ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 deals with the role of the state as an institutional and regulative mechanism crystallizing bourgeois political power and class rule. starting from an overview of the development and evolution of nation-states, and the dialectical interaction and determination between society (the economy) and the state, the relevant analysis will proceed to a brief outline of the emerging ‘transnational
capitalist state’, under the current conditions of a rapid capitalist globalization. Chapter 5 will investigate, more specifically, the role of technology as a crucial mediating factor contributing significantly in the exploitation of labour, the appropriation of nature by capital, and the overall accumulation and development of capital. The socially (and class) non-neutral character of technology, which is briefly analyzed, enables us to decipher the rising tension between the immensely increasing productive potential generated by new technologies and the constrained and inadequate satisfaction of real social needs. By extending the current trends of technological development and the associated socialization of labour and production, we are finally led to a broad outline of the technological and socioeconomic preconditions for a supersession of capitalism. in the subsequent Chapter 6, we analyze the environmental implications of capitalism. The rapid exhaustion of natural and economic resources and the other forms of environmental degradation and ecological crisis that we face today are considered as, largely, a direct impact from the inherent characteristics of the Cmp itself. To face the aggravating environmental crisis and the threat of an ecological collapse is an absolutely urgent task, and it is the final end of this chapter to investigate the preconditions of superseding the alienation of both labour and nature, and of a reconciliation of society with nature.
