Antisystemic Movements

Antisystemic Movements
GIOVANNI ARRIGHI,
TERENCE K. HOPKINS &
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN
VERSO
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British L i b r a r y C a t a l o g u i n g i n P u b l i c a t i o n D a t a
Arrighi, G i o v a n n i
Antisystemic movements
1. E c o n o m i c c o n d i t i o n s . Sociological perspectives
I. Title. II. H o p k i n s , T e r e n c e III. Wallerstein,
I m m a n u e l 1930-
306'.3
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T y p e s e t by L e a p e r & C a r d L t d , Bristol, E n g l a n d
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To our colleagues, in memonam:
A q u i n o d e Bragan^a
R u t h First
Georges H a u p t
Walter Rodney
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 R e t h i n k i n g the C o n c e p t s of Class a n d
S t a t u s - G r o u p in a World-Systems Perspective 3
2 D i l e m m a s of Antisystemic M o v e m e n t s 29
3 T h e Liberation of Class Struggle? 53
4 1886-1986: Beyond H a y m a r k e t ? 77
5 1968: T h e Great Rehearsal 97
References 117
Index 119
Acknowledgements
T h i s set of essays is the fruit of a collaboration of m a n y

years a n d primarily of o u r joint participation in the a n n u a l
International Colloquia on the W o r l d - E c o n o m y sponsored
by the F e r n a n d Braudel C e n t e r for the S t u d y of Economies,
Historical Systems, a n d Civilizations; the Maison des
Sciences de L ' H o m m e ; a n d t h e S t a r n b e r g e r Institut zur
Erforschung Globalen Strukturen, Entwicklungen, u n d
Krisen. T h e first four essays were presented respectively at
the IVth C o l l o q u i u m , New Delhi, J a n u a r y 4 - 6 1982;
the V l t h C o l l o q u i u m , Paris, J u n e 4 - 5 1984; the V l l t h
C o l l o q u i u m , Dakar, M a y 2 0 - 2 2 1985; a n d t h e V H I t h
C o l l o q u i u m , M o d e n a , J u n e 14-16, 1986. T h e last p a p e r
was given at the X l l t h Political E c o n o m y of t h e W o r l d -
System Conference, held at E m o r y University, Atlanta,
M a r c h 2 4 - 2 6 1988.
All five essays have been previously published a n d are
reprinted with permission; Essay 1 - Review, VI 3, W i n t e r
1983; Essay 2 - Social Research, LIII 1, Spring 1986; Essay 3
- Review, X 3, W i n t e r 1987; Essay 4 - Review, X I I 2,
Spring 1989; Essay 5 - in T. Boswell, ed., Revolution in the
World-System, Greenwood Press, Westport, C T , 1989.
ix
Introduction
T h e concept of antisystemic m o v e m e n t s is one which

p r e s u m e s an analytic perspective a b o u t a system. T h e
system referred to here is the world-system of historical
capitalism which, we argue, has given rise to a set of anti-
systemic movements. It is the contours of this process that
we are proposing to outline here. We are in search of the
system-wide structural processes that have produced certain
kinds of m o v e m e n t s a n d which have simultaneously f o r m e d
the constraints within which such m o v e m e n t s have
operated.
T h e m o v e m e n t s have h a d their o w n m o d e of self-
description. This self-description emerged largely out of
categories that were formulated or crystallized in the
nineteenth-century capitalist world-economy. Class a n d
status-group were the two key concepts that justified these
m o v e m e n t s , explained their origins a n d their objectives,
a n d indeed indicated the b o u n d a r i e s of their organizational
networks.
T h e c o n t e m p o r a r y d i l e m m a s of these m o v e m e n t s are
part a n d parcel of the same p r o b l e m as the d i l e m m a s of the
concepts of class a n d status-group. T h a t is why we felt that
1
we could not analyze the movements, either historically or

prospectively, without first rethinking t h e s e two concepts
from a world-systems perspective.
We shall not repeat in this introduction t h e a r g u m e n t s
that a r e to be found in the articles. We would merely like to
suggest that if the structural processes that gave birth to
these m o v e m e n t s have been world-scale from the begin-
ning, the organizational responses hitherto have been
predominantly at t h e level of the various states. It is because
we believe that new organizational responses will begin to
surface that will be m o r e world-scale that we think it
urgent, not only for theory b u t for praxis, to reexamine the
patterns a n d the degree of success of t h e world-system's
antisystemic movements heretofore.
2
1
Rethinking the Concepts of

Class and Status-Group in a
World-Systems Perspective
In his well-known b u t often neglected conclusion to Book I

of The Wealth of Nations, A d a m Smith defined the interests
of "the three great, original and constituent orders of every
civilized society," that is, those who live by rent, those who
live by wages, a n d those who live by profit (1961: I, 276).
His a r g u m e n t was that t h e interests of the first two orders
coincide with the general interest of society because,
according to his analysis, t h e real value of b o t h rents a n d
wages rises with the prosperity a n d falls with the economic
decline of society. T h e interests of profit earners, on the
other hand, a r e different from, and even opposite to, such
general social interest, because to widen the m a r k e t a n d to
n a r r o w the competition are always in t h e interest of
m e r c h a n t s a n d m a n u f a c t u r e r s . A n d , while to "widen t h e
market m a y frequently be agreeable e n o u g h to the interest
of t h e public; . . . to n a r r o w t h e competition m u s t always be
against it, a n d can serve only the dealers, by raising their
profits above w h a t they naturally would be, to levy, for their
own benefit, an a b s u r d tax u p o n the rest of their fellow-
citizens" (1961:1, 278).
Profit-earners not only have an interest contrary to t h e
general one. They also have a better knowledge of their

interest a n d a greater power and d e t e r m i n a t i o n in p u r s u i n g
it t h a n those w h o live by either r e n t or wages. T h e indo-
lence of landowners, "which is the n a t u r a l effect of the ease
and security of their situation, renders t h e m too often, not
only ignorant, b u t incapable of that application of m i n d
w h i c h is necessary in order to foresee a n d u n d e r s t a n d the
consequences of any public regulation" (1961: I, 276-7). As
for the wage-earner, "he is incapable either of c o m p r e h e n d -
ing the general social interest, or of u n d e r s t a n d i n g its
connection with his own" (1961: I, 277). Moreover, in the
public deliberations, "his voice is little h e a r d and less
regarded, except u p o n some particular occasions, w h e n his
c l a m o u r is a n i m a t e d , set on, a n d s u p p o r t e d by his
employers, not for his, b u t their own particular purposes"
(1961: I, 277). Profit-earners, on the o t h e r h a n d , particularly
those who employ the largest a m o u n t of capital, draw to
themselves by their wealth the greatest share of the public
consideration. Moreover, since d u r i n g their whole lives they
are engaged in plans and projects, they have a m o r e acute
u n d e r s t a n d i n g of their particular interest t h a n the other
orders of society.
The Wealth of Nations being a work of legislation, the
p u r p o s e of this "class analysis" was to warn the sovereign
against the dangers involved in following the advice and
yielding to the pressures of m e r c h a n t s and master m a n u -
facturers. As the h e a d of the national h o u s e h o l d , he should
instead strengthen the rule of the m a r k e t over civil society,
thereby achieving the d o u b l e objective of a m o r e efficient
public administration a n d a greater well-being of the
nation.
It is not our p u r p o s e here to assess t h e s o u n d n e s s of the
advice given by Smith to the national h o u s e h o l d e r or of the
substantive analysis on which it was based. R a t h e r , we want
to point out those aspects of his analysis that can be con-
sidered as4 paradigmatic of political e c o n o m y and that we
Rethinking the Concepts of Class and Status-Group
can find duplicated in c o n t e m p o r a r y class analyses.

First, the tripartite social order of which he spoke was a
predicate of a particular kind of society; that defined by the
territorial reach of a definite sovereign or state. T h e s e were
the states of E u r o p e as they had been a n d were being
formed within mutually exclusive d o m a i n s operating within
an interstate system.
Second, his social orders (or classes) were defined on the
basis of property relations. T h e ownership of land, of capi-
tal, and of labor-power define his three great orders of
society. A m o n g the proprietors of capital, w h a t some today
would call a "fraction" of capital ( m e r c h a n t s and m a s t e r
m a n u f a c t u r e r s ) is singled out for special t r e a t m e n t in view
of its political-economic power, of its greater self-awareness
of its own interests, and of the opposition of its interests to
the general social well-being.
T h i r d , t h e interests of each of t h e social orders/classes
were identified with its market situation; that is, both their
competitive opportunities in relation to each other as classes
(and of individuals within each class to each other), and the
costs and benefits to each of t h e m of m o n o p o l y p o w e r
within markets, u n d e r s t o o d as restriction of entry. In The
Wealth of Nations, Smith limited the subjective g r o u n d of
collective action by a class to these market interests.
M o n o p o l y power in the p r o d u c t as well as in factor markets
was traced back to the creation of tolerance of restrictions to
entry on the part of the sovereign/state.
F o u r t h , market relations were defined within or between
national economic spaces. Class conflicts a n d alignments
were thus limited to struggles within each state for
influence/control over its policies. T h e unit of analysis, in
other words, was t h e nation-state, which d e t e r m i n e d both
the context a n d the object of class contradictions.
Fifth, a "relative a u t o n o m y " of state actions in relation to
class interests and powers was presupposed. T h e e n a c t m e n t
of laws a n d regulations by the state was continuously traced
77
to the powers and influence of particular classes or

"fractions" thereof. But the sovereign was a s s u m e d to be in
a position to distance himself from any particular interest to
p r o m o t e some form of general interest, reflecting a n d / o r
generating a consensus for this general interest.
If we contrast this analytical framework with that asso-
ciated with K a r l M a r x ' s critique of political economy (that is,
of Smith a n d other classical economists), we notice two
consequential shifts of focus: a shift away from state-defined
economic spaces to world-economic space on the one h a n d ,
a n d a shift away from t h e marketplace to t h e workplace on
the other.
T h e first shift implied that the m a r k e t was no longer seen
as enclosed within (or " e m b e d d e d " in) each nation-state as
an i n d e p e n d e n t economic space, a n d that the world-
economy was no longer conceived of as an interstate
economy linking discrete national e c o n o m i c spaces. Rather,
nation-states were seen as jurisdictional claims in a unitary
world market. By effecting the socialization of labor on a
world scale, the world market d e t e r m i n e d the most general
context of the class contradictions and therefore of the class
struggles of capitalist society, which M a r x defined by its
constitutive orders, the bourgeoisie a n d the proletariat:
T h e m o d e r n history of capital dates f r o m the creation in the

sixteenth century of a w o r l d - e m b r a c i n g c o m m e r c e a n d world-
e m b r a c i n g m a r k e t (1959: 146).
T h i s m a r k e t has given an i m m e n s e d e v e l o p m e n t to
c o m m e r c e , to navigation, to c o m m u n i c a t i o n by land. This
d e v e l o p m e n t has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of
industry; a n d in proportion as industry, c o m m e r c e , navi-
gation, railways extended, in the s a m e proportion the b o u r -
geoisie developed, increased its capital, a n d p u s h e d into the
b a c k g r o u n d every class h a n d e d d o w n from t h e M i d d l e Ages
(1967: 81).
T h i s was not a m e r e m a t t e r of trade relations between

sovereign states. Rather, the developing bourgeoisie
6
compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to a d o p t the b o u r -

geois m o d e s of p r o d u c t i o n ; it compels t h e m to i n t r o d u c e what
it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to b e c o m e bourgeoisie
themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its o w n image
(1967: 84).
T h e world so created was characterized by a highly strati-

fied structure of d o m i n a t i o n a n d h a d m o r e than m a r k e t
interests as subjective grounds for collective action:
J u s t as it has m a d e the country d e p e n d e n t on the towns, so it

has m a d e b a r b a r i a n a n d s e m i - b a r b a r i a n countries d e p e n d e n t
on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of b o u r -
geois, the East on the West (1967: 84).
T h e second shift implied that the a n t a g o n i s m between the

two great classes into which, according to M a r x , bourgeois
society as a whole tends to split, the bourgeoisie a n d the
proletariat, was no longer traced to relations in the p r o d u c t
or factor m a r k e t s b u t to relations in p r o d u c t i o n . In o r d e r to
define the interests of the nation a n d of its c o m p o n e n t
classes, Smith took leave of the pin factory whose scenario
opens The Wealth of Nations to follow the interplay of supply
a n d d e m a n d in the marketplace, a n d of class interests in the
national political arena. M a r x in his critique of political
economy took us in the opposite direction. We take leave
not of the shopfloor but of the noisy sphere of the market-
place (and, we may add, of the political arena) "where
everything takes place on the surface a n d in view of all
m e n , " a n d follow the o w n e r of the m e a n s of p r o d u c t i o n a n d
the possessor of labor p o w e r "into the h i d d e n a b o d e of
production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face
'No a d m i t t a n c e except on b u s i n e s s ' " (1959: 176). In this
h i d d e n a b o d e of production, M a r x discovered two quite
contradictory tendencies that implied two quite different
scenarios of class struggle and social transformation.
T h e first was t h e one generally e m p h a s i z e d in Marxist
77
/
literature after M a r x : even if we a s s u m e that in the

m a r k e t p l a c e the relationship between t h e owners of the
m e a n s of production a n d the owners of labor-power
appears as a relationship between equals, in t h e sense that
the commodities they bring to t h e m a r k e t tend to exchange
at their full cost of p r o d u c t i o n / r e p r o d u c t i o n (which, of
course, is not always or even normally t h e case), the
relationship would still be a f u n d a m e n t a l l y u n e q u a l one.
T h i s is so because of the longer-run effects of capitalist
production on the relative value a n d the relative bargaining
power of capital a n d labor. Capitalist p r o d u c t i o n , that is, is
seen as a process that tends to r e d u c e t h e value of labor-
power (its real costs of reproduction) a n d simultaneously to
u n d e r m i n e the bargaining power of its possessors, so that
the advantages of the reduction of labor's costs of repro-
duction tend to accrue entirely to capital.
T h i s tendency obviously poses p r o b l e m s of realization of
the growing mass of surplus labor that capital appropriates
in production. T h e s e p r o b l e m s periodically manifest t h e m -
selves in crises of overproduction that are overcome on the
one hand
by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the

other, by c o n q u e s t of new markets, a n d by the m o r e t h o r o u g h
exploitation of the old ones. T h a t is to say, by paving the way
for m o r e destructive crises, a n d by d i m i n i s h i n g the m e a n s
w h e r e b y crises are prevented (1967: 86).
It would seem from the above that t h e u n e q u a l relation

between labor a n d capital, continuously r e p r o d u c e d and
e n h a n c e d in the workplace, leads capital either to self-
destruction in the m a r k e t p l a c e or to a greater development
of the world-economy, b o t h extensively (incorporations)
a n d intensively. Given a finite globe, the m o r e t h o r o u g h this
development, the greater the self-destructiveness of capital.
In this scenario labor plays no role in precipitating capi-
talist crises except in a negative sense; it is its growing
8
subordination in the workplace, a n d c o n s e q u e n t weakening

of bargaining power in the marketplace, t h a t are ultimately
responsible for the outbreak of t h e " e p i d e m i c of over-
production," as M a r x called it. Labor, or its social personifi-
cation, the proletariat, plays an active role only in
transforming the self-destructiveness of capital into political
revolution. T h e increasing precariousness of working a n d
living conditions induces proletarians to form c o m b i n a t i o n s
against the bourgeoisie.
N o w a n d then the workers are victorious, b u t only for a time.

T h e real fruit of their battles lies, not in the i m m e d i a t e result,
b u t i n the ever-expanding u n i o n o f the workers . . . .
T h i s organization of the proletarians into a class, a n d conse-
q u e n t l y into a political party, is continuously being u p s e t
again by the competition b e t w e e n the workers themselves. B u t
i t ever rises u p again, stronger, firmer, mightier . . . .
A l t o g e t h e r collisions b e t w e e n the classes of the old society
f u r t h e r , in m a n y ways, the course of d e v e l o p m e n t of the pro-
letariat. T h e bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a c o n s t a n t
battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those
portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have b e c o m e
antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the
bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself
c o m p e l l e d to a p p e a l to the proletariat, to ask for its help, a n d
thus, to drag it into the political a r e n a (1967: 90).
Alongside this scenario, however, as we indicated, M a r x

suggested a n o t h e r one, quite distinct in its unfolding. Both
in the Manifesto a n d in Capital we a r e told that, along with
t h e growing mass of misery, oppression, a n d degradation,
the strength of the working class grows too, not so m u c h as
a result of political organization aimed at counteracting its
structural weakness, but rather as a result of the very
process of capitalist production.
A l o n g with the constantly d i m i n i s h i n g n u m b e r of the m a g -

n a t e s of capital . . . grows the mass of misery, oppression,
9
slavery, degradation, exploitation, b u t with this too grows the

revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in
n u m b e r s , a n d disciplined, united, organized by, the very
m e c h a n i s m of the process of capitalist p r o d u c t i o n itself (1959:
763).
T h e essential condition for the existence, a n d for the sway of

the b o u r g e o i s class, is the formation a n d a u g m e n t a t i o n of capi-
tal; the condition for capital is wage labor. W a g e l a b o r rests
exclusively on competition between the laborers. T h e advance
of industry, whose involuntary p r o m o t e r is the bourgeoisie,
replaces the isolation of the laborers, d u e to competition, by
their revolutionary c o m b i n a t i o n , d u e t o association. T h e
development of M o d e r n Industry, therefore, cuts f r o m u n d e r
its feet the very f o u n d a t i o n on which the bourgeoisie p r o d u c e s
a n d a p p r o p r i a t e s p r o d u c t s (1967: 93—4).
Here, therefore, the strengthening of labor in the workplace

is the cause of the crisis of capital.
As we know, M a r x never m a n a g e d to reconcile these two
contradictory tendencies that he discovered in t h e a b o d e of
production, let alone to work out fully a n d systematically all
their implications for the analysis of class contradictions in
capitalist society. Instead, Marx, in s o m e of his historical
writings, a n d m a n y followers in their theoretical writings,
gave up t h e critique of political e c o n o m y a n d reverted to the
Smithian p a r a d i g m of class analysis, reviving rather t h a n
carrying out the critique of political economy.
In the case of M a r x , this retreat is most evident in his
writings on the class struggle in France, in which class
interests were defined in t e r m s of a national political-
economic space, a n d w h a t goes on in the a b o d e of production
simply does not c o m e into the p i c t u r e at all. Obviously,
M a r x himself t h o u g h t t h a t the shift of focus he was
advancing to analyze t h e overall, long-term tendencies of
capitalist society h a d a limited relevance for the concrete
analysis of a concrete instance of class struggle at a relatively
low stage of development of such tendencies.
10
Moreover, even at the theoretical level, the shift of focus

away from the noisy sphere of political e c o n o m y did not
imply any belittlement of t h e nation-state as the m a i n locus
of political power, that is, of t h e m o n o p o l y of the legitimate
use of violence over a given territory. T h i s p o w e r e m b o d i e d
in nation-states, whatever its origins, could obviously be
used, and has indeed generally been used, simultaneously
in two directions: as an aggressive/defensive i n s t r u m e n t of
intra-capitalist competition in the world-economy, a n d as
an aggressive/defensive i n s t r u m e n t of class struggle in
national locales. T r u e , the growing density a n d connected-
ness of world-economic networks on the one h a n d , and the
displacement of class contradictions from the marketplace
to the workplace on the other, would ultimately m a k e
nation-states "obsolete" from both points of view. In out-
lining this tendency, however, M a r x was only defining
t h e situation that t h e capitalist world-economy would
asymptotically approach in the very long r u n . T h e farther
the class struggle was from the projected asymptote, the
m o r e it would take on a political/national character. Even
the proletariat, the class which in his view h a d neither coun-
try n o r nationality, h a d first of all to wage a national
struggle:
Since the proletariat m u s t first of all acquire political

s u p r e m a c y , m u s t rise to be the leading class of the nation,
m u s t constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national,
t h o u g h not in the bourgeois sense of the word (1967: 102).
M a r x ' s empirical retreat into political e c o n o m y did not,

however, entail a corresponding retreat at the theoretical
level. It simply implied a recognition of the distance
separating the historical circumstances of nineteenth-
century E u r o p e from the asymptotic circumstances
projected in the Manifesto a n d in Capital.
Far more than this was implicit in the retreat into/revival
11
A ntisystemic Movements
of political e c o n o m y by Marxists after M a r x , however. T h e

most striking characteristic of t h e theories of finance a n d
m o n o p o l y capital, of imperialism a n d of state capitalism,
that begin to develop at t h e t u r n of t h e century a n d are later
synthesized in canonical f o r m by Lenin, is that they take us
back to the noisy sphere of political economic relations.
T h e i r m a i n concerns are t h e forms of capitalist competition,
a n d t h e class contradictions identified are those defined in
terms of market interests a n d state power. However m u c h
such formulations m a y or m a y not be justified in terms of
the political strategies of the time, we are concerned here
with their elevation by epigones into theoretical advances
r a t h e r t h a n pragmatic retreats f r o m M a r x ' s critique of
Smithian political economy.
This theoretical retreat into political economy h a d some
justification in the tendencies that c a m e to characterize the
capitalist world-economy a r o u n d the t u r n of the century.
T h e growing unity of t h e world market presupposed by
M a r x ' s p a r a d i g m a t i c shift began to be u n d e r m i n e d by t h e
re-emergence of state protectionist/mercantilist policies.
These policies increasingly transferred world capitalist
competition f r o m t h e realm of relations a m o n g enterprises
to t h e realm of relations a m o n g states. As a consequence,
w a r a n d n a t i o n a l / i m p e r i a l autarky c a m e to the fore a n d in
p r a g m a t i c t e r m s shaped t h e scenario of t h e world-economy.
C o n n e c t e d with this tendency, t h e high concentration a n d
centralization of capital, characteristic of most of the new
l e a d i n g / c o r e sectors of economic activity, led to a resur-
gence of practices, often backed by state power, that
restricted competition within the national/imperial
segments into which the world-economy was splitting.
States thus r e t u r n e d to the forefront of world-economic life,
and monopoly in and through the sovereign b e c a m e once
again the central issue a r o u n d which conflicts a n d align-
m e n t s a m o n g classes a n d fractions thereof revolved. This
situation, which has broadly characterized t h e first half of
12
the twentieth century, undoubtedly warranted a revival of

