ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses capitalist globalization and develops an historical materialist analysis of the transnationalization of the state. It argues that the nation-state is an historically specific form of world social organization that is in the process of becoming transcended by capitalist globalization. The chapter distinguishes analytically between a number of related terms: nation, country, nation-state, state, national state, and transnational state. Historical materialism is emancipatory precisely because it allows to cut through the reification that results from naturalizing historical arrangements and reveals the historical specificity of existing social forms. The supra-national organizations function in consonance with transformed national states. They are staffed by transnational functionaries that find their counterparts in transnational functionaries who staff transformed national states. These transnational state cadres act as midwives of capitalist globalization. Under capitalist globalization, the linkage between securing labour and territoriality is changing, and national labour pools are merging into a single global labour pool that services global capitalism.
