The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World by Immanuel Wallerstein

The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World Reviews

• 
  David

  In many academic circles Wallerstein is considered passé, not quite as much as, say, Levi-Strauss, but still a creature of the past. It shows the stupidity of academic fashion because the man keeps churning out brilliant new ideas which have largely gone unnoticed even in radical academic debates, except in the relatively restricted world of world-systems analysis itself, where of course he is the Grand Old Man and always will be. In the '90s, he was responding to the hegemony of the pomo turn after the fall of the Soviet bloc by producing a really brilliant new theory of world revolutions which has been largely ignored. In this one, he pulls off two feats. First of all, he manages to make himself one of the few academics who correctly predicted the economic crash of 2008 - like Dean Baker (coming from a different, neo-Keynesian, perspective) he noted that logically, the US faces three bubbles, each of which must necessarily burst: the tech bubble (which already had), the 8 trillion dollar housing bubble (which as we all know did in 2008, but had not at the time of writing) and then the dollar bubble, based on imperial segniorage (the fact that as a world empire the US provides the world currency, and attains huge economic advantages from this.) That one hasn't burst yet but when it does it's hard to see how it won't be curtains for the US empire.
  
  His second brilliant point: the real secret of neoliberalism, which I haven't seen elsewhere anywhere. US power, he explains, must decline because US productivity is so much lower than that of our rival centers of industrial production in Europe and East Asia. This seems startling because on paper US productivity is extremely high, but that's just because we cook the books, just counting wage laborers - who are exploited here like nowhere else in this respect - but never white color salaried workers. In fact, Wallerstein argues, in a delightfully provocative but also ultimately perfectly common-sensical argument, US executives in particular are the least efficient and least productive in the world: it takes 3 US executives to do what one Chinese or even French one can do, and each one has to be paid much, much more. As a result we are burdened with an unproductive largely parasitical class that's pulling us down. One of the points of the US attempt to impose the neo-liberal economic model on other parts of the world was a vain effort to force other countries to create a similar class of overpaid parasites to slow down their economic advantages, and delay their inevitable overtaking us.
  
  The long-term prospect? I'm not sure if it's in the book, but Wallerstein suspects over the next generation or two, East Asia will overcome its major divisions and achieve global hegemony, reducing the US, slowly and subtly, to the role of military enforcer for East Asian capital. The EU will be forced to turn to Russia to provide a similar role - provider of resources and military enforcer. That is, if capitalism endures, which, he is always careful to point out, is by no means guaranteed.
• 
  Matthew

  We're caught in a trap, I can't walk out..
  
  Um actually the only complaint I have about Wallerstein is that many of his books harp on his same (giant) analysis. Capitalism has run out of frontier, the proletarianization of the populace, the coming bifurcation and likely emergence of a new global system. He gets the fifth point for covering the one thing that Negri/Hardt got right in Empire, the material contextualization of postmodernism, but in a much clearer and explicit way.
• 
  Matt

  A collection of essays on America's geopolitical status and, as the name suggests, its decline that international scheme. This is a book I'd dearly love to give more attention to at another time, but as my interests are elsewhere right now I found it a chore and not nearly rewarding enough to finish completely.
• 
  Jonathan

  read for sociology class in college, but kept it because of its accurate portrayal of our precarious position "on top" and recommendations for how to deal with our declining power in that position.
• 
  Yakov Pyatnitskov

  I was deeply sorry to know Immanuel Wallerstein died just two week ago. His spirit of promoting a creation of a more egalitarian society is very inspiring, almost as his certainty in the inevitable decline of capitalism is inspiring. But like he says there is no guarantee the new system will be better and fairer if we don't take part in its creation.
  
  In this book written in 2003 the founder of world-system analysis Mr Wallerstein argued that capitalism as a historical social system is coming to an end. That is the most important point of the book because it affects all of us and because capitalism has been in place for the last 600 years. It can not be fixed because the changes are structural and irreversible – it cannot be saved, it can only be changed into something else and it depends on all of us how this new system will look like (our active participation or withdrawal both count as "involvement").
  
  The main questions the author discuses in the book are:
  
  How capitalism came to its dominance
  How can be this new system look like and how can we make sure it is not another inegalitarian, hierarchical model
  Why and how American dominance is coming to an end.
  
  The last part about America is a fascinating read of a truly imperialistic policy that can be characterised: "Establish the rules, demand others to comply but refuse to comply yourself". Now, 16 years later things have really changed and America cannot force countries to do as it pleases.
  
  Wallerstein is driving his point about capitalism with three arguments:
  
  1. Globally there is less and less agrarian population who are the first generation of factory workers meaning they just moved from villages to cities and willing to settle for whatever they are offered because they possess no skills or education. Once they acquire some productive skills and their value at the market place increases they are less ready to work for minimal wages and will be getting stronger at defending their rights and demanding a higher pay. Their increasing wages will inevitably squeeze the profit margins of corporations.
  
  2. The handling costs (eg. dumping toxic waste instead of processing it) will be more and more difficult to externalize because the environmental awareness is getting stronger and people demand more strict regulation. Thus the handling costs will go up.
  
