Author: Giovanni
Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins & Immanuel Wallerstein
Title (Year): Antisystemic Movements (1989)
Abstract:
The
five essays that make up Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements, all of which
were presented between 1982 and 1988 at the International Colloquia on the
World Economy, progressively theorize and explicate the new world-system and
the antisystemic movements that shape and are shaped by it. Although system and resistance are
dialectically related, all resistence is directly shaped by the structures and
processes of the world-system; the purpose of this volume is to reexamine
patterns and successes of antisystemic movements thus far. To theorize the world-system, AH&W expand
on Weber’s distinction between class-based (economic) and status-based (prestige)
political communities, which, in turn, is based on Marx’ base and
superstructure. They articulate
status-based communities to autonomous nation-states and class-based communities
to the increasingly global world economy, where economic and political
competition are increasingly being replaced by giant transnational corporations
managing vast circulations of capital.
States become striated into three rings of power: the core states, which
conveniently include the US, USSR, Japan, China, and Western Europe; the
semi-peripheral states, which are mostly communist, and the peripheral states
which are going through various iterations of radical nationalism. As capitalism goes global, power becomes
centralized in the core, but capital becomes decentralized as it goes further
and further in search of Third World countries that can’t resist its
exploitation. However, while increased
globalization of capitalism leads to increased oppression of the world’s
peoples, this process also leads to greater opportunities for transnational
resistance, because capitalism’s “integrating tendencies” lend structure and
organization to the resistence that is always-already fomenting just beneath
the surface. When oppression becomes too
acute, antisystemic activity responds.
The dilemma of antisystemic activism, however, is that historically it
has been aimed at overturning the state, but in the era of global capitalism it
should really be aiming to overturn the capitalist system, because capitalism,
not states, is where the power lies now.
I have
to admit, I find a lot to like in world-systems theory, partly because it is
clearly and succinctly theorized and partly because its global perspective
helps explain processes that might be invisible or less logical at a smaller
scale. Although the authors touch on a
mere two dozen sources in their bibliography, they spend pages explaining each
element of their theory and how they used Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, or
Emile Durkheim to derive it, a process which, while keeping their work solidly
within the Enlightenment canon, clearly anchors their ideas in the history of
Western thought. Thus, they are able to
derive a political model from the familiar base-and-superstructure, explain
that class is by definition a class in itself but nationalism is a class for itself (because it involves mutual
recognition of non-economic similarities), and show that at a global scale,
class and status become fused at the level of the state and therefore at the
level of the (dialectically necessary) antisystemic movement. Likewise, they can show that while social
movements generally occur in direct action against the state, the new global
capitalism – and the resulting fusion between base and superstructure at the
state level – make it possible for revolution to occur at the global scale,
both because the theory works out neatly and because all of the states are
thoroughly and irrevocably interconnected.
The combination of theory and global scale makes world processes and
world revolution visible and legible. It
also has an eerie ability to make sense of the relationships between, say, the
Arab Spring, the teetering Euro, and the Occupy Wall Street movement: increased
interconnectivity both renders economics more important than statehood and helps protesters mobilize class- and
status-based identities and rhetorics to protest the New World Order.
Despite
my infatuation with neat theoretical explanations, however, AH&W’s
world-systems version of social movement theory is not without its
problems. Beyond the obvious lack of
empirical evidence, world-systems theory, as Tilly reiterates in Big Structures, operates at such a large
scale that only sweeping generalizations are possible; this leads to an erasure
of the very differences between peoples and movements that can help explain
their development, rise, and fall.
Further, characterizing social movements as merely the dialectical
partner of global capitalism assigns all agency to the capitalist system and
leaves nothing but structurally pre-ordained crumbs for antisystemic activists
– or for any social actors, for that matter.
And far from being dynamic, the picture of the world that world-systems
theory creates is resolutely static, with its three concentric rings of power,
continually-suffering oppressed peoples, and linear trajectory from 1848 to
1968, which the authors call the “great rehearsal.” The great rehearsal for the glorious
revolution? In spite of their insistence
on a dialectical structure, the authors come off as rather heavy-handed
Marxists, moulding world history into some slow but steady progress toward the
final liberatory revolution.
Despite
this heavy-handedness – and in some cases because of it – AH&W’s
world-systems take on social movements is connected to many writers working on
similar problems at the same time and has had a profound impact on the study of
social movements. The authors cite Marx,
Smith, Weber, and Durkheim as their primary influences, and these are all very
visible in the text, but Foucault and Althusser are also quite present,
particularly in their conception of politics as a closed system and power as
inescapable. Although he disagrees with
their choice of scale, Charles Tilly’s Big
Structures shows that he was strongly influenced by their
nation-state/world-economy tension as well as by the dialectical relationship
between social movements and the structures they are moving against. Tarrow’s Power
in Movement belies a similar understanding of these tensions, though he
(and Tilly) insist that the large-scale theory be paired with empirical
evidence of historically contingent social movements. Finally, and more recently, geographer David
Harvey has adapted world-systems theory for the present day and has used it to
advocate for revolution from within the system.
Thus, despite its faults, world-systems theory has been incredibly
useful for scholars of social movements, and I imagine it will continue to do
so.
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