On the Analysis of the Bourgeois Nation State within the World Market Context.

An attempt to develop a methodological and theoretical approach

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966i

Originally written in German in 1974, later republished in English in 1978 incorporating some of the author’s subsequent considerations, this article by Claudia von Braunmühl argues for taking the world market as the essential concept to explain the formation of national markets and of the political apparatuses (nation states) as authority complexes which defend and support the reproduction of capital within certain boundaries. The author argues for a dialectical comprehension of the pressures of the world market, which are perceived interchangeably as internal or external and manifested in class struggle, not only to understand the formation of states in the periphery of the system, but also in the central nations, as an indispensable instrument to assure the lucrative results of capital accumulation in its competition with multiple other capitals combined in nation states. The world market is seen as the fully developed domain of capital movement, leading to repercussions in the study of Imperialism, International Affairs, History and International Law.