Re: Praxis

On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

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

The US as hegemon promoted national sovereignty in its early days as a
major component of its regulatory regime - it had been more constrained
(worldwide) prior to 1945.  National sovereignty became more constrained
as hegemony proper went into decline (and as it became more widespread, as
you say).  Back then, there was at least a general recognition
(reinforced by the counterweight of the other superpower) that states
were sovereign within their borders, even if it did not work that way in
practice in every instance.  It is true that Negri's Empire (an
analytical concept denoting the sovereignty exercised by an agency
essentially identical to Wallerstein's world-empire, in my reading) is
informed by his conceptualization US polity as potentially universally
expansive (and he traces this expansiveness to its very inception, i.e.
long before 1945, even), so in a sense it has always attempted to
transcend the limitations established at Westphalia (linked to Corrupt Old
Europe).  In the last 30 or so years, as the balance of power has broken
down, the imperial tendencies, reinforced by the US position as current
hegemonic power,  have become much more explicit, as constraints have
fallen away.  I'm asking what previous transition this situation has
applied to.

>  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.

I'm not sure who exactly is saying that territorialism has become
completly irrelevant - it has simply become a strategy of subimperial
agencies.

>  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.

Europe's ability (and will) to counteract the centrifugal pull
of its components and to effectively resist US is still very much in
question (Barendse has made this point quite well in his last few posts).
If the EU is much bigger and more powerful than in the 60's, it still
lacks effective leadership (and Germany's continues to be morally
suspect) and the ability to project its power globally; the US, on the
other hand, is certainly more powerful than it was in the 60's.  What you
see as the surreal spectacle of NATO/US trying to define its role in the
new world I see as Europe's inability to manage its own sphere of
influence, its susceptability to disruption by US adventures, and in the
last instance, its lack of alternatives but to support US policy.  

>  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.

It wasn't just that Germany went nuts, but had Germany not been pushing
for war, there is no telling how long some semblance of the old regime
could have persisted.  In any event, the British accomodated to  German
rearmament and expansion throughout the 1930's and I would be hard-pressed
to correllate 2001 to any single year in the previous transition.

>  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.

"Perhaps" is of course the operative word here.  I second your suggestion
to wait and see, because our models do not have ultimate predictive
power, and precisely for that reason we should continue to
theoretically explore multiple trajectories.  In the spirit of "perhaps",
I offer the following projections for reassessment in light the present
situation.  This first one was written by Wallerstein 10 ago:

"There is much talk these days of a three-way breakdown of the world
market.  I don't believe it, because, in this kind of acute competition,
triads give way to a binary split.  The stakes are high, and the weakest
of the three competitors will seek an alliance with one of the other two
for fear of being squeezed out altogether.  Today, and surely a decade
from now, the weakest of the three, in terms of efficiency of production
and national financial stability, is and will be the United States.  The
natural alliance is with Japan.  The trade-off is obvious.  Japan is now
strong in production processes and in capital surplus.  The United States
is strong in research and development capacity and potential, the service
sector generally, military power, and accumulated wealth for consumption.
A reunited Korea could join the Japan-United States arrangement, as would
Canada.  Japan and the United States would bring into the arrangement
their links in Latin America and Southeast Asia.  Ane they would make a
strong bid to find the appropriate niche for China.
        Europe has seen this coming for a long time.  That is why the 1992
arrangements have not only never been derailed but also are surely going
to be augmented, now that Germany is reunited and Thatcher has been
disposed of.  Europe has to work out its detailed strategy; either
piecemeal expansion of the EC or wide-ranging confederation.  The key is
Russia, which must be included if Europe is to have any strength vis-a-vis
a Japan-United States arrangement.  Europe will work hard to counter a
disintegration of the U.S.S.R., and since Japan, China, and the United
States for other reasons are fearful of the same process, the U.S.S.R.
will probably weather the storm somehow" [reprinted in _After Liberalism_
(1996), pp.19-20.]

First of all, one does not have to overestimate US power to conclude that
now, 10 years later, the US is certainly not the weakest component of the
triad in terms of production and financial stability.  The idea of the US
offering a partnership to anyone, least of all Japan (which has been
stagnating for the last decade) sounds anachronistic in an age where the
"last superpower" mantra has become ingrained not only among the talking
heads, but also the policy establishment.  As for the rest of Asia, the
Koreas are indeed talking reunification, but the US role here has been
decidedly secondary, and ambivalent.  If Clinton won't go to
N. Korea in the next week, Bush certainly won't in the next four years.
So the "Asian archipelago" is still not assembled, and as for finding a
niche for China, that's even more uncertain.  Rhetoric coming both from
China and the US in the last 2 years does not provide much encouragement
for proponents of the US-Asia axis.  Wallerstein appraises the harsh tone
as bargaining for position, but there is no telling when a feint turns
into a tragic misstep (the lessons of WWI).  

