Relative autonomy reframes state-capital causality as multidirectional, not base-determined

Evidence

Where Marxists like Poulantzas theorize the state as “relatively autonomous” from infrastructural material production, then, they still maintain the primacy of the mode of production in setting the limits of social conception and comprehension. … Yet in shaking social theory loose of these moorings, in undoing the hold of the base-superstructure metaphor on thinking the social, “relative autonomy” should not give way to thinking of material production, politics, and economics as totally autonomous or independent of each other. Rather, the shift makes the causal connections multidirectional and historically specific. Thus it no longer is necessary to maintain determination of the state by the interests of capital “in the last instance.” There are historical moments when the forces and resources of capital have been deployed by design to reproduce the conditions of sustaining the racial state - the racial conditions of the state - either generally or in a historically specific form like apartheid even to the detriment, shortor long-term, of capital’s interests. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1671

Categorization

• XREF: Directly qualifies how the ‘racial state’ concept relates to earlier vault claims about structural racism and CRT’s critique of orthodox Marxism. — connects to: State and capital interdefine through shared mediating logics, not one dominating the other — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1672; State and capital have autonomous logics yet mutually define each other — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1672; Economic restructuring does not make superstructural self-development automatic — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 926 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Specifies what ‘relative autonomy’ means once the base-superstructure metaphor is dissolved: multidirectional, historically specific causality rather than last-instance economic determination.

Broader Connections

• Base and superstructure relate through non-immediate, relative autonomy rather than direct correspondence #corroborates (0.90) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 509
• State and capital interdefine through shared mediating logics, not one dominating the other #corroborates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1672
• Economic restructuring does not make superstructural self-development automatic #corroborates (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 926
• State and capital have autonomous logics yet mutually define each other #qualifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1672