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First Excerpt from Immanuel Wallerstein’s chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future?, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding”

(Discussed during the WUR of May 4th, 2014… Miklos Nyiszli's Lessons on Class [temporary page])

[Note: Wallerstein uses the term ‘world right’ in some ways as I use the word (in quotes) ‘power’.]

* “‘Capitalist System’ Defined…”

 

“In my view, for a historical system to be considered a capitalist system, the dominant or deciding characteristic must be the persistent search for the endless accumulation of capital – the accumulation of capital in order to accumulate more capital. And for this characteristic to prevail, there must be mechanisms that penalize any actors who seek to operate on the basis of other values or other objectives, such that these nonconforming actors are sooner or later eliminated from the scene…” (Wallerstein excerpt, Part 1)

 

In my view, for a historical system to be considered a capitalist system, the dominant or deciding characteristic must be the persistent search for the endless accumulation of capital – the accumulation of capital in order to accumulate more capital. And for this characteristic to prevail, there must be mechanisms that penalize any actors who seek to operate on the basis of other values or other objectives, such that these nonconforming actors are sooner or later eliminated from the scene, or at least severely hampered in their ability to accumulate significant amounts of capital. All the many institutions of the modern world-system operate to promote, or at least are constrained by the pressure to promote, the endless accumulation of capital.

 

The priority of accumulating capital in order to accumulate still more capital seems to me a thoroughly irrational objective. To say that it is irrational, in my appreciation of material or substantive rationality (Weber’s materielle Rationalitat), is not to say that it cannot work in the sense of being able to sustain a historical system, at least for a considerable length of time (Weber’s formal rationality). The modern world-system has lasted some 500 years, and in terms of its guiding principle of the endless accumulation of capital it has been extremely successful. However, as we shall argue, the period of its ability to continue to operate on this basis has now come to an end…. (p. 10 – 11)

 

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* “A Major Geocultural Change…”

 

The profit squeeze for capitalist producers [he has just shown that the long-term structural trend is toward increasing costs of the “three generic costs in any production process: personnel, inputs, and taxation…”] has been compounded by a colossal cultural change. This is the end of the dominance of centrist liberalism in the geoculture, which is the meaning and the consequence of the world-revolution of 1968….

 

The world-revolution of 1968 (actually it occurred over a period going from 1966 to 1970) did not lead to a political transformation of the world-system. Indeed, in most countries, the movement was successfully repressed, and many of its participants abandoned their youthful enthusiasm as the years went by. But it did leave a lasting legacy. The ability of centrist liberals to insist that their version of the geoculture was the only legitimate one was destroyed in the process. Exponents of truly conservative and truly radical ideologies resumed their autonomous existence, and began to pursue autonomous organizational and political strategies.

 

The consequence of this cultural-political change for the operation of the modern world-system was enormous. Having entered into a critical situation in terms of the ability of capitalists to pursue the endless accumulation of capital, the political stability of the modern world-system was no longer guaranteed by the overwhelming strength of centrist liberalism with its assurances of an ever-better future for everyone, provided only one patiently submitted to the wise actions of the persons with the specialized capacity to bring about this ever-better future, eventually. (p. 24, 28)

 

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* “The Chaos That Ensued…”

 

The world-revolution of 1968 was an enormous political success. The world-revolution of 1968 was an enormous political failure. It seemed to spread and flourish across the globe, yet by the mid-1970s seemed to be extinguished almost everywhere. What had been accomplished by this world brushfire? Actually, quite a bit. Centrist liberalism had been dethroned as the governing ideology of the world-system, the de facto only legitimate ideology. It was now reduced to being simply one alternative among others. In addition, the Old Left movements were destroyed as mobilizers of any kind of fundamental change. Still, the immediate triumphalism of the revolutionaries of 1968, liberated from any subordination to centrist liberalism, proved shallow and unsustainable.

