Anaylisis of Historical
Global Developments and their Relevance to the
Internal
Situation of the United States
Written by dmorista
In this article I will endeavor to try
to look at the current world situation, and particularly that of the
U.S, in socioeconomic, political, and military terms, in a historical
perspective. I will use some of the theoretical systems developed on
the left, to analyze the Capitalist world milieu and the nations and
socioeconomic systems that compose it. First a discussion of some of
the basic concepts and theoretical constucts I will use to couch my
arguments. Those who are familiar with World-Systems Theory mignt want to go to the end of main body of the article and read the concluding section: Application
of World Systems Theory to the Current Situation.
Introduction:
There can be no doubt, as we look at
the great sweep of human history, that great civilizations and
empires; are “born”; they “rise”; they pass through a period
of “greatness”, during which their power, institutions, and
culture reach a peak; and eventually they “decay and fall”.
There has been a lot of theoretical work on these issues, especially
for the particular case of Empires that rise to the level of being
the Global Hegemon; a position that the U.S. has occupied for around
a century, but would seem to be sliding out of at this time. The
time period during which the U.S., to one degree or another, occupied
that position stretches from around 1908 to the present day. The
dynamics of the situation, how it affected the U.S. internally, and
who the other major powers, rivals, and allies that were involved has
changed over time.
The examination of Capitalism, Global
Hegemony, and the dynamics of the various Global Hegemons has been
taken up by many scholars. Among the most prominent are Immanuel
Wallerstein, George Modelski, and Giovanni Arrighi. Wallerstein,
whose analysis proposed that there is a World System of capitalism,
engendered a school of thought called World-Systems Theory.
Wallerstein propounded and expanded upon these ideas in a 4 volume
work in which he proposed that Holland was the first Global Hegemonic
Power, then the British Empire, and finally the United States; and he
analyzed the operations of capitalism during these respective
Hegemonic Epochs in great detail (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980, 1989,
2011). Wallerstein proposed relatively short periods of what he
termed “Uncontested Hegemony” exercised by each of those three
societies, (See Table 1). He examined developments outside of those
restricted time periods in great detail, but did not propose a
formalized framework for a recurring cycle of developments, inside
and outside of the respective Hegemonic Powers, that explained these
events. George Modelski described 5 global hegemonies each about one
century in length, and proposed a set of cyclical events that helped
explain the recurring phenomenon of Hegemonic Rise, Ascendancy, and
eventual Decline (Modelski, 1987). {See Table 2A in the Appendix for
Modelski's proposal and Table 2 in the text for my modification of
it}. Giovanni Arrighi outlined the occurrence of 4 global
hegemonies, each with increasing power and control over the global
economic system, but ironically of declining temporal length
(Arrighi, 1988). {See Table 3A in the Appendix for Modelski's
proposal and Table 3 in the text for my very slight modification of
it}. Joshua Goldstein writing about Long Economic Cycles and
political power among the major powers, proposed his own explanation
of the evolution of Great Power Global Hegemony (Goldstein, 1988).
All the major variants of theories proposing a World Capitalist
System and a succession of hegemonic powers agree on two things: that
in the last few decades of its power, the ruling class of the
declining hegemon shifts over from actual productive capitalism to
financial capitalism; and that “Hegemonic Wars”, of particularly
horrific intensity and length, mark the transition from one hegemony
to the next.
Some theorists have proposed that the
first hegemon was Portugal, and they advance involved arguments as to
why Portugal was hegemonic (the Portugese Empire did have more
extensive holdings in Asia and Africa than the Spanish Empire did)
rather than Spain. The Spanish Empire, however, was actually larger
and it produced far more of the gold and silver; that played a
pivotal role in the economic developments of the 15th -
17th centuries. I prefer to just call the first Hegemonic
Epoch that of “Iberia” for the reason that it involves the two
empires; that were the first and the second empires to control areas
in both the “Old World” (Eurasia and Africa) and also in the “New
World” (the Americas), i.e. the first truly global empires. I also
think that France was the third Global Hegemon, or a very close miss,
that had its period of hegemony, or near hegemony, after that of
Holland and before that of the British Empire. There is plenty of
evidence to support either the postion that France was a hegemonic
power, and perhaps more that affirms that it was not, it is beyond
the scope of this essay to address it at any length.1
All historians are in agreement that, neither Spain nor Portugal, had
the sophisticated financial institutions needed to process the wealth
that flowed into those countries; and that therefore their banking
was handled by financial institutions in the Italian city states,
most notably Genoa and Venice. Giovanni Arrighi argues that Genoa
was actually the first Global Hegemonic power and that both Portugal,
and Spain, depended on the Genoese Bankers; and in turn were
manipulated by them to utilize their geographic, military, and
political power, largely in the service of Genoa's ruling class'
agenda; he discussed this at length in his seminal book on the
subject (Arrighi, 1988)
