ABSTRACT
Capitalist states, that is to say states that represent and promote the interests of primarily capitalist ruling classes, must act on the domestic and international planes to do so, including to manage the contradictions of their capitalisms. This chapter focuses on the intertwined trajectories of capitalism and socialism. After brief reflections on capitalism and the revolutions that make and break capitalist states, it outlines the understanding of the contractions of capitalism in the realms of the state and the international before tracing the political and geopolitical economy of capitalism and socialism up to the end of capitalism’s post-war Long Boom. More than any other form of society, capitalism has an intimacy with revolutions because it is neither natural nor in possession of Promethean capabilities of developing the forces of production and creating prosperity everywhere and for all time.