 

The world right was equally liberated from any attachment to centrist liberalism. It took advantage of the world economic stagnation and the collapse of the Old Left movements (and their governments) to launch a counteroffensive, which we call neoliberal (actually quite conservative) globalization. The prime objectives were to reverse all the gains of the lower strata during the Kondratieff A-period [Wallerstein describes ‘Kondratieff’ as a ‘mechanism’ that explains how ‘capital’ accumulates… i.e. cyclically: ‘expansion’ and ‘contraction’….] The world right sought to reduce all the major costs of production, to destroy the welfare state in all its versions, and to slow down the decline of U.S. power in the world-system….

[And why should the ‘world right’ want to “slow down the decline of U.S. power in the world-system…”? This question relates to the discussion in Founding & Realizing A Test-Site… and to ‘power’s use of De Tocqueville for their notion of the ‘historical role’ of the U.S. to establish (impose) a global ‘order’… – P.S.]

…The onward march of the world right seemed to culminate in 1989. The ending of Soviet control over its east-central European satellite states, and the dismantling of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, led to a sudden new triumphalism of the world right.

 

The offensive of the world right was a great success. The offensive of the world right was a great failure. With the onset of the world economic stagnation in the 1970s (the Kondratieff B-phase), large capitalist producers did shift significant amount of productive activity to new zones, which did seem to “develop” significantly. But however beneficial this was to the local middle strata in these countries, whose numbers now expanded considerably, the amount of capital accumulation, seen at a global level, was not all that impressive and did not begin to match what these corporate producers had been able to accumulate during the 1945 – 1970 period.

 

To maintain a level of massive appropriation of world surplus value, capitalists had to turn to obtaining it in the financial sector – what has come to be called the “financialization” of the world-system. As suggested previously, such financialization has been a cyclically recurring feature of the modern world-system for 500 years.

 

“The OPEC countries could not utilize immediately all of the increased income and deposited the rest in Western banks. The banks sent emissaries to the countries of the South and the socialist bloc to offer them loans to alleviate the balance of payments difficulties, which almost all of them readily accepted. These countries found it difficult, however, to keep up with repayments to the banks, …” (Wallerstein excerpt, Part 2)

 

What was sustaining the accumulation of capital since the 1970s was the turning from seeking profits via productive efficiency to seeking profits via financial manipulations, more correctly called speculation. The key mechanism of speculation is encouraging consumption via indebtedness. (This is of course what has happened in every Kondratieff B-phase.) What was different this time has been the scale and the ingenuity of the new financial instruments used to pursue speculative activity. The biggest A-phase expansion in the history of the capitalist world-economy has been followed by the biggest speculative mania.

[One of the helpful things Wallerstein does… is… he follows the ‘global-money’… he gets us thinking big… like ‘power’ does… which should help us enlarge our response… help us understand that our response must be commensurate… – P.S.]

It is not hard to follow the successive targets of indebtedness, each producing a bubble and each finally collapsing.…

[And what is a ‘bubble’ if not a sweeping up – a gathering together – of as much of the earth’s treasure as one can at any particular ‘time – place moment’… stripping the meat off the bone… aggregating planetary resources… – P.S.]

…The first big one was the OPEC-induced large oil price rises in 1973 and 1979. The OPEC price rise was sponsored not by the radical members of OPEC but by Saudi Arabia and Iran (of the Shah), the two closest allies of the United States among the OPEC members. There has long been reason to believe that the United States encouraged their moves.

 

In any case, the financial consequences of the oil price rises were clear. A great deal of money flowed into the coffers of the OPEC countries. This had a double negative effect on non-oil-exporting states in the South and the socialist bloc. They had to pay more for the needed oil and all products made with oil, and their export income was reduced because of the recession in North America and western Europe. The balance of payments difficulties of these countries were leading to popular unrest.

[Another helpful thing about Wallerstein… is… he shows us how ‘power’ strategizes… how it schemes… how it operates behind scenes… that the official policy is theater… – P.S.]

The OPEC countries could not utilize immediately all of the increased income and deposited the rest in Western banks. The banks sent emissaries to the countries of the South and the socialist bloc to offer them loans to alleviate the balance of payments difficulties, which almost all of them readily accepted. These countries found it difficult, however, to keep up with repayments to the banks, eventually causing the so-called debt crisis. It was publicly signaled by Mexico’s default in 1982. Actually, however, it really started with Poland’s near default in 1980. The austerity measures that the Polish government put into effect in order to make debt payments were the trigger for Solidarnosc.

