Review, Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century (Verso, 1994)
by Immanuel Wallerstein
(for The Guardian)
Despite its title, this book is not really about the twentieth
century, long or otherwise. It is an attempt to understand the de
cline of U.S. hegemony and the present dilemmas of the world-system
in the light of the historical evolution of world capitalism begin-
ning with Venice and Genoa. It is a historicized political economy
of the world-system, a major contribution to our understanding of
our world. It is ambitious theoretically, since Arrighi is trying
to put together a whole series of familiar stories and theoretical
propositions in a provocative and original way. It will be dis-
cussed and debated and used widely.
Arrighi sees a constant tension between the "revenue-maximiz
ing logic of trade expansions" and the "profit-maximizing logic of
capital accumulation" (p. 232) which alternately coincide with and
reinforce each other and bifurcate. Lest this seem abstruse, Arri
ghi immediately translates this into a concrete interpretation of
600 years of world history. He builds his story on the idea of suc-
cessive, alternating forms of hegemony within the world-system,
what he calls the dialectic of state and capital.
He takes off from a boutade of Braudel: "[In] Venice the state
was all; in Genoa capital was all" (p. 145). In Venice the strength
of capital rested on the coercive power of the state; in Genoa,
capital stood on its own two feet, and the state, such as it was,
was dependent upon it. Arrighi's summary judgment: In the short run
(in which a century is a short run), Venice's method seemed unbeat-
able, but in the long run it was Genoa that created the "first
world-embracing cy cle of capital accumulation" (p. 147). Then, in
one of those clever antinomies of which he is fond, Arrighi says:
"Just as Venice's inherent strength in state- and war-making was
its weakness, so Genoa's weakness in these same activities was its
strength" (p. 148). Venice became the prototype of "state (monopo-
ly) capitalism" and Genoa of "cosmopolitan (finance) capitalism".
So far, most readers will nod hazily in their fuzziness about
the details of the fifteenth-century world. It is when Arrighi
starts applying these categories closer to home that the surprises
come. It turns out the "Dutch regime, like the Venetian, was rooted
from the start in fundamental self-reliance and competitiveness in
the use and control of force" (p. 151), which explains its hegemony
and which then "backfired...[by creating] a new enticement for ter-
ritorialist organizations to imitate and compete with the Dutch..."
(p.158). Once again, success would mean failure, Arrighi's repeated
leitmotiv.
The British replaced the Dutch, and the Age of the Genoese was
paralleled by the Age of the Rothschilds. They did this by reviving
"the organizational structures of Iberian imperialism and Genoese
cosmopolitan finance capital, both of which the Dutch had supersed-
ed" (p. 177). "Control over the world market was the specificity of
British capitalism" (p. 287). The Germans tried to suspend the ex
cessive competition this brought about, but the U. S. "superseded"
it (p.285). U.S. corporate capitalism, expanding transnationally
became "so many `Trojan horses' in the domestic markets of other
countries" (p. 294). This destroyed the structures of accumulation
of British market capitalism but once done, "US capitalism was pow-
erless to create the conditions of its own self-expansion in a cha-
otic world" (p. 295). The impasse was overcome only by inventing
the cold war.
In the light of this history, the financial expansion of the
1970's and 1980's does not seem revolutionary but a repeat of an
old story. The overall picture is of four successive hegemonies:
Genoese, Dutch, British, and US, about which three major statements
can be made: they successively were briefer; there was a long-term
tendency for the leading agencies to be successively larger and
more complex; there was a double movement, backward and forward in
time, with each shift of hegemony (Venice/United Provinces/U.S.
contrasted with Genoa/United Kingdom).
What can we say about such a vast canvas, most inadequately
summarized here? Its greatest strength is its clear vision of capi-
talism as a single-mindedly rational attempt to accumulate capital
endlessly, which means, says Arrighi, capitalists are interested in
the expansion of production only if it's profitable, which is true
only about half the time. The rest of the time, the capitalists ex-
pand their money stocks by playing financial games. They can inter-
nalize or externalize their protection costs (Frederic Lane's very
fruitful concept) and there are pluses and minuses in each path.
But it's not a matter of capricious option. The structure forces
capitalists to alternate in a sort of ratchet fashion: one step
backward, two steps forward.
Arrighi's intellectual indebtedness to Marx and Schumpeter are
well-known. What he has done is this book is take Braudel seriously
as a source of data and hypotheses and cast him in a Marxo-Schum-
peterian mold. The work is truly a political economy, one in which
successes breed failures, where "the real barrier of capitalist
production is capital itself" (Marx), but [or is it and?] capital
ism is the "anti-market" (Braudel).
This book will not make everyone happy. There is no discussion
of class, but then there is none in Marx's Capital. Perhaps more
surprisingly, in a work written by Arrighi, there is scarcely a
hint about the core-periphery antinomy in the organization of the
world-economy. What Arrighi is concentrating upon in the organiza
tion of the cycles of accumulation as the key to the story of the
historical development of the world-system. And finally, for a po
litical economy, which in theory emphasizes the role of political
factors in the process of accumulation, there is little real poli
tics in the book. Words like left and right do not appear, and ide-
ology is never mentioned. The current very central concerns of rac-
ism/sexism or culture do not appear in the index.
Nonetheless, this is an important and exciting work, which
challenges most people's approach to the understanding of the
world-system. It is argued intensively, if a bit kaleidoscopically.
It forces the reader to reflect, if only to locate the potential
inconsistencies in the fast-moving narrative. It is not bedside
reading. It is a serious book for serious people in serious times.
Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu