(One of the curiosities of the academic left is the tendency of various figures to agree with each other on broad questions without sharing a common ideological framework. For example, neo-Althusserian Stephen Resnick has the same exact "state capitalist" analysis of the USSR as people like Alex Callinicos. Turning to Immanuel Wallerstein, a kingpin in the world-systems world, we discover agreement with Hardt-Negri on two fundamental questions: one, that socialism on a state level is to be avoided at all costs; two, that US imperialism has been in a process of decline--a point made in the article below that is dubious at best. US imperialism may be more dangerous than ever, but the fall of the USSR has given it unlimited power. Since Wallerstein (and Resnick and Hardt-Negri) lacks a dialectical approach to the USSR, no wonder this point would be lost on him.)
Foreign Policy, Jul-Aug, 2002 The Eagle Has Crash Landed Pax Americana is over. Challenges from Vietnam and the Balkans to the Middle East and September 11 have revealed the limits of American supremacy. Will the United States learn to fade quietly, or will U.S. conservatives resist and thereby transform a gradual decline into a rapid and dangerous fall? By Immanuel Wallerstein The United States in decline? Few people today would believe this assertion. The only ones who do are the U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously for policies to reverse the decline. This belief that the end of U.S. hegemony has already begun does not follow from the vulnerability that became apparent to all on September 11, 2001. In fact, the United States has been fading as a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this decline. To understand why the so-called Pax Americana is on the wane requires examining the geopolitics of the 20th century, particularly of the century's final three decades. This exercise uncovers a simple and inescapable conclusion: The economic, political, and military factors that contributed to U.S. hegemony are the same factors that will inexorably produce the coming U.S. decline. full: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2002/wallerstein.html Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