[Is it clear that if we on the Left had developed our ‘new story’… our ‘opposite’ of ‘power’… and were operating with accurate definitions – i.e. with the definition of ‘capitalism’ (discussed most recently during the April 27, 2014 show): “‘capitalism’ is a means for ‘power’ to achieve, maintain and manage ‘total privatization’ of the globe…” – that that position of clarity… and certainty… would have better positioned us to intervene in and possibly defeat… ‘power’s scheme to achieve total privatization of the globe by means of debt-servitude?

 

But what this is also bringing up for me is the need for we-the-people (globally) to move with speed. Seeing how… when armed with the truth… we could have intervened in and perhaps even defeated this tactic… is also seeing this coda: “if only temporarily…” because with subsequent generations… the tactic is repeated. They repeat their tactics continuously… if they’re working. This is why it’s so important that when a generation wakes up and understands ‘power’s game… sees that they’re playing a ‘long game’… that they play unequivocally… that they act and plan globally… sees the tactics they’re using… their habits of surveillance… use of agents to foster systematically our uncertainty – we must move fast to achieve and establish… in our enduring habits… our global solidarity… – P.S.]

The next set of debtors was the wave of large corporations which, beginning in the 1980s, issued the famous junk bonds as a means of overcoming their liquidity problems. This led to acquisitions by a group of ravenous investors, who made their money by stripping the enterprises of material value. The 1990s saw the beginning of extensive individual indebtedness, especially in the North, made possible by extensive use of credit cards and then later investment in housing. The first decade of the 21st century saw the remarkable rise in public indebtedness of the United States resulting from the combination of enormous war costs and large-scale reduction in tax income. With the collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2007, the world’s press and politicians took public note of a “crisis,” the efforts to “bail out” the banks and, in the case of the United States, to print currency. This was followed by the ever-widening circle of indebtedness of governments, leading to pressures everywhere for austerity measures to reduce state debt, which reductions simultaneously have reduced effective demand.

 

It occurs… so let’s ponder it… that Wallerstein may serve as a bridge of sorts… over our ‘lexicon’ problem… perhaps because ‘world-systems analysis’ opens up more of the truth to our scrutiny… not just because its scope is global… and takes the long view… but because it recognizes ‘power’ as most Left ‘scholars’ fail to do… (Wallerstein excerpt, Part 3)

 

The first decade of the 21st century has also seen the geographic relocation of capital appropriation. The rise of the so-called emergent countries, notably the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), is the kind of slow reordering of the hierarchy of the modern world-system that has been seen regularly before. However, this presumes that there is room in the system for new productive leading industries, something the generalized profit squeeze seems to counterindicate. Rather, the rise of the BRICS has involved a widening of the numbers of persons involved in partaking of the distribution of world surplus value. This actually reduces, not increases, the possibilities of the endless accumulation of capital, and intensifies rather than counteracts the structural crisis of the world-system. Furthermore, the austerity measures now so widespread are reducing the customer base for the exports of the BRICS.

[It occurs… so let’s ponder it… that Wallerstein may serve as a bridge of sorts… over our ‘lexicon’ problem… perhaps because ‘world-systems analysis’ opens up more of the truth to our scrutiny… not just because its scope is global… and takes the long view… but because it recognizes ‘power’ as most Left ‘scholars’ fail to do. This might best be shown with an illustration.

 

The second chapter in this collection of essays is written by Randall Collins… who argues that Marx and Engels’ “theory of increasing immiseration” has vastly superior explanatory power than any other for understanding the current crisis… precisely because “it is a theory of crisis first and foremost.” Here’s an excerpt:

Technological displacement is the mechanism by which innovations in equipment and organization save labor, thereby enabling fewer employed persons to produce more at lower cost. Marx and Engles argued that capitalists strive to increase profit in competition with each other; those who fail to do so are driven out of the market. But as labor-saving machinery replaces workers, unemployment grows and consumer demand fails. Technology promises abundance, but the potential product cannot be sold because too few persons have enough income to buy it. Extrapolating this underlying structural tendency, Marx and Engels predicted the downfall of capitalism and its replacement by socialism.

