Yoshie:
Moreover, we live in the age of movements toward regional integration with a great potential for the decline of US hegemony. So, each nation's struggle had better be understood in this context, too, rather than in isolation from the rest of the world.
After taking a look at what Samir Amin has been saying recently, prompted by Yoshie's recommendation of his "multipolar" approach, I can better understand where she is coming from. His recently published "Beyond US Hegemony?: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World" (co-authored by Patrick Camiller, somebody I am not familiar with) is described on amazon.com this way: "Samir Amin rejects the notion that the current form of neoliberal capitalism is an inevitable future for humanity. He analyzes tendencies within the US, Europe and Japan, the rising powers of China and India, the likely future trajectory of post-Soviet Russia, and the developing world. He explores whether other hegemonic blocs may emerge to circumscribe American power, and force free market capitalism to adjust to demands other than its narrow central economic logic." This might ring a bell. It is almost identical to the sort of thing that Hardt and Negri have said, especially after 9/11, except oriented more to the South. >>However, there is an alternative to US imperialism: global power can be organised in a decentred form, which Toni Negri and I call "empire". This is not merely a multilateral coalition of leading nation states. Think of it as multilateralism squared. Empire is a network composed of different kinds of powers, including the dominant nation states, supranational organisations, such as the United Nations and the IMF, multinational corporations, NGOs, the media, and others. There are hierarchies among the powers that constitute empire but despite their differences they function together in the network. This decentred network power of empire corresponds to the interests of global elites because it both facilitates the potential profits of capitalist globalisation and displaces or defuses potential security threats. Once empire is firmly established as the prevailing form of global rule, those who oppose the domination of global elites in the name of equality, freedom, and democracy will certainly find ways to struggle against it. But that does not mean that we prefer imperialism today.<< Michael Hardt, The Guardian (London), December 18, 2002 With all due respect to Samir Amin, I am afraid that this formula is the stock in trade of the world systems school, which thinks in terms of hegemonic blocs. At its most grotesque extreme, it is A.G. Frank getting all enthused by the prospect of China becoming a superpower once again and reigning over a new 5000 year long wave. No thanks.
