States are capitalist by structural position, not class composition

Evidence

Capitalist states - or more carefully, states that operate in the terrain of capitalist economic formation and a more or less expansive capitalist world system - nevertheless are not simply reflective of capital’s interests. Indeed, one could make the matter more complex still by insisting that capital’s interests are never singular, and often not unitary, either intraor internationally.” Capitalist states are capitalist, as Poulantzas points out, not for their class composition - not simply for representing the interests of the capitalist class. They are capitalist rather for occupying a particular “objective” structural position in virtue of reproducing an historically specific and internally contradictory mode of production, locally and globally (Poulantzas, 1969:73; Holloway and Picciotto, 1977:4-6). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1666

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines the Poulantzas criterion distinguishing a capitalist state from mere capitalist-representing legislatures.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1666
• XREF: connects to: The Institute viewed the Soviet economy as a variant of state capitalism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 483; Modern capitalism created two overlapping worlds of territorial states and dispersed private property. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 50; Government wartime economic policy revealed state as instrument of class domination — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 204 (+1 more)