ABSTRACT
The capitalist state performs certain essential functions long recognized by both its proponents and opponents. First, like any state, it must provide services that cannot reliably be developed through private means, such as public safety and orderly traffic, public infrastructure (roads, rails, canals, bridges, ports), and protection from natural disaster and foreign aggression. Second, there looms that most important class function of the state: securing the plutocratic interests of the very few at the top, protecting the moneyed interests from the have-nots, the 0.01 percent from the impoverished masses. The state maintains the process of capital accumulation in part by exercising methods of suppression against the working populace and its champions, using the 118police powers of the state, keeping the many in line in order to secure the interests of the few.