political economy as the most relevant theoretical frame-
work for the short- or medium-term analysis of class
contradictions and conflicts.
We should not be surprised, therefore, to find that the
conception of class conflicts and alliances advanced by
Lenin fits better theoretically into the Smithian than the
Marxian paradigm: the monopoly power of a "fraction" of
capital (finance capital and large-scale industry, as opposed
to Smith's merchants and master manufacturers employing
large capitals) is singled out as the main determinant of
waste and exploitation as well as of inter-imperialist rivalries
and war (the enmity among nations, in Smithian parlance).
It follows that all "popular classes," including the non-
monopolistic fractions of capital, can be mobilized by the
party of the proletariat (the "new prince," as Gramsci would
have said) to wrest political power from the monopolistic
fractions of capital — a prescription analogous to Smith's
suggestion that the enlightened sovereign could count on
the support of all other orders of society in pursuing the
general interest against the particular interest of large
merchants and manufacturers.
This, however, is not all that was involved in the theo-
retical retreat of Marxists back into political economy.
Monopoly capitalism and imperialism were not treated for
what they ultimately turned out to be — cyclical resur-
gence of mercantilist policies connected with the crisis of
British world hegemony and with intensifying tendencies
toward overproduction. If they had been treated in this
way, the retreat into political economy would have merely
implied a recognition of the fact that the path leading the
capitalist world-economy to the ideal-typical asymptote
envisaged in Marx's critique of political economy was char-
acterized by cycles and discontinuities that could increase,
even for relatively long periods, the distance separating
historical circumstances from such an asymptote. Instead,
13
monopoly capitalism and imperialism were theorized as t h e

highest a n d final stage of the capitalist world-system, that is,
as themselves representing the asymptote. In this way,
M a r x i s m as canonized by Lenin has c o m e to be perversely
identified as (and therefore with) political economy.
W e b e r ' s writings on processes of g r o u p formation in the
m o d e r n world a r e u n d o u b t e d l y a m o n g t h e most extensive
available. For present purposes we limit o u r attention to his
highly influential contrast of classes a n d status-groups
(Stande). T h e contrasted categories were at once an
advance over the class analysis projected by M a r x a n d a
retreat from it. They were an advance because of t h e juxta-
position of status-group formation to class formation. T h e y
were a retreat because of the restriction of the processes,
a n d t h e resulting elemental forms of social structure, to
existent "political c o m m u n i t i e s " (which " u n d e r m o d e r n
conditions . . . a r e 'states'") (1968: 904). We require in our
work on m o d e r n social change the kind of juxtaposition
W e b e r constructed. But in o r d e r to have it, we n e e d to free
it from the assumptions he m a d e . A n d , in order to do that,
we need to examine those assumptions.
M o d e r n sociology would have us believe that W e b e r
w r o t e an essay on class, status, a n d party. He did nothing of
the sort. It would f u r t h e r m o r e have us believe that he juxta-
posed class and status-group as two separate dimensions of
something called stratification in m o d e r n societies, both in
t u r n separate from t h e state (construed as t h e realm of
"parties"), which he also did not do. We then m u s t first set
to one side these imposed readings in order to see what
W e b e r did do, and so allow ourselves to e x a m i n e the
a s s u m p t i o n s he did make.
T h i s preliminary exercise can fortunately be quite brief.
In the Roth-Wittich edition of Economy and Society (Weber,
1968), C h a p t e r IX in P a r t T w o is entitled "Political
C o m m u n i t i e s . " T h i s c h a p t e r is provided with six sections,
each titled, the sixth of which is entitled, " T h e distribution
14
of power within the political c o m m u n i t y , " a n d subtitled,

"class, status, party." It is this section of this c h a p t e r t h a t
appears in H a n s Gerth a n d W r i g h t Mills, Essays from Max
Weber (1946) as itself a "chapter" (there, C h a p t e r VII) with
its subtitle, "class, status, party," as its full title. As s o m e o n e
once said, m u c h m a y be lost in translation. 1
For W e b e r in C h a p t e r IX of Economy and Society, t h e r e
w e r e two a n d only two possible basic ways for t h e distri-
bution of power in political c o m m u n i t i e s (that is, in the
m o d e r n world, states) to be structured: it can be either class-
structured or status-group-structured. F o r "power" (undif-
ferentiated here) to be class-structured, the factual
distribution of goods a n d services within t h e political
c o m m u n i t y or state in question m u s t be market-organized.
If so, or in so far as it is so, the distribution of life chances
a m o n g the m e m b e r s of the political c o m m u n i t y (and others
in its territory) is d e t e r m i n e d by their relative position
("class situation") in the organizing complex of market
relations, the basic categories of which are "property" a n d
"lack of property." Alternatively, for "power" to be status-
group-structured, t h e factual distribution of goods and
services within t h e political c o m m u n i t y or state in question
m u s t be prestige-organized. If so, or in so far it is so, t h e
distribution of life chances a m o n g t h e m e m b e r s of the
political c o m m u n i t y (and others) is d e t e r m i n e d by their
m e m b e r s h i p ("status situation") in t h e organizing complex
1. W e b e r scholars will k n o w that most h e a d i n g s in the R o t h - W i t t i c h

edition were provided not by W e b e r b u t by t h e editors of t h e writings
c o m b i n e d to form Economy and Society. T h e key s e n t e n c e s f r o m the section
u n d e r discussion are for present purposes two:
T h e structure of every legal order directly influences t h e distribution

of power, e c o n o m i c or otherwise, within its respective [political]
c o m m u n i t y (1968: 926).
N o w : "classes", "status groups", a n d "parties" are p h e n o m e n a of the
distribution of power within a [political] c o m m u n i t y (1968: 927).
15
of honorifically r a n k e d c o m m u n a l groups, t h e basic cate-

gories of which are "positively esteemed" a n d "negatively
esteemed."
W h i l e depicted as if positively different, a class-structured
distribution of power within a political c o m m u n i t y differs
f r o m a status-group-structured distribution only in one
governing respect, namely, whether the distribution of
goods a n d services is effected t h r o u g h m a r k e t relations (—
"class-structured") or instead t h r o u g h non-market relations
(= "status-group-structured"), that is, residually. 2 T h e two
stated elemental ways in which a given political c o m m u n i t y
m a y be socially structured, then, were for W e b e r central
categories to use in tracing historically t h e rise of the market
— that is, the historical displacement by m a r k e t relations of
any a n d all other kinds of social relations t h r o u g h which the
"factors" of p r o d u c t i o n are recurrently b r o u g h t together,
the resulting p r o d u c t s are "circulated," the e m b o d i e d
surpluses are "realized" a n d a p p r o p r i a t e d , a n d the material
m e a n s of subsistence are "distributed." To t h e extent that
relations a m o n g status-groups organize a n d mediate these
flows, the market (the complex of market relations) does
not, a n d classes in his terms are u n f o r m e d . To the extent
that the m a r k e t organizes the flows, status-group relations
do not, a n d status-groups are u n f o r m e d (or better,
"eroded," since the historical transformation from feudal-
ism to capitalism in E u r o p e u n d e r p i n s t h e contrast).
Still, even given the one-dimensionality of the distinction,
it retained in its elaboration a m a t t e r of central importance,
that of an sich/fiir sich derived from M a r x . W e b e r m a d e use
of it in a particular m a n n e r . Classes in relation to one
a n o t h e r , in a given political c o m m u n i t y , are an sich by
definition b u t n o t thereby fur sich. H e r e he followed quite
2. It is not until Polanyi (in The Great Transformation [1957] and

subsequent writings) gave positive content to "non-market forms of inte-
gration" that this residual category began to receive systematic con-
ceptual elaboration.
16
u n a m b i g u o u s l y the p r e - M a r x conventional political eco-

n o m y , seeing i m m e d i a t e class interests as given by m a r k e t
position a n d h e n c e as theoretically i n d e t e r m i n a t e , so far as
collective action is concerned, w h e t h e r it be directly in
relation to other classes or indirectly t h r o u g h their relation
to the a p p a r a t u s of the political c o m m u n i t y (state). T h e o -
retically, s o m e t h i n g in addition to class interests m u s t be
introduced if o n e is to a c c o u n t for (continuous) collective
class action a n d so therefore for its absence. In contrast,
status-groups in relation to one a n o t h e r are by definition
groups, definitionally endowed with t h e capacity to act
collectively in relation to one a n o t h e r a n d to act on their
respective behalfs in relation to the state.
T h e definitional difference was not arbitrary for W e b e r .
A political c o m m u n i t y entails by construction "value
systems" (1968: 902), in accordance with which its con-
stituent elements have m o r e or less legitimacy, prestige, a n d
so on, in comparison with o n e a n o t h e r , a n d with reference
to which they have m o r e or less pride, solidarity, or capacity
to act collectively in relation with o n e another. A status-
g r o u p structuring of the distribution of power, because the
constituent groups are arrayed honorifically by rank,
confers on each m o r e or less prestige a n d pride, a n d
t h r o u g h that, the solidarity a n d capacity to act collectively
in relation to one another. A class structuring of this distri-
bution of power, in contrast, because of t h e m a r k e t prin-
ciple — which, in its operations for W e b e r , either eliminates
all considerations of h o n o r from its relations or is
constrained in its working by t h e m — provides its constitu-
ent classes with no necessary solidarity in their relations
with one a n o t h e r , a n d hence no necessary capacity for
collective action in or on these relations. In short, a n d to go
a bit beyond W e b e r in this s u m m a r y , status-groups are
constituents of a n d thereby carriers of a m o r a l order, in
D u r k h e i m ' s sense. Classes are n o t ; if they b e c o m e so, it is
by virtue of processes f u n d a m e n t a l b u t different f r o m , a n d
17
not entailed in, those that constitute them as classes in

relation to one another.3
All of this is subject to the very strict proviso that we are
examining the possible social structurings of the distri-
bution of power within a constituted political community, a
state under modern conditions. Weber himself, however,
earlier opened up the possibility of freeing the contrasted
categories of class and status-group from this highly
constraining premise of their construction. In Section
Three, headed "Power, prestige and the 'Great Powers,'" he
asserted that states in relation to one another "may pretend
to a special 'prestige,' and their pretensions may influence"
the conduct of their relations with one another. "Experience
teaches," he continues,
that claims to prestige have always played into the origins of

wars. Their part is difficult to gauge; it cannot be determined
in general, but it is very obvious. The realm of "honor,"
which is comparable to the "status order" within a social struc-
ture, pertains also to the interrelations of political structures
(1968: 911; italics added).
But extending the scope of stratifying processes,4 so that
3. Weber's one theoretical claim in this section, Section Six of the

Chapter "Political Communities," reads thus:
As to the general economic conditions making for the predominance
of stratification by status, only the following can be said. When the
bases of the acquisition and distribution of goods are relatively stable,
stratification by status is favored. Every technological repercussion
and economic transformation threatens stratification by status and
pushes the class situation into the foreground. Epochs and countries
in which the naked class situation is of predominant significance are
regularly the periods of technical and economic transformations. And
every slowing down of the change in economic stratification leads, in
due course, to the growth of status structures and makes for resusci-
tation of the important role of social honor (1968: 938).
4. We have departed from Weber's use of "stratification." For a pro-
visional and programmatic formulation of the concept, "stratifying
processes," see Hopkins & Wallerstein (1981).
18
their operation within the interstate system of t h e world-

economy is " c o m p a r a b l e " to their suggested operation
within one of its units (a political c o m m u n i t y , w h e t h e r
sovereign state or colony), runs into deeply serious diffi-
culties. An illustration of this claim is all that t i m e a n d
space here permit.
W e b e r , in a " f r a g m e n t " on " T h e M a r k e t " ( C h a p t e r VII of
Part T w o in the Roth-Wittich edition [1968: 635-40]),
distinguished appropriately a n d sharply between t w o
f u n d a m e n t a l l y different kinds of "monopolies" e n c o u n t e r e d
within a given political c o m m u n i t y . On the o n e side are
"the m o n o p o l i e s of status-groups [which] excluded from
their field of action the m e c h a n i s m of t h e market." On t h e
other side are the "capitalistic monopolies which are
acquired in the market t h r o u g h t h e power of property."
T h e difference is elliptically specified: " T h e beneficiary of a
m o n o p o l y by a status-group restricts, a n d m a i n t a i n s his
power against, the market, while the r a t i o n a l - e c o n o m i c
monopolist rules t h r o u g h the m a r k e t " (1968: 639). T h e
general difficulty we alluded to m a y be exemplified as
follows. S u p p o s i n g that, a m o n g our interrelated a n d h o n o r -
oriented states, the government of o n e creates a
"monopoly" within its borders for its few local (national)
producers of, say, automobiles, by so raising t h e import
duties on automobiles p r o d u c e d elsewhere in the world that
they are no longer price-competitive. T h e y are, as is said,
"priced out of the market," which a m o u n t s to saying that
the government in question has restricted, a n d m a i n t a i n e d
its power against, the world m a r k e t for automobiles. Do we
construe that situation as c o m p a r a b l e on the world scene to
a status-group monopoly within a political c o m m u n i t y , or
to a class-formed capitalistic m o n o p o l y ? Or is it a bit of
both — class-like because of the rational appropriation of
profit opportunities by the automobile firms w h o p e r s u a d e d
the government to i n t r o d u c e t h e restrictions; a n d status-
group-like because of the sentiments of national p r i d e a n d
19
prestige m a r s h a l l e d in s u p p o r t of a n d g e n e r a t e d by t h e
policy?
VVe suspect t h e latter. B u t if we a r e right, W e b e r ' s
sharply etched structural distinction, b e t w e e n class-
s t r u c t u r e d a n d status-group-structured distributions of
p o w e r within political c o m m u n i t i e s , b e c o m e s a fused
c o n c e p t w h e n p u t to use in t h e e x a m i n a t i o n of processes of
g r o u p - f o r m a t i o n in t h e m o d e r n world-system. A n d we shall
have to g r o u n d anew processes of class-formation a n d
processes of status-group-formation, in o r d e r to see t h e m on
occasion as fused a n d reinforcing sets of processes rather
t h a n b e i n g restricted b y their original a n d careful f o r m u -
lation as necessarily diametrically o p p o s e d in their
operation.
T h e intellectual pressure to reify groups, to p r e s u m e
their p e r m a n e n c y a n d longevity, is difficult to resist. F o r
o n e thing, most self-conscious g r o u p s a r g u e as p a r t of their
legitimizing ideology not merely their p r e e m i n e n c e (in o n e
way or a n o t h e r ) b u t their t e m p o r a l priority over c o m p e t i n g
g r o u p s . G r o u p s that a r e self-conscious, t h a t s e e m to act
collectively in significant ways, often s e e m very solid a n d
very resilient. We too often lose f r o m sight t h e d e g r e e to
w h i c h t h i s solidarity, this reality, is itself t h e p r o d u c t of t h e
g r o u p ' s activities in relations with others, activities that in
t u r n a r e m a d e possible b y a n d have a direct i m p a c t u p o n
t h e rest of social reality. T h e very activities of g r o u p s in
relation t o o n e a n o t h e r serve t o c h a n g e e a c h g r o u p s u b s t a n -
tially a n d substantively, a n d in p a r t i c u l a r to c h a n g e their
respective b o u n d a r i e s a n d their d i s t i n g u i s h i n g a n d d e f i n i n g
characteristics.
P e r m i t us to suggest an analogy. If o n e has a wheel of
m o t t l e d colors, o n e that includes t h e whole r a n g e of t h e
color s p e c t r u m , a n d if o n e spins t h e wheel, it will a p p e a r
m o r e a n d m o r e like a solid white m a s s as t h e s p e e d
increases. T h e r e c o m e s a p o i n t of s p e e d w h e r e it is i m p o s -
sible to see t h e wheel as o t h e r t h a n p u r e white. If, however,
20
t h e wheel slows down, the white will dissolve into its

c o m p o n e n t separate colors. So it is with groups, even (and
p e r h a p s especially) those most central of institutional struc-
tures of t h e m o d e r n world-system — the states, t h e classes,
the nations, a n d / o r ethnic groups. 5 Seen in long historical
time a n d b r o a d world space, they fade into o n e another,
b e c o m i n g only "groups." Seen in short historical t i m e a n d
n a r r o w world space, they b e c o m e clearly defined a n d so
f o r m distinctive "structures."
T h e distinction between classes an sich a n d classes für sich
is helpful insofar as it recognizes that t h e self-consciousness
of classes (and other groups) is not a constant b u t a variable.
W e must, however, d r a w o n M a r x a n d W e b e r o n e step
f u r t h e r a n d recognize with t h e m that the very existence of
particular historical g r o u p s in relation to o n e a n o t h e r is not
given b u t is also a variable. It m a y be o b j e c t e d that no o n e
ever a s s u m e d that a class or an ethnic g r o u p always existed,
a n d that everyone knows that for every g r o u p t h e r e is of
course a m o m e n t of its c o m i n g into existence (however diffi-
cult this m a y be to specify). But this is not the point we are
making.
At s o m e m o m e n t of historical t i m e t h e bourgeoisie (the
world bourgeoisie or a local version in a given area, or of a
given people), the B r a h m i n caste, t h e H u n g a r i a n nation,
a n d t h e religious c o m m u n i t y of Buddhists all c a m e (or
evolved) into existence. Are we to a s s u m e that each j u s t con-
tinued to exist from that point on? We are c o n t e n d i n g that
there is a sense in which all these groups are in fact
constantly being recreated such that over time we have
genuinely new wine in old bottles, a n d that t h e emphasis on
the continuity a n d primordiality of t h e g r o u p ' s existence,
t h o u g h it m a y b e of considerable ideological value to its
m e m b e r s as such, is of very little analytic value to us as
observers. T h e transition from feudalism to capitalism
5. T h i s t h e m e is developed in Wallerstein (1980).
21
c a n n o t be explained by the struggle of classes t h a t c a m e

into real current existence only as the result of that transition.
Civil war in L e b a n o n cannot be explained by the struggle of
religious groups who have c o m e into real current existence
largely as a result of that civil war.
W h a t intelligent analysis therefore requires is that we
uncover the processes by which groups (and institutions)
are constantly recreated, r e m o u l d e d , a n d eliminated in the
ongoing operations of the capitalist world-economy, which
is an actual social system that c a m e into historical existence
Primarily in E u r o p e in the "long" sixteenth century, a n d
which subsequently has been e x p a n d e d in space so that it
now includes all other geographical areas of the globe. T h e
relational concept and, therefore, the actual structures of
classes a n d ethnic groups have b e e n d e p e n d e n t on the
creation of the m o d e r n states. T h e states are the key politi-
cal units of the world-economy, units that have been
defined by a n d circumscribed by their location in t h e inter-
state system. A n d this system has served as t h e evolving
political superstructure of the world-economy.
In the original loci of the capitalist world-economy, the
birth of diplomacy, of so-called international law, a n d of
state-building ideologies (such as absolutism) all coincide
with t h e early functioning of the world-economy. Of course,
these states rapidly f o u n d themselves in a hierarchical
network of u n e q u a l strength. As new areas b e c a m e incor-
porated into this capitalist world-economy, the existing
political structures of such areas were c o m m o n l y r e s h a p e d
in quite f u n d a m e n t a l ways (including even t h e definition of
their territorial a n d "ethnic" or national boundaries) so that
they could play their expected roles in the relational
network of the interstate system. T h e s e states h a d to be too
weak to interfere with the flow of the factors of p r o d u c t i o n
across their boundaries, a n d therefore with t h e peripheral-
ization of their production processes. H e n c e , in s o m e cases,
pre-existing political structures h a d to be "weakened." But
22
t h e states also h a d to be strong e n o u g h to e n s u r e the very

s a m e flow, the same peripheralization. Hence, in other
cases, pre-existing political structures h a d to be "streng-
thened." But w e a k e n e d or s t r e n g t h e n e d , these recreated or
entirely newly created incorporated states e n d e d up as state
structures that were weak relative to the states specializing
in core p r o d u c t i o n processes within the world-economy.
T h e classes a n d the e t h n i c / n a t i o n a l groups or groupings
that began to crystallize were crystallized, so to speak, from
three directions. T h e y defined themselves primarily in
relation to t h e s e state structures t h a t c o m m a n d e d the
largest a m o u n t of a r m e d force a n d access to economic
possibilities, either t h r o u g h the direct distribution of ever-
increasing tax i n c o m e or t h r o u g h the creation of structured
possibilities of preferential access to the market (including
training). T h e y were defined by those in the centers of these
structures (and in the centers of t h e world-system as a
whole). A n d they were perceived by competitive groups in
their relational setting.
T h r e e kinds of groups emerged in relation to these state
structures — class, national, a n d ethnic groups. W h i l e
classes an sich developed in terms of the relation of house-
holds to the real social economy, which in this case was a
capitalist world-economy, a class für sich is a g r o u p that
makes conscious claims of class m e m b e r s h i p , which is a
claim to a place in a particular political order. Such a class
could therefore only grow up in relation to a given political
entity. W h e n E.P. T h o m p s o n (1964) writes a b o u t the
making of the English working class, he is writing a b o u t the
conditions u n d e r which u r b a n proletarians within a juris-
diction called " E n g l a n d " c a m e to think of themselves as
English workers a n d to act politically in this capacity. T h e
class " m a d e " itself, as he emphasizes, not only by t h e evo-
lution of objective economic a n d social conditions, b u t by
the ways in which some (many) people reacted to these
conditions.
23
Of course, t h e exent to which t h e r e e m e r g e d an English

r a t h e r t h a n a British working class already indicated that a
key political choice h a d been m a d e . T h e Irish workers, for
example, were thereby defined as a different group. T h u s ,
the construction of a "class" was ipso facto part of the
construction of at least two "nationalities," the English a n d
the Irish. N o r did this particular story stop there. For we are
still seeing today the later consequences of these early
developments. Protestant u r b a n proletarians in N o r t h e r n
Ireland do not today think of themselves as "Irish." Instead
they call themselves "Protestants," or " U l s t e r m e n , " or (least
likely) "Britons," or even all three. It is clear that, in reality,
to be a "Protestant" a n d to be an " U l s t e r m a n " is in this situ-
ation virtually synonymous; to be a "Catholic" a n d to be
"Irish" is also synonymous. To be sure, there are Prot-
estants, a n d even J e w s resident in D u b l i n who think of
themselves as Irish. T h i s doesn't mitigate the m e a n i n g of
the religious terms in N o r t h e r n Ireland.
If now some political organization comes along a n d
insists on b a n n i n g the use of religious terminology in favor,
let us say, of the exclusive use of class terminology, such a
group is arguing in favor of a particular political resolution
of the conflict. W e r e such a g r o u p to succeed, the reality of
the religious groups as social entities might rapidly recede
in N o r t h e r n Ireland, as they have in m a n y other areas of the
world. An example would be Switzerland, w h e r e people
primarily identify as m e m b e r s of linguistic groups a n d only
in a m i n o r way as m e m b e r s of religious groups.
Is there an I n d i a n bourgeoisie? T h i s is not a question of
essences, b u t of existential reality. It is a political question
that divides I n d i a n e n t r e p r e n e u r s a m o n g themselves. T o
the extent that we can say t h a t t h e r e exists an I n d i a n b o u r -
geoisie, as opposed to merely m e m b e r s of the world b o u r -
geoisie w h o h a p p e n to hold I n d i a n passports, it is because
there is a belief on the part of these bourgeois that the
I n d i a n state a p p a r a t u s has or could have an important role
24
In assuring their "class" interests vis-a-vis both workers in

