Giovanni Arrighi, "The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the
Origins of Our Times", Verso, UK, 1994, paperback.
10 May 2007 - "ARRIGHI: Hegemony Unravelling - 2" (written in 2005)
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2501&lists=newslog
Friends,
If you want to understand capitalism, and how it has evolved
historically, then I highly recommend Arrighi's material. The article
"Hegemony Unravelling -2" gives a good introduction to his thinking,
and also brings us partly up to date, vis a vis the rise of China.
The book describes the systematic process of capital accumulation
that began to dominate global affairs in the 14th Century, and traces
the process up to 1994.
Here's a review from the Amazon website:
____________________
Giovanni Arrighi's text is the most under-rated as well as the most
brilliant of all theoretical works on historical capitalism and its
futures. Unlike the claims of recent scholars like Hardt and Negri,
the text is NOT about one historical cycle succeeding another. Such a
claim is one of the worst examples of intellectual misrepresentation
that I have ever come across. Their own work ('Empire' and then
'Multitude') are vain and failed attempts to come to terms with
Arrighi's work.
As a student of Marx, Braudel, and Schumpeter, Arrighi knows better
than most that no two systemic cycles are ever the same. Each one not
only ruptures the world system, it also creates conditions for its
own supersession, in what Arrighi, drawing upon Braudel, calls
'financial expansions', and what David Harvey following Arrighi,
calls 'accumulation by dispossession'. By drawing insightful
comparisons between four long systemic cycles starting with the
medieval Genoese financial expansion, Arrighi demonstrates the
novelty of the cycle underlying the long twentieth century as well as
pointing to what lies ahead.
This is an absolute must read for anyone interested in capitalism,
the interstate system, the social movements (though here the text is
somewhat deficient), and the possibility of a future different from
the lackluster present. Arrighi's work is simultaneously historical
and theoretical (theory after all comes from a deep grasp of
historical currents). Although much misunderstood, misinterpreted,
and misrepresented, and often appropriated without adequate
acknowledgement, The Long Twentieth Century is destined to become the
classic work of the 21st century.
Ten years after it first came out, almost all of Arrighi's
predictions are turning out to be accurate, so much so that his
school of imitators is becoming as vast as his train of never-ending
admirers. To those who like large meta-narratives that combine
spatial dynamics with temporal rhythms - and there are only a few out
there (Marx, Weber, Braudel, Schumpeter, Perry Anderson, Michael
Mann, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Charles Tilly)- Arrighi's work will
be the unsurpassable horizon of our times. Arrighi is a
master-synthesizer. One of the challenges he raises is the question
of synthesis itself. What is entailed in the act of synthesizing
without distorting particulars, is the capacity to give each
particular its due (as if that were ever possible!). Arrighi's deep
compassion for the struggles to bring about a different global future
guide much of his architecture. Unlike many who call themselves
socialists, Arrighi carries none of their presumptuous and often
ridiculous baggage.
To read this text is like experiencing a breath of fresh air after so
many sterile polemics on the Left. It is a tall order to go beyond
the Long twentieth century. Future attempts will invariably find
themselves repeating an insight already developed in some obscure
page of the Long Twentieth Century. It is the challenge of the 21st
to come up with something at least as good as the offering of the
Calabrian maestro.
____________________
* Dominance vs. Hegemony
Arrighi makes an interesting distinction between "dominance" and
"hegemony". A "hegemon" not only dominates affairs, but also provides
a leadership that is recognized, to some extent, as being beneficial
to the powers that are being dominated. During the Cold War era, for
example, the US was hegemonic -- the leading powers of the 'Free
World' saw the US as playing a stabilizing role, and offering
protection from expansion of the Communist block. Since 9/11, and the
unilateral invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has remained
dominant, but its role as hegemon has been rapidly deteriorating.
