The Dialectical Relationship Between National Capital and Bureaucratic Capital

This chapter argues that much confusion about “bureaucratic capital” in China comes from mistaking it for “state capital” in Western Europe. The same capital may display different social characters under different relations of production. I therefore distinguish two fundamentally different meanings of state capital: the Soviet case, where private capital is prohibited and “state capital” is effectively social capital as a whole; and capitalist society, where state property exists only alongside and within the pores of private capital, with its content changing as capitalism moves from liberal competition toward monopoly, finance capital, and war economy. On this basis, I ask whether Chinese society can genuinely allow national capitalism or state capital to exist in a non-bureaucratized form. I conclude that under China’s current transitional conditions, capital adorned with the name of “state” is easily transformed into bureaucratic capital. State capital does not exist in a vacuum; without corresponding social foundations, bureaucratic capital and state capital cannot stably coexist.