India and bourgeois in other areas of the world.
The whole line between classes as they are constructed
and status-groups of every variety is far more fluid and
blurred than the classic presumption of an antinomy
between class and status-group has indicated. It is in fact
very hard to know when we are dealing primarily with the
one rather than with the other. This is especially true when
political conflict becomes acute, and this is one of the
reasons why the lines between social .movements and
national movements have become increasingly difficult to
disentangle and are perhaps unimportant to discern.
Furthermore, even among traditionally defined status
groups, it is not sure that it is very useful to distinguish
"nations" from other kinds of "ethnic groups." A "nation"
seems to be nothing but a political claim that the boun-
daries of a state should coincide with those of a given
"ethnic group." This is used to justify either secessionist
movements or unification movements. In point of fact, if we
were to use a strict definition of the concept "nation," we
should be hard-pressed to find even one "nation-state" in
the entire world-system. This indicates that "nation" is
more the description of an aspiration, or of a tendency, than
of an existing phenomenon. Whenever the political claim
(and/or definition by others) is less than that of state
sovereignty, we tend to call this group an "ethnic group,"
whatever the basis of the claim, be it common language,
common religion, common skin color, or fictive common
ancestry.
The actual history of the construction (reconstruction,
remolding, destruction) of classes, nations, and ethnic
groups — including the pressure both of "external" groups
to create these groups and of the "internal" desire of puta-
tive groups to create themselves — is a history of the
constant rise and fall of the intensity of these political claims
in cultural clothing. There is no evidence that, over the
25
several h u n d r e d years of the existence of t h e capitalist

world-economy, one particular genre of claim has grown at
t h e expense of others; each genre s e e m s to have held its
own. It would seem, therefore, that assertions a b o u t
primordiality are in fact ideological. T h i s is not to say that
there has not been systemic d e v e l o p m e n t . For example,
nothing herein a r g u e d is inconsistent with t h e proposition
that there has been growing class polarization in the capi-
talist world-economy. But such a proposition would be
referring to classes an sich, that is, at t h e level of the real
social economy, the capitalist world-economy. Rather, this
analysis should be seen as an a r g u m e n t that group for-
mations (solidarities) are processes of t h e capitalist world-
economy, a n d are a m o n g the central underlying forms of
the m o r e narrowly manifest efforts at political organization.
In recent years, social scientists of various intellectual
schools have b e g u n to return to M a r x ' s critique of political
economy, b u t in ways that go b e y o n d the mechanical
usages of class analysis that formed t h e ideology of the
Second a n d T h i r d Internationals a n d b e y o n d the equally
mechanical concept of primordial status-groups that
d o m i n a t e d the developmentalist ideology of U S - d o m i n a t e d
world social science in the 1950s a n d 1960s.
On the one h a n d , in the era of US h e g e m o n y (roughly
1945-70), the unity of the world m a r k e t analytically pre-
supposed by M a r x (when he observed an era of British
hegemony) and which was t h o u g h t to have disappeared in
the late nineteenth century, was in fact progressively recon-
stituted. T h e so-called t r a n s n a t i o n a l sought to operate with
m i n i m a l constraint by state-political apparatuses. T h o u g h t
the concentration of capital increased even further, its trans-
national expansion out of t h e A m e r i c a n core b e c a m e a
m a j o r factor in the intensification of world m a r k e t com-
petition a n d in the consolidation of t h e unity of t h e world
market. In this context t h e role played by states c h a n g e d
radically, t h o u g h not everywhere to the s a m e extent. Par-
26
ticularly outside of the C o m m u n i s t world, the emphasis in

their action changed from territorial expansion a n d restric-
tion of inter-enterprise competition within a n d across
n a t i o n a l / i m p e r i a l boundaries, to strengthening t h e com-
petitive edge of their territories as locales of p r o d u c t i o n a n d
to sustaining the transnational expansion of their respective
national capitals. T h e y thereby contributed to t h e enhance-
m e n t of the density a n d connectedness of world-economic
networks that, in turn, u n d e r m i n e d their ability to
influence/control economic activity even within their own
borders.
O n t h e other h a n d , t h e antisystemic m o v e m e n t s have
m o r e a n d m o r e taken on the clothing of "national-
liberation movements," claiming t h e d o u b l e legitimacy of
nationalist anti-imperialism and proletarian anti-
capitalism. This has given t h e m great strength as mobi-
lizing movements. But, insofar as they have c o m e to p o w e r
in specific state structures operating within the interstate/
system, they have been caught in t h e constraints of this
system that has led, a m o n g other things, to conflicts within?
a n d a m o n g such "post-revolutionary" states.
A cogent analysis of existing trends within the world-
system requires both a return to basics, in terms of an
analysis of the operational m e c h a n i s m s of capitalism as a
m o d e of production, a n d a reconceptualization of t h e oper-
ational m e c h a n i s m s of the social groups (that are formed,
are reformed, a n d of course also disappear) t h a t c o m p e t e
a n d conflict within this capitalist world-economy, as it con-
tinues to evolve a n d to transform itself.
77
Dilemmas of Antisystemic
Movements
Opposition to oppression is coterminous with the existence

of hierarchical social-systems. Opposition is p e r m a n e n t , but
f o r t h e m o s t p a r t l a t e n t , T h e oppressed are too weak —
politically, economically, a n d ideologically — to manifest
their opposition constantly. However, as we know, w h e n
oppression b e c o m e s particularly acute, or expectations par-
ticularly deceived, or t h e power of t h e ruling s t r a t u m falters,
people have risen up in an almost s p o n t a n e o u s m a n n e r to
cry halt. T h i s has taken the form of revolts, of riots, of flight.
T h e multiple forms of h u m a n rebellion have for t h e most
part b e e n only partially efficacious at best. S o m e t i m e s they
have forced the oppressors to reduce the pressure or t h e
exploitation. But sometimes they have failed utterly to do
so. However, one continuing sociological characteristic of
these rebellions of the oppressed has been their "spontane-
ous," short-term character. T h e y have c o m e a n d they have
gone, having such effect as they did. W h e n t h e next such
rebellion came, it n o r m a l l y h a d little explicit relationship
with t h e previous one. Indeed, this has b e e n one of t h e great
strengths of t h e w o r l d ' s ruling strata t h r o u g h o u t history —
the noncontinuity of rebellion.
29
In t h e early history of t h e capitalist world-economy, the

situation remained m o r e or less the same as it h a d always
been in this regard. Rebellions were many, scattered,
discrete, momentary, a n d only partially efficacious at best.
O n e of the contradictions, however, of capitalism as a
system is that the very integrating tendencies that have been
one of its defining characteristics have h a d an impact on the
form of antisystemic activity.
Somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century —
1848 is as good a symbolic date as any — there c a m e to be a
sociological innovation of profound significance for the
politics of the capitalist world-economy. G r o u p s of persons
involved in antisystemic activity began to create a new insti-
tution": the continuing "organization with members, officers,
and specific political objectives (both long-run a n d short-
term).
Such organized antisystemic movements had never
existed before: O n e might argue that various religious sects
h a d performed analogous roles with an analogous organ-
ization, but the long-run objectives of the religious sects
were by definition otherworldly. T h e antisystemic organ-
izations that c a m e into existence in the nineteenth century
were preeminently" political, not religious — that is, they
focused on the structures of "this world.''
Social Movements and National Movements
In the course of the nineteenth century, two principal

varieties of antisystemic movements emerged — what c a m e
to be called respectively the "social movement" a n d the
"national movement." T h e m a j o r difference" Between t h e m
lay in their definition of the problem. T h e social movement
defined the oppression as that of employers over wage
earners, the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. T h e ideals of.
the French Reyolution — liberty, equiality, and fraternity —
30
Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements
could be realized, they felt, by replacing capitalism with

socialism. T h e national movement, on the o t h e r h a n d ,
defined t h e oppression as that of one ethno-national g r o u p
over another. T h e ideals could be realized by giving the
oppressed g r o u p equal juridical status with t h e oppressing
g r o u p by the creation of parallel (and usually separate)
structures.
T h e r e has been a long discussion, within t h e m o v e m e n t s
a n d a m o n g scholars, a b o u t t h e differences between these
two kinds of m o v e m e n t . No d o u b t they have differed both
in their definitions of the p r o b l e m a n d in the social bases of
their support. In m a n y places a n d at m a n y times, the two
varieties of m o v e m e n t felt they were in direct competition
with each other for t h e loyalty of populations. Less
frequently in the nineteenth century, b u t sometimes, t h e
two varieties of m o v e m e n t f o u n d e n o u g h tactical con-
gruence to work together politically.
T h e traditional emphasis on the differences of the two
varieties of movement has distracted o u r attention from
some f u n d a m e n t a l similarities. Both kinds of m o v e m e n t ,
after considerable internal debate, created formal organ-
izations. As such, these organizations h a d to evolve a basic
strategy to transform their i m m e d i a t e world in the direction
in which they wished it to go. In both cases, the analysis was
identical. T h e key political structure of the m o d e r n world
they each saw to be the state. If these m o v e m e n t s were to
change anything, they h a d to control a state a p p a r a t u s ,
which pragmatically m e a n t "their" state a p p a r a t u s . Conse-
quently, the p r i m a r y objective had to be obtaining state
power.
For the social m o v e m e n t , this m e a n t that, despite t h e
internationalism of their ideology — "workers of t h e world,
unite!" — the organizations they created h a d to be national
in structure. A n d the objective of these organizations had to
be the coming to power of t h e m o v e m e n t in that state.
Similarly, for the national m o v e m e n t , the objective c a m e to
31
be state p o w e r in a particular state. To be sure, the juris-

diction of this state was by definition what the national
m o v e m e n t was a b o u t . S o m e t i m e s such a m o v e m e n t sought
the creation of an entirely new state, either by secession or
by merger, b u t in o t h e r cases this "new state" might have
already existed in the form of a colonial or a regional
administrative entity.
T h e fact that the two varieties of m o v e m e n t defined the
same strategic objective accounts for their sense of rivalry
with e a c h ' o t f t e r , particularly w h e n a workers' m o v e m e n t
sought to obtain p o w e r in an entity out of which a given
national m o v e m e n t was seeking to detach a zone in order to
create a new state.
T h e parallel objectives — obtaining state p o w e r — led to
a parallel internal debate on t h e m o d e of obtaining state
power, which might be defined in polar t e r m s as t h e legal
p a t h of political persuasion versus t h e illegal p a t h of insur-
rectionary force. T h i s has often b e e n called, reform .versus i
revolution, but these two terms have bec0m&~50"0verlaid 1
with polemic a n d confusion that today they o b s c u r e m o r e
t h a n they aid analysis.
It should be noted that in the case of the social move-
m e n t , this internal d e b a t e c u l m i n a t e d d u r i n g the period
between t h e First a n d Second W o r l d W a r s in the existence
of two rival a n d fiercely competitive Internationals, the
Second a n d the T h i r d , also k n o w n as t h e conflict between
Social D e m o c r a t s a n d C o m m u n i s t s . T h o u g h b o t h t h e
Second a n d T h i r d Internationals asserted that they h a d the
s a m e objective of socialism, that they were movements
based in the working class a n d on the left, a n d even (at least
for a while) that they a s s u m e d the s a m e Marxist heritage,
they rapidly b e c a m e vehemently o p p o s e d o n e to the other,
to the extent that their s u b s e q u e n t occasional political
convergences (the " p o p u l a r fronts") have s e e m e d at best
tactical a n d m o m e n t a r y . In s o m e sense, this has r e m a i n e d
t r u e right up to the present.
32
Dilemmas of A ntisystemic Movements
If one looks at the geography of the movements, one

quickly notices a historical correlation. Social-democratic
movements have b e c o m e politically strong a n d have "come
to power" (by electoral means, to be sure, a n d then in alter-
nation with more conservative parties) almost only in the
core states of the world-economy, b u t in virtually all of
them. C o m m u n i s t parties, by contrast, have become poli-
tically strong primarily in a certain range of semiperipheral
a n d peripheral zones, a n d have come to power (sometimes
by insurrection, b u t sometimes as a result of military occu-
pation by the USSR) only in these zones. T h e only Western
countries in which C o m m u n i s t parties have been relatively
strong for a long period of t i m e are France, Italy, a n d Spain,
a n d it should be noted that Italy a n d Spain might well be
considered semiperipheral. In any case, the parties in these
three states have long since shed any insurrectionary inclin-
ations.
We are therefore in the 1980s faced with the following
political history of the m o d e r n world. Social-democratic
parties have in fact achieved their primary political objec-
tive, coming to power in a relatively large n u m b e r of core
states. C o m m u n i s t parties have in fact come to power in a
significant n u m b e r of semiperipheral a n d peripheral coun-
tries — concentrated geographically in a b a n d that runs
from Eastern E u r o p e to East a n d Southeast Asia. And in
the rest of the world, in m a n y of the countries, nationalist —
sometimes even "radical nationalist" or "national liber-
ation" — movements have come to power. In short, seen
from the vantage point of 1848, the success of the anti-
systemic movements has been very impressive indeed.
The Unfulfilled Revolution
H o w are we to appreciate t h e consequences? In gross terms,

we can see two consequences that have moved in very
33
different directions. O n the o n e h a n d , these movements,

taken collectively as a sort of "family" of movements, have
b e c o m e an increasingly consequential element in the politics
of the world-system a n d have built u p o n their achievements.
Later movements have profited from the successes of earlier
movements by moral encouragement, example, lessons in
political tactics, a n d direct assistance. M a n y concessions
have been wrested from the world's ruling strata.
On the other h a n d , the c o m i n g to state power of all these
m o v e m e n t s has resulted in a very widespread sense of
unfulfilled revolution. T h e questions have r u n like this.
Have social-democratic parties achieved anything m o r e
than some redistribution to what are in fact "middle" strata
located in core countries? H a v e C o m m u n i s t parties
achieved anything m o r e t h a n some economic development
for their countries? A n d even then, how m u c h ? A n d
furthermore, has this not been primarily to benefit the so-
called new class of a bureaucratic elite? H a v e nationalist
m o v e m e n t s achieved anything m o r e t h a n allowing the so-
called c o m p r a d o r class a slightly larger slice of the world
pie?
T h e s e are p e r h a p s not the questions that o u g h t to be
asked, or t h e m a n n e r in which t h e issues s h o u l d be posed.
But in fact these are t h e questions that have been asked,
a n d very widely. T h e r e is little d o u b t that t h e resulting
skepticism has m a d e deep inroads in the ranks of potential
a n d even active supporters of the world's antisystemic
movements. As this skepticism began to take hold, there
were a n u m b e r of ways in which it began to express itself in
ideological a n d organizational terms.
T h e period after the Second W o r l d W a r was a period of
great success for the historic antisystemic movements.
Social democracy b e c a m e firmly ensconced in the West. It
is less that the social-democratic parties c a m e to be seen as
one of the alternating groups which could legitimately
govern t h a n that the m a i n p r o g r a m of the social democrats,
34
the welfare state, c a m e to be accepted by even the con-

servative parties, if no d o u b t begrudgingly. After all, even
R i c h a r d Nixon said: " W e are all Keynesians now."
C o m m u n i s t parties, of course, c a m e to power in a whole
series of states. A n d the post-1945 period saw one long
process of decolonization, p u n c t u a t e d by s o m e dramatic,
politically important a r m e d struggles, such as Vietnam,
Algeria, a n d Nicaragua.
Nonetheless, by the 1960s, a n d even m o r e by the 1970s,
there began to occur a "break with t h e past" with the rise of
a new kind of antisystemic m o v e m e n t (or m o v e m e n t s
within the movements) in world-regional locales as diverse
a s N o r t h America, J a p a n , Europe, C h i n a , a n d Mexico. T h e
student, Black, a n d antiwar m o v e m e n t s in the U n i t e d
States; the student m o v e m e n t s in J a p a n a n d Mexico; the
labor a n d student m o v e m e n t s in Europe; the Cultural
Revolution in C h i n a ; a n d as of the 1970s the w o m e n ' s
movements; did not have identical roots or even c o m m o n
effects. Each one was located in political a n d economic
processes shaped by the particular a n d different histories,
a n d by the different positions in the world-system of the
locales in which they arose a n d worked themselves out. Yet,
by world-historical standards, they occurred in the s a m e
period and, moreover, they shared s o m e c o m m o n ideo-
logical t h e m e s that clearly set t h e m apart from earlier
varieties of antisystemic movements.
T h e i r almost simultaneous occurrence can largely be
traced to the fact that the movements of t h e late 1960s were
precipitated by a c o m m o n catalyst: the escalation of the
anti-imperialist war in Vietnam. T h i s escalation posed an
immediate threat to the established patterns of life, a n d to
the very lives not only of the Vietnamese but of A m e r i c a n
youth as well, a n d the war posed a clear threat to the
security of the Chinese people. As for E u r o p e a n youth a n d
workers, while no i m m e d i a t e threat was posed to their lives
a n d security, the indirect effects of the escalation (world
35
m o n e t a r y crisis, intensification of market competition, a n d

so on) a n d the ideological spill-overs f r o m the movements in
the U n i t e d States, from the Cultural Revolution in China,
a n d from the struggle of the Vietnamese people soon
provided e n o u g h reasons a n d rationalizations for rebellion.
T a k e n together, all these m o v e m e n t s a n d their Viet-
n a m e s e epicenter were i m p o r t a n t in disclosing a basic
asymmetry in t h e power of systemic a n d antisystemic forces
on a world scale. T h e asymmetry was most dramatically
exemplified on the battlefields themselves. Following the
precedent of the Chinese war of national liberation, the
Vietnamese showed h o w a national-liberation movement
could, by shifting the confrontation with conventional
armies onto nonconventional terrains (as in guerrilla
warfare), erode a n d eventually disintegrate the social,
political, a n d military position of c u m b e r s o m e imperial
forces. F r o m this point of view, the other m o v e m e n t s (par-
ticularly the US antiwar m o v e m e n t ) were part a n d parcel of
this asymmetrical relation: to different degrees a n d in dif-
ferent ways, they showed how the shift of the confrontation
between systemic a n d antisystemic forces onto non-
conventional terrain was strengthening t h e latter a n d
h a m p e r i n g / p a r a l y z i n g the former.
T h e o u t c o m e a n d implications of t h e c o m b i n e d a n d
uneven development of the antisystemic m o v e m e n t s of the
1960s a n d 1970s must be assessed at different levels.
Locally, the Vietnam war h a d a very "conventional"
outcome: the coming to state power of a "classical" anti-
systemic m o v e m e n t , a n d the s u b s e q u e n t strengthening of
t h e b u r e a u c r a t i c structure of this state. Assessed f r o m this
angle, at the national level the o u t c o m e of t h e Vietnamese
national-liberation m o v e m e n t did not differ significantly
from t h e earlier kinds of antisystemic m o v e m e n t s (national
a n d social). Globally, however, the V i e t n a m war was a turn-
ing point in disclosing the limits of military actions in
coercing the periphery into a hierarchical world order.
36
T h e s e limits a n d their recognition were t h e o u t c o m e not

only of the confrontation on the battlefields b u t also, a n d
possibly to a greater degree, of the m o v e m e n t s unleashed
elsewhere in the world-system. It was the n a t u r e of these
other movements that most clearly m a r k e d a d e p a r t u r e
from, a n d a counterposition to, earlier patterns of anti-
systemic movements. To varying degrees, the Cultural Revo-
lution in China, the student m o v e m e n t s in t h e West, J a p a n ,
a n d Mexico, a n d the "autonomist" workers' m o v e m e n t s in
E u r o p e took as o n e of t h e i r t h e m e s t h e limits a n d dangers of
t h e establishment a n d consolidation of bureaucratic struc-
tures by the m o v e m e n t s themselves, a n d this was new.
T h e Cultural Revolution was largely directed against the
bureaucratic power of t h e C o m m u n i s t Party and, whatever
its failures from other points of view, its m a i n achievement
has been precisely to have prevented, or at least slowed
d o w n , the consolidation of party b u r e a u c r a t i c power in
C h i n a . T h e student a n d y o u t h m o v e m e n t s t h a t c r o p p e d u p
in t h e m o s t diverse contexts w e r e generally directed not
only against t h e various bureaucratic powers t h a t tried to
c u r b a n d repress t h e m (states, universities, parties) b u t also
against all attempts to channel t h e m toward the formation
of new, a n d the strengthening of old, b u r e a u c r a t i c organ-
izations. A l t h o u g h the new workers' m o v e m e n t s generally
e n d e d up by strengthening bureaucratic organizations
(mostly unions), nonetheless the protagonists of these "new"
m o v e m e n t s showed an u n p r e c e d e n t e d awareness of the fact
that b u r e a u c r a t i c organizations such as u n i o n s were b o u n d
to develop interests of their own that might differ in
i m p o r t a n t respects f r o m t h o s e of t h e workers they claimed
to represent. W h a t this m e a n t , concretely, was that the
instrumental attitude of unions a n d parties vis-a-vis the
m o v e m e n t was m a t c h e d a n d countered to an unpre-
cedented extent by an instrumental attitude on the part of
the m o v e m e n t vis-a-vis unions a n d parties.
T h e anti-bureaucratic thrust of the m o v e m e n t s of t h e
37
1960s a n d early 1970s can be traced to three main ten-