* Systemic Cycles of Accumulation
The core of Arrighi's analysis is what he calls "systemic cycles of
accumulation". There have been four of these cycles, with hegemony
centered first in Genoa, then Holland, Britain, and the US. The
cycles overlap with one another -- the declining phase of one cycle
becomes the birth phase of the next. The last quarter of the 19th
Century, for example, was simultaneously the "grand moment" of
Britain, and the beginning of power transfer to the US. The US is now
in its declining phase, and a new cycle of accumulation is beginning
-- with China as the new potential hegemon.
Each cycle is both the same and different than the preceding ones.
All cycles are the same, in that they begin with an expansion of
production and commerce, and decline when the hegemon begins to focus
on financial manipulations. All cycles are different, in that each
successive cycle is centered on a larger-scale hegemon, and each
introduces a new organizing principle for the global economy.
Genoa rose to the level of hegemon through a synergistic relationship
with Spain. Spain had the armies and fleets and did the conquering,
while Genoa provided the financing and disposed of the silver being
brought in from the New World. Genoa itself was always a very small
power, a mere city state. Hegemony over the global economy was
exercised not by Genoa as a 'state', but rather by a network of
Genoese bankers and merchants who were spread throughout Europe. On
the surface, it appeared that Spain was the dominant power, and
that's how historians generally describe that era. But in fact it was
the Genoese diaspora that made the system work, and who accumulated
most of the gains.
Eventually, and this happens in every cycle, the very success of the
Genoese created the circumstances that led to their decline. The
scale of the global economy grew to the point where the Genoese were
no longer in a position to control it. While the Genoese continued to
be financial players, hegemony passed to the Dutch Provinces.
The critical difference between the Genoese cycle, and the Dutch
cycle, is what Arrighi calls the "internalization of protection".
While Spain provided "protection" for the global economic system
during the Genoese cycle, the Dutch had their own fleets and army,
and were able to provide their own "protection". With their larger
scale, and their own protection, the Dutch were better able to manage
the expanded global economy that the Genoese were instrumental in
creating. The transfer of hegemony was assisted by the Genoese
themselves, as they increasingly found that investing in the Dutch
Provinces offered the most profitable financial returns.
In the transition to British hegemony, the critical new element was
"internalization of production". While the Dutch had engaged in
commerce and finance, and had their own protection, they did very
little production of their own. Britain meanwhile was emulating the
successful practices of the Dutch and, with its own growing
production capacity, Britain eventually came to be in a better
position to take control of the still-expanding global capitalist
economy. And as with the Genoese before them, the Dutch assisted in
the transition as more and more Dutch capital was drawn to London,
where the highest returns could be obtained.
In the transition to US hegemony, the critical new element was the
"internalization of transaction costs", enabled by the
vertically-integrated corporation, of which John D. Rockefeller's
Standard Oil was the archetype. By managing every transaction within
the corporation, from the acquisition of raw resources through to the
distribution of final products, this new corporate form achieved a
decisive competitive advantage. As in the previous cycles, Britain
itself provided much of the investment funding that led to the
emergence of US hegemony.
The latest cycle of accumulation, increasingly centered on China,
emphasizes the incorporation of cheap labor. This is by no means a
new element in capitalism, but as cheap labor becomes increasingly
important in the global economy, Asia has a clear competitive
advantage. Again, the new potential hegemon (China) is much larger
(geographically and in population) than the preceding one (the US).
Again, it is the US that created the global economic environment that
has nurtured the rise of China. And again, we see the new
accumulation center arising with a focus on production and commerce,
while the declining capitalist clique depends increasingly on
financial manipulation for its economic survival.
* Capital Accumulation vs. State Power
Over the lifetimes of these cycles, Arrighi traces the relationship
between capital accumulation on the one hand, and "state making" and
"war making" activities on the other. The Genoese were exclusively
capital accumulators, with no state powers of any consequence. The
Dutch had a respectable scale of state powers, but it was the British
who developed the capacity to directly administer a global-scale
empire through the exercise of state power and war making, while at
the same time functioning as the global center of capital
accumulation. The US in its turn did not actually conquer a global
empire, rather it gained hegemony over the empire Britain had
developed, but under modified regimes of economics and management.
