> If the state maintains order (e.g., establishes on which side of the
> road traffic moves), that is all capitalism as capitalism needs.
But the state does much more than maintain order and make rules. Robert referred earlier to Deleuze (and Guattari), and I think their writings on the state get at its function: it's not just the apparatus for maintaining control while capital extracts its surplus value (which is sort of how they thought of the state in Anti-Oedipus with the idea of antiproduction) but it is a "model of realization" for that capital. The state captures and realizes what capital produces; without the state, capital would fall off the earth.
> The State, the Family, Education are not capitalist institutins, though
> capitalism needs all three. It needs many other instittuions that are
> not capitalist institutions.
If I'm reading Mike Beggs correctly, it's just this sort of instrumentalized view of the state that is so objectionable, and that I thought had been considered outdated. There are no autonomous institutions in capitalist society; calling them noncapitalist is maximally idealist, as if they had some essence that capital can't touch. Capital doesn't just use them, it also modifies them, just like they modify capital.