> A concept of Late Feudalism might be of some assistance here. But
> first: "Lateness" arrives at the point where the scale and scope of
> capitalist development generated social and political crises, in the
> course of the 'normal' processes of the business cycle, which
> threatened the existence of capital. IOW, the point at which the real
> supersession of capital became an actual possibility. WWI was that
> point. Keynes and the RR was its sign...
I think that's right. "Late feudalism" and "late capitalism" are respectively state feudalism and state capitalism. Both feudalism and capitalism for all their differences are at the outset non- and even anti-statist, growing up as they do in the interstices of an existing state system (resp. Imperial Rome, Absolutist Europe).
The crises of the 14th century and the exhaustion of feudalism lead to the dominant feudal classes' coalescing around the monarchies and the construction of Absolutist (state-feudalist) states. It is against them that the interlocking series of bourgeois revolutions, from the the Revolt of the Netherlands to the 20th century, are ranged. Classical (18th-century) liberalism as its etymology suggests is a theory of freedom, freedom from the Absolutist state.
Similarly the crises of the "Thirty Years' War of the 20th Century" (WWI/Depression/WWII) and the exhaustion of capitalism lead to the dominant capitalist class(es)' coalescing around the states and their leaders (Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin) and the construction of state-capitalist states. Classical liberalism extended into an era of industrial state-capitalism remains a theory of freedom, libertarian socialism.
It remains to be seen whether "Empire" is significantly different from the dominance, now more two generations old, of the leading state-capitalist state. I rather doubt it. --CGE