The question now before us, and Arrighi develops this theme in the
article cited at the top, is whether or not we will see the full
development of another cycle of accumulation. From a capitalist
perspective, the US cycle is clearly in a state of irreversible
decline. While the de-industrialized US runs up record deficits and
adverse trade imbalances, China, with immense cash reserves, is
moving to the fore as the center of global production and commerce.
From this capitalist perspective, the baton of hegemony is rapidly
moving from West to East.
However, from a state-power perspective, the US still retains
overwhelming military superiority. In addition, Washington continues
to exercise considerable leadership within elite Western capitalist
circles (as reflected in Bilderberger activities). Can US elites
resist the tides of capitalist dynamics? Can they retain global
dominance using the raw military power of the Pentagon? Can they
regain hegemony with the help of their elite European allies?
(At this point I depart from Arrighi and continue with speculations
based partly on Arrighi, and partly on other sources.)
When the neocons took over the White House, by means of election
fraud, they came in with a two-part strategy aimed at global
dominance. Part 1, enabled by their 9/11 project, was an attempt to
gain decisive control over global oil supplies using their war-making
capabilities. Part 2, under the rubric of 'UN reform', was an attempt
to create a US-dominated one-world government using their diplomatic
influence and state-making capabilities.
Part 1, aka 'Agenda for a New American Century', has been so far a
dismal failure. Iraq has turned into a quagmire, the CIA-sponsored
'colored revolutions' have been partially reversed, and China and
Russia have responded by forming a close alliance. Note:
10 May 2006 Engdahl: USA's "geopolitical nightmare"
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=1138&lists=newslog
Part 2 (one-world government), in the face of Chinese and Russian
opposition, has little chance of success.
US elites, however, show no signs of giving up their attempt to
retain / regain dominance. Rather than abandoning their military
aggression, they are seeking to develop a first-strike nuclear
capability to be used against Russia and China. We see this in their
space-weapons programs and in their missile 'defense' installations.
These missile 'defenses' would be of little value in a nuclear
exchange -- unless the Pentagon succeeds in wiping out most of the
opposing strategic capability by means of a first strike. Note:
21 Feb 2007 * William Engdahl: Putin and the Geopolitics of the
New Cold War *
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2190&lists=newslog
28 Apr 2007 US Must Maintain Superiority In Space Says General Hamel
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2448&lists=newslog
This first-strike strategy is by no means certain of success. Russia
retains a formidable strategic capability and is keeping a close eye
on US developments. China is rapidly upgrading its own weapons
systems, with an emphasis on asymmetric warfare. China has also
demonstrated recently the ability to knock-out satellites. We are in
the midst of a new arms race, and it is not clear that the US can
achieve a decisive lead, enough to pull off a first strike without
suffering unacceptable damage. The outcome of this race remains in
doubt.
It now appears that the US is also pursuing a backup strategy, based
on its state-making capabilities, but falling short of a one-world
government. Part of this strategy is focused on North America, and
part on the EU. In North America, and ignored by the corporate media,
a union of Canada, the US, and Mexico is being rapidly stitched
together. This union would of course be dominated by US elites, and
it is an attempt to slightly lessen the scale advantage of Asia, vis
a vis the US. Mexico brings in a mass of cheap labor, and Canada
brings in considerable natural resources.
With regard to the EU, and with the help of its Bilderberger friends,
US elites are seeking to bring the EU closer to the US orbit, and to
prevent the EU from developing closer ties with Russia and China. It
was Bilderberger support that got Merkel into office in Germany, and
the new right-wing, US-leaning leader in France seems to have gotten
there by means of voter-machine election fraud (ditto the recent
Scottish elections). These covert methods are necessary because the
US agenda makes little sense for the EU generally, although it may
make sense to European capitalist elites who seek to retain Western
dominance.
This state-making backup strategy, if it succeeds, would result in
two major power blocks, Russia + China, and Enlarged US + Europe. It
would presumably also result in an end to cycles of accumulation as
we have known them.
rkm
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