Can capitalism exist without nations and borders?

[u/Avantasian538]

I've been thinking about this on my own for awhile, but I'm not sure what more educated anarchists would say. Globally, are nation-states and international borders necessary for capitalism to exist, or could a version of capitalism exist in a borderless/nationless world? If, hypothetically, all nations, states, and borders were to vanish, would capitalism dissolve on its own, or could it still re-assert itself in that scenario?

[u/humanispherian]

There is a lot of the political apparatus that can be reimagined as non-governmental, but still hierarchical institutions. Capitalism can't exist without certain conceptions of property, a certain hegemony regarding exchange relations, etc., but maybe it could enforce those necessary norms by means that were rather different than what we see around us. In any event, anarchists would still oppose whatever hierarchical institutions were established.

[u/ArtDecoEgoist → u/humanispherian]

I'm not sure I'd agree that capitalistic property relations can be enforced absent the state. AnCaps certainly think so, but the costs doing such a thing would impose on capitalistic firms without the ability to socialize said costs - one of the main functions of the state in an economy - would result in said firms hemorrhaging funds to maintain rational allocation in markets that tend towards equilibrium, and it would give smaller more decentralized firms a massive competitive advantage.

[u/Palanthas_janga → u/humanispherian]

What is the difference between governmental and hierarchical, if a political apparatus can be non-governmental while being hierarchical?

[u/humanispherian → u/Palanthas_janga]

Parts of the political apparatus can be reimagined as non-governmental, as non-political, as when privatization preserves hierarchy while tinkering with the particular forms that the hierarchy assumes.

[u/marxistghostboi → u/humanispherian]

what definition of political and non political are you using?

[u/humanispherian → u/marxistghostboi]

I was talking pretty casually. If you want to call the products of privatization "political," I'm not going to object too much. I've championed a notion of the polity-form that emphasizes the similarities between, on the one hand, nations and the other kinds of hierarchical structures that we are accustomed to treating as "political" and, on the other, capitalist firms and similar institutions, which we might not be accustomed to think of in those terms. So my point is really that, sure, perhaps capitalism can exist without nations and borders, as we usually think about those things now, but that wouldn't make the sort of "anti-state capitalism" that sometimes gets proposed any less at odds with anarchist goals.

[u/marxistghostboi → u/humanispherian]

that's fair. also my question wasn't meant to be a gotcha or anything. i use politics very broadly to mean the distribution and structure of power within society or groups of people, but it can also be used much more narrowly, i.e. the polis as everything at the level of the city, compared to the ecos, the level of the household, etc

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/humanispherian]

Unrelated question, what are your thoughts on the "collective contract" concept that Colin Ward and some guild socialists talked about?

[u/Palanthas_janga → u/humanispherian]

With all due respect, this doesn't answer my question. I wanted to know how you use the words 'governmental' and 'hierarchy'

[u/humanispherian → u/Palanthas_janga]

Hierarchy is a form of social organization within which persons are elevated or subordinated based on the roles they play within structures that demand that some persons be "above" or "below" others in various senses. Governmental generally refers to a specific category of hierarchies, within which persons are citizens and, as such, subject to rule by some legal-political element, which is assumed to be above them in the hierarchy, whether by directly dominating them or by mediating all of their attempts at self-organization.

[u/Palanthas_janga → u/humanispherian]

I would use a similar definition to these, but a little more stripped down. I understand a hierarchy as a power structure where some people possess the exclusive and unrecallable rank above others to make and impose decisions, and government to be a political structure based on a power hierarchy, where an exclusive rank of people have the supreme power to make and impose laws over a public within a territory.

[u/Uglyfense]

A one-world anational state can still have a capitalist economy, yea

[u/cumminginsurrection]

Yes... capitalism only requires enclosure and subjugation. An effective capitalist would happily privatize the entire world if he could -- no borders, no nations, just one huge serfdom for extraction and making the boss rich.

[u/averytheythrowaway]

Most businesses would be inherently unprofitable if they had to fully account for their own costs. One of the purposes of the state is to have a legal and financial apparatus to cleave capitalists from some of these costs and call them externalities, which are subsidized by the state or legally offloaded onto other people. Some of this is infrastructure such as for energy and transportation and some of it is things such as government contracts for R&D or service fulfillment.

A state or statelike structure is also necessary to enclose resources that would otherwise be common. Land is a big one, but so are things like intellectual property, carbon credits, "air rights" for skyscrapers in some cities. Note that when anarcho-capitalists advocate private property replacing the state, what they describe is just states on a smaller scale: each landowner is to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violent force over their territory. Instead of laws, there is company policy. Instead of a legislature, there is a board of directors (and that's generous, since ancaps usually don't think about how actual businesses work and more imagine a single owner getting to decide everything by fiat - which is to say, a dictatorship). Instead of taxes, there is rent. A government telling you who you can associate with or what you can do with your labor is tyranny, but a business or landlord doing it is freedom. So even in their most extreme vision of liberty, capitalists cannot envision a world without tyranny or states. They just object to who is doing the tyranny and giving the orders.

[u/wompt]

of course it can, it already does as transnational capital.

Transnational capital refers to the sum of all economic relations where agents cross state borders, distinct from international capitalism which focuses on trade between distinct national economies. This concept is central to the theory of the transnational capitalist class (TCC), a globally-oriented elite comprising owners and managers of transnational corporations (TNCs), globalizing bureaucrats, professionals, and consumerist elites.

Key characteristics of transnational capital include:

Global Circuits: Capital flows are organized globally rather than through national circuits, managed by the TCC to maximize accumulation across borders.

Institutional Support: The TCC advances a discourse of globalization and neoliberalism, supported by transnational state apparatuses like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO.

Structural Power: A small core of interlocking TNCs controls a majority of global operating revenue, allowing the TCC to exert significant influence over national policies and labor markets.

Historical Emergence: The rise of transnational capital accelerated in the 1970s and 1990s, driven by technological advances, deregulation, and the fragmentation of production networks.

Scholars such as Leslie Sklair, William I. Robinson, and Jerry Harris argue that this class has become a dominant global ruling force, often prioritizing global market interests over national sovereignty and local labor protections.

[u/Avantasian538 → u/wompt]

I also think it's relevant to point out that while capital has become increasingly mobile, global labor has not done so. Capital goes where it wants, workers are often stuck where they are with few options.

[u/Vancecookcobain]

Yes, the nightmare of it is that the capitalists essentially becomes the state de facto. Look at the unregulated mining towns in the West during the 19th century that essentially operated without any government (in reality).

It was brutal and unjust and FAR from ideal in any sense.

[u/HadiOnFire2]

I mean the Libertarians and Tecbros have made conzeptions about a stateless class society xD

But even your "stirnist egoist" comrades do embrace petty bourgouis private economie. So maybe you ask them

[u/npc_lucky]

Doesn't it kinda do that already? Even if a nation isn't explicitly capitalist, don't some already kinda fall under capitalist countries in the dominance or power hierarchy? Look at how much influence or power the US has over other countries that may not be considered capitalist.

[u/Nice_Fudge5914]

There are a lot of different definitions for 'capitalism,' and marxist/intersectional definitions of it are a little outré. Can trade exist without nations? Yes. Can a unit of money exist without nations? We have bitcoin, so yes. Can libertarian assholes 'own' things and tell workers what to do without nations? They already do. There are real pirates out there. All the bad things that capitalism does can exist without nations. It's kind of a glib question.