dencies: the t r e m e n d o u s widening a n d deepening of the
power of bureaucratic organizations as a result of the pre-
vious wave of antisystemic movements; the decreasing
capabilities of such organizations to fulfill the expectations
on which their e m e r g e n c e a n d expansion h a d been based;
a n d the increasing efficacy of direct forms of action, that is,
forms u n m e d i a t e d by bureaucratic organizations. On the
first t w o tendencies, nothing needs to be a d d e d to w h a t h a s
already b e e n said concerning the successes a n d limits of t h e
earlier movements, except to point o u t t h a t t h e reactivation
of market competition u n d e r US h e g e m o n y since the
Second W o r l d W a r h a d further tightened the world-
e c o n o m y constraints within which states acted.
As for the increasing efficacy of direct forms of action, the
tendency concerns mainly the labor m o v e m e n t a n d was
rooted in the joint impact of two key trends of the world-
economy: the trend toward an increasing commodification
of labor power a n d the t r e n d t o w a r d increasing division of
labor a n d mechanization. In the previous stage, labor
movements c a m e to rely on p e r m a n e n t b u r e a u c r a t i c organ-
izations aiming at the seizure or control of state power for
two m a i n reasons. First, these labor m o v e m e n t s were
largely at the beginning the expression of artisans a n d craft
workers w h o h a d been or were a b o u t to be proletarianized
b u t whose bargaining p o w e r vis-a-vis employers still
d e p e n d e d on their craft skills. As a consequence, these
workers h a d an overwhelming interest in restricting the
supply of, a n d e x p a n d i n g the d e m a n d for, their skills. This,
in t u r n , required trade-union organizations oriented to t h e
preservation of craft-work roles in t h e labor process on t h e
o n e h a n d , a n d to control over the acquisition of craft skills
on the other. Like all organizations that a t t e m p t to repro-
d u c e "artificially" (that is, in opposition to historical ten-
dencies) a scarcity that affords monopolistic quasi-rents,
these craft or craft-oriented unions ultimately d e p e n d e d for
38
their success on the ability to use state power to restrain

employers from profiting from the operations of the market.
T h e artificial (that is, n o n m a r k e t ) restraints were twofold:
state rules a b o u t workers' pay a n d conditions; state legiti-
m a t i o n of unionization a n d collective bargaining.
T h e second a n d m o r e i m p o r t a n t reason for the previous
reliance of labor m o v e m e n t s on p e r m a n e n t bureaucratic
organizations aiming at state power was related to t h e
question of alliances a n d h e g e m o n y . In most national
locales, the struggle between labor a n d capital took place in
a context characterized by the existence of wide strata of
peasants a n d m i d d l e classes which c o u l d be mobilized
politically to support anti-labor state policies, a n d eco-
nomically to e n h a n c e competition within the ranks of labor.
U n d e r these circumstances labor could obtain long-term
victories only by neutralizing or winning over to its side
significant fractions of these strata. A n d this could not be
achieved t h r o u g h s p o n t a n e o u s a n d direct action, which
o f t e n h a d the effect of alienating the strata in question.
R a t h e r , it required a political platform that would appeal to
peasants a n d the middle strata, a n d an organization that
w o u l d elaborate a n d p r o p a g a n d i z e that platform.
By the 1960s radical changes h a d occurred from b o t h
points of view, in core regions a n d in m a n y semiperipheral
countries. T h e great advances in the technical division of
labor a n d in mechanization of the interwar a n d postwar
years h a d destroyed or peripheralized in the labor process
the craft skills on which labor's organized power h a d pre-
viously rested. At the same time, these very advances had
e n d o w e d labor with a new power: the power to inflict large
losses on capital by disrupting a highly integrated a n d
mechanized labor process. In exercising this power, labor
was far less d e p e n d e n t on an organization external to the
workplace (as t r a d e u n i o n s generally were), since w h a t really
m a t t e r e d was the capacity to exploit the interdependencies
a n d networks created by capital itself in the workplace.
39
Moreover, the increased commodification of l a b o r h a d

d e p l e t e d the locally available strata of peasants t h a t could
be effectively a n d competitively mobilized to u n d e r m i n e the
political a n d economic power of labor. As for the m i d d l e
strata, the u n p r e c e d e n t e d spread a n d radicalism of t h e
student m o v e m e n t s were s y m p t o m s of the d e e p e n i n g
c o m m o d i f i c a t i o n of the labor power of these strata, a n d of
the greater difficulties of mobilizing t h e m against t h e labor
m o v e m e n t . (This process was reflected in an extensive liter-
a t u r e of the 1960s on the "new working class.") It follows
that the p r o b l e m of alliances a n d h e g e m o n y was less central
t h a n in the past a n d that, as a consequence, labor's depen-
dence on p e r m a n e n t bureaucratic organizations for t h e
success of its struggles was f u r t h e r r e d u c e d .
As we have seen, for m a n y persons the conclusion to be
d r a w n f r o m this analysis is that the antisystemic m o v e m e n t s
have "failed" or, even worse, were "co-opted." T h e c h a n g e
from "capitalist state" to "socialist state," for m a n y w h o
think in these terms, has not h a d the t r a n s f o r m i n g effects on
world history — the reconstituting of trajectories of growth
— that they h a d believed it would have. A n d the change
f r o m colony to state, w h e t h e r by revolution or by nego-~
tiation, has lacked not only the world-historical effects but
also, in most instances, even the internal redistribution of
well-being so p r o m i n e n t in the p r o g r a m s of these move-
m e n t s . Social democracy has succeeded no better. Every-
w h e r e it finds its o c c u p a n c y of state p o w e r merely a
m e d i a t i n g presence — o n e constrained by t h e processes of
a c c u m u l a t i o n on a world scale a n d by the twin require-
m e n t s of governments: b u r y i n g the d e a d a n d caring for t h e
w o u n d e d , w h e t h e r people or property. To t h e chagrin of
some, the applause of others, the o n e coordinated effort
t o w a r d a world revolution, the C o m i n t e r n / C o m i n f o r m ,
collapsed completely u n d e r the disintegrating weight of
continuing state f o r m a t i o n at all the locations of its oper-
ations — its historical center, its loci of s u b s e q u e n t success,
40
its other national arenas of strength, its points of marginal

presence. Without exception, all current C o m m u n i s t
parties are concerned first with domestic conditions and
only secondarily if at all with world revolution.
The Transformed Historical Ground
We, on the other h a n d , contend, as we said, that from t h e

vantage point of 1848 the success of the antisystemic move-
ments has been very impressive indeed. Moreover, that
success does not dim in the least when viewed from the
vantage point of today. Rather the opposite. For without
such an appreciation, one cannot understand where the
nonconventional terrain opened up by the most recent
forms of antisystemic movement has c o m e from historically
and where therefore the movements seem likely to go in the
historical future.
At the same time, however, the antisystemic movements
are of course not the only agencies to have altered the
ground on which a n d through which current and future
movements must continually form and operate. Those they
would destroy — the organizing agencies of the accumu-
lationjorocess — have also been at work, owing partly to an
"inner logic," partly to t h e very successes of the movements
and hence to the continually transformed historical ground
which that "logic" has as its field of operation and contra-
diction. Above all, the ongoing structural transformation of
the capitalist world-economy has in effect opened up the
locations in its overall operation where the process of class
struggle is proving formative of the sides of conflict, and
polarizing in the relations so formed.
In the course of the twentieth century, indeed defining it,
a massive sea-change has been occurring in the social
relations of accumulation. In a sentence, the relational
networks forming the trunk lines of the circuits of capital
41
42
have been so structurally t r a n s f o r m e d that the very work-
ings of the a c c u m u l a t i o n process a p p e a r to be historically
altered. It is this ongoing transformation that has continu-
ally r e m a d e the relational conditions both of the organizing
agencies of accumulation (by definition) a n d of those in
f u n d a m e n t a l struggle with them, the antisystemic move-
ments; and so have continually r e m a d e as well the
relational character of the struggle itself a n d hence the
n a t u r e of the m o v e m e n t s defined by it. To retrace the steps:
the life cycles of the various movements have been a part of
a n d have helped to f o r m the structural shift; h e n c e the
relational struggles defining the m o v e m e n t s as antisystemic;
hence the movements themselves a n d the trajectories that
m a k e t h e m antisystemic. We depict the ongoing trans-
formation here by outlining three of its faces in the form of
structural trends.
In o n e guise the transformation appears as simulta-
neously an increasing "stateness" of the world's peoples (the
n u m b e r of "sovereign states" having m o r e t h a n tripled
d u r i n g the twentieth century) a n d an increasingly dense
organization of the interstate system. T o d a y virtually the
whole of the globe's nearly five billion people are politically
partitioned into the subject populations of the h u n d r e d -
and-sixty or so states of an interstate system, which contains
a large n u m b e r of formal interstate organizations. T h i s
might be called the widening of stateness. T h e deepening of
stateness is another matter. H e r e essentially we have in
m i n d the growing "strength" of state agencies vis-a-vis local
bodies (within or intersecting with the state's jurisdiction).
M e a s u r e s of this are of m a n y sorts, f r o m the voluminous
expansion of laws a n d of agencies to enforce them, t h r o u g h
central-government taxes as growing proportions of
m e a s u r e d domestic or national product, to the structural
expansion of kinds of state agency, the geographical spread
of their locations of operation, and the growing proportion
of the labor force formed by their employees. Moreover, like"
international airports a r o u n d the world, and for analogous

if deeper reasons, the organizational form of stateness (the
complex array of hierarchies forming the a p p a r a t u s of
administration) has everywhere virtually the s a m e anatomy,
the differences f r o m place to place being of the order of vari-
ations on a theme. T h e y are variations that no d o u b t m a t t e r
a great deal to the subjects of state power, but, world-
historically, they are nonetheless only variations a n d not
qualitative d e p a r t u r e s in form.
O n e final point should p e r h a p s be noted here. M u c h has
been m a d e of the extent to which, following the accessions
to power of social a n d / o r national antisystemic movements,
a m a r k e d increase in the structural "centralization" of the
state has occurred, that is, a m a r k e d increase in what we're
calling here the deepening of stateness. And, examining the
trends in state formation within the jurisdictions severally,
one at a time, one does see that. However, watching the
overall trend in state formation in the m o d e r n world as a
singular historical system over the course of the twentieth
century, one would be h a r d put to attribute the overall
trend to any such "internal" processes or, for that matter,
even to the interrelated successes of the particular social a n d
national m o v e m e n t s construed collectively as but particular
e m a n a t i o n s of a singular complex historical process of the
m o d e r n world-system. For even in locations where, seen in
t h a t way, t h e world-historical process has been manifestly
weakest (the movements least apparently successful), the
structural trend in state formation is no less a p p a r e n t t h a n
elsewhere.
Of even m o r e importance here, in some ways, is the still
far greater growth in the density of the interstate system.
J u s t using the simplest of assumptions, a n d reasoning
purely formally from the fourfold increase in the n u m b e r of
states, there is a sixteenfold increase in their relations with
one another. But that of course barely scratches the surface.
T h e kinds of specialized relations a m o n g the states of the
43
interstate system have e x p a n d e d nearly as m u c h as the

kinds of internal state agency. A d d e d to this there are over a
dozen specialized U n i t e d Nations agencies (in each of
which most states are related as m e m b e r s ) a n d a very large
n u m b e r of regional international organizations (such as
O E C D , O P E C , ASEAN, C O M E C O N , N A T O , O A U , a n d
so on). If one goes b e y o n d the existence of the voluminous
set of interstate relations to the frequency with which
they're activated, via meetings, postal mail, cable, tele-
phone, a n d now, increasingly, electronic mail, the density
of the interstate system's relational network today is
probably several times greater t h a n the c o m p a r a b l e density
of the official intrastate relational network of the most
advanced a n d centrally a d m i n i s t e r e d country of a century
ago (say, France).
O n e result is an e n m e s h i n g within each state's operations
of the "internal" a n d "external" relational webs a n d
processes to s u c h an extent t h a t t h e distinction itself, except
p e r h a p s for b o r d e r crossings of people a n d goods, begins to
lose substantive force (in contradiction to its nominal force,
which is increased with every treaty signed, every package
assessed for duty by customs, every postage s t a m p issued).
Hence, to a degree a n d extent never envisioned by the
successful social a n d national m o v e m e n t s w h e n they
eventually gained state power, b o t h what agencies of a state
administer internally, a n d how they do this, is increasingly
d e t e r m i n e d , to use a W e b e r pairing, not a u t o n o m o u s l y (as
befits sovereignty) b u t heteronomously (as befits what?).
A second result, a n d one of no less i m p o r t a n c e to o u r
subject — the current a n d future terrain on, through, a n d
against which present a n d future antisystemic m o v e m e n t s
are a n d will be operating — is the degree to which virtually
all interrelations a m o n g peoples in different state juris-
dictions have b e c o m e dimensions of their respective states'
relations with one another. T h i s is not just a m a t t e r of
travelers o b t a i n i n g passports a n d visas a n d passing t h r o u g h
44
emigration a n d immigration authorities, or of packages

having to be sent with export a n d import permits a n d be
duly processed, a n d so forth. T h e s e interstate procedures,
which daily r e - a n n o u n c e the borders of the respective juris-
dictions of each constituent state, are b u t mediations of the
m o v e m e n t of people, goods, a n d capital, a n d have been
practiced for a r a t h e r long time.
T h e "openness" or "closure" of a state's borders to such
movements, however — we note parenthetically in passing
— has always been less a m a t t e r of that state's policies
"toward the world" than of its location in the hierarchical
ordering inherent in the capitalist world-economy's inter-
state system. T h i s location is d e t e r m i n e d not merely by
academicians b u t by d e m o n s t r a t e d or credible relational
strengths, practical conditions effected by ruling classes.
R a t h e r it is a m a t t e r of the interstate system's appropriating
all m a n n e r of direct a n d circuitous relations a m o n g people
of different countries (state jurisdictions) — w h e t h e r
religious, scientific, commercial, artistic, financial, lin-
guistic, civilizational, educational, literary, productive,
problem-focused, historical, philosophical, ad infinitum —
such that they all become, at the very least, m e d i a t e d , m o r e
often actually organized, by the c o u n t e r p a r t agencies of
different states t h r o u g h their established or newly f o r m e d
relations with one a n o t h e r . T h e effect is to s u b o r d i n a t e the
interrelations a m o n g the world's peoples not to raisons
d'etat, a practice with which all of us are all too familiar, b u t
to raisons du systeme d'etats, a practice with which most of us
are all too unfamiliar.
T h e r e is, we should briefly note, a set of consequential
historical contradictions being f o r m e d t h r o u g h this recre-
ation of all varieties of social relations into networks within
either inter- or intrastate frameworks. M a n y kinds of
c o m m u n i t y — in the sense of c o m m u n i t i e s of believers/
practitioners — form in a way "worlds" of their own in
relation to, in distinction from, a n d often in conflict with all
45
others; that is, those who are not of their c o m m u n i t y , who

a r e nonbelievers or nonpractitioners, hence n o n m e m b e r s .
T h e s e are often large, encompassing worlds: the Islamic
world; the scientific world; the African world (or, in the
United States today, the Black world); the w o m e n ' s world;
the workers" or proletarian world; a n d so forth. It is far from
evident that such communities of consciousness can even
persist, much less grow, within the structurally developing
inter- a n d intrastate framework. T h e kind of contradiction
noted here marks to an even greater extent the popular
peace and environmental movements, but that is because
they a r e perforce, in today's world, state-oriented; whereas
the communities of consciousness we have in mind elab-
orate themselves independently of stateness (hence,
however, in contradiction to it a n d to interstateness, rather
than through them).
Division of Labor, Centralization of Capital
We have dwelt at length on but one face of the ongoing

structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy;
that seen through a focus on the plane of the interstate
system and its constituent units, the states, and their
relations with one another. We have done so for two
reasons. O n e is the seemingly e n d u r i n g disposition, on the
part of historical social scientists, to carry forward — all
evidence to the contrary notwithstanding — the liberal
ideological distinction between "state" and "economy," or
"state" a n d "market" in some versions, as if these were
f u n d a m e n t a l theoretical categories. T h e other is the equally
prevalent, although apparently less impermeable, dispo-
sition to imagine — again, all evidence, to the contrary
notwithstanding — that the capitalist world-economy has
evolved rather as an onion grows, from a core of small a n d
local beginnings through successively larger rings until the
46
outer peripheral skin is formed, all by virtue of, in this view,

the self-expansion of capital t h r o u g h its increasing sub-
ordination of labor.
We turn now to m u c h briefer observations on two m o r e
faces of this transformation. A second face is in the organ-
ization of the structuring of another p l a n e of the capitalist
world-economy's operation, the axial division of labor. T h i s
is t h e complex of interrelated p r o d u c t i o n / t r a n s p o r t a t i o n
processes that is so ordered that the surplus-value created in
the course of production a n d transportation is, historically,
disproportionately appropriated at t h e organizing centers of
the multiple a n d more-or-less lengthy chains or networks of
d e p e n d e n t production processes. T h e relational patterns
this ordering entails are thereby r e p r o d u c e d a n d , for
additional reasons, their reproduction h a s cyclically deep-
ened the differences in productive capacity between the
organizing center or core portions of the axial division of
l a b o r a n d its increasingly peripheralized portions. In t h e
twentieth century, the u n d e r l y i n g transformation has
effected s o m e truly massive alterations in t h e constituent
relations of the complex core—periphery axis a n d hence in
t h e m a p p i n g of their respective global zones, the results of
which — generally rendered as if the result of state policies
— a r e broadly known. Of m o r e i m m e d i a t e interest is the
extraordinary growth in recent decades of a long-standing
agency of t h e organizing center or core of the socialization
of production (hence of labor) on a world scale; namely,
what is currently called the multinational or transnational
firm. In a sentence, m a n y relations a m o n g materially
d e p e n d e n t production processes that h a d been exchange
relations — or, if newly formed, could have been u n d e r
o t h e r conditions (and so of, or potentially of, market-
organized networks of c o m m o d i t y flows) — b e c a m e trans-
formed into (or, if new, formed as) intrafirm relations. T h e
elemental a r r a n g e m e n t — centralizations of capital, in the
form of firms, entrepreneurially organizing geographically
47
extensive a n d technically c o m p l e x (for t h e time) c h a i n s of

related production operations — is hardly new. It was, after
all, w h a t distinguished the chartered m e r c h a n t (sic!)
c o m p a n i e s of the seventeenth a n d eighteenth centuries f r o m
o t h e r capitalized operations. But in recent d e c a d e s this "ele-
m e n t a l a r r a n g e m e n t " of the capitalist w o r l d - e c o n o m y h a s
been increasingly constituted on a scale, a n d in a form of
both organization a n d production, that is historically orig-
inal. T h e transnational corporations' reconstruction of the
world-scale division a n d integration of labor processes
f u n d a m e n t a l l y alters the historical possibilities of w h a t are
still referred to, a n d not yet even nostalgically, as "national
economies."
A third face of the ongoing structural transformation we
are sketchily addressing here shows itself, so to speak, in the
massive centralization of capital of the postwar decades.
Slowly, haltingly, b u t m o r e a n d m o r e definitely, the central
agency of capitalist a c c u m u l a t i o n on a world scale, a world
ruling class in formation, is organizing a relational structure
for continually resolving the massive contradictions,
increasingly a p p a r e n t between the transnational corpor-
ations' control over, a n d hence responsibility for, t h e inter-
relations among productive processes a n d the multiple
states' control over, a n d hence responsibility for, the labor
forces these production processes engage, m o r e or less
sporadically.
T h i s structure being organized is basically a sort of
replacement, at a "higher level" of course, for the late-
l a m e n t e d colonial empires, w h o s e d e m i s e the national
m o v e m e n t s sought a n d t h e new h e g e m o n i c power, the
U n i t e d States, required. T h r o u g h those a r r a n g e m e n t s , a n d
such cousins of t h e m as t h e C h i n e s e concessions a n d the
O t t o m a n capitulations, the axial division of labor h a d been
furthered a n d , subject to the very system's structural cycles,
assured. T h e twentieth century's thirty-years' war (1914—
45), insofar as it was a b o u t those a r r a n g e m e n t s , resolved the
48
question of h e g e m o n i c p o w e r (a U n i t e d States versus

