Asia and Transition to Empire?

An issue indirectly tied to Mine's questions on the Asian financial crisis
is the topic of the current transition or demise of the modern world-system
(or the Reorientation of the world system, ala Frank -- the idea of which
brings
to mind Julian Weiss' The Asian Century published in 1989, primarily for
businessmen, or nearly a decade before that, Hofheinz and Calder's
The Eastasia Edge, 1982).

After several months of correspondence with Boris Stremlin prior to the
publication of Negri and Hardt's Empire, I was stimulated to rethink the
trajectory of the decline of the modern world-system.  I'm still working
through this thick book and find stimulating their own thesis of the ongoing
transition to an Empire (qua a new kind of world system).  However, among
the problems I've encountered is their brief critique of Arrighi, whose
lectures I attended at Binghamton during the early nineties while he was
writing The Long Twentieth Century (TLTC) -- a brilliant book in many
respects.
Where Negri and Hardt error in their assessment of TLTC is the claim that
in "Arrighi's cyclical argument it is impossible to recognize a rupture of
the
system, a paradigm shift, an event.  Instead, everything must always return,
and the history capitalism thus becomes the enternal return of the same"
Negri and Hardt, 2000: 239).

I have two responses to this mischaracterization of TLTC, one
methodological,
the other substantive.  On methodology, Philip McMichael in a recent and
interesting
JWSR article notes in passing that TLTC is an example of how the method of
"incorporated comparison" may be employed to explain social phenomena on the
basis of their historical interconnections.  (I was fascinated McMichael's
idea which I
first read about in 1990, for it seems to draw on the sophisticated
theoretical
conceptualized developed by Tomich in Slavery in the Circuit of Slavery,
1989).
In this case, Arrighi compares the evolution of episodes or regimes of
capitalist
development that are ordered by hegemons, the contradictions of which appear
in part in the "autums" of systemic cycles of accumualtion which mark the
final
days of hegemonic power.  Arrighi's cycles are not more of the same, but
outline
a broad view of the systems evolution through contradictions of an era that
give
rise to new solutions.  The structure and contradictions evolve because the
solutions
to the contradctions of prior regimes and forms of global governance change.

Methodologically Arrighi, McMichael, and Tomich implicitly, sometimes
explicitly,
critique formulations of the modern world-system as theorized by
Wallerstein,
their long-time colleague and friend, as a theory of "an historical system
without history."
That is, Wallerstein's older model (which seems to have evolved to focus on
ideology and structures of knowledge), emphasized continuity of structure
rather
than on evolution or specificity of an era or of differences between forms
of labor,
etc. Change -- the trends -- are not really change of quality, but simply a
quantitative
change that has certain physical limits which will eventually lead to crisis
of the system.
Thus, for IW, the current global difficulties are basically another a crisis
of "conjonture."
It is ironic that Negri and Hardt overlook what Arrighi actually argues and
consequently
end up making the same criticism of Arrighi that he and others make of
Wallerstein (and they do so far less subtly).

Negri and Hardt's critique is also off in terms of recognizing Arrighi's
view of
the current crisis of hegemony as one possibly of systemic transition,
though
I don't recall Arrighi being as explict in TLTC as he was in our
seminars.  But certainly, he does not present the current situation as
"more of the same" in TLTC.   On the contrary, he synthesizes a number
of observations to put forth what is still a provocative insight
into the rupture of the capitalist world-system.  Unlike any
of the two previous shifts in the center of the world economy, in this
ongoing shift to East Asia the US is retaining the guns even though the
money-makiing center has shifted to East Asia.  Moreover, it is not
shifting abroad to another continental-size state, but to (1) numerous
semi-states that are either occupied by US forces or are merely cities:
Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore (2) to a huge semi-periphery,
China; (3) and the latter four places, as the dymamos of investment flows
and
sinkholes, are interlinked by the overseas Chinese diaspora.  All of this
is discussed again in Arrighi, Silver, et. al., Chaos and Governance ...
and touched on in an Arrighi article in David Smith, et. al., States and
Sovereignty in the Global Economy (1999).

The shift to East Asia has a number of implications for the crisis of
hegemony
and possibly the crisis of capitalism.  Among them, which Arrighi
sees as unlikely, but which I think relevant since the 1980s, are the new
uses of US military power *directly* (Reagan-wars, the Gulf, and Bosnia) and
*indirectly* (the threat of its use as a means to sustain US decision making
power in world-government institutions, power which used to be based more on
US economic power) as means to create a virtuous cycle.   Capital
runs from areas made unstable by US intervention or US financial
policies, heads to safe US shores, with US investors taking their cut,
who then send the capital back out to the choice areas where prices
have been deflated by the regional crisis and thus good deals abound.
The Japanese banks lost out as a result of this game.  They went in big
time during the 1980s, shot prices up, and kept feeding a bubble which
the US -- or the infamous "Washington Consensus" -- popped through the
Structural Adjustment Policies.  This view of what may come to
characterize an Empire differs from Negri and Hardt who seem to emphasize
the "order" (espeically legalistic order)  in their vision of Empire as a
New World
Order.  In contrast, it seems that the Empire, or at least the transition,
may be characterized by "systemic chaos" -- to use an Arrighi concept -- but
still held together by a world economy.  It is a new kind of system chaos,
one
not based on territoral control by core states, which seems to me to have
characterized the modern world-economy *until* US hegemony.  Which is
why the period of US hegemony may itself be seen as indicative of transition
and new rules of a new game.

The question is, how long can the US sustain this new Mafioso-racket?  Only
as
long as their are sufficient capital flows to divert?   As previously noted,
Soros thinks the cash has dried up, for the time being anyway.  If his view
is on target, then after another deflationary shake-down, the cash may
materialize and start flowing again, in which case the US may resume the
Mafioso racket.  I'm sure Bush Jr. will not hesitate to start another war
like dear old Dad.  But Arrighi and Wallerstein suggests that these are acts
of a dying hegemon.  No doubt, US power aint' what it used to be.  But
power is still there, precisely as Arrighi points out, and the shift in the
center
of the world economy this time is quite unlike the prior instances.

Sure, the US is increasingly dependent on its allies for cash to finance US
wars.
Yet, it seems that the Mafioso racket has worked: aren't US government
finances looking pretty good after gutting the welfare state and the
accumulation of tax revenues from escalating financial-boom and
dot.com stock growth?   Of course, the US is not as
competitive economically as it was or as Europe or Japan is today (or will
be tomorrow).  But isn't there a new financial basis for another round?
Isn't there more money now for SDI, which Bush will no doubt push forth?
Will this start a new kind of cold war-like escalation of military
expenditures globally?  What's stopping the US?  Will the allies really
stand up and say, enough is enough.

If the US has a virtual monopoly on the guns and has discovered a way
to use that power to channel capital to US coffers to sustain that power
in a self-feeding loop, then indeed the rules of the game have changed.
It may be that the US Mafioso-racket is only a lever toward empire or
characteristics of real chaos of a transition.  But it is among the
manifestations
indicating that we are entering a new game.  For this and the reasons that
Negri
and Hardt cite, the possiblity of Empire formation -- and what it may look
like --
is worth consideration.

elson e. boles