Giovanni Arrighi

Industrial convergence, globalization, and the persistence of the North-South divide

This article demonstrates empirically that widespread convergence in the degree of industrialization between former First and Third World countries over the past four decades hasnot been associated with convergence in the levels of income enjoyed on average by the residents of these two groups of countries. Our findings contradict the widely made claim that the significance of the North-South divide is diminishing. This contention is based on a false identification of “industrialization” with “development” and “industrialized” with “wealthy”. Elaborating from elements of Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, Raymond Vernon’s product cycle model, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept ofillusio, the article offers an explanation for the persistence of the North-South income divide, despite rapid Third World industrialization and despite dramatic changes in the world political-ideological context for development (that is, the shift around 1980 from the “development” project to the “globalization” project or “Washington Consensus”). While emphasizing the long-term stability of the Northern-dominated hierarchy of wealth, the article concludes by pointing to several contemporary processes that may destabilize not only the “globalization project”, but also the global hierarchy of wealth that has characterized historical capitalism.

Polanyi's “Double Movement”: The Belle Époques of British and U.S. Hegemony Compared

The core of this article is a comparative analysis of the double movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (the belle époque and collapse of British hegemony) with the double movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century (the belle époque and current crisis of U.S. hegemony). In both periods the movement toward allegedly self-regulating markets called forth a countermovement of protection. Nevertheless, important differences exist due, first, to differences in the nature of the hegemonic state and, second, to the greater role of subordinate forces in constraining the movement toward self-regulating markets in the late twentieth century.

Transforming the revolution : social movements and the world-system

In this successor volume to the widely read Dynamics of Global Crisis, the authors engage in a provocative discussion of the history and contemporary dilemmas facing the movements that are variously described as antisystemic, social, or popular. The authors believe that these movements, which have for the past 150 years protested and organized against the multiple injustices of the existing system, are the key locus of social transformation.

Capitalism and world (dis)order

A sea change of major proportions is taking place in the historical social system forming the modern world, creating a widespread sense of uncertainty about the present and foreseeable future. In the words of Eric Hobsbawm, as ‘the citizens of the fin de siecle tapped their way through the global fog that surrounded them, into the third millennium, all they knew for certain was that an era of history had ended. They knew very little else’.

Semiperipheral development : the politics of southern Europe in the twentieth century

PART ONE: THE FORMATION OF THE SOUTHERN EUROPEAN SEMIPERIPHERY The Relevance of the Concept of Semiperiphery to Southern Europe - Immanuel Wallerstein Nation-States and Interregional Disparities of Development - Maurice Aymard Problems of Southern European Economic Development (1918-38) - Gyorgy Ranki Incorporation Peripheralization - Kostis Papadantonakis Contradictions of Southern Europes Economic Development Core Demand for Labor from Southern Europe - John Casparis The Case of Switzerland PART TWO: THE POST-WAR TRANSITION The American Recovery of Southern Europe - Caglar Keyder Aid and Hegemony Democracy from Above - John R Logan Limits to Change in Southern Europe Semiperiphery and Core in the European Context - Peter Lange Reflections on the Post-War Italian Experience The Crisis of the Late 1960s in Italy and France - Sidney Tarrow The Transition to Mature Capitalism Fascism to Democratic Socialism - Giovanni Arrighi Logic and Limits of a Transition

Capitalist Development in World Historical Perspective

The particular way in which we periodize capitalist history largely depends on the temporal and spatial horizons of our observations and on the conceptual frameworks that underlie those observations. Most periodizations have been based on observations and conceptual frameworks that refer implicitly or explicitly to national dynamics of capitalist development. This is a perfectly legitimate and useful way of analyzing and periodizing capitalist development, provided that we do not conflate the dynamic of capitalist development as it unfolds in specific national (or sub-national) locales with the dynamic of capitalist development as it unfolds in a ‘world’ consisting of a large number and variety of such locales. Although these two dynamics influence one another, each has a logic of its own and must be treated as an object of analysis in its own right.

Lineages of Empire

I Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire is a powerful antidote to the gloom, suspicion and hostility that have characterised the predominant reaction of the radical Left to the advent of so-called globalisation. While excoriating its destructive aspects, Hardt and Negri welcome globalisation as the dawn of a new era full of promise for the realisation of the desires of the wretched of the earth. In the same way that Marx insisted on the progressive nature of capitalism in comparison with the forms of society it displaced, they now claim that Empire is a great improvement over the world of nation-states and competing imperialisms that preceded it. Empire is the new logic and structure of rule that has emerged with the globalisation of economic and cultural exchanges. It is the sovereign power that effectively regulates these global exchanges and thereby governs the world. Unlike empires of pre-modern and modern times, the singular Empire of postmodern times has no territorial boundaries/frontiers or centre of power. It is a decentred and deterritorialised apparatus of rule that incorporates the entire global realm.

States, Markets, and Capitalism, East and West

Writing in the mid-1960s, Geoffrey Barraclough contended that when the history of the first half of the twentieth century — which for most historians was still dominated by European wars and problems — came to be written in a longer perspective, no single theme would prove of greater importance than “the revolt against the West.”1 In a similar vein, we may today contend that when the history of the second half of the twentieth century is written in such a longer perspective, the chances are that no single theme will prove of greater importance than the economic renaissance of East Asia. The renaissance has unfolded through a snowballing process of connected economic “miracles” in a succession of East Asian states, starting in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s, rolling on in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and some ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries in the 1970s and 1980s, and culminating in the 1990s and early years of the

Socialism and Economic Development in Tropical Africa

A sophisticated socialist position in contemporary Africa must fuse a concern for an increased rate of economic development with a perception of the role played in the development process by the existence and emergence of classes and groups with divergent interests and differential access to benefits. Only if these factors are taken into account can one understand the extent to which the productive potential of African societies, and therefore their development and structural transformation, are constrained by the present pattern of world and domestic economy and society. The available surplus is being drained away, for example, as the repatriated profits of overseas firms; or it is consumed by self-indulgent domestic elites. As a consequence, the generation of a larger surplus from an aroused and mobilized peasantry is discouraged. It is, in brief, the pattern of inequality which tends to hamper a rise in productivity.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980. By David B. Abernethy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. 536p.

In The Dynamics of Global Dominance David Abernethy advances four main propositions concerning the rise and demise of European overseas empires over the last half-millennium. The first proposition is that the unprecedented and unparalleled success of European states in building overseas empires in the two long phases of expansion (dated with questionable precision from 1415 to 1773 and from 1824 to 1913) was due primarily to the cumulative, synergistic effects of the extended geographical reach, functional specialization, and ability to work in mutually reinforcing ways of European governmental, business, and religious institutions. In each sphere Europeans faced highly effective non-European competitors. But no such competitor could match the European combination of mutually reinforcing advances in all three spheres. This combination was critical in sustaining not just expansion but also colonial consolidation.