http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/07/28/1916205
"Many Marxists saw in Capital the portrayal of a capitalism limited to the framework of a single nation-state, to which the theory of world market would be an addition. As such, the categorical sequence (books on the State and the World Market were to follow the book on Capital) is viewed as a sequence of the range of coverage of the analysis.
But a national economy has as its precondition the demarcation from other national economies (mediated through the state). Without the world market, a national economy cannot be properly analyzed. In Capital, we do not already encounter the analysis of a national economy, but (with the analyzed “ideal average”) rather the categorical preconditions for researching a national economy and the world market..
In the Marxist tradition, this theoretical hole is often filled by the theory of imperialism. However, Lenin’s theory of imperialism in particular falls far behind the insights of the Marxian critique of political economy. The inadequacies of the theory of monopoly capitalism were already hinted at above. Complementary to those is an economically foreshortened theory of the state, which is still popular today in various guises: the state is reduced to the status of being the “instrument” of the “monopolies”, whose international economic interests must be imposed or secured. Obscured by this simple view of the state as an “instrument” is the fact that common capitalist interests (other than the common interest of retention of the capitalist mode of production) are in no way already pre-existent and simply waiting on the opportunity to be implemented. They have to be defined and implemented, they have to gain support, they need social hegemony – processes, in which the state plays a decisive role, but not as a mere “instrument”."
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