>That's a broad generalization. There are many cases where nation-states
>have been controlled (at least temporarily) by progressive forces who used
>the power of the state for the economic and social benefit of its
citizenry.
>And now that global capital has become so powerful, the nation-state is the
>only institution strong enough restrain it -- through capital controls,
etc.
I always understood that it was only when, as Marx put it, capital began "to sense itself and become conscious of itself as a barrier to development" that it sought "refuge in forms which, by restricting free competition" seemed "to make the rule of capital more perfect" (Grundrisse). In other words, capital only started using state intervention in the economy to any extent when the system itself started to decay and was no longer progressive in the sense that it had once been, namely, that it was a universalising force which superseded remnants of previous modes of production and the archaic and parochial social structures which depended on them.
Use of the state in this way meant that capital was forced to try to regulate competition and thus contradict its own laws. The increased role for the state was as a crutch for an increasingly doddery system. This role for the state is evidence of stagnation rather than a sign of anything particularly progressive. I would also argue that measures undertaken by the state which might appear to have progressive implications for the majority (nationalisation of industry or the formation of a national health service are oft quoted examples) were usually also in the interests of capital rather than the majority and were intended to ensure the perpetuation of a particular form of social relations. Of course there are (rare) situations where the balance of forces dictates that the state (on behalf of capital) coughs up and makes concessions to the masses. It doesn't look that way now.
We shouldn't see state intervention as a way to reduce the negative effects of so-called globalisation. Rather than "restraining" globalising tendencies, such intervention is, if anything, in the long run more likely to be used to replicate at an international (global) level the kinds of competition between capitalists which was normal at a national level in capital's earlier phases.
Russell