The creation of the new market states is the result of NAFTA, the EU, and other new evolving models of contractual corporate and state cooperation. They are the WTO, APEC , etcagreements and meetings that are occuring that have set in motion the evolution of the market state that Bobbitt speaks of below.

The War in the Balkans followed by the war in Afghanistan followed by the war in Iraq is not just the war of Empire and Imperialism but of private armies and private contractors, becoming in effect a state, since they provide privatized functions of the state as I have blogged about. (He links to an earlier post of his here.)

The attack on the Balkans was an attempt to end the last vestiges of State Capitalism and pound the Serbians into submissive acceptance of the privatization of the State through strategic bombing of industries.

It is the same with Iraq. It too was the last state capitalist country in the Middle East that had to be privatized. The other countries were less vulnerable since they are hierarchical societies that had opened their markets to capitalism, while remaining fuedalistic social constructs.


An interesting analysis of this concept of the War of the Market State can be found at Global Guerrillas which reviews this book [Phillip Bobbit's - the Shield of Achilles - which Elites were reading ~911 I think]

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Thus the War on Terror is a war on two fronts. One to smash and transform the last outposts of state capitalism in Europe and the Middle East, and a war on the unregulated market.

Global Guerrillas says; The similarity between these commercial networks and those of modern terrorism (my global guerrillas) is not incidental.
Nor is it incidental that the American Empire is sowing the seeds of its own self destruction, not only in expensive military operations that rack up thousands of corpses and trillions in deficits, but in the fact that like the British Empire before it in order to finance these wars, it too relies on the black market. The British Empire set itself up for decline as it persued its Opium Wars against China. The US set itself up in the 1980's providing stinger missles to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan who paid for them in opium money. Who transported them through smuggling routes, still with us today used by Bin Laden Inc.

Capitalism has outgrown the Nation State. It reguired it for its period of ascendency. Now that it is the real domination of everything , of all social relations it needs a new state, a market state. One that can continually destroy its overproductive capacities. As capitalism evolves better technonological production, increases productivity and reduces the need for real labour, it amasses capital, which becomes unproductive. It is here that the new market state can use this capital to create permanent war, small scale localized war, that does not threaten its global expansion, but allows it areas for wide scale destruction of productive capabilities to offset its cancerous growth.

If war is privatized and all state functions are privatized, then the individual is no longer identified as a citizen, or as a wage labourer, but as 'free' individual, a contractor in a market state. Capitalism will have evolved to its logical conlusion; that we remain wage slaves but no longer to a particular boss or business but to the market. Our alienation will be complete. And it will be a society of barbarism, of all against all.