 

Why has this not happened in the 160 years since the theory was formulated? As is well known, where socialist regimes have come into power, the transition was not driven by capitalist economic crisis – nor indeed when they have fallen out of power. My point here is the absence of definitive capitalist breakdown through technological displacement. Marx and Engels focused on the displacement of working-class labor; they did not foresee the rise of the massive middle class of white-collar employees, of administrative and clerical workers and educated professionals. But this is why I now argue for the return of technological displacement crisis. Until the 1980s or 1990s, mechanization chiefly displaced manual labor. In the most recent wave of technology, we now have the displacement of administrative labor, the downsizing of the middle class. Information technology is the technology of communications, and it has launched the second great era of contraction of work, the displacement of communicative labor, which is what middle-class employees do. Mechanization is now joined by robotization and electronicization – an ugly and ungainly term to add to our vocabulary of ugly terms dictating our long-term future. (Randall Collins, “The End of Middle-Class Work: No More Escapes,” in Does Capitalism Have A Future?)

(Speak for yourself dude….) So what’s wrong with “increasing immiseration” as an explanatory ‘theory of the current crisis’? The theory argues that the terms of ‘private ownership’…i.e. the ‘rules’ of the ‘capitalist game’… preclude efficient management… of ‘abundance’ – but the ‘rules’ of the ‘totalitarian game’… don’t.

 

You see what I mean? Left pundits are so proud of their mastery of the “rules of capital accumulation,”… or the minutiae of a state’s legal framework… and ‘power’ just blows right through them… because all it cares about is winning… and they believe they’ve achieved sufficient ‘bias’ to bend us to it… to the future they want….

 

This is what Rosa Luxemburg was attempting to show… ‘rules-schmules’… you want more stuff?… rape the earth or beat up captives – it’s no different from the ancient world… it’s all there in the Iliad… ‘power’ is ‘power’ is ‘power.’

 

Recall Miklos’ warning to us: “The Third Reich operates on the ‘work standard’, not the ‘gold standard.’”

 

For them… the ‘power’-guys… the philosopher-state-global-statesmen… ‘running’ the earth is a ‘management’ question… and they think they can do it more efficiently than we can. This is how they justify their malevolence (because it is ‘malevolence’… no matter what excuse they give for it.) They believe there has to be a degraded ‘class’ to “do the work”… even as an ‘intermediary class’ is allowed greater access to the earth’s resources (this is why our response must be global if we are not to betray our brothers and sisters…) and as there are ‘mind-workers’ to pursue ‘Knowledge-Infinite’….

 

They believe they are the ones to do the planning. So… again… are we willing to let them? Are we willing to abdicate our responsibility to reclaim our leadership?… and to establish global ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… – P.S.]

As the Rosecrance article indicates… ‘power’ is moving apace… to unify the ‘master race’… these global-state-statesmen… of the ‘global state’…. Certainly they have their differences… but their systematic pursuit of ‘aggregated means’ means… they are convinced… that the weight (bias) of their relative swollen pockets… will decide who gets to settle the question… (Wallerstein excerpt, Part 4)

 

The most likely financial result of the economic turmoil will be the final eviction of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency, followed not by another currency performing this function, but a multicurrency world that allows for the constant fluctuations of exchange rates, a further inducement to the freezing of the financing of new productive activity.

 

Meanwhile, and simultaneously, the decline of U.S. hegemony became irreparable after the blowback caused by the political-military fiasco of the neocon program of unilateral military machismo undertaken in the period 2001 – 2006 by the administration of President George W. Bush. The outcome has been the reality of a multipolar world, in which there are eight to ten centers of power, sufficiently strong that they can negotiate with other centers with relative autonomy. However, there are now too many centers of power….

