Re: Praxis

In a message dated 1/11/01 5:14:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
bc70219@binghamton.edu writes:

<< Subj:     Re: Praxis
 Date:  1/11/01 5:14:47 PM Eastern Standard Time
 From:  bc70219@binghamton.edu (Boris Stremlin)
 To:    Threehegemons@aol.com
 CC:    wsn@csf.colorado.edu
 
 Steve,
 
 With regard to new hegemons eroding previously constituted sovereignty,
 which hegemony dispensed with the inside/outside dialectic altogether,
 rather than merely transposing it to a new set of variables?

Not completely following your question.  The point is that the institutions 
the US set up constrained any sort of national sovereignity.  Nearly everyone 
who wanted to get one got a 'sovereign' state, and like most things that 
'everyone' has, it becomes worth less and less.  This is a condition any 
future actor will have to take into account.  I'm not sure it is that 
different from Negri's concept of 'Empire'--although, since I haven't read 
that book, can you clarify whether he is using that term analytically or 
rhetorically?  ditto 'constitution'.
 In any case, the decline of 'classical' sovereignity does not render 
territorialism completely irrelevant--in the sense that various classes may 
find territorial institutions effective ways to advance their interests.  
Using territorial institutions to advance capitalist interests is one 
example.  Using them to protect subaltern interests is another.  So is using 
them to create a little cultural utopia, as I mentioned in my last post.


 With regard to hegemonies being products of chaotic conditions - sure, but
 chaos can easily (and has historically) had a variety of different
 outcomes.  On Arrighi's own evidence, this transitional period is highly
 anomalous, since the previous hegemon has retained (overwhelming) military
 predominance (and I remain skeptical of projections of "intercore"
 conflict - tensions there are, but any more so than in the age of Johnson,
 De Gaulle and Mao? 

a--De Gaulle was France--now the US has to worry about 'Europe'.  It did not 
have to do so in the 60s because 'Europe' was worried about the USSR.  The 
surreal spectacle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a 'self-defense' 
organization rushing to bomb a balkan territory is symptomatic of the 
difficulty the US is having in clarifying its role in the new situation.

b--France, and Europe, constituted a much smaller economic unit in the 60s 
than they do today.  The EU is much bigger, and more powerful than a similar 
unit would have been in the sixties.

 Furthermore, the key agency fostering instability this
 time around is the previous hegemon, rather than a purely territorialist
 hegemon, as in Arrighi's three previous transitions.

I hope this is not getting excessively scholastic--but Arrighi puts a lot of 
the blame for chaos the previous time around on the British refusal to 
accomodate themselves to a decrease in prestige and power.  It wasn't just 
that Germany went nuts.
 
 Finally, with regard to the unfeasibility of what you characterize as a 
 unitarist centralism at this juncture - I refer you to Negri's actual
 theorization of the imperial constitution.
 
Not sure exactly what you are referring to.  I would just like to point out, 
as I tried to indirectly in 1931, that because the US has enjoyed 
considerable success recently in pushing its agenda on much of the world, one 
should not presume this success will continue indefinitely.  Perhaps, as many 
people seem to now believe, China, Iran, Cuba, Iraq etc will all cave and the 
US will indefinitely lead a neoliberal consumerist world through institutions 
like the IMF and World Bank (although lets not forget that this world hasn't 
exactly been met with enthusiasm in Europe either).  Or perhaps  Hugo Chavez 
and the Ecuadorian coup attempt are more indicative of the future prospects 
of this regime.  And perhaps when the US economy runs out of gas, and the 
credit card bills the US has run up become more expensive (if the dollar 
declines in value) many of the cultural fissures that have simultaneously 
been buried by the prosperity of the 90s while actually continuing to deepen 
will come to light. We will have to just see, although people are welcome to 
try to push things in one direction or another.

To endorse David Smith's encouragement of further reading, I suggest Peter 
Gowan's 'The Global Gamble' as a highly balanced account of US efforts to 
exert power that nevertheless underscores the limits of this power.  See in 
particular his analysis of the relationship of the US/IMF to South Korea, p. 
113-14.

I haven't read Negri/Hardt's book.  A review I read appeared to indicate 
that, like so many commentators of the late 90s, they make light of the 
importance of the shift in financial power toward East Asia over the last 
forty years.  I have to say I am deeply suspicious of all those who do so.  
For all the talk about de-centering, anti-oedipus, etc. during the 1980s, it 
sounds to me like a lot of people are worried about the West no longer being 
the only player in world history.  It is the geopolitical equivalent of the 
unending unhappiness of many former and still-marxists at the fact that 
women, gays, various minorities have moved onto the stage once solely 
occupied by the workers and their vanguards.

Again, the Aihwa Ong book mentioned earlier is a terrific antidote. As she 
comments: "It is a historical irony that at the point when a new Asian 
hegemony is emerging out of the particular imbrications of state and capital 
in the Asia Pacific region, so much Western academic attention remains 
riveted on the West itself or mesmerized by the West's colonial past and 
present in 'the peripheries'" .   Also useful is Goran Therborn's appraisal 
of Europe's likely role in the world in the next century, in the Perry 
Anderson edited book about Europe.

Elson--you've said a lot.  I agree with you that territorialism in the sense 
of conquering land is dead.  I just mean territorialism in the sense of 
institutions that attempt to rule over a particular territory.  The EU, The 
US, and the Nicaraguan state are all territorial in my book.  Amnesty 
international, diasporic communities and the IMF are not.  Some people seem 
to believe the latter are thoroughly superseding the former.  I disagree.

I don't think the world will break up into seriously divided regions.  But I 
do see one of the tensions in the world today between universalism and 
particularism.  The Chinese state is in the particularist camp, in that it 
insists that it is not obligated to conform to US dictats about 'human 
rights'.  Many commentators on China's intro
to the WTO openly wonder if, given China's attitude toward US pressure on 
human rights, whether they will really take orders from outside on the 
economy.  They may have a point.

But its not only the US, with its consumerist/free market vision, that is 
universalist.  So is Amnesty International,  Greenpeace, and all kinds of 
other groups.  Most of us multiculturalists would like all women and gays and 
minorities everywhere to have more power, respect, security....  
Fundamentalist tend to be more local--women should go back to the home, 
minorities should be quiet, because that is how us Christians/Muslims/Hindus 
do things. Do you anticipate that one set of global rules can contain either 
side in this situation?  If not, how else is it going to be resolved except 
through territorial divisions?  I anticipate a world of integrated, but 
somewhat seperated regions with different views on these matters.


Steven Sherman
Greensboro College

 -- 
 Boris Stremlin
 bc70219@binghamton.edu
 
 
 
 
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