Louis Proyect wrote... A related position is Giovanni Arrighi's peculiar 'geometry' of world processes under capitalism. Arrighi is an admitted Kantian, and he believes that the basic forces determining the historical trajectory of the modern world are ultimately spatial, in an absolutist, Newtonian or Kantian sense. Thus he deduces what he calls the 'crisis of the nation-state', the latter seen as a mere spatial cell in the geometry of the world. In this geometry, scalar forces like imperialism -- Hobson's concept, not Lenin's, which Arrighi dismisses - are seen as acting independently of other scalar forces like capitalism. The 'crisis of the nation-state' derives from these worldscale absolute-spatial forces, which seem likely soon to erase states from the geometrician's blackboard. In sum, these are two forms of neo-Marxism which postulate not empirically observable processes, but world-embracing metaphysical forces, as the explanation for what one theorist (Arrighi) believes to be the decline of the national state and the other (Wallerstein) the insignificance of the state and of struggles to control it."
Yeah, I read the Wallerstein piece that was posted earlier today and I was profoundly underwhelmed. It made me think that one cure for neo-marxism would be some kind of grunt job for at least a year (in lieu of a sabbatical). Beyond that, Hardt/Negri/Wallerstein/etc interest me only as flavors of social/intellectual/ pathology; and right now, there are more urgent tasks.....like organizing against any and all forms of US aggression. Joanna