  3. People demand more and more social benefits but don’t want to pay more taxes and are NOT opposed to the corporations paying more. This will create increased pressure on governments to answer and increase taxation therefore decreasing profit margins for the companies.
  
  Wallerstein uses this triad as the main driver to explain why capitalism is coming to an end. Honestly, from his arguments I couldn't see how these forces may go so far as to make corporate production so unprofitable it is not worthwhile for MNCs to engage in it. That lack of concluding arguments left me hanging. 16 years later the process of decline of capitalism is still ongoing although there are signs of its decline.
  
  For example, the ubiquitous word "globalisation" which was in fashion in early 2000s is almost never
  used now. Everyone understands that the consequences of unencumbered growth and corporate greed for the ecology are so high that we cannot continue to exploit the resources at the past rate or we will go extinct.
  
  There are world leaders openly stating that (see Vladimir Putin recent interview to FT saying "Liberalism has become obsolete"). There are leading economists predicting a financial crisis on a scale bigger than Great Depression (see Ray Dalio articles). The countries are dumping their US bonds and buying gold.
  
  Something is rapidly changing but no-one know when it will all explode. And Wallerstein argued that we can (must) all take active part in it by thinking and discussing what new world we want and how we can create it.
  
  I took one star because in his analysis of the future economic powers he did not include China which already surpassed both Western Europe, Japan and maybe the US. The was a big blinder and it makes me wonder how many others there might be in his analysis.
  
  Despite that and the fact the book is dated it is still an example of not only an excellent world analysis but also a lucid language and arguments.
• 
  Sinan Öner

  Birleşmiş Milletler Genel Kurulu'nun Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'nin New York kentinde başladığı bugünlerde, Wallerstein'ın "Amerikan Gücünün Gerileyişi: Kaotik Bir Dünyada ABD" kitabını okumak yararlı olabilir! Birleşmiş Milletler Genel Sekreteri Guterres de açılış konuşmasında, "ahlâk dersinde notumuz 'F'" dedi, "ahlâkî kriz"in dünya politikasında, Birleşmiş Milletler Üyeleri'ni nasıl sardığını söyledi. Wallerstein'ın "üç görev"den bahsetmesi, bugün de bu "üç görev"lerini -"entelektüel görev", "ahlâkî görev", "politik görev"- bilim adamlarının, sanat adamlarının, hatta, Guterres'e göre Birleşmiş Milletler Üyeleri'nin bu "üç görev"lerini yapmaları zorunluluğu. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'nin, Wallerstein'a göre, dünyadaki gücü zayıfladı, dünya politikasının başlıca merkezi olarak Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'ni görmek yanılgılıdır, ama, Wallerstein, bu farklılaşmanın olumsuz yönlerini yazıyor, "Amerikan gücü"nün zayıflaması, "kapitalist dünya sistemi"nin "kriz"ini yansıtıyor, "Amerikan gücü" zayıflamakla dünya daha iyi olmuyor, Wallerstein "kaotik bir dünya"dan bahsediyor, "kaos"un yayılışı ile "Amerikan gücü"nün zayıflaması koşut bir çizgide. Wallerstein'ın kitabını Metis Yayınları 2004 yılında yayınladığı için, yıllar sonra kitabı yeniden okumak, dünyada kitabın yayınından sonra neler olduğunu hatırlarken bugünkü dünya ile ilgili sorular sormak olası!
• 
  yugi

  Bu kitabı ekleyeli baya olmuş. Her canım çektiğinde açıp biraz okuduğum bir kitaptı. Kurduğu denklemleri çok kaliteli ve akıcı aktaran birisi.
  
  yav bi arap baharı daha olsa keşke
• 
  Dana

  Na rozdiel od ďalšieho ľavicového intelektuála, Baumana, je Wallersteinovi rozumieť. A to je super, lebo z tejto zbierky esejí som sa tak toho veľa dozvedela. Ani nie tak o USA, ako o celej planéte, pretože o Štáty sa táto kniha iba štrajchne. V skutočnosti je skôr o tzv. "svetosystéme", čo je Wallersteinov termín pre to, čo si možno predstavíte pod globalizáciou. Immanuel má skvelú schopnosť pozrieť sa na spletité planetárne vzťahy z diaľky, vytiahnuť to najpodstatnejšie a popísať tak, čo sa deje.
  
  Keďže ide o pozbierané eseje, niektoré jeho myšlienky sa opakujú, čo časom začne liezť na nervy (napríklad bifurkácia svetosystému). Preto dávam štyri hviezdice. A možno aj kvôli jemne zavádzajúcemu názvu knihy, lebo o úpadku USA sa tu toho dozvieme menej, než sľubuje.
• 
  Harper

  The author is an academic, and a theorist. So steer away from this book if you get intimidated by jargon. However it's a really good examination of political and economic power in the global marketplace through the lens of systems theory. The title doesn't do it justice - the subject matter is a lot broader than just US hegenomic power. I really need to read this again, because I read it for class during a busy semester and just caught the most relevant points.
• 
  Benjamin Thomas Sutpen

  
  http://sensemania.blogspot.com/2008/0...
• 
  Carmen Flores

  Marvellous! A jewel
• 
  Daniel Burton-Rose

  One of the best summaries of immediate post-Sept. 11 geopolitics available.