Re: spiral of capitalism and socialism

Dear Richard,

        There is only one problem with your reactions.  They summarize
virtually everything that really matters amd reach, what to my mind, are
the correct and most judicious conclusions.  So you leave us with little
to discuss, except the details!  I hope we will do that, but I just want
to express, at the outset, my broad agreement with your assessment.  The
last thing I would want to happen is the Catastrophe of 2044, as described
in A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE.  Chase-Dunn and Boswell give us a
plausible alternative.  But you are wise to remind us of the non-rational
factors that might impede or accelerate their alternative.  The reason I
am a historian and not a social scientist is my fascination with
surprises.  Nevertheless, I do concede that most surprises generally
contribute to rational outcomes, in the strangest ways.  Just consider
Hitler's mad career, which did nothing in the long run but speed up the
transition of Europe to bourgeois democracy and the triumph of
multinational capitalism!  Not HIS ambition, but he was an unwitting tool
of the cunning of history....

        Thanks for your astute, balanced, and sane analysis of this major
book.

        Cheers,

        Warren

On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

> These are my initial reactions to Terry Boswell and Chris Chase-Dunn's
> "The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism," and I will make no attempt to
> be very specific or thorough -- it's a broad-brush summary, and it's 
> longer than my norm for an acceptable posting -- I only hope that the
> importance of the topic is sufficient justification. 
> 
> 
> 1)
> SCS is an important and impressive work, oriented toward praxis, that
> everyone should read and discuss.  It somehow manages to be at the same
> time both hard-headed and practical, and visionary.  It is a novel
> synthesis, informed by the findings of world-system research at every
> turn.  The first chapter is valuable in its own right, a 35-page updated
> summary of world-system theory and research.  It leaves me with a rare
> sense of optimism.
> 
> 
> 2)
> SCS provokes a dual reaction.  
>       On the one hand:  
> "But that's just core-centric liberalism/social democracy!"  
>       On the other hand:
> "What?  Global socialism?  How did they get to *that*?"
> 
> B&C-D explicitly adopt analytical marxism's micro-level theory 
>(specifically 
> Roemer and Przeworski) and use it to inform their proposals for praxis (as
> well as their assessment of state socialism's strengths and weaknesses).
> 
> From one angle, then, the project looks:
> 
> a) conservative (assuming "rational actors" trying to maximize utilities),
> b) reformist,
> c) committed to non-violence,
>       and
> d) core-centric (assuming progressive change radiating out from core).
> 
> But I'm separating out these elements -- in the book's presentation, they
> are dialectically intertwined with these elements:
> 
> a) a historic tendency toward a world state,
> b) both growing power and a historic tendency toward structural innovation
>       in the semi-periphery,
> c) the emergence of a progressive world polity, spreading universal values
>       of human rights, environmental protection, etc,
>       and
> d) the European Union as the potential model and actual embryo of
>       history's first multi-state hegemon, opening space for movements 
>       from below. 
> 
> So SCS presents the possibility of transforming the world into One Big
> Sweden, if ever so slowly.  The start, though, could come as soon as the
> next K-wave A-phase peak in 2015 or 2020, (or perhaps the next one 50
> years later if we're still around, I'm not clear) -- this could be the
> occasion for the creation of a multi-state hegemon instead of the
> horrifyingly typical pattern of world war.
> 
> 
> 3)
> The "trick," as it were, of B&C-D's analysis, is to transpose cycles and
> trends.  They basically propose that if progressive forces just keep
> pushing (clearsightedly, based on good assessment, and with a catholic
> attitude rather than baptist infighting, to use my phrase)) for
> democracy and equality (the old slogans of the French Revolution), they
> can push the system's secular trends to a point of affecting the playing
> out of the cycles.
> 
> The ace in the strategy, not quite a deus ex machina, but the lynchpin
> or engine without which the mechanism won't work, is the semiperiphery.
> The assumption is that the peasants and workers in the periphery have
> motivation, but no opportunity, while the core workers have opportunity
> but little motivation (see Przeworski for supporting evidence, including
> his analysis of the "valley of transition," also discussed on Wright's new
> AJS piece -- Jan. 2000).  The workers and peasants of the semiperiphery
> have both motivation and opportunity, and thus become the locus for
> progressive system-level change.  A key becomes "harmonization
> upward," the potential for core labor to join with semiperipheral labor to
> enforce global standards that will benefit both.
> 
>  
> 4)
> Sorry, I haven't yet summarized the scenario.  In a nutshell, the
> capitalists create the rudiments of a world state, partly in response to
> pressure from below, as seen today with the opposition to the WTO, and
> then progressive forces democratically take over that state and implement
> a form of market socialism (which I won't attempt to describe here).
> 
> The vision is that the same forces that have led to progress within states
> can continue at the global level, a result of the ongoing "spiral" of
> capitalism responding to, and often making concessions to, workers and
> other progressive forces, mainly through the process of democratization.
> 
> 
> 5)
> A carefully crafted, provocative vision indeed, and not just a vision, but
> the solid basis for a coordinated strategy.
> 
> In general, my inclination is to say, "I haven't seen anything else that
> comes close in terms of strategy, let's adopt it and get to work!"
> 
> I do have two reservations, though:
> 
> Ai) There is not enough attention to the ecological crisis.  It is
> included (as Doom 2 to nuclear war's Doom 1), but addressed using the term
> "sustainable growth," which I'm afraid is an oxymoron.  The destruction of
> ecosystems and species is a secular trend not addressed by SCS, and the
> depletion of fossil fuels is another secular trend that not only is not
> addressed, but which may intervene to disrupt the predictable cycles in
> ways which B&C-D do not even speculate.
> 
> Aii) Related to this, new technologies such as bioengineering and ongoing
> computerization, with its interesting potential for "dematerialization" 
> are not addressed at all.
> 
> B) The conditions of the periphery are also brushed by too fast.  The SCS
> scenario may be right if the assumption about the lack of opportunity of
> the periphery is right.  But it seems to me that surprises may well be in
> store, both good and bad, based on the incredible stresses that are being
> and will increasingly be felt.  I wouldn't be so fast to write off the
> periphery as the source of innovation -- there will be hundreds of
> millions of very young, very informed, and very oppressed people there in
> the 21st century, and what *they* may dream of and do isn't, and can't be,
> incorporated into anything so rational and well thought through as this
> book.
> 
> *** *** *** *** *** 
> 
> I haven't even addressed the specifics of the World Party idea, or the
> implications for the recent discussions of "global keynesianism."
> 
> This is enough for now.  I hope this provokes some refocused discussion of
> the sort Warren was recently requesting!
> 
> Richard Hutchinson
> Ogden, Utah
> 
> 
>