G e r m a n y fight, it was then understood) b u t left for invention
the m e a n s of its exercise and, with that, the perpetuation of
both the axial division of labor a n d t h e necessary multiple
sovereignties, t h r o u g h which the interstate system a n d
hence the relations of h e g e m o n y operated.
T h e invention was a long time in c o m i n g a n d seems to
have emerged fully only, as we said earlier, after the narrow-
ness of the limits of great-power military force h a d finally
been established by the V i e t n a m e s e for all to see. Crudely
put, what seems to have been going on, by way of a struc-
tural replacement of the colonial empires, has been the
s i m u l t a n e o u s growth in massive centralizations of capital
and a sort of deconcentration of capital (called deindustrial-
ization in present core areas of the axial division of labor).
T h e massive centralization has as its agencies quite small ad
hoc steering committees of consortia, each c o m p o s e d of
several h u n d r e d b a n k s working in close relations both with
central b a n k s a n d with international agencies, notably the
I B R D , a n d IMF, a n d the BIS. T h e centralization here is at
the m o n e y point in the circuit of capital, a n d t h e borrowers
are not directly capitalist e n t r e p r e n e u r s b u t are instead
states, which in turn use the more-or-less e n c u m b e r e d
credits to work with transnationals, operating with undis-
tributed surpluses in various "development" projects,
which, as they are realized materially, a m o u n t to w h a t is
called by some " T h i r d W o r l d industrialization" a n d result
in precisely the "deindustrialization" of previously core
areas.
T h i s face of the transformation does suggest reconsider-
ing the theoretically p r e s u m e d concatenation of central-
ization a n d concentration of capital. But even m o r e it
suggests reconceptualizing the fundamental n a t u r e of t h e
a c c u m u l a t i o n process as it is f r a m e d t h r o u g h t h e idea of t h e
circuits of capital. F o r w h e n the i n d e b t e d states r u n into
trouble, one of the agencies of this a r r a n g e m e n t , t h e I M F ,
49
steps forward with austerity plans, the gist a n d substance of

which a m o u n t to lowering the costs, now internationally
reckoned, of the daily a n d generational reproduction of the
labor forces of (within?) each of the countries.
T h e a r r a n g e m e n t is not per se historically new — one
thinks of the O t t o m a n capitulations, for example — b u t it is
far m o r e massive and, as a structural array of processes of
the world-system, far m o r e frequent in occurrence a n d tell-
ing in its implications for the structuring of the a c c u m u -
lation process as such.
Together these three facets of the o n g o i n g structural
transformation of the m o d e r n world-system, all of which
reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, the structural s u r r o u n d
of the state power seized or occupied by antisystemic move-
ments in the course of the twentieth century, a n d indicate
the degree a n d kind of reconstitution of terrain with which
present a n d future m o v e m e n t s of a like sort have to
contend. T h e y indicate as well — t h o u g h this is not here a
central concern of ours — the a n a c h r o n i s m of the contents
we give to the concepts with which we c o m m o n l y work.
T h e d i l e m m a s of the antisystemic m o v e m e n t s are thus in
some m e a s u r e the u n i n t e n d e d p r o d u c t of a sort of false
consciousness on the part, not of toadies nor even of hair-
splitters, b u t of the most engaged of the intelligentsia.
T h e r e remains a m a t t e r to e n d on here — to raise as a
sort of coda — for nothing before has directly prefigured it.
T h i s is the ongoing transformation of c o m m u n i c a t i o n s
networks. T h e Communist Manifesto observes: "And that
union, to attain which the burghers of the M i d d l e Ages,
with their miserable highways, required centuries, the
m o d e r n proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few
years." It is now nearly a century a n d a half since that was
written. T h a t sentence has lost n o n e of its force. But it m u s t
be understood contemporarily. In the U n i t e d States, in the
1960s, what effected the interrelation of the h u n d r e d - a n d -
fifty or so Black demonstrations a n d the even m o r e n u m e r -
50
Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements
ous public forms of the antiwar movement was television,

which is why the c o m m a n d i n g officer of the G r e n a d a oper-
ation (Grenada: less than half the size in territory a n d
people of an upstate New York county) correctly, from the
US government's point of view, decreed there w a s to be no
a c c o m p a n y i n g news coverage of the invasion. T h e kind of
concern flagged in the Manifesto, the material m e a n s of
unity a m o n g those geographically separate, remains
central. T h e m e a n s themselves, a n d the very form of their
materiality, have been f u n d a m e n t a l l y t r a n s f o r m e d . M o r e
a n d m o r e antisystemic movements will find their own cohe-
sion a n d coherence forged a n d destroyed by the newest of
the m e a n s of mediating social relations.
W h e r e then are we? We are massively, seriously in
urgent need of reconstructing the strategy, perhaps the
ideology, p e r h a p s the organizational structure of the family
of world antisystemic movements; if we are to cope effec-
tively with the real d i l e m m a s before which we are placed, as
the "stateness" of states a n d the "capitalist" n a t u r e of capi-
talism grow at an incredible pace. We know this creates
objective contradictions for the system as such a n d for the
m a n a g e r s of the status q u o . But it creates d i l e m m a s for the
antisystemic movements almost as grave. T h u s we cannot
count on the "automaticity" of progress; thus we cannot
a b a n d o n critical analysis of o u r real historical alternatives.
51
The Liberation of Class
Struggle?
Over the past few decades the relationship between national

liberation a n d class conflict — between national-liberation
struggles a n d proletarian-liberation struggles — has been
presented in three broadly differing ways. T h e national
struggle has been seen as a form, or even the form, of the
class struggle on a world scale. T h e national struggle has
been t h o u g h t of as analogous to the class struggle because a
revolutionary m o v e m e n t may organize the oppressed in
each case a n d , with victory, effect f u n d a m e n t a l changes in
the world-scale social structuring of the a c c u m u l a t i o n
process. T h e national struggle a n d the class struggle have
also been seen as related historically, a n d so theoretically,
b u t as different in kind because their historical trajectories
differ, the o n e toward r e p r o d u c i n g the capitalist world-
e c o n o m y by extending a n d d e e p e n i n g its interstate plane of
operations, the other toward eliminating the capitalist
world-economy by eliminating its defining b o u r g e o i s -
proletarian relation. T h e first we think of as the ideological
conception of the relation (between the national struggle
a n d the class struggle); the second, as the political con-
ception; the third, as the historical-theoretical conception.
53
We seek below to explicate these prefatory remarks in

three ways. First, we shall sketch the rise a n d subsidence or
quiescence of national liberation as a world-historical
organizing — or better, reorganizing — force. Second, we
shall seek to clarify the differences between, on the o n e
h a n d t h e "vertical" relation a n d class categories formed by
t h e class struggle, a n d on t h e other h a n d t h e "horizontal"
relations of competition a m o n g a n d b e t w e e n "political"
leaderships a n d "economic" leaderships that are often
c o n f o u n d e d with the "vertical" relations, both practically
and theoretically. T h i r d , we shall briefly outline the
developmental processes that m a k e t h e class struggle an
increasingly overt a n d ramifying force for the trans-
formation of the m o d e r n world-system, while at the s a m e
time operating in contradiction to its objectives by confining
excessively its expression to changes in t h e relational struc-
tures of the interstate system.
T h e struggle for national liberation as we have c o m e to
know it has a long history. National liberation from what?
Obviously, the answer is national liberation f r o m the
unequal relations a m o n g different zones of t h e m o d e r n
world-system. T h i s system has taken, as we know, t h e form
of a capitalist world-economy, which has e x p a n d e d in space
over time, incorporated zones previously external to it,
subordinated t h e m (economically, politically, a n d cul-
turally), a n d held t h e m tightly within an integrated whole.
O n e of the f u n d a m e n t a l ideological t h e m e s of all m o d e r n
nationalism has been the struggle for equality — both the
hypothetical equality of all m e m b e r s of the "nation" a n d the
d e m a n d for equality with "outside" oppressor states/
groups. (Of course, this was only o n e of t h e themes. T h e r e
has also been the theme of " u n i q u e n e s s " which, u n d e r
certain conditions, could be translated into a justification
for the oppression of others.)
Egalitarian d e m a n d s in t h e guise of nationalism are
already in evidence in the nineteenth, even the late
54
The Liberation of Class Struggle?
eighteenth, centuries. T h e struggle of W h i t e colonists for

i n d e p e n d e n c e in t h e Americas, the H a i t i a n revolution, the
Spanish resistance to N a p o l e o n , M e h e m e t Ali's effort to
" m o d e r n i z e " Egypt, the "Springtime of the Nations" in 1848,
Garibaldi a n d Kossuth, t h e founding o f t h e I n d i a n National
Congress w e r e all reflections of this global thrust.
But it is only in t h e twentieth century that we can see
national-liberation m o v e m e n t s as a m a j o r organizational
p h e n o m e n o n of the world-system. Even before the First
World W a r , the political "revolutions" in Mexico, the O t t o -
m a n E m p i r e , Persia, and C h i n a m a d e it clear that, no
sooner had the "expansion of E u r o p e " reached its a p o g e e
(the last two decades of the nineteenth century), than the
counterpressures immediately began to be significant.
T h e Russian Revolution of O c t o b e r 1917 was no d o u b t a
turning point in the political history of t h e m o d e r n world-
system. T h e Bolsheviks presented themselves as the pro-
tagonist of the working-class struggle for C o m m u n i s m , the
outgrowth o f t h e nineteenth-century "social m o v e m e n t " (at
that time largely a E u r o p e a n movement) of the proletariat
against t h e bourgeoisie. This was no d o u b t t h e case. But
from t h e outset, everyone r e m a r k e d on the fact that this
"first proletarian revolution" h a d t a k e n place not in t h e
m o s t "advanced" capitalist country or countries (where t h e
theory h a d predicted it would h a p p e n ) b u t in a relatively
" b a c k w a r d " zone.
Although m u c h of the s u p p o r t for t h e revolution c a m e
from "proletarians" struggling against "bourgeois," surely
one element of support for the Bolsheviks took t h e form of a
drive for "national liberation." T h a t this latter "nationalist"
element was involved a n d was not always c o m p a t i b l e with
the o t h e r "class" element in t h e Bolshevik a g e n d a was most
poignantly a n d significantly reflected in the s t o r m y career
and eventual elimination of Sultan Galiev who called u p o n
Bolshevik leaders to redirect their strategy f r o m a concen-
tration on E u r o p e to a concentration on t h e "East." Lenin
55
himself did try to bring together the world's "socialist"

m o v e m e n t s a n d the world's "national-liberation" move-
m e n t s in the Congress of Baku. Ever since, the cohabitation
of these two "antisystemic" forces h a s r e m a i n e d both very
real a n d very uneasy. In the last fifty years it has b e c o m e
m o r e a n d m o r e difficult to separate the two rhetorics
(socialism a n d national liberation), a n d even to keep t h e m
organizationally separate (as the political histories of C h i n a
a n d Vietnam both illustrate very well). T h i s c o m b i n a t i o n
has been very efficacious. Nonetheless, the cohabitation of
these two rhetorics, tendencies, forces, has b e e n at best
uneasy, at worst deeply obscuring of social reality.
At o n e level, since 1945, national-liberation m o v e m e n t s
have been magnificently successful. Almost all parts of the
world that in 1945 were colonies of " m e t r o p o l i t a n " states are
today i n d e p e n d e n t sovereign states, equal m e m b e r s of the
U n i t e d Nations. T h e process by which this occurred was
threefold. On the one hand, in a certain n u m b e r of states,
there was a significant a m o u n t of organized a r m e d struggle,
which culminated in t h e c o m i n g to political p o w e r in the
state of the m o v e m e n t that h a d led this a r m e d struggle. In
o t h e r states, merely t h e potential for such a r m e d struggle by
a movement, given the world context of the m a n y a r m e d
struggles going on elsewhere, was e n o u g h to enable t h e
m o v e m e n t to achieve power (usually by "electoral" means).
Finally, in a third set of states, precisely in o r d e r to h e a d off
such movements, the metropolitan p o w e r a r r a n g e d a trans-
fer to power of s o m e so-called m o d e r a t e i n d i g e n o u s g r o u p
(what the French called an " independance octroyee").
No d o u b t there a r e m a n y instances in which t h e story
falls in t h e interstices of this m o d e l . A n d no d o u b t , too, a
few such struggles for the "transfer of power" are still going
on, particularly in states that are already "sovereign" (South
Africa, various parts of C e n t r a l A m e r i c a , a n d so on).
However, the bulk of the struggles for w h a t m i g h t be called
"formal" national liberation are n o w over. We a r e now able
56
to look back u p o n what they have accomplished.

On the o n e h a n d , these struggles have accomplished very
m u c h . T h e arrogant a n d self-confident global racism
involved in colonialism has disappeared or at least gone
u n d e r g r o u n d . T h e role of indigenous persons in the politi-
cal decisions affecting the less powerful states of the world is
considerably greater today t h a n it was in 1945. T h e actual
state policies of such countries have tended to reflect this
"indigenization" of political decision-making.
On the other h a n d , the changes certainly have not been
as great as the national-liberation m o v e m e n t s h a d anti-
cipated as of, say, 1945. T h e r e are two kinds of explanation
for this. O n e is that the control of the state m a c h i n e r y of a
state (any state) in t h e interstate system affords less real
p o w e r in practice t h a n it does in theory. T h e second is that
there a r e internal class struggles going on in the states who
have already known "national liberation." T h e s e two factors
are linked, b u t it would be clearer to begin the analysis by
provisionally keeping t h e m analytically separate.
T h e analytical question: " H o w m u c h power does one
have w h e n o n e has state power?" is relatively simple to
explicate, once o n e distinguishes ideology f r o m reality. O n e
of the ideological principles of the m o d e r n interstate system
is the totality of sovereignty. Sovereignty, or the inde-
p e n d e n t juridical status of a "state" as recognized by the
other state m e m b e r s of the interstate system, m e a n s in
theory the right of the government of that state to m a k e laws
a n d administer its "internal" affairs w i t h o u t a n y constraints
other t h a n those that are self-imposed by the state's consti-
tutional structure. In plain English, every g o v e r n m e n t is
s u p p o s e d to be able to do whatever it d e e m s wise within its
borders. However, this is in fact not t h e case, even for such
powerful states as the U n i t e d States or the U S S R , a n d a
fortiori it is not true for the weaker states of Asia, Africa, a n d
Latin America.
T h e restraints on the power of sovereign states are m a n y .
57
First, t h e r e are those restraints t h a t exist b u t are "illegitim-

ate." For example, one restraint is the de facto power of
outside forces to subvert openly or to seek to modify sub rosa
the policies of a given state by s o m e form of "interference"
in that state's "internal" affairs. T h i s is a familiar story. Ulti-
mately, such an activity can involve actual military intru-
sion. Although in s o m e formal sense such practices are
"illegitimate" in terms of "international law," they are in
fact engaged in with such frequency that any government
m u s t take cognizance of these possibilities if it intends to
remain in power. H e n c e the threat of such illegitimate
interference in practice compels a certain " p r u d e n c e " on
sovereign states.
Since the interstate system is normally the arena of
k n o w n rivalries (for example, at the present time, that
between the U n i t e d States a n d the U S S R ) , it is often
t h o u g h t that a sovereign state can "escape" t h e threat of
interference by one strong state if it links itself politically
with that state's principal rival. T h i s is to s o m e extent true,
of course. To be sure, it t h e n risks "interference" by t h e
state to w h i c h it has linked itself, b u t it m a y consider this
prospect less i m m e d i a t e a n d less threatening. T h e real
question is not in this prospect. T h e real question lies in t h e
realm of w h a t might be called the "legitimate" constraints
on t h e powers of sovereign states.
W h a t are these "legitimate" constraints? T h e y are those
that all the m a j o r powers of the interstate system agree de
facto to impose not only on the weaker states b u t on t h e m -
selves. T h e y are those that m a i n t a i n the existence of an
interstate system. T h e s e constraints are m o r e n u m e r o u s
t h a n we ordinarily recognize, primarily because they are
seldom codified a n d are s o m e w h a t a m o r p h o u s a n d variable
in their details. T h e y include w h a t is sometimes called
"civilized behavior" a m o n g states. For example, diplomatic
i m m u n i t y is a quite sacred principle, rarely violated. T h e
social pressure to m a i n t a i n this system is so strong that
58
states often restrain themselves on matters a b o u t w h i c h they

feel very strongly in order to fulfill their obligations u n d e r
this principle.
A second imposed restraint has to do with trans-state
property rights. T h e de facto principle is that all states m a y
exercise e m i n e n t d o m a i n on foreign-owned property within
their frontiers up to a point. T h a t point is somewhat unclear.
But it has not been historically true that any state could in
fact nationalize without any c o m p e n s a t i o n . M a n y have
tried, b u t the counterpressures have been such that they
have all retreated in part. A rapid look at the practices o f t h e
government of the U S S R vis-a-vis foreign-property rights
will m a k e this eminently clear. (We single out t h e U S S R
only to indicate t h a t even a state with its military might a n d
ideology conforms to this constraint.)
A third imposed restraint has to do with t h e s u p p o r t of
oppositional m o v e m e n t s in other countries. All states (or
almost all states) engage in such supportive actions. Some-
times they do it intensively. Yet they all do it only up to a
point. T h e r e seems regularly to i n t r u d e s o m e limit to
comradely assistance. O n c e again the limit is unclear. But
the reality is there.
If o n e asks how these imposed "legitimate" restraints on
sovereignty really operate, often even in w a r t i m e , t h e
answer has to be that there are implied threats of force
against the violators of the n o r m s , which are efficacious
because they are s u p p o r t e d by an exceptionally strong
consensus o f t h e world's states. R e g i m e s that flaunt such a
strong consensus rarely survive very long. W h e n , therefore,
in the early years of a "revolutionary" government, after t h e
coming to power of a "national-liberation m o v e m e n t " there
is a faction talking about "realism," what this faction is
a r g u i n g is t h e n e e d to take cognizance of t h e s e m e c h a n i s m s
of the interstate system. W h e n s o m e other m o v e m e n t
accuses a regime that has decided to be "realistic" of being
"revisionist," the accusation rings true. But t h e "revision-
59
ism" is structural, not volitional. Let us be very clear. We

are n o t preaching the virtues of "realism" or "revisionism."
We are merely trying to explain its repeated occurrence in
states w h e r e national-liberation m o v e m e n t s have c o m e to
power.
But this is of course not t h e whole story. T h e r e is also t h e
factor of the class struggle. As long as we live in a capitalist
world-economy, there is class struggle, a n d it continues to
exist within all states located within t h e world-system, no
m a t t e r w h a t its political coloration. Statements of regimes
that there does not exist, or t h e r e no longer exists, a class
struggle within the b o u n d a r i e s of their state, are ideological
statements devoid of analytical substance. T h e underlying
social reality of the class struggle continues within all exist-
ing states, including those where national-liberation move-
m e n t s have c o m e to power. T h e question is, w h a t is t h e role
of this national-liberation m o v e m e n t in relation to this class
struggle in the period after it has c o m e to power, or p e r h a p s
we should invert the question a n d ask w h a t is t h e role of
class struggle in relation to o t h e r kinds of struggle that
typically characterize the capitalist world-economy, t h e
struggle between c o m p e t i n g "elites," that is, intra-bourgeois
struggles.
T h e r e are two varieties of such intra-bourgeois struggles.
O n e is the struggle for state power or political c o m m a n d . Its
protagonists compete with each other (within a n d outside of
parliaments, parties, state bureaucracies, a n d so on) in an
a t t e m p t to seize the " c o m m a n d i n g h e i g h t s " of state a p p a r -
atuses (that already exist or are being created ex novo) a n d ,
once in control, to enforce t h e sovereignty of t h e state. T h i s
e n f o r c e m e n t involves struggles against other states (as
e m p h a s i z e d in the previous pages) b u t also struggle against
the state's own subjects.
T h e outcomes of the struggle a m o n g such c o m p e t i n g
political elites for state power on these t h r e e fronts (control
over the state a p p a r a t u s , sovereignty in t h e interstate
60
system, a n d authority over t h e state's subjects) are

obviously closely interrelated. In turn they are strongly
influenced by the other kind of intra-elite struggle that m u s t
also be clearly distinguished f r o m t h e class struggle: the
struggle for the appropriation of wealth or economic
command.
T h e protagonists of this economic struggle c o m p e t e with
each other (within a n d outside of markets a n d economic
organizations) to obtain as large a share as possible of the
wealth p r o d u c e d in the world-economy. T h e larger the
share actually obtained, the larger t h e resources that can be
mobilized in future struggles. Since "wealth" can be
accumulated m o r e easily t h a n "state power," economic
c o m m a n d has a cumulative character t h a t is w a n t i n g in
political c o m m a n d . We shall later discuss t h e implications
of this difference. For now let us n o t e that t h e difference is
one of degree a n d that t h e reproduction of economic
c o m m a n d also involves a p e r m a n e n t struggle on m a n y
fronts.
At t h e global level, t h e essential characteristic of the
economic struggle is that each actor (normally b u t not
necessarily a capitalist enterprise) tries to force competition
u p o n the other actors while simultaneously creating for
itself a relatively protected niche f r o m which a rent or a
quasi-rent (natural, positional, technological, organizational,
a n d so on) can be reaped. T h i s struggle continually struc-
tures a n d restructures economic activities into core activities
(those that afford the appropriation of a rent or a quasi-rent)
a n d peripheral activities (those that afford no such appro-
priation). C o r e niches are never secure for long. As soon as
they are created, they invite the direct or indirect counter-
attack of other e c o n o m i c elites that have been forced by that
very creation into less competitive niches. A n d as the
counterattack unfolds, previously core activities are
peripheralized a n d with it t h e locales a n d the organizations
that h a n g on to t h e m .
61
It follows t h a t mobility (as a m o n g activities, locales,

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l forms, a n d so on) is an essential r e q u i r e m e n t
for t h e s u r v i v a l / r e p r o d u c t i o n of e c o n o m i c elites, a n d this
r e q u i r e m e n t often t e n d s to b r i n g t h e m into conflict with
political elites; despite t h e fact that, at t h e individual level,
m a n y p e r s o n s m o v e b a c k a n d forth b e t w e e n a political role
a n d a n e c o n o m i c o n e . T o b e s u r e , t h e interests o f political
a n d e c o n o m i c elites overlap o n m a n y g r o u n d s . T h e very
r e p r o d u c t i o n of e c o n o m i c elites r e q u i r e s t h e b a c k i n g of
political c o m m a n d , if for no o t h e r r e a s o n t h a n to enforce
p r o p e r t y rights a n d c o n t r a c t u a l obligations; a n d w h e n e v e r
they can, e c o n o m i c elites are all too keen to exploit or u s e
political c o m m a n d to b a c k up or create for themselves rent
a n d q u a s i - r e n t positions.
Conversely, political elites c a n n o t succeed in their m u l t i -
faceted struggle for state p o w e r w i t h o u t t h e b a c k i n g of t h e
e c o n o m i c c o m m a n d wielded by e c o n o m i c elites. T h i s is
particularly t r u e in view of t h e fact m e n t i o n e d earlier t h a t
wealth o r e c o n o m i c c o m m a n d a c c u m u l a t e s m o r e easily
t h a n political c o m m a n d . T h e implication of this difference
is t h a t success a n d failure in t h e struggle for state p o w e r is
increasingly related to t h e actors' capability to b r i n g ( c u m u -
lating) e c o n o m i c c o m m a n d t o b e a r u p o n ( n o n c u m u l a t i n g )
political c o m m a n d .
E c o n o m i c a n d political elites are t h u s u n d e r c o n s i d e r a b l e
p r e s s u r e t o s h a r e / e x c h a n g e t h e e c o n o m i c a n d political
c o m m a n d t h e y respectively wield. As we shall see presently,
the p r e s s u r e to do so originates not only in t h e competitive
struggles for state p o w e r a n d wealth, b u t also a n d especially
in t h e class struggle. W h e n all is said a n d d o n e , however, it
r e m a i n s true, first, that t h e logic of t h e struggle for political
c o m m a n d is different f r o m that of t h e struggle for e c o n o m i c
c o m m a n d ; a n d , second, that this difference is a s o u r c e of
conflict a n d struggle b e t w e e n (as well as a m o n g ) political
a n d e c o n o m i c elites.
F o r o n e thing, conflicts a r e b o u n d to arise over t h e
62
"terms of exchange" between political a n d economic

