A 'Concert of Powers'?

Writing in the current New Left Review, Marxist historian Perry Anderson assesses the world situation seven years into the 21st century, evaluating the current balance of forces, the results of the Iraq war, and the forces of opposition to hegemony. He also comments on the optimistic, post-capitalist visions of several theorists.

Economically, the past twenty years have extended capitalism greatly, with its penetration into Russia and China and rapid development of India and Brazil. "Regardless of the parties in power—Communist, Liberal-Democratic, Gaullist, New Labour, United Russia, Congress, Workers or Republican—the same basic bundle of property rights and policies has rolled forward, at varying speeds and in differing stages, but with no significant counter-marches in the opposite direction. Rather, with world trade still racing ahead of world growth, there has been a steady increase in the interlocking of all the major capitalist economies in a common dependence on each other."

Though U.S. economic weight is declining as other power centers rise, Anderson sees continued U.S. hegemony. "With still the world’s largest economy, financial markets, reserve currency, armed forces, global bases, culture industry and international language, the U.S. combines assets that no other state can begin to match. " However, the U.S. role is now that of leader of a "densely interconnected universe of profit and privilege"-- a Concert of Powers, "still in its early stages," in which China, Japan, the EU, Russia, India and Brazil coordinate their actions to maintain the international order under the leadership of the U.S.

Against this backdrop, Anderson sees the war in Iraq as an irrational and destabilizing lunge, not justified by U.S. economic or strategic interests, and not necessary to tighten its already strong control over the Middle East. Following Mearsheimer and Walt, he sees the Israel lobby and U.S. ignorance of Islam as the drivers for an action dangerous to the U.S. and Europe, but one which, although a quagmire, is unlikely to lead to an unraveling of the U.S. position in the Mideast.

Anderson points out that popular resistance movements such as those in France, Venezuela, and Bolivia have continued to unfold in this period, given international scope for a time by the World Social Forum. But the popular conviction that there is no alternative to financial markets has been difficult to shake, and overall the motion has been to the right. Ecological and particularly financial problems remain likely to bring crisis to the system.

Unconvinced that popular opposition or the structural problems of capitalism will provide the motive force of change, Anderson assesses four authors or pairs of authors with non-Marxist views on globalization, nationalism, state, and capitalism. If I understand his summary, Anderson believes that Nairn; Hardt and Negri; Arrighi; and Bull all posit in different ways a transition to a future in which capitalism overcomes its contradictions and, through globalization, provides a relatively rational human existence. While Anderson says he is skeptical of these arguments, he indicates that they must be responded to with equivalent visions.

While it is superficially grounded in some events of recent years, I think Anderson's Concert of Powers is a gross misreading of the fierce competition currently underway among the major capitalist nations -- in this sense Khanna's analysis seems much closer to the mark. For the same reasons, and as I wrote last week, I disagree that the occupation of Iraq was an aberrant move by U.S. imperialism. Rather, it is struggling fiercely to maintain and deepen its control of the Middle East, both to discipline smaller nations and to keep its resources out of the hands of its imperialist competitors.

While I haven't looked into the post-capitalist authors Anderson mentions, my own sense is that the expansion of capitalism will generate more rather than fewer explosive contradictions in the coming years. As he says himself, the integration of China, India and Russia into the capitalist system, causing "doubling of the world’s working class to 3 billion in the space of a few years, in conditions often as harsh as in the early nineteenth century, is the largest structural change of the period. Its long-term consequences remain to be seen." I suggest that the future holds increased struggles of these workers for a fairer share of the rising incomes generated by global development, as well as of workers in the already advanced countries to maintain a decent life.