[…definitions… definitions… – the importance of having our own is waving at us here… as well our ‘opposite-vision’ warning us that possibly we’re seeing the problem of… a ‘bully-analysis’?… by which I mean… a problem akin to Popper’s ‘historicism’… which I defined in Beginning Again as “story leading reality…” i.e. Wallerstein’s ‘categories’ may be distorting what he sees (and ‘disappearing’ what ‘power’ has conjured itself into being…) because… if the point for ‘power’ is total privatization… if ‘power’ is global and the state it is making embraces the earth… then… the ‘fiasco’-appearance may disguise a triumph… particularly as… if… as ‘power’ seems to be doing apace… the goal ‘power’ is sculpting is a ‘global state’ – recall that during the October 6, 2013 show we quoted Richard Rosecrance…

This [the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between Europe and the United States, “creating an economic power with nearly half of the world’s gross domestic product”] is not a declaration of economic war against the East. Rather, it reflects an awareness that China and others need to be brought into the West, bringing two halves of the world together. A greater American and European combination would amass $32 trillion today and much more tomorrow. A balance of power leads to conflict. But an overbalance attracts others to its economic core. (Richard Rosecrance, “Want World Domination? Size Matters,” The New York Times, July 28, 2013)

…a quite open admission of a totalitarian ambition… – then… ‘power’ views states as vehicles for achieving a larger goal… and have no overarching allegiance to any particular state…. As the Rosecrance article indicates… ‘power’ is moving apace… to unify the ‘master race’… these global-state-statesmen… of the ‘global state’…. Certainly they have their differences… but their systematic pursuit of ‘aggregated means’ means… they are convinced… that the weight (bias) of their relative swollen pockets… will decide who gets to settle the question… – P.S.]

…However, there are now too many centers of power. One consequence is the frequent tentative geopolitical realignments, as each of these centers seeks maximum advantage. Fluctuating markets and currencies are thereby reinforced by fluctuating power alliances.

 

The basic reality is unpredictability not merely in some middle run but very much in the short run. The sociopsychological consequences of this short-run unpredictability have been confusion, anger, disparagement of those in power, and above all acute fear. This fear leads to the search for political alternatives of kinds not entertained before. The media refer to this as populism, but it is far more complicated than this slogan term suggests. For some the fear leads to multiple and irrational scapegoatings. For others, it leads to the willingness to unthink deeply ingrained assumptions about the operations of the modern world-system. This can be seen in the United States as the difference between the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

[I have a concern about the way he presents the emerging ‘political’ responses to this moment we’re in (a concern that will come up again in the next section when he says that the contested ‘political field’ is composed of four groups…) i.e. he lists but doesn’t ‘weight’… which gives the impression that he thinks each can be weighted equally… with which I mos def disagree. Moreover… it seems to me this ‘fear’ he speaks of… where it exists among commoners… at least in the U.S.… is both a reflection of ‘power’s fear (an identification with ‘power’…) – as it knows this moment for us is full of promise – and is a cultivation of ‘power’ (e.g. stimulating fear of immigrants…) – P.S.]

The main concern of every government in the world – from the United States to China, from France to Russia to Brazil, not to speak of all the weaker governments on the world scene – has become the urgency of averting an uprising of unemployed workers joined by middle strata whose savings and pensions are disappearing.…

[All disagreements collapse in the face of this threat… and though it will never be publicly acknowledged… behind scenes they will collude to address it…e.g. the single alarum going off in the heads… of Russia and the European Union… at the ‘nightmare’ (for them) of the Ukrainian Revolution… – P.S.]

…One reaction has been that the governments have all become protectionist (while vigorously denying this). The reason for this protectionist thrust is that governments are seeking to obtain short-term money, however they can and at whatever price they have to pay. Since protectionism is insufficient to overcome unemployment, governments are also becoming more repressive.

 

This combination of austerity, repression, and the search for short-term money makes the global situation even worse. It accounts for an ever-tighter gridlock of the system. Gridlock in turn will result in ever-wilder fluctuations, and will consequently make short-term predictions – both economic and political – ever more unreliable. And this in turn will aggravate the popular fears and alienation. It is a negative cycle.