c o m m a n d . T h e fact that both types of elite benefit f r o m the
exchange does not in a n d of itself d e t e r m i n e the terms at
which the two parties will agree to carry out t h e exchange.
A m o r e or less wide zone of indeterminacy remains, a n d
both types of elite will be u n d e r the pressure of their respec-
tive competitive struggles to strike the best possible bargain
a n d , if pressed too hard, to transform the bargaining
process into open conflict.
W h a t makes this transformation likely is the fact that
political c o m m a n d is typically "territorial" (in the sense that
it is b o u n d to a given territory) while economic c o m m a n d is
very often, a n d particularly for m a j o r actors, " t r a n s t e n t -
orial" (in the sense that it operates across territories). In this
case too, the difference between the two types of c o m m a n d
is one of degree. Yet is is real enough, a n d it leads to a
p e r m a n e n t struggle between political a n d economic elites
over the "transterritoriality" of t h e latter, that is, their ability
to move in a n d out of state jurisdictions rather t h a n being
p e r m a n e n t l y a n d completely subjected to any one of t h e m .
All these inter- a n d intra-elite struggles are often con-
fusingly discussed as t h o u g h they were part of t h e class
struggle. In our view, it is m o r e useful to restrict the concept
of class struggle to vertical conflicts that c o u n t e r p o s e groups
a n d individuals in situations differently related to t h e m e a n s
of p r o d u c t i o n . Inter- a n d intra-elite conflicts, in contrast,
are typically horizontal conflicts that counterpose groups
a n d individuals related in similar ways to the m e a n s of
p r o d u c t i o n or to the m e a n s of legitimate violence. As such,
they are better referred to as competitive struggles a n d
labeled as either economic or political intra-elite struggles
d e p e n d i n g on w h e t h e r the p r i m a r y object of t h e com-
petition is wealth or state power.
Strictly speaking, in order to be able to speak of t h e exist-
ence of class struggle, three conditions m u s t be fulfilled.
First, t h e r e is an identifiable pattern of collective or general-
63
ized protest. Second, the objectives or t h e forms of t h e

protest are such that the struggle is traceable to a class situ-
ation (that is, a given relationship to the m e a n s of pro-
duction) of the participants in the protest. T h i r d , the
struggle derives from, or creates a counterposition between,
groups differently related to t h e m e a n s of p r o d u c t i o n .
A c c o r d i n g to these criteria s o m e struggles (strikes a n d
other forms of collective or generalized workplace protest by
wage workers, t h e witholding of agricultural surpluses or
the cutting d o w n of cultivation by peasants or farmers, the
seizure of land by landless peasants, food riots by t h e u r b a n
u n e m p l o y e d , a n d so on) have a strong likelihood of quali-
fying as episodes of class struggle. In other cases ( d e m o n -
strations, u r b a n a n d rural guerrilla warfare, acts of
terrorism, a n d so on), w h e t h e r or not t h e acts of protest
qualify as episodes of the class struggle d e p e n d s , a m o n g
other things, on their context, protagonists, objectives, a n d
so on. T h e p r o b l e m in these latter instances is that t h e form
of struggle is m o r e frequently associated with a competitive
struggle a m o n g political elites t h a n it is with a class struggle
in the sense we have defined it.
T h e two types of struggle can of course intersect a n d
overlap, a n d they n o r m a l l y do. Q u i t e often, t h e class
struggle generates d e m a n d s for l e a d e r s h i p a n d organization
that are supplied either by new political elites that e m e r g e
out of the class struggle itself or by previously existing elites.
In either case t h e class struggle "flows out" into a c o m p e -
titive struggle for state power. As this occurs, t h e political
elites that provide social classes with leadership a n d organ-
ization (even if they sincerely consider themselves "instru-
m e n t s " of t h e class struggle) usually find that they have to
play by t h e rules of that competition a n d therefore m u s t
a t t e m p t to s u b o r d i n a t e the class struggle to those rules in
order to survive as competitors for state power. Conversely,
it often h a p p e n s that the inter- a n d intra-elite struggles over
political a n d economic c o m m a n d wittingly or unwittingly
64
stir up the class struggle. In this case, a particular class

struggle that emerges initially as an " i n s t r u m e n t " of intra-
a n d inter-elite competition may very well s u b s e q u e n t l y
develop its own m o m e n t u m . In b o t h instances the class
struggle intersects a n d overlaps with t h e struggle over politi-
cal c o m m a n d b u t remains or b e c o m e s a distinct process.
Mutatis mutandis, the s a m e could be said of t h e relationship
between the class struggle a n d the struggle over economic
command.
T h e Russian Revolution of 1917 was the o u t c o m e of a
very special c o n j u n c t u r e of these three types of struggle,
n a m e l y the convergence a n d fusion of particularly a c u t e
horizontal a n d vertical conflicts over world political a n d
e c o n o m i c c o m m a n d within a n d across national locales.
T h e Bolsheviks, skillfully exploiting this c o n j u n c t u r e , seized
the c o m m a n d i n g heights of the R u s s i a n E m p i r e in t h e
n a m e of the working class. T h e y were thereby faced with
the d i l e m m a of w h e t h e r to use this newly-conquered p o w e r
to sustain the class struggle within a n d outside their state
b o u n d a r i e s or to consolidate their power within a restruc-
t u r e d b u t tendentially stable interstate system. A l t h o u g h
t h e eventual solution of the d i l e m m a in t h e direction of the
second vector was already foreshadowed at Kronstadt, t h e
o u t c o m e was t h e result of long inter- a n d intra-elite
struggles in which the rhetorical identification of the politi-
cal interest of t h e Bolshevik Party a n d the state with the
class interests of world labor played a m a j o r role in influ-
encing a n d constraining t h e behavior of all involved.
T h i s s u b o r d i n a t i o n of the class struggle in the U S S R to
other considerations has h a d two consequences. It has
tended to de-legitimize the class struggle when waged
against t h e interests of t h e Soviet political leadership a n d its
m o r e or less t e m p o r a r y allies. A n d it has p r o m o t e d an ideo-
logical polarization in the interstate system that could be,
a n d has been, exploited by national-liberation m o v e m e n t s
a n d t h e political elites that have e m e r g e d out of t h e m . T h e
65
c o m b i n e d effect of these two tendencies has been t h e

continuing a m b i g u o u s relationship between t h e political
leadership of national liberation m o v e m e n t s a n d the class
struggle.
In the p h a s e of actual struggle for national liberation,
that is; in the process of formation of new formally sover-
eign states, the political elites leading the struggles have
used a d o u b l e s t a n d a r d toward the class struggle. T h e
legitimacy of genuine episodes of class struggle, as defined
above, was u p h e l d or denied according to w h e t h e r they
strengthened or weakened the elites' h a n d in the pursuit of
the Political K i n g d o m . For example, w h e t h e r a strike was
s u p p o r t e d / o r g a n i z e d or not often d e p e n d e d on whether it
was directed against the colonial authorities a n d sectors of
capital hostile to independence, or against sectors of capital
favorable to i n d e p e n d e n c e . This double s t a n d a r d was m o r e
strictly enforced when the leaderships of national-liberation
m o v e m e n t s depicted themselves as instruments or agents of
the class struggle in the interstate system.
O n c e national i n d e p e n d e n c e was attained, the use of this
d o u b l e standard m e a n t a f u r t h e r narrowing of the
legitimacy of the class struggle in the new national locales.
T h i s tendency has two q u i t e distinct roots. On the o n e
hand, we have regimes that have a t t e m p t e d to consolidate
their power t h r o u g h an alliance with the political a n d eco-
n o m i c elites of core zones. In this case, the class struggle
was de-legitimized as part of the political exchange between
core a n d peripheral elites, whereby the former respect/
protect the formal sovereignty of the latter in exchange for
the latter's creation within their national b o u n d a r i e s of an
environment favorable to core capital. On the other h a n d ,
we have regimes that have a t t e m p t e d to consolidate their
power through the opposite route of struggle against core
elites. In this case, the class struggle within the country was
de-legitimized as an obstacle to the former struggle, which
was itself defined as class struggle at a higher level.
66
T h e fact that opposite strategies of consolidation of

p o w e r led to similar outcomes from the point of view of the
legitimacy of class struggle in t h e T h i r d W o r l d c a n only be
understood in the light of the peripheral position of m o s t
T h i r d W o r l d states. This position implies little or no
c o m m a n d over world surplus, a n d this, in turn, has two
implications for the class struggle: (1) from the point of view
of its protagonists (social classes) there is not m u c h to be
gained from it, so that actual episodes of class struggle are
likely to engender frustration rather than class conscious-
ness; (2) u n d e r these circumstances, peripheral elites
competing for political c o m m a n d do not normally find
social classes u p o n which to constitute reliable bases of
power a n d hence have resorted to one of the two strategies
m e n t i o n e d above.
O u r conception of class struggle as the pivotal process of
the capitalist world-economy is t h u s u n r e m a r k a b l y con-
ventional. As struggle, it is conceived to be a struggle over
the development a n d organization of productive forces;
hence over the directional control of m e a n s of production
a n d m e a n s of livelihood; hence over the social relations
factually effecting that control. As historical process, it is
conceived to be a process that continually forms and
reforms the relational classes it joins in conflict. In t u r n , of
course, their structuring, consciousness, organization, a n d
development vary immensely, a m o n g a n d within the t i m e -
space structural zones of the world-scale a c c u m u l a t i o n
process, owing, as was said in a n o t h e r context, to a "histori-
cal a n d moral element." As a result, the process of class
struggle a n d the relational character of the classes f o r m e d
therein continually occur historically in culturally, organ-
izationally, a n d civilizationally distinctive versions, each as
it were with its ownauthenticity a n d originality, which
m a r k the scope of its historical presence. Moreover, the
ongoing changes which the class struggle effects in the
social structuring of the a c c u m u l a t i o n process themselves
67
transform in locationally distinctive ways the circumstances

in a n d t h r o u g h which the class struggle as historical process
operates. It is as if the g a m e a n d the players — there are no
spectators — were always the s a m e b u t the rules, officials,
a n d b o u n d a r i e s of the playing field were novel on each a n d
every occasion — a n d not at all that k n o w a b l e until seen in
retrospect.
We know f r o m the sketch in Part I of the Communist
Manifesto h o w M a r x a n d Engels saw that class struggle
f o r m e d the two great classes d u r i n g t h e period w h e n the
ramifying social division of labor that m a r k e d industrial-
ization of the core at that time was occurring. We know too
f r o m the E u r o p e a n writers of the interwar period —
Gramsci, Lukacs, Reich, Korsch, for example — h o w
deeply state encapsulation of the projected development of
the proletariat contradicted t h e uniting of t h e workers of the
world. It deflected the formative revolutionary tendencies
into national a n d international organs, that is, into organs
that work through, a n d so reinforce a n d d e p e n d u p o n , o n e
of the f u n d a m e n t a l structures a n d planes of operation of t h e
capitalist economy, namely, the relational network we call
its interstate system. A n d we know t h e c o u n t e r p a r t move-
m e n t : in the phrasing of E . H . Carr,
W h e n the cause of revolution, having proved b a r r e n in the
west, flourished in the fertile soil of Asia, the s h a p e of things to
c o m e radically c h a n g e d . . . . T h e [Russian] revolution could
n o w be seen n o t only as a revolt a g a i n s t bourgeois capitalism
in the most b a c k w a r d western country, but as a revolt against
western imperialism in the most advanced eastern c o u n t r y
(1969: 30-31).
T h i s we discussed earlier. Samir A m i n d r e w t h e necessary
inference for theoretical work, in r e m a r k i n g on t h e a m a z i n g
power of Eurocentrism. " T h e vision of the 'advanced' pro
letariat of the West bringing socialism as a 'gift' to the 'back-
w a r d ' masses of the periphery is not 'intolerable' — it is
merely refuted by history" (1974: 603),
68
With the reestablishment of h e g e m o n y in t h e world-

system u n d e r the aegis of t h e U n i t e d States as h e g e m o n i c
power, there developed in t h o u g h t — Eastern a n d Western,
N o r t h e r n a n d S o u t h e r n — an effort to b r i n g class struggle
a n d national liberation, as conceptions of transformation,
into m o r e definite theoretical (not merely historical) relations.
We pass over here the kinds of effort we earlier called ideo-
logical in character, those where the leadership of national-
liberation struggles was seen as acting in the cause of, a n d
by s o m e in the n a m e of, the world proletariat's historical
mission. Not m a n y students of t h e capitalist world-
e c o n o m y today work with this sort of version, or vision, of
the relation between the two constructs.
W h a t we called the political form of the relation, however
— in which the c o m m o n element of struggle for state power
provides t h e g r o u n d for considering the two, the national
struggle a n d the class struggle, as historically alternative
precursors to socialist revolution — does require brief
c o m m e n t . M a n y of us have m o v e d theoretically in this
direction if not e m b r a c i n g the formulation explicitly. An
influential statement of the theoretical development was by
Lin Biao in " T h e International Significance of C o m r a d e
M a o T s e - t u n g ' s T h e o r y of People's War." T h e r e it will be
recalled he first notes that " t h e proletarian revolutionary
m o v e m e n t [i.e., class struggle] has for various reasons b e e n
temporarily held back in the N o r t h A m e r i c a n a n d West
E u r o p e a n capitalist countries . . ." He s u b s e q u e n t l y asserts
that t h e "national-democratic revolution is t h e necessary
preparation for the socialist revolution, and t h e socialist
revolution is the inevitable sequel to t h e national-
democratic revolution." T h e national-democratic struggle
has of course the form of a united front: " T h e revolution
e m b r a c e s in its ranks not only the workers, peasants, a n d
the u r b a n petty bourgeoisie, b u t also the national b o u r -
geoisie a n d o t h e r patriotic a n d anti-imperialist d e m o c r a t s "
(1967: 3 5 2 - 3 [emphasis added]).
69
This is not a theoretical u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the relations

between national liberation a n d class struggle with which
we can concur, as o u r reflections above probably suggest.
T h e r e m a y indeed be theoretical virtue, w h e n arraying the
historical alternatives (here, futures) to which national-
liberation struggles could lead (might have led, might yet
lead), in the d r a w i n g of an analogy between t h e m a n d the
world-historical class struggle a n d the revolutionary trans-
formation the conception entails. T h e r e is, however, no
theoretical virtue in, a n d m u c h confusion p r o d u c e d by, the
drawing of an analogy between, (1) national-liberation
struggles a n d the historical alternatives their a t t a i n m e n t s
define and, (2) class struggle on a world scale a n d the his-
torical alternatives it conceptually entails. National liber-
ation in segments of the capitalist world-economy, a n d the
transformations it has effected in relations of rule a n d other
social relations, have altered the social structuring of the
world-historical a c c u m u l a t i o n process. T h a t m u c h is his-
torically evident a n d therefore theoretically to be taken into
account. But it has not eliminated the relational conditions
t h r o u g h which the a c c u m u l a t i o n process operates. A n d
precisely that world-historical elimination, of the relational
conditions t h r o u g h which a c c u m u l a t i o n of capital occurs, is
what is entailed in the idea of the class struggle as the
pivotal process in the transformation o f t h e capitalist world-
e c o n o m y into a socialist world order.
N o r theoretically, in o u r view, could national-liberation
movements, any m o r e t h a n core-zone social-democratic
m o v e m e n t s — given their c o m m o n historical focus on
securing a n d exercising power within the interstate system
— have effected m u c h more by way of change t h a n they
have d o n e . If, however, we cease to accord strategic primacy
to acquiring such state power within the interstate system,
far m o r e becomes historically possible a n d thereby, within
the d o m a i n of historically realistic alternatives, theoretically
possible. It would seem a d u b i o u s theoretical tenet to assert
70
that national liberation, in its successive occurrences, is in

any way a necessary condition of the revolutionary trans-
formation of the world-economy. It is surely indefensible to
claim it as a sufficient condition.
T h e structuring a n d restructuring of the world-economy
in the period of US h e g e m o n y has been effected in large
part by the successes of the national-liberation movements,
successes that have hinged in part on the U n i t e d States'
b e c o m i n g hegemonic, a n d have in t u r n up to a point actu-
ally furthered that hegemony, C u b a a n d V i e t n a m to the
seeming contrary notwithstanding. T h r e e aspects of that
continuing change largely delimit at present b o t h the
spaces into which the class struggle as world-scale organ-
izing process is moving, a n d the enclosing, f r a g m e n t i n g
counterprocesses that have worked to prevent any "uniting"
of the workers of the world.
F u n d a m e n t a l to the forming of the world labor-force —
or in Lenin's sense, to the socialization of production, hence
of the proletariat of the world — is of course the rapidly
growing world-scale technical division of labor, t h r o u g h the
a r r a n g e m e n t s constitutive of the operations of transnational
corporations a n d integral, as well, to those of socially
related state a n d interstate agencies. Frobel, Heinrichs, a n d
Kreye have called this "the new international division of
labor" (1980). It is n o t to us so obviously "new," a l t h o u g h
that is as m u c h an empirical as a conceptual matter. But it
surely is not centrally "international" in the usual sense of
that term. It is, rather, centrally "world-scale" — however
consequential the interstate system m a y be in laying a n d
m a i n t a i n i n g the g r o u n d s for the intrafirm integrations of
discrete labor processes, a n d the parallel structuring of
a c c u m u l a t i o n , that these world-scale technical divisions of
labor entail.
T h e s e continuing extensions of technical divisions of
labor — of labor processes integrated authoritatively
t h r o u g h a capitalist firm's planning a n d control structure,
76
r a t h e r t h a n t h r o u g h market processes — p r e s u p p o s e of
course extraordinary centralizations of (so-called) pro-
ductive capital. T h e o r y tells us that centralizations of capital
of this sort are to be expected a n d are likely to continue, a n d
n o t h i n g in recent history suggests that the theory is in n e e d
of revision on this score. T h i s growing "technical" inter-
relation of labor processes, t h r o u g h this m o v e m e n t of capi-
tal, interrelates as well of course the workers so associated,
plus those at o n e remove as it were, that is, those whose
productive talents are p u t to use in providing those directly
engaged in world-scale p r o d u c t i o n with m e a n s of well-
being (via "the h o m e market"). (World-scale p r o d u c t i o n
increasingly displaces " h o m e - m a r k e t " p r o d u c t i o n of course,
but we leave that aside here.) It is these ligaments of capi-
talist enterprise on a world scale that, joining ever larger
segments of the world's workers, provide o n e of the r a m i -
fying relational networks t h r o u g h which class struggle is
forming the classes it j o i n s together.
T h e developmental tendencies contradicting this p l a n e of
potential proletarian u n i o n are several. T h o s e at the level of
capital proper, opposing this kind of centralization, seem
relatively weak (local capital, the state bourgeoisie, a n d so
on). T h o s e at the level of labor, on t h e o t h e r h a n d , seem
strong, notably of course state policies, sentiments of
n a t i o n a l i s m / p a t r i o t i s m , a n d the like. We r e t u r n to this
briefly below.
A second of the aspects (of t h e o n g o i n g reorganizing of
the m o d e r n world-system) is relationally very different. It
has to do with the continuing centralization of (so-called)
financial capital, a n d concerns the relational networks of
increasing governmental indebtedness. ( W h e t h e r some of
these relations of indebtedness c o n c e r n "capital" at all, b u t
r a t h e r concern appropriations f r o m realized surplus
[revenue] for n o n p r o d u c t i v e operations, is an i m p o r t a n t
question b u t n o t o n e we can address here.) T h e s e relations
f o r m t h e (rather intricately d r a w n ) d e b t o r - c r e d i t o r lines of
T)
struggle in t h e capitalist w o r l d - e c o n o m y , a n d so do n o t
directly entail class-forming effects {pace W e b e r ) . T h e
evolving relational network s e e m s , however, to be m o v i n g
increasingly, via the interstate system, to f o r m highly m e d i -
ated b u t definite c o n n e c t i o n s b e t w e e n very large g r o u p i n g s
of d e b t o r s a n d very small g r o u p i n g s of creditors, with t h e
g r o u p i n g s b e i n g partially parallel in t h e i r f o r m a t i o n to t h e
classes b e i n g f o r m e d by class struggle as it is m o v e d (by
capital) o u t a l o n g the e n t e r p r i s e - o r g a n i z e d world-scale
division of labor.
T h e m e d i a t i o n s m a t t e r . F o r t h e a p p e a r a n c e i s that o f t h e
creation of offical d e b t o r a n d c r e d i t o r "states," as c o n d i t i o n
of t h e i r existence as states. A n d officially classified d e b t o r
states are r e q u i r e d , on p a i n of losing t h e i r creditability as
states ( a n d h e n c e of losing, in t o d a y ' s w o r l d , their very
"stateness"), to r e d u c e t h e cost of their exports by r e d u c i n g
t h e costs to capital, direct a n d indirect, of l a b o r within their
b o r d e r s . P o p u l a r d e m o n s t r a t i o n s against such officially
c o n s t r u c t e d austerity p l a n s are r e p o r t e d almost daily. T h i s
world-level, o r g a n i z e d p r e s s u r e to d e p r e s s the living con-
ditions of the w o r l d ' s m o r e a n d less p r o l e t a r i a n i z e d workers
is h a r d to c o n s t r u e as o t h e r t h a n a strategic escalation (by
capital) of class struggle. It is, however, an escalation (a n e w
scale) t h a t is n o t all that easy to a n a l y z e . It occurs via r a t h e r
original m e c h a n i s m s , c o n c e r n i n g an area of class struggle
t h a t is poorly u n d e r s t o o d theoretically, n a m e l y , t h e
c o m p l e x lines d e l i m i t i n g t h e s p h e r e s of necessary labor,
relative s u r p l u s value, a n d levels of livelihood (or, nor-
matively, s t a n d a r d s of well-being). A n d it is a sort of
pressure, particularly given the c o m p l e x i t y of the relational
m e d i a t i o n s t h a t divides p e o p l e s into o v e r l a p p i n g r a t h e r
t h a n p o l a r i z i n g g r o u p i n g s . W h e t h e r , t h e n , the g r o u p i n g s
t h a t in fact f o r m , as t h e p r e s s u r e d e e p e n s a n d s p r e a d s , will
reinforce or w e a k e n t h e e l e m e n t a l class-forming process is
still to be d e t e r m i n e d .
O n e can speculate, however, t h a t t h e m o r e these p o p u l a r
73
struggles focus in each national setting on whatever regime

is in office, a n d so b e c o m e focused on who speaks in the
n a m e of that national people as a whole, the m o r e will such
struggles weaken the workings of the world-scale class-
forming process a n d strengthen the interstate system. T h e
more, on the other h a n d , the p o p u l a r m o v e m e n t s j o i n
forces across borders (and continents) to have their respec-
tive state officials abrogate those relations of the interstate
system t h r o u g h which the pressure is conveyed, the less
likely they are to weaken, a n d the m o r e likely they are to
strengthen, the pivotal class-forming process of the world-
economy. It seems unlikely, to assess the third historical
alternative, that such p o p u l a r struggles would directly
b e c o m e integral to, a n d in this way reinforce, the central
area(s) of class struggle, except incidentally, here a n d there,
owing to local conditions or local organizing a c u m e n .
World-historically, then, these local or regional struggles
integral to t h e d e b t o r - c r e d i t o r relation of the world-
e c o n o m y of the sort we have been talking a b o u t may keep
some relations of accumulation uncertain, but probably will
not in themselves prove to be a step or stage in the elimin-
ating of the accumulation process as central organizing
force of the m o d e r n world-system.
T h e third aspect of the ongoing changes in the organ-
izations a n d structures of the capitalist world-economy is
the relational tendencies suggested by the "electronic
village" notion. Neither of the kinds of centralization of
capital previously remarked, let alone the relational struc-
tures of d o m i n a t i o n in virtue of which they could occur a n d
operate, is theoretically conceivable without the kind of
material conditions for the exercise of power that "electroni-
fication" provides. T h e relational networks being formed in
addition to the one that we are talking a b o u t are truly
extraordinarily complex. We who would study t h e m , are
often baffled by their reach as well as by their operation;
b u t so too are those responsible for a n d to them, w h e t h e r in
74
" c o m m a n d i n g " or only "local" positions. On the other

