Rational kernels in a mystical shell: A comment on Robinson

Abstract

Stripped of its needless confusion, presentist exaggeration, and antique Marxist fundamentalism, Robinson's article on globalization and the state makes two vital contributions that deserve highlighting. First, against the global-versus-national dualism prevalent in much writing on the subject, he shows how the globalization project is being carried out, often eagerly and willingly, by rulers and bureaucrats within the very nation-states this project is supposedly undermining. Second, he argues forcefully and reasonably that the major cause of the emerging transnational state apparatus is the ascendance in many countries of an increasingly self-confident transnational fraction of the world bourgeoisie. Accepting these two major points, let me try to clarify the confusion, reduce the exaggeration, and challenge the fundamentalism.