As for Europe, integration is not so far along as most people expected a
decade ago.  The Marseilles talks decided little, the euro has so far been
a flop (and some countries have stayed out altogether), and the European
military is still only in the planning stages (and its efficacy remains
questionable).  EC expansion to date has been very timid, and most
importantly, membership has been withheld from those countries who have
needed its stabilizing power the most, and those countries have careened
into chaos.  The disintegration of the USSR has not been prevented (it was
positively encouraged by Washington), and the resulting depression has
exceeded all expectations.  Putin has indeed been talking to Schroeder
lately and picking up some of the pieces Gorbachev left behind, but one
wonders whether it's too little, too late.

Now, here is Arrighi's favored scenario for getting out of the current
crisis (of 7-year vintage):

"Why not seek a way out of this self-destructive competitive struggle
through a renegotiation of the terms of the political exchange that has
linked East Asia capitalism to the global military Keynesianism of the
United States throughout the Cold War era?  Why not acknowledge the
fundamental limits that the shift of the epicenter of systemic processes
of capital accumulation to East Asia puts on the state- and war-making
capabilities of the West, regardless of how unprecedented and
unparalleled these capacities may seem and actually are?  Why not, in
other words, let East Asian capital dictate the conditions under which it
would assist the West to power?  Is not this kind of deal what historical
capitalism has been all about?" [This from the _Long 20th Century_, p.
355].

Perhaps seven years is not a very long period of time, but everything
we've seen in that time suggests that the course chosen by the US has not
followed Arrighi's modest proposal, not least because there has been no
external pressure from a territorialist challenger to push the US toward
the kind of deal" with which historical capitalism has been familiar.
Rather, we have seen capital moving back to the US, because the above
trajectory has been "countered by the very extent of the state- and
war-making capabilities of the old guard, which may well be in a position
to appropriate through force, cunning, or persuasion the surplus capital
that accumulates in the new centers and thereby  terminate capitalist
history through the formation of a truly global world empire" (ibid.).
Persuasion - the neoliberal agenda - is not without detractors, but thus
far most of the world which has not yet been pushed off the map is still
playing along with the tune.  As for force and cunning - the cultivation
of crises and their exploitation have proved fairly successful at
forestalling greater Asian and European integration in the last decade.
Looking ahead, the picture is not getting prettier.  Whereas Clinton
stressed the persuasive aspect of the globalist gambit, Bush appears
poised to stress the military.  It may be that this is a sign of weakness,
and indeed, there are signs that the Great Society upon which globalism
was premised is beginning to fray.  The economic prospects have gotten
bleaker for the US (though I hasten to add that they are bleaker still
for Asia, which is dependent on US markets).  The fact of a weak president
surrounded by much stronger and more experienced advisors may also play a
role.  Be that as it may, it seems that the die has been cast:  the "old
guard" has recaptured global liquidity through persuasion and deceit, and
will now defend it by force.   And, in an age of dynastic politics, it's
even entirely possible that at the end of four disasterous years we will
just hear a clamour for a return to Clinton (figuratively and literally). 

> 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.

I'm sure you have a good reason for linking doubts about the primary
importance of the shift of financial power to East Asia (in the 70's and
80's) to retrograde politics.  I see no such necessary link, any more than
I believe the argument that Wallerstein and Arrighi's assignment of a
European origin to capitalism is an instance of Eurocentrism.  East
Asian hegemony may be comparably more desireable, but to downplay
the imperial gambit because it does not conform to the precedents of
"historical capitalism" seems cavalier to me.  It may be that opponents of
empire may have to do without the benefits of a rising hegemon on its
side, and this simply adds salience to questions of how and what sorts
of communities can be constituted.  I'm not sure how you are using the
terms "world history" and "The West" (imperial sovereignty is arguably
anti-Western, depending on how you define it) and when you believe the
West was world history's sole player, but I don't see why seeking
theorizations of what may be the greatest global threat necessarily
predisposes one toward a given ism.


-- 
Boris Stremlin
bc70219@binghamton.edu