ABSTRACT
The distinction between form and content is very important to Marx’s historical materialist method. The state form – the form of the content of state–society relation – is designed to exclude direct participation of the masses in their common affairs. This chapter discusses the geographical form of the state, including the scale division of labour within the state between more local and more central branches of the state. The local branches of the state are said to be more accessible to common people. The scale of the territorial reach of the state, or of the state’s interaction with, and penetration into, society, has expanded over time, which corresponds to the scaling up of capitalist accumulation and development of technologies of transportation, communication, and surveillance. The task of ensuring political dominance of the bourgeois class increasingly gets transferred from the parliament to successively higher levels of bureaucracy.