h a n d , these m e a n s of c o m m u n i c a t i o n — constructed for
information to move inward, c o m m a n d s to move o u t w a r d
— are in place a n d rapidly growing. They are integral to the
e x p a n d i n g centralizations of productive capital a n d its
corollary, the extending technical divisions of labor. A n d
they are even m o r e integral to the e x p a n d i n g centralizations
of financial capital a n d its corollary, the e x p a n d i n g official
d e b t o r - c r e d i t o r relational networks. These developmental
conditions a n d tendencies are not in d o u b t .
A n d again, as M a r x a n d Engels observed in Part I of the
Communist Manifesto', "that union, to attain which the b u r -
ghers of the M i d d l e Ages, with their miserable highways,
required centuries, the m o d e r n proletarians, thanks to rail-
ways, achieve in a few years" (1976: VI, 493). T h e m e t a p h o r of
railways seems to be given more weight here t h a n it can bear.
But the general point is as clear as it is central to the way they
conceive of class struggle as class forming: the m e a n s the
bourgeoisie successively expand, in o r d e r to f o r m a n d inte-
grate discrete labor processes (both the technical a n d the
social divisions of labor), thereby bring into relation, as well,
the laborers whose activities are being interrelated.
Beyond the essentially administrative d e p l o y m e n t of
electronic m e a n s of c o m m u n i c a t i o n is the capitalization of
it as an historically increasing c o m p o n e n t of ordinary well-
being, a process increasingly in direct conflict (not neces-
sarily contradiction) with efforts by governments, in virtue
of the workings of the interstate system, to define a n d filter
for those territorially subject to their rule what is a n d is not
information, entertainment, c o m m e n t a r y , a n d so on. J u s t
as one direction of electronification, as world-historical
process, bears integrally on the central class-forming
process by integrating the technical divisions of labor, so the
other r e m a r k e d on here bears integrally on p o p u l a r
consciousness of conditions of existence — of what is a n d is
not tolerable, of what is a n d is not desirable — a n d hence
75
on t h e abstruse matters of "necessary labor" a n d "relative

surplus value."
As with t h e d e b t o r - c r e d i t o r relational structures, so (but
even m o r e so) with this second dimension of world-scale
"electronification": We collectively lack as yet t h e theo-
retical ideas to gauge the directional i m p e t u s that this on-
going development will give to p o p u l a r struggles and, a
fortiori, to gauge t h e array of effects they m a y have on social
m o v e m e n t s forming t h r o u g h the structurally shifting loci of
class struggle. Such theoretical u n d e r s t a n d i n g is therefore
an u r g e n t priority at this t i m e if we wish to f u r t h e r t h e class
struggle in this new period before us w h e n t h e initial wave
of national-liberation m o v e m e n t s have m o r e or less success-
fully completed t h e initial tasks they set themselves.
76
1886-1986: Beyond Hay market?
The central fact of the historical sociology of late-

nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Europe has been
the emergence of powerful social movements which
implicitly or explicitly challenged the achievements of
triumphant capitalism. These movements generated organ-
izations (parties, unions, mass organizations) that survived
long after the early mobilization stage; long enough to
become in turn one of the targets of the new social move-
ments of the late twentieth century. It is our contention that
the earlier movements were shaped by the social structure
of the nineteenth century, one that has been thoroughly
transformed in the course of the twentieth century, and that
the later movements are precisely the expression of this
transformation. Whether and how the old organizations can
survive in the new social context largely depends on their
capacity to come to terms with the contradictions posed by
the dissolution of their social base.
The social movements of the late nineteenth century
were rooted in the intensification of the processes of capi-
talist centralization, and rationalization of economic activi-
ties. A large variety of social groups (servants and peasants,
77
craftsmen and low-status professionals, small traders and

shopkeepers), which h a d up to then coped m o r e or less with
the spread of m a r k e t competition, suddenly found their
established patterns of life a n d work t h r e a t e n e d by widen-
ing a n d deepening proletarianization, a n d reacted to the
threat through a wide variety of struggles. T h e s e struggles
owed their p r o m i n e n c e a n d effectiveness to the very
processes they were directed against: the capitalist central-
ization and rationalization of e c o n o m i c activities.
In earlier periods, food riots a n d similar forms of protest
resulted merely in localized disruptions of law a n d order
which at most contributed to s u d d e n accelerations in the
"circulation of elites." T h e few struggles at the point of
production — in industry or in agriculture — could most of
the time be isolated a n d repressed or a b s o r b e d into the
n o r m a l processes of capitalist competition. T h e y r e m a i n e d ,
that is, the "private business" of t h e g r o u p s opposed in t h e
struggle. T h e m o r e production was socialized, however, the
m o r e the strife between labor a n d capital b e c a m e a social
p r o b l e m : t h e very size a n d distribution of the social p r o d u c t
were affected by them, with repercussions t h r o u g h o u t the
social a n d political system.
T h e m a i n weakness of the E u r o p e a n labor m o v e m e n t in
t h e period u n d e r consideration lay precisely in t h e fact that
t h e processes of capitalist centralization and rationalization
had not gone far e n o u g h . By and large, capitalist pro-
duction was still e m b e d d e d in a social structure in which
wage-labor played a limited role. As late as the beginning of
the twentieth century, w a g e workers a c c o u n t e d for a
majority of the active labor force in only a few states
(definitely in the U K , probably in G e r m a n y , and possibly
in France). In all states except the UK there were large
n u m b e r s of "peasants'" — a differentiated a n d stratified
e n s e m b l e of low-status agricultural cultivators with some
kind of access to the m e a n s of p r o d u c i n g a subsistence.
In all states, furthermore, there were smaller but
78
Beyond Haymarket?
nonetheless relatively large groups of self-employed

artisans, petty b u r e a u c r a t s and professionals, small traders
and shopkeepers, and domestic servants. T h e social weight
of these other groups was far greater than their n u m b e r s
indicated, because a good proportion of the wage-labor
force itself retained organic links with t h e m a n d / o r had
strong cultural affinities with t h e m . O r g a n i c links between
wage workers and non-wage workers were primarily d u e to
the practice of pooling incomes in h o u s e h o l d s f r o m dif-
ferent sources. Many wage-earners were not full-lifetime
proletarians b u t m e m b e r s of non-proletarian h o u s e h o l d s
w h o sold their labor p o w e r on a m o r e or less t e m p o r a r y
basis. T h i s practice was particularly widespread a m o n g
peasant households which hired out t h e l a b o r p o w e r of
s o m e of their m e m b e r s precisely in o r d e r to preserve their
own viability as peasant households. Since these workers
were generally in low-pay and low-status jobs, they h a d a
strong incentive to retain their links with the peasant house-
holds as a form of u n e m p l o y m e n t , sickness, a n d old-age
insurance as well as a source of self-fulfillment.
If the lower layers of the wage-labor force were populated
by peasant workers a n d other part-lifetime proletarians who
were the bearers of non-proletarian cultures, the u p p e r
layers w e r e populated by full-lifetime proletarians s o m e of
w h o m nonetheless also continued to reproduce, f r o m one
generation to another, non-proletarian cultures. T h e two
most i m p o r t a n t instances were white-collar workers and
skilled blue-collar workers. T h e f o r m e r carried out sub-
ordinate entrepreneurial functions such as keeping
accounts, buying a n d selling, servicing the e n t r e p r e n e u r ,
a n d supervising the l a b o r process. T h e y w e r e recruited
a m o n g the lower strata of t h e professional groups, and,
notwithstanding (or because of) their full-lifetime prole-
tarian status, they tended to show an exaggerated attach-
m e n t to the lifestyle symbols of such elites. T h i s a t t a c h m e n t
was generally accompanied by strong sentiments of loyalty
79
towards t h e capitalist employer, with w h o m they worked in

close contact, a n d of w h o m they were living extensions.
Skilled blue-collar workers were the bearers of a quite
different culture. T h e y were craftsmen w h o wielded
complex skills (partly m a n u a l , partly intellectual) on which
production processes were highly d e p e n d e n t and on which
the income, status, a n d power of the craftsmen, both in the
workplace a n d in t h e household, rested. C o n s e q u e n t l y ,
their greatest preoccupation was the preservation of their
monopolistic control over p r o d u c t i o n know-how. T h i s
preoccupation identified their interests with those of self-
e m p l o y e d craftsmen, m a d e t h e m suspicious of unskilled
workers, a n d was a c o n t i n u o u s source of a n t a g o n i s m
towards the attempts of t h e capitalist employers to break
t h e monopolistic practices of these craftsmen t h r o u g h de-
skilling innovations.
This antagonism of craftworkers towards de-skilling
innovations was probably t h e most i m p o r t a n t single factor
sustaining a n d shaping t h e development of t h e E u r o p e a n
labor m o v e m e n t at t h e t u r n of t h e century. White-collar
workers generally played a secondary a n d a m b i g u o u s role,
while unskilled blue-collar workers generated great b u t
shortlived outbursts of conflict. Generally speaking t h e
m o v e m e n t w a s neither based on, n o r did it generate motu
proprio, t h e unity of wage-labor against capital. T h e protest
of the various sectors was sparked by the s a m e processes of
capitalist development, but as the protest unfolded each
segment a n d s t r a t u m of the wage-labor force t e n d e d to go
in its own direction, often in open or latent conflict with the
direction taken by other segments.
T h e fact that wage workers constituted either a minority
or a small majority of the total labor force a n d that, in any
event, the majority of t h e wage workers themselves still bore
t h e stigmata of their non-proletarian origin, created serious
d i l e m m a s for the leadership of the m o v e m e n t . T h e first
d i l e m m a concerned t h e extent to which t h e rank-and-file of
80
Beyond Haymarket?
t h e m o v e m e n t could be relied u p o n spontaneously to

p r o d u c e realistic objectives a n d a d e q u a t e f o r m s of organ-
ization. T h e alternative, obviously, was that such objectives
a n d organization be b r o u g h t to the m o v e m e n t from t h e
"outside," that is, by professional politicians constituted in
p e r m a n e n t organizations. T h e Marxists, w h o a r g u e d the
necessity of the latter solution, were in conflict with t h e
anarchists a n d syndicalists in t h e early stages of t h e move-
ment, even t h o u g h within M a r x i s m itself a n a r c h o -
syndicalist tendencies survived t h r o u g h o u t the period. T h e
m a i n weakness of the anarcho-syndicalist position (and a
key reason for its political defeat) lay in t h e fact that, given
t h e social context sketched above, t h e s p o n t a n e o u s ten-
dencies of t h e labor m o v e m e n t could only be self-defeating,
as they not only heightened t h e internal divisions of the
wage-labor force but also were powerless in the face of the
economic a n d political mobilization of the n o n wage-labor
force against t h e movement.
In a situation of this kind, the different a n d partly
contradictory objectives of the movement could only be
attained through political mediation a n d , ultimately,
t h r o u g h control of state power. Political m e d i a t i o n a n d the
gaining of state power in t u r n presupposed a centralized
direction of the m o v e m e n t ; a n d h e n c e t h e creation of
p e r m a n e n t organizations capable, on t h e o n e h a n d , of
imparting such direction, a n d on the other, of operating
professionally in the political arena.
A g r e e m e n t on this point, however, posed a second
d i l e m m a concerning the t i m e schedule a n d t h e m e a n s of
gaining state power. T w o alternatives presented themselves.
On t h e o n e h a n d , the centralized direction of t h e m o v e m e n t
could take a gradualist a n d democratic road, as advocated
by the reformist wing of the Second International. T h e
rationale of this position was that t h e minority status of t h e
wage-labor force, as well as its internal divisions, were
t e m p o r a r y problems which would in d u e course be taken
81
care of by the further centralization/rationalization of eco-

n o m i c activities i m m a n e n t in capitalist a c c u m u l a t i o n .
H e n c e the task of the leadership was to establish organic
links with the movement, a n d fight the democratic battle for
parliamentary power without any particular sense of
urgency. On the o t h e r h a n d , the centralized direction of t h e
m o v e m e n t could take a revolutionary a n d insurrectionary
road, as advocated by the currents that were eventually to
create the T h i r d International. A c c o r d i n g to this position
there was no guarantee that capitalist development would
create m o r e favorable conditions for a gradual accession to
state p o w e r by working-class organizations. Q u i t e apart
from the fact that the representatives of t h e bourgeoisie a n d
its allies could not be expected to yield their power peace-
fully, capitalism had entered a new stage of h e g e m o n i c
rivalries a n d mercantilist struggles (the so-called stage of
imperialism) which was b o u n d to frustrate t h e expectations
of the reformists, while however creating opportunities for
the seizure of power by revolutionary vanguards.
O n c e in power, as h a p p e n e d in t h e interwar period to a
revolutionary party in Russia and to a reformist party in
Sweden, f u r t h e r d i l e m m a s arose concerning what socialists
could or should do with state power in a capitalist world-
e c o n o m y . T h e s e other d i l e m m a s fall beyond our present
concern, which is to point out that the social structure that
generated the social movements, political dilemmas, a n d
organizations of the late nineteenth a n d early twentieth
centuries was thoroughly transformed in the course of the
Second World W a r a n d the subsequent postwar phase of
rapid e c o n o m i c expansion.
By the late 1960s, peasants h a d dwindled into insignifi-
cance in most of Europe. T h e n u m b e r of shopkeepers,
small traders, a n d artisans h a d also been significantly
reduced. T h e n u m b e r of professionals h a d increased b u t
not sufficiently to m a k e a great difference in the overall
picture. T h e overall picture was now that between 60 and
82
Beyond Haymarket?
90 per cent (depending on t h e country) of the E u r o p e a n

labor force h a d c o m e to d e p e n d on wages or salaries for its
subsistence. On the basis of this purely formal criterion, t h e
E u r o p e a n l a b o r force h a d b e c o m e as fully "proletarianized"
as it possibly could.
However, in this case sheer n u m b e r s are deceptive. T h i s
"proletarianized" l a b o r force in fact h a d a n u m b e r of rela-
tively discrete sections. T h e n u m b e r of salaried professionals
was large a n d growing, in most cases over 15 per cent of t h e
population in the 1980s. T h o s e in this g r o u p normally h a d
a university education, reflecting the h i g h percentage of t h e
population attending the university (see T a b l e I). T h e
percentage of w o m e n in this category h a d b e e n growing,
although m e n still p r e d o m i n a t e d . T h i s g r o u p was well-paid
of course, b u t lived primarily on its income.
T h e m a n u f a c t u r i n g sector of E u r o p e a n countries
employed 30 to 40 per cent of the p o p u l a t i o n in the 1980s.
T h i s was true even in those few countries w h e r e t h e agri-
cultural p o p u l a t i o n was still over 10 per cent (see T a b l e II).
However, t h e m a n u f a c t u r i n g sector w a s divided with
increasing clarity on ethnic lines. T h e better-paid, m o r e
skilled workers were largely m a l e and native to t h e country,
w h e r e a s the less well-paid, less skilled workers were dispro-
portionately d r a w n from radical minorities, immigrants,
guest workers, a n d so on, m a n y of w h o m were not citizens
(though this may t u r n out to be a transitional
p h e n o m e n o n ) . Of course, ethnic stratification of t h e work-
force h a d no d o u b t a long history, b u t prior to 1945 t h e
ethnic "minority" was largely d r a w n from within a state's
b o u n d a r i e s (Irish in Great Britain, Bretons in France)
which h a d different citizenship and voting consequences.
T h e e x p a n d i n g clerical a n d service sector was in the process
of increasing feminization with a concomitant loss of rela-
tive status a n d i n c o m e level.
T h i s sociological transformation has b e e n going on for a
long time. Its impact on the structure of social m o v e m e n t s
83
Table I No. of university-level students per 100,000 in 1983
Western & Northern Europe

Austria 2,058
Belgium 2,285
D e n m a r k (1982) 2,159
Finland 2,485
France 2,253
G e r m a n Federal R e p u b l i c (1982) 2,289
Iceland 2,197
Ireland (1981) 1,731
Luxembourg 270
N e t h e r l a n d s (1982) 2,645
Norway (1982) 2,151
Sweden 2,701
Switzerland 1,515
U n i t e d K i n g d o m (1982) 1,572
Southern Europe
Greece(1980) 1,250
Italy 1,981
Portugal (1981) 964
Spain (1982) 1,919
Other countries with over 1,500 students per 100,000

Argentina 1,962
Australia (1982) 2,237
Barbados 1,966
Canada 4,169
E c u a d o r (1981) 3,192
G e r m a n D e m o c r a t i c R e p u b l i c (1982) 2,420
Israel 2,746
Japan 2,033
J o r d a n (1982) 1,570
Korea, R e p u b l i c of 2,951
L e b a n o n (1982) 2,715
M o n g o l i a (1981) 2,235
New Zealand 2,612
Panama 2,212
P e r u (1982) 2,001
Philippines (1981) 2,694
Qatar 1,678
84
Beyond Haymarket?
USSR ] 947
U S A (1982) 5;355
Uruguay 1,686
Yugoslavia 1 647
Source: U N E S C O Statistical Y e a r b o o k , 1985, T a b l e 3,10
has b e e n p r o f o u n d . T h e labor m o v e m e n t a n d the socialist

parties h a d originally b e e n constructed a r o u n d (male)
workers in the m a n u f a c t u r i n g sector whose n u m b e r s , it had
been a s s u m e d , would be ever growing. But the m a n u -
facturing sector levelled off in n u m b e r s a n d percentage in
the 1960s a n d began a process of shrinkage. Faced with a
sharply declining percentage of t h e labor force in agri-
culture a n d a levelling-off (and potential decline) in the
m a n u f a c t u r i n g sectors, the tertiary sector has necessarily
b e c o m e ever m o r e central. However, this sector in t u r n
b e c a m e ever m o r e polarized into a salaried professional
s t r a t u m a n d a lower-paid s t r a t u m working u n d e r increas-
ingly "factory-like" conditions.
As the "internal" reserve labor force (peasantry, small
artisans, wives a n d daughters of industrial workers) dis-
a p p e a r e d by virtue of actual incorporation into the u r b a n ,
proletarianized labor force, the only "reserve" available
b e c a m e o n e "external" to the state's b o u n d a r i e s . H e r e ,
however, o n e m u s t take into account the historical trans-
formation of the capitalist world-economy as a whole. T h e
development of national liberation forces in Asia, Africa,
a n d Latin America h a d c h a n g e d the w o r l d political rapport
de forces, a n d above all the ideological a t m o s p h e r e within
which E u r o p e a n social development occurred.
In t h e period 1945-60 it could be said that the social-
democratic parties of Western E u r o p e achieved a large
n u m b e r of their intermediate objectives: full organization of
the industrial working class a n d a significant rise in their
85
Table II Percentage of economically active population by occupation
Prof. * Manas,. Clerical Sales Service Agnc. Manuf.

