Re: evolutionary options

Agree completely - all evolutionary options should be explored, none is
preordained - my original point.  Spruyt's book sounds a lot like Michael
Mann's _Sources of Social Power_ - hope he takes "ideological" power as
seriously as the latter.

On Sun, 14 Jan 2001 Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

> "Given the political bargains during such transformatory phases, we should 
> expect a multiplicity of alternatives to arise.  Institutional change will 
> occur through a twofold process: a stage of institutional emergence and a 
> subsequent stage of systemic selection."  This is from Hedrik Spruyt's The 
> Sovereign State and its Competitors, mostly devoted to the emergence of the 
> state form following the medieval period, but looking to the present and 
> future.  Spruyt critiques the numerous weberian, marxist, etc accounts of the 
> rise of the state that see it as a unilinear, inevitable development.  In 
> fact, there were a number of different forms of social organization at the 
> end of the medieval period, and the state won due to historical developments. 
>  I think this critique is relevant to the present, and many accounts of the 
> contemporary and future world system.  However, whereas unilinear accounts of 
> the past at least give overly simplified accounts of what happened, unilinear 
> accounts of the present give overly simplified accounts of what their authors 
> think is going to happen.
> 
> There are three unilinear accounts of the current system that one hears over 
> and over:
> 
> Neoliberalism--everyone with any common sense now recognizes the virtues of 
> the free market.  In any case, the world economy is set up such that you will 
> fall hopelessly behind if you try to defy it.  The world is moving towards a 
> community of neoliberal states in which goods and capital will freely flow 
> between borders.  This is a good thing.   It happened because common sense is 
> prevailing. 'Democracy movements' like those in Chile, the Phillipines, 
> Eastern Europe, etc facilitate neoliberalism and are generally a good thing.  
> Once in a while, however, the masses' fears intrude and threaten to mess 
> things up.  Given the choices, it is probably better to have a somewhat 
> authoritarian neoliberalism than a democratic anti-neoliberalism.
> 
> Disorganized Capitalism--there is no more core and periphery, hegemony, etc.  
> Everything is going in all directions at once.  Nations states are 
> meaningless as actors in the world economy.  Transnationalism is hot.  this 
> happened because of accelerations of speed due to communications and 
> transportation breakthroughs.  Efforts to impose world order are no longer 
> relevant, and probably a bad thing.  Local, hybrid activity is a good thing.  
> Where are we going?  History lacks that sort of coherence.  Its silly to talk 
> about things like 'the rise of East Asia' or 'the decline of the US' because 
> place no longer means anything much.  But probably networks of global cities 
> will be key players in the future.
> 
> Empire--The US-led core keeps getting stronger and stronger.  The US is 
> strong militarilly, culturally, and economically, especially compared to 
> alleged competitors like Europe and Asia. It will impose its rules 
> everywhere.  The world it will force through looks a lot like the ones 
> neo-liberals describe.  However, far from being the product of common sense, 
> it is the result of power.  There are no contradictions to speak of amongst 
> the ruling classes that will cause it to weaken.  Thus it should be frontally 
> assaulted by the discontented everywhere. 
> 
> (note if we line them up like this, we can see how incongruous versions two 
> and three seem to be--although two was extremely fashionable only ten years 
> ago).
> 
> In contrast, an approach like Spruyt's would suggest that the present 
> situation--in which we can probably all agree that there is a certain 
> exhaustion of the conventional notion of national soveriegnty--will give rise 
> to a number of alternatives, that will then go through a selection process 
> (i.e. struggles, history, etc)   How would alternatives be generated?  
> Probably forces that have access to different kinds of resources--military, 
> economic, etc. will try to piece them together into alternatives.  One way to 
> do so would be territorially, if a large pool of resources is located in one 
> place.  Another would be transnationally, if one could figure out a way to 
> pull dispersed actors together under one plan.  I think both the European 
> Union and the East Asian regional economy are examples of the former.  They 
> both have a lot of economic resources, quantitatively more than the US, 
> probably even if one conceives of 'the US'  as a region including not only 
> Canada but Latin America (and while the US seems to be incorporating Mexico, 
> I'm not sure Brazil is sold on this vision). The EU supercedes the nation 
> state by formally combining a bunch of states under a political umbrella.  EA 
> has no such formal organization, but is regionally integrated through 
> Japanese capital and the Chinese diaspora.  The US 'empire' might be 
> considered an example of the latter, i.e. the emergence of a transnational 
> alternative through the shared interests of dispersed groups (worldwide 
> neo-liberals).  Finally, its also possible that some territorial or 
> transnational group may emerge as an alternative due to the power of 
> ideology.  This is what happened with the Lutheran principalities, the US in 
> the 1780s, Russia in 1917, etc.  None of these places were very strong 
> militarilly or economically, but they became extremely important due to the 
> impact of their ideological models.   Calvinists and Socialists tried to 
> present transnational models, but they were overwhelmed by the logic of the 
> state system.  Perhaps a transnational model will have a better chance this 
> time.  I should add, however, that the 'swarm' model of mobilization that has 
> been so effective in places like Seattle, Prague and Sydney (so why do people 
> continue to advocate Leninism?) doesn't quite qualify yet--it is a model of 
> mobilization, not a model of social organization.
> 
> I think comprehending our position on the cusp of indeterminate change, with 
> a number of alternatives emerging, is more useful than fundamentally 
> apocalyptic notions in which the power of capital is homogenized, or trying 
> to create excessively elaborate notions of cyclical parallels (which was 
> never the intention of '1931' in the first place).
> 
> Steven Sherman
> Greensboro College
> 

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bc70219@binghamton.edu