 

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* “The Political Struggle over the Replacement System…”

 

“There are however some actors who are quite aware of the structural crisis. They are aware that while we cannot maintain the present system, we can contribute to deciding which prong of the bifurcation the world will take, what kind of new historical system the world will construct. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are living amidst a struggle for the successor system.…” (Wallerstein excerpt, Part 5)

 

The question before the world today is not in what way governments can reform the capitalist system such that it can renew its ability to pursue effectively the endless accumulation of capital. There is no way to do this. The question therefore has become what will replace this system. And this is a question both for the 1% and the 99%, in the language used since 2011. Of course, not everyone agrees, or phrases it this way. Indeed, most people still assume that the system is continuing, using the old rules, perhaps after amending the rules. This is not wrong. It is just that, in the present situations, using the old rules actually intensifies the structural crisis.

 

There are however some actors who are quite aware of the structural crisis. They are aware that while we cannot maintain the present system, we can contribute to deciding which prong of the bifurcation the world will take, what kind of new historical system the world will construct. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are living amidst a struggle for the successor system. While complexity studies insists that the outcome of such a bifurcation is intrinsically unpredictable, nonetheless the options between which the world will choose are quite straightforward, and can be sketched in broad terms.

 

One kind of possible new stable system is one that retains the basic features of the present system: hierarchy, exploitation, and polarization. Capitalism is far from the only kind of system that can have such features, and the new one could be far worse than capitalism. The logical alternative to this is a system that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian. This latter has never yet existed; it is only a possibility. Of course, none of us can design either alternative in institutional detail. Such a design will evolve as the new system begins its life.

 

I have given symbolic names to the two possibilities. I call them “the spirit of Davos” and “the spirit of Porto Alegre.” The names themselves are unimportant. What we need to analyze are the probable organizational strategies on each side in this struggle that started more or less in the 1970s and will continue in all probability to circa 2040 or 2050.

[In large measure the effort expressed in the pages of this website… and in our radio conversations… is to challenge the notion that ‘the system’ that is ending is ‘capitalism.’ Rather… I believe that it is ‘class’ (which has become totalitarian… global…) that is coming to an end… and that ‘capitalism’ is an ideology of ‘class’. Wallerstein’s own observations and analysis suggests this… and I think that in wading into this discussion… we are ‘knee-deep’ in our lexicon-problem… which I nonetheless think ‘world-systems’ analysis can help us with… not just because it’s unit of analysis is the ‘world-system’ (and that’s a tremendous advance because it begins with the understanding that whatever ideological con we’re living under… the ‘system’ itself is global… unitary… and that it’s the problem. How, then, can all these versions of ‘class’ be integrated into… best understood when seen through the lens of… ‘class’… and yet class not be the defining quality of the system? – P.S.]

The political struggles of a structural crisis have two basic characteristics. First, there is a fundamental change of the situation from that of the “normal” operation of an historical system. During “normal” life, there exists a very strong pressure to return to equilibrium. That is what makes it “normal.” But in a structural crisis, the fluctuations are wide and constant, and the system is ever further from equilibrium. This is the definition of a structural crisis. If follows that however radical are “revolutions,” during “normal” times their effect is limited. In contrast, during a structural crisis, small social mobilizations have very great effects. This is the so-called butterfly effect, when free will prevails over determinism.

 

The second politically significant characteristic of a structural crisis is that neither alternative “spirit” can be organized such that a small group can fully determine its actions. There are multiple players, representing different interests, believing in different short-run tactics, and coordination among them is difficult to achieve. Furthermore, the militants on each side must spend energy persuading the always larger group of potential supporters of the utility of their actions. It is not only the system that is chaotic. The struggle for the successor system is also chaotic.

[Except… we-the-people have never been consulted… and we are the determining factor… – P.S.]

What we can perceive, up to now, are the strategies that have been emerging in practice. The camp of the “spirit of Davos” is deeply divided. One group favors immediate and long-term harsh repression, and has invested its resources in organizing a network of armed enforcers to crush opposition….

[I think I’ve encountered one or two of these folks… – P.S.]

…There is however another group who feel that repression can never work over the long term. They favor the di Lampedusa strategy of changing everything so that nothing changes. They talk about meritocracy, green capitalism, more equity, more diversity, and an open hand to the rebellious – all in the spirit of heading off a systems premised on relative democracy and relative equality.

