The early formation of capital relations and the state

Introduction In previous chapters, we concluded that the autonomy of the state is to be subjected to a thorough critique, the aim of which is to show the formation of the mystifi ed form of the state in and through which the totality of capitalist social relations are manifested. Now we are developing a historical critique of the Korean state. This will be done not only by looking at the formation of the state apparatus itself but also, and more importantly, by tracing the historical formation of specifi cally articulated capitalist social relations as a whole. The process of the early formation of the totality, encompassing the development of the specifi c form of the state, will show that a specifi c class composition, which was formed through specifi c historical class struggles in capitalist development, led to the development of particularly articulated social relations. Furthermore, this history will show how the specifi c process of the reproduction of capital relations has formed the Korean state and provided a distinctive mystifi cation into which the developmental state theories fell back. In this chapter, the critique of the Korean state begins with the particular formation of capitalist social relations in the Japanese colonial period, during which the colonial initiation of capitalist development conditioned a further development of class struggle and thereby a distinctive form of the capitalist state after Korea’s liberation from Japan.