[This is called ‘co-optation’… or… “keep the people duped…” and we’d be foolish to think ‘power’ doesn’t consciously do both… it’s called: “good-cop-bad-cop”… – P.S.]

“So, to resume, the modern world-system in which we are living cannot continue because it has moved too far from equilibrium, and no longer permits capitalists to accumulate capital endlessly. Nor do the underclasses any longer believe that history is on their side, and that their descendants will necessarily inherit the world. We are consequently living in a structural crisis in which there is a struggle about the successor system.” (Wallerstein excerpt, Part 6)

 

The camp of the “spirit of Porto Alegre” is similarly split.

 

There are those whose tactics for the transition period reflect their image of the world they want to build. It is sometimes called “horizontialism.” In practice, it seeks to maximize debate and the search for relative consensus among persons of divergent backgrounds and immediate interests. It is a search to institutionalize a functional decentralization of the movement and the world. And this group has also emphasized the reality of what is often called a “civilizational crisis,” by which is really meant a rejection of the basic objective of economic growth and substituting for this objective the search for rational balances of social objectives that will result precisely in relative democracy and relative egalitarianism.

 

Arrayed against them is the group that insists that, in a struggle for political power, vertical organization of some kind is a sine qua non, without which the group is doomed to failure….

[…given what we’ve learned about what ‘power’ requires to exist… and that the only true ‘alternative’ must be its opposite… and then… added to which… what we know about the on-going and unequivocal efforts of ‘power’ to subvert our ‘opposite’… I think we can see in this notion of “the need for some ‘vertical organization’”… ‘power’ acting through its network of agents (and whether such as these are from so-called ‘less-developed regions’ or no… their ideological positions ‘out’ them….) Once we’re clear on our goal… there are no more ‘splits’… there’s just “working on it.” No coercion… no force… but no being pulled off-course… – P.S.]

…This group also emphasizes the importance of achieving significant short-run economic growth in the less “developed” areas of the present-day world in order to have the wherewithal to redistribute benefits.

 

Thus the picture is not one of a simple two-sided struggle but rather of a political field with four groups. And that is very confusing to everyone….

[Hopefully not anymore… right?… – P.S.]

…The confusion is at one and the same time intellectual, moral, and political. And this reinforces the uncertainty of the outcome.

 

Finally, this kind of uncertainty heightens the short-run problems of the existing system. Such uncertainty is both exhilarating (the feeling that action makes a difference) and paralyzing (the sense that we can’t move since the short-run consequences are so uncertain). This is true both for those who benefit from the existing system (the capitalists) and those who are the vast underclasses.

[We are wading-thick… in the lexicon-problem: what is ‘the system’?… who ‘benefits’ and who doesn’t?… and in this… where fit the pundits?… – P.S.]

So, to resume, the modern world-system in which we are living cannot continue because it has moved too far from equilibrium, and no longer permits capitalists to accumulate capital endlessly. Nor do the underclasses any longer believe that history is on their side, and that their descendants will necessarily inherit the world. We are consequently living in a structural crisis in which there is a struggle about the successor system. Although the outcome is unpredictable, we can feel sure that one side or the other will win out in the coming decades, and a new reasonably stable world-system (or set of world-systems) will be established. What we can all do is try to analyze the historical options, make our moral choice about the preferred outcome, and evaluate the optimal political tactics to get there.

 

History is on nobody’s side. We all may misjudge how we should act. Since the outcome is inherently, and not extrinsically, unpredictable, we have at best a 50 – 50 chance of getting the kind of world-system we prefer. But 50 – 50 is a lot, not a little.

[‘History’ never was… nor should be… our concern… any more than the health of a ‘system’…. Life… ever was… ever will have… my allegiance… and a 50 – 50 chance… for the oceans… for so-called ‘hand-work-designates’… slotted for bare existence… or for all of us to be told “just settle for what you get… for what we choose to give…” – and never forget… that in that ‘50 – 50 chance’ that Wallerstein gives… to a so-called ‘progressive’ outcome… there is no true freedom… and that is not acceptable… – P.S.]

 

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[Return to: Miklos Nyiszli's Lessons on Class (temporary page)] to listen to Parts 77 and 78 of Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account

 

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