Year 0/1 2 ' 3 4 5 7-9 Other
Western & Northern Europe

Austria 1984 13.0 5.2 15.6 9.2 10.8 9.1 36.9 0.2
Belgium 1970 11.1 4.6 12.8 10.2 6.7 4.5 45.2 4.9
Denmark 1983 17.0 3.1 13.9 6.0 12.6 2.1 29.4 15.9
Finland 1980 17.0 3.0 11.9 7.3 11.6 12.5 34.8 2.1
France 1982 14.1 0.3 17.1 7.8 10.7 7.6 30.9 11.5
G e r m a n Federal Republic 1984 13.9 3.5 17.3 8.6 10.8 5.0 31.8 9.1
Ireland 1983 14.2 2.8 14.1 8.6 8.6 14.9 30.3 6.5
Luxembourg 1981 11.9 1.0 20.3 8.8 12.9 5.3 36.3 3.5
Netherlands 1979 17.3 2.3 17.6 9.6 10.1 5.6 30.0 7.5
Norway 1980 18.2 4.6 9.6 9.0 12.0 7.1 31.9 7.6
Switzerland 1980 15.1 2.4 20.2 8.2 11.3 6.5 34.4 1.9
Sweden 1984 27.3 2.3 11.9 8.0 13.7 5.0 28.7 3.1
United Kingdom 1971 11.1 3.7 17.9 9.0 11.7 3.0 40.0 3.6
Southern Europe
Greece 1983 9.7 1.7 8.7 9.3 8.0 27.8 30.0 4.8
Italy 1981 11.5 16.0 9.6 11.1 11.1 9.3 20.7 10.2
Portugal 1982 5.9 0.8 10.2 8.1 9.1 23.0 37.3 5.5
Spain 1984 6.9 1.4 9.7 9.0 12.9 15.6 35.4 9.1
Other countries for comparison

Hungary 1980 14.7 0.7 12.0 4.9 7.1 10.0 50.6 —
Poland 1978 11.0 1.5 13.9 2.8 3.2 26.7 37.4 3.5
USA 1984 14.7 10.3 15.3 11.5 13.5 3.4 28.8 2.5
Venezuela 1983 10.2 4.0 11.2 12.7 13.3 14.1 32.2 2.3
El Salvador 1980 4.2 0.6 5.4 14.1 8.1 37.5 26.4 1.7
Egypt 1982 10.5 1.9 8.2 6.2 8.5 36.1 23.1 5.5
India 1980 3.0 0.1 3.7 12.6 4.6 53.7 18.4 3.9
Mali 1976 1.5 — 0.6 1.9 1.0 82.0 6.9 6.1
Source: I L O Y e a r b o o k of L a b o r Statistics 1985, Table 2B (except F i n l a n d f r o m 1984; N e t h e r l a n d s , H u n g a r y , El

Salvador, Mali from 1983; Belgium a n d the U n i t e d K i n g d o m f r o m 1977).
*Full h e a d i n g s as follows: 0 / 1 - Professional, technical, a n d skilled workers; 2 - A d m i n i s t r a t i v e a n d m a n a g e r i a l workers;

3 - Clerical and related workers; 4 - Sales workers; 5 - Service workers; 6 - Agricultural, a n i m a l h u s b a n d r y a n d forestry,
f i s h e r m a n a n d h u n t e r s ; 7 - 9 - P r o d u c t i o n a n d related workers, t r a n s p o r t e q u i p m e n t , o p e r a t o r s a n d laborers; O t h e r -
M a y i n c l u d e (varying with country): (a) W o r k e r s not classified by o c c u p a t i o n s ; (b) A r m e d forces; (c) U n e m p l o y e d
workers; (d) U n e m p l o y e d w o r k e r s not previously regularly e m p l o y e d .
s t a n d a r d of living, plus accession to a place in the state

political structure. But they f o u n d themselves to a sig-
nificant degree locked into reflecting this traditional central
core of the working class whose n u m b e r s were no longer
growing. T h e y f o u n d it far m o r e difficult to appeal poli-
tically to the three growing segments of the wage-labor
force: the salaried professionals, the "feminized" service-
sector employees, and the "ethnicized" unskilled or semi-
skilled labor force.
It seems therefore no accident that the three m a j o r
varieties of "new" social m o v e m e n t have their social bases in
these other groups: the peace/ecology/alternative lifestyle
m o v e m e n t s ; the w o m e n ' s m o v e m e n t s ; the "minority",
r i g h t s / " T h i r d W o r l d within" movements. In different ways,
each of these movements was expressing its discomfort not
merely with the socio-economic structures that governed
their lives b u t with the historical political strategy of the
social-democratic (and C o m m u n i s t ) parties in p u r s u i n g the
need for change.
T h e basic complaint of the "new" social m o v e m e n t s
a b o u t the "old" social m o v e m e n t s was that the social-
democratic movements h a d lost their "oppositional" quality
precisely as a result of their successes in achieving partial
state power. It was argued that: (1) they s u p p o r t e d b o t h
state policy and multinational policy vis-a-vis the T h i r d
W o r l d a n d the socialist world; a n d (2) they m a d e no effort
to represent the interests of the lowest-paid a n d most
exploited strata of the work force. In short, the charge was
that labor a n d social-democratic m o v e m e n t s were no longer;
antisystemic, or at least no longer sufficiently antisystemic.
T h e initial response of the "old" social m o v e m e n t was to
dismiss the charges of one segment of the "new" m o v e m e n t s
as coming from middle-class elements (that is, salaried
professionals) w h o w e r e using anti-industrial-worker a r g u -
ments. As for the criticisms of other "new" m o v e m e n t s
(women, minorities), the "old" m o v e m e n t s accused t h e m of
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Beyond Haymarket?
being "divisive" (the traditional nineteenth-century view of

the labor movement).
T h e relationship of the two sets of m o v e m e n t s — the old
a n d the new — has gone t h r o u g h two phases thus far. T h e
first phase runs from a b o u t 1960 to 1975. T h i s phase was
one of deteriorating relations between the two sets. T h e
simmering b a d relations exploded in 1968 a n d the tensions
strongly reinforced a period of a c u t e ideological struggle in
the T h i r d W o r l d — t h e Vietnam war, the Chinese C u l t u r a l
Revolution, the m a n y guerilla struggles in Latin America.
Several factors entered to bring this phase to an end. T h e
fraction of the new social m o v e m e n t s that b e c a m e most
"radicalized" — taking the various forms of Maoist parties,
a u t o n o m i s t movements, u r b a n terrorism — failed poli-
tically. T h i s was partly because of repression, partly
because of exhaustion and a thin social base, and partly
because of changes in the ideological tone of struggles in the
T h i r d W o r l d (end of the Cultural Revolution in China,
socialist wars in Indochina, e n d of "focoism" in Latin
America).
T h e new conjoncture of the world-economy also had its
impact. T h e growing u n e m p l o y m e n t in E u r o p e along with
the partial dismantling of the traditional heavy-industry
sectors began to reopen for the labor-socialist m o v e m e n t s
m a n y ideological questions that h a d been undiscussible in
the p e r i o d 1945-65. T h u s t h e social democrats started to
reassess their view of t h e new social m o v e m e n t s j u s t at the
m o m e n t when the new social movements began to have
some inner doubts about the validity of the "new left"
tactics evolved in t h e 1960s.
T h e period since 1975 has been one of an uncertain
m i n u e t in old l e f t - n e w left relations in W e s t e r n E u r o p e .
T h e case of t h e Greens a n d the S P D in t h e Federal
R e p u b l i c of G e r m a n y illustrates this perfectly. Both parties
are constantly in the midst of a m e d i u m - d e c i b e l internal
debate a b o u t their relations with each other, able neither to
89
move closer together nor to move further apart. Both sets of

m o v e m e n t s h a v e however b e e n m o r e concerned with their
relations to each other t h a n to the other kinds of move-
ments found in the socialist countries or t h e T h i r d W o r l d .
We may r e s u m e what we have said t h u s : (1) t h e circum-
stances giving rise to the drive a n d partially successful
organizational forms of the E u r o p e a n left have been totally
eroded by the very processes, those of capitalist develop-
ment, they were created to supersede historically; (2) poten-
tially serious (antisystemic) tendencies instead now c o m e
increasingly from social locales not central to the traditional
organized forms of the E u r o p e a n left. W h a t , from o u r angle
of vision, would seem to lie ahead?
T h e principal directional tendency of capital is its
centralization on a world scale in t w o forms; financial pools,
a n d technically divided a n d integrated labor processes. T h e
first is effected through extraordinarily large-scale b a n k i n g
consortia m a n a g i n g "public" a n d "private" f u n d s alike a n d
mediated by such organs of the world's bourgeoisie as t h e
I M F , the I B R D , a n d the BIS. T h e second is effected of
course t h r o u g h the multiplying transnationalization of
p r o d u c t i o n u n d e r t h e aegis of the transnational corporation.
T h i s determining direction of capital on a world scale —
oddly e n o u g h , not one that departs greatly from that
projected in "the absolute general law of capitalist a c c u m u -
lation" — entails for antisystemic forces at least three broad
consequential subordinate directional tendencies.
First, a n d in the present context p e r h a p s foremost, is the
ongoing relocation of labor-using m a n u f a c t u r i n g processes
to the semiperiphery a n d hence the shift there of the epi-
center of "classically" framed a n d c o n d u c t e d class conflict
— direct, organized, large-scale c a p i t a l - l a b o r struggles.
T h a t epicenter, a n d so its historical trajectory, will h e n c e
increasingly be formed within the jurisdictions of the states
of that zone, and their politics indeed increasingly reflect
the transformation.
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Beyond Haymarket?
Second is the de-nationalization, in effect, of domestic

("national") labor forces. T h e world's workers, increasingly
m a d e into laborers u n d e r the aegis of capital, move as they
always have in order to be in relation to capital, a move-
m e n t sharply furthered in speed and extent by develop-
ments in c o m m u n i c a t i o n s a n d transportation. M a r x and
Engels saw the railroad as shortening to a century, for
national proletariats, the time needed to achieve the degree
of class organization it took national bourgeoisies, with their
miserable roads, five centuries to attain. Ship, air, a n d elec-
tronics have for decades now been analogously forming the
possibility of an organized world proletariat within
"national" locales. T h e possibility is at once eliminated,
however, so long as we think with the state-formed
consciousness that there are "nationals" a n d there a r e
"immigrants," a n d in that way r e p r o d u c e the varieties of
racism these historically formed categories inevitably entail.
"National" a n d " i m m i g r a n t " are categories of the capitalist
world-economy's interstate system; they have no place
(except as phenomenologically real conditions to be over-
come) in the language of world-scale workers' movements.
And t h i r d is the "official p a u p e r i s m " sketched in t h e
general law, which, to estimate from recent trends in the US
a n d Western Europe, has two principal overlapping social
locales, the y o u n g a n d the aged (both m e n a n d w o m e n ) and
w o m e n (of all ages). T h e s e were, it will be recalled, the first
"officially protected" social segments of labor, in country
after country, in the decade or so that " H a y m a r k e t " sig-
nifies. "Welfare," too, has its contradictions. It seems likely
that the " n a t i o n a l ' V ' i m m i g r a n t " categorization deepens the
b u r d e n s of current capitalist development carried by the
young, t h e old, a n d w o m e n , b u t it is only a d e e p e n i n g of
the destruction of dignity, well-being, and h o p e that their
pauperization perse entails.
T h e growing contradiction(s) between relations of rule
a n d relations of production entail a n o t h e r trio of sub-
95
ordinate tendential or "directional" changes. P e r h a p s fore-

most here will be the growing contradiction of "stateness" in
core-area countries, between forming a n d reforming the
requisite frameworks of "capitalist d e v e l o p m e n t " of capital,
on t h e o n e h a n d ; a n d addressing a n d re-addressing the
endless constituencies of "welfare" that that d e v e l o p m e n t
continues to p r o m o t e , on the other. T h e contradiction has
been central to "stateness," of course, t h r o u g h o u t the inter-
state system's historical elaboration; in o u r times it has
been particularly evident in t h e peripheralized a n d semi-
peripheralized zones that a r e continually r e p r o d u c e d by the
f u n d a m e n t a l world-forming polarization entailed in the
capitalist development of capital. In the state regimes of the
core zone, governments have been largely spared the
politics f r a m e d by t h e contradiction, essentially because
coreness d u r i n g US h e g e m o n y entailed a kind a n d degree
of "revenue" flow that allowed "redistribution" without (all
that m u c h ) pain. T h a t has b e c o m e , a n d will c o n t i n u e to
become, less and less so. "Austerity" is the order of t h e d a y
not only in Haiti, a n d in Argentina, b u t in F r a n c e . . .
We m u s t r e m a r k here in passing w h a t this contradiction,
in this form, implies for those of us w h o subscribe to t h e
theoretical notion t h a t relations of rule o p e r a t e by virtue of a
condition of consciousness known, since W e b e r , as their
"legitimacy." Namely, it implies increasingly corrosive
effects on the very "right" of the a p p a r a t u s e s of states to
compel c o m p l i a n c e with state-promulgated rules ("laws").
This sort of "legitimacy" crisis — e n d e m i c w h e r e "stateness"
has been a historically imposed form of relations of rule (for
example, via overrule) — s e e m s likely to have initial occur-
rence in the ideologically distorted form of "nationals"
versus " i m m i g r a n t s , " with the rhetorical core being a
m a t t e r of "patriotism" — t h e o n e defined d o m a i n of
consciousness specifically formed to "legitimate" stateness,
as every schoolchild, everywhere, knows without knowing.
However, the structured incapacity of states to take care of
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Beyond Haymarket?
their own, as it were, could so help shift m o d e s of u n d e r -

standing a n d c o m p r e h e n s i o n that the specifically legiti-
m a t i n g d o m a i n of "patriotism" b e c o m e s secondary — b u t
to what?
Second is t h e seemingly contradictory growth —
contradictory to the capitalist development of capital — of
" h u m a n rights" as an organizing concern of growing
n u m b e r s of intellectuals a n d p o p u l a r leaders, of various
persuasions, t h r o u g h o u t the world. To a large extent —
f r a m e d , as the issue has been, almost solely in t e r m s of
relations of rule (its i m m e d i a t e locus of course, as "issue")
— the c o m p r e h e n s i o n of its emergence as reflecting t h e
contradictions between relations of rule a n d relations of
production (including relations of appropriation) has been
slow to form. T h e rights of workers in the end u n d e r p i n all
others. Without the former, such "rights" as others may
have are b u t certificates issued; a n n u l l a b l e by the particular
a p p a r a t u s of "stateness" that forms the confrontational
relation. As elsewhere in our conditions of existence, so here
too does the c a p i t a l - l a b o r relation organize the terrain of
confrontation and discourse.
A third tendential development is t h e growing "anti-
Westernism" of the peoples of t h e peripheralized and
semiperipheralized zone of the world-economy's oper-
ations. Primarily channelled in a n d t h r o u g h the interstate
system, the i m p e t u s for the sentiment lies not in m e r e "anti-
imperialist" (positively put, "nationalist") m o v e m e n t s b u t
r a t h e r in elemental challenges to t h e "Westernism," as
e n c o m p a s s i n g civilization, t h a t the capitalist development
of the m o d e r n world as historical social system has entailed.
T h i s is a d o m a i n of inquiry f r a u g h t with difficulties, both
theoretical and historical, for the o n c e colonized and the
once colonizing alike (specifically p r e s u m i n g good faith on
the- art of each, however central t h e historical divide
perforce remains).
T h e tendency shows m o r e f u n d a m e n t a l l y , if less clearly
93
theoretically, in the question of how relations of rule relate to

relations of production. We reach h e r e matters of very
considerable civilizational depth, w h e r e even the distinction
which we have been working with disappears. For the chal-
lenge, in process of realization, is to the "Westernism" of
our ways of thinking — and, to short-circuit m u c h — to our
ways of conceiving of the "socialism" of a socialist world-
system a n d so derivatively to our ways of identifying what is
or is not "progressive."
In brief, in question is — assuming we're collectively
a n d actively concerned with furthering t h e transformation
of the capitalist world-system into a socialist world-system
— "whose" socialism? T h a t , it seems to us, is the query
posed by the growing if still m u t e d "anti-Westernism." It
addresses directly the a s s u m p t i o n that the coming socialist
world-system is of Western m a n u f a c t u r e , so to speak.
P e r h a p s the central question is this: how, a n d to w h a t
extent, can the well-organized a r m s of progressive move-
ments in Western E u r o p e , f r a m e d as they are by their
current forms a n d i m m e d i a t e concerns, r e c o m p o s e t h e m -
selves into agencies, not of national realization b u t of world-
historical transformation? T h i s recomposition would m e a n
they b e c a m e in the f u t u r e as subversive of the interstate
system per se as they have in the past been its products a n d
proponents.
T h e centralization of capital per se can be neither factually
n o r strategically a legitimate concern of movements, it as
process being for t h e m formative merely of terrain, not of
objective. T h e f u r t h e r processes it entails, however, p r o d u c e
the very politics of m o v e m e n t formation a n d growth. T h e
first observation above, a b o u t the relocating of the epicenter
of overt "classical" class struggle, implies merely a refocus-
ing of Western E u r o p e a n movements. T h e second a n d
third, in contrast, entail the redefinition of trajectories. For
the de-nationalization of domestic labor forces suggests a
f u n d a m e n t a l change, on the part of the left, as to w h a t
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Beyond Haymarket?
"national" m e a n s (thus leaving to the right the systemically

formed residues of "primordial" sentiments). To accom-
plish the reconception will entail a degree a n d kind of
substantive a n d rhetorical inventiveness not presently in
a s c e n d a n c e within p r o m i n e n t movements. A n d the third,
the increasing salience of the g e n d e r question, entails; (1)
the elimination from the m o v e m e n t s of yet a n o t h e r (and in
a different sense) "primordial" sentiment, a n d (2) the world-
scale generality o f — hence organizational subordination to
— w h a t is essentially a reforming m o v e m e n t ("capitalism"
being quite a b l e "to develop" u n d e r conditions of legal a n d
substantive g e n d e r equality). It is the f u r t h e r generalization,
from the pauperization of w o m e n to the pauperization of
people on a world scale, that is precisely the c h a n g e in
consciousness the very effectiveness of the organizations in
core zones m a y help to b r i n g about, as part of world-scale
m o v e m e n t s that bypass a n d so subvert interstate arrange-
ments. T h e growing contradictions between relations of
rule a n d relations of production will in all likelihood occa-
sion a plethora of radical nationalist expressions a n d "move-
ments." But world-scale movements, with e m a n a t i o n s in
various national arenas, may prove world historically even
m o r e consequential. At least, this is the m a j o r positive
direction in which to move.
95
1968: The Great Rehearsal
What Was 1968 About?
There have only been two world revolutions. One took place
in 1848. The second took place in 1968. Both were historic
failures. Both transformed the world. The fact that both
were unplanned and therefore in a profound sense spon-
taneous explains both facts — the fact that they failed, and
the fact that they transformed the world. We celebrate
today July 14, 1789, or at least some people do. We cele-
brate November 7, 1917, or at least some people do. We do
not celebrate 1848 or 1968. And yet the case can be made
that these dates are as significant, perhaps even more sig-
nificant, than the two that attract so much attention.
1848 was a revolution for popular sovereignty — both
within the nation (down with autocracy) and of the nations
(self-determination, the Völkerfrühling). 1848 was the revo-
lution against the counterrevolution of 1815 (the Restor-
ation, the Concert of Europe). It was a revolution "born at
least as much of hopes as of discontents" (Namier: 1944, 4).
It was certainly not the French Revolution the second time
around. It represented rather an attempt both to fulfill its
97
original h o p e s a n d to overcome its limitations. 1848 was, in

a H e g e l i a n sense, the sublation (Aufhebung) of 1789.
T h e same was true of 1968. It too was born of hopes at
least as m u c h as discontents. It too was a revolution against
the counterrevolution represented by t h e US organization
of its world h e g e m o n y as of 1945. It too was an a t t e m p t to
fulfill the original goals of t h e R u s s i a n Revolution, while
very m u c h an effort to overcome t h e limitations of that revo-
lution. It too therefore was a sublation, a sublation this t i m e
of 1917.
T h e parallel goes further. 1848 was a failure — a failure
in France, a failure in t h e rest of Europe. So too was 1968.
In b o t h cases the b u b b l e of p o p u l a r enthusiasm a n d radical
innovation was burst within a relatively short period. In
b o t h cases, however, the political ground-rules of t h e world-
system were profoundly a n d irrevocably c h a n g e d as a result
of t h e revolution. It was 1848 which institutionalized t h e old
left (using this t e r m broadly). A n d it was 1968 that insti-
tutionalized the new social m o v e m e n t s . Looking forward,
1848 was in this sense the great rehearsal for the Paris
C o m m u n e a n d the Russian Revolution, for the Baku
Congress a n d Bandoeng. 1968 was the rehearsal for what?
T h e lesson that oppressed groups learned f r o m 1848 was
that it w o u l d not be easy to transform t h e system, a n d t h a t
the likelihood that "spontaneous" uprisings w o u l d in fact be
a b l e to accomplish s u c h a transformation was rather small.
T w o things seemed clear as a result. T h e states were suf-
ficiently bureaucratized a n d appropriately organized to
function well as machineries to p u t d o w n rebellions. O c c a -
sionally, b e c a u s e of wars or internal political divisions
a m o n g powerful strata, their repressive m a c h i n e r y might
buckle a n d a "revolution" seem to be possible. But t h e
machineries could usually be pulled together quickly
e n o u g h to p u t d o w n the putative or abortive revolution.
Secondly, the states could easily be controlled by t h e
powerful strata t h r o u g h a c o m b i n a t i o n of t h e latter's eco-
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The Great Rehearsal
n o m i c strength, their political organization, a n d their cul-

tural h e g e m o n y (to use Gramsci's t e r m of a later period).
Since the states could control t h e masses a n d the power-
ful strata could control t h e states, it was clear that a serious
effort of social transformation would require counter-
organization — b o t h politically a n d culturally. It is this
perception that led to the formation for t h e first t i m e of
bureaucratically organized antisystemic m o v e m e n t s with
relatively clear m i d d l e - t e r m objectives. T h e s e movements,
in their two great variants of the social a n d t h e national
m o v e m e n t , began to a p p e a r on the scene after 1848, a n d their
n u m b e r s , geographic spread, a n d organizational efficiency
grew steady in the century that followed.
W h a t 1848 accomplished therefore was t h e historic turn-
ing of antisystemic forces towards a f u n d a m e n t a l political
strategy — that of seeking the intermediate goal of obtain-
ing state power (one way or another) as the indispensable
way-station on the road to transforming society a n d the
world. To be sure, m a n y a r g u e d against this strategy, but
they were defeated in the debates. Over t h e following
century, the o p p o n e n t s of this strategy grew weaker as t h e
p r o p o n e n t s of the strategy grew stronger.
1917 b e c a m e such a big symbol b e c a u s e it was t h e first
d r a m a t i c victory of the p r o p o n e n t s of t h e state-power
strategy (and in its revolutionary, as opposed to its evo-
lutionary, variant). 1917 proved it could be d o n e . A n d this
time, unlike in 1848, the revolutionary government was
neither s u b o r n e d nor overturned. It survived. 1917 m a y
have b e e n the most d r a m a t i c instance b u t it was not of
c o u r s e the only instance of successes, at least partial, of this
strategy. T h e Mexican Revolution beginning in 1910 a n d t h e
C h i n e s e Revolution of 1911 c u l m i n a t i n g in 1949 also
seemed to demonstrate the worth of the strategy, for
example.
By 1945, or p e r h a p s m o r e accurately by the 1950s, t h e
strategy seemed to be b e a r i n g fruit a r o u n d t h e world. All
99
three m a j o r variants of the historic "old left" antisystemic

m o v e m e n t s — the T h i r d International C o m m u n i s t s , the
Second International Social D e m o c r a t s , a n d t h e nationalist
m o v e m e n t s (especially those outside E u r o p e ) — could point
to notable successes: the a r m e d struggle of the C o m m u n i s t
parties in Yugoslavia a n d C h i n a , the massive 1945 electoral
victory of the L a b o u r Party in Great Britain, nationalist
t r i u m p h s in I n d i a a n d Indonesia. It seemed b u t a m a t t e r of
d e c a d e s until the goals of 1848 w o u l d be realized in every
corner of the globe. T h i s widespread o p t i m i s m of t h e anti-
systemic forces was nonetheless quite exaggerated, for two
reasons.
O n e , the institutionalization of US h e g e m o n y in t h e
world-system as of 1945 m a d e possible a generalized coun-
terrevolutionary thrust to slow d o w n t h e p a c e of t h e grow-
ing political strength of the antisystemic m o v e m e n t s . T h e
US sought to "contain" the bloc of C o m m u n i s t states led by
t h e U S S R . A n d in Greece, in Western E u r o p e , in Korea,
they succeeded in such " c o n t a i n m e n t . " T h e US govern-
m e n t sought to "defang" t h e Western labor a n d social-
d e m o c r a t i c parties by rigidifying historic differences
between t h e Second a n d T h i r d Internationals a n d b y erect-
ing " a n t i - C o m m u n i s m " as an ideological carapace. T h i s
a t t e m p t too was largely successful, within the US itself a n d
elsewhere. T h e U S sought t o slow d o w n , dilute, a n d / o r
coopt the political expressions of T h i r d W o r l d nationalism
a n d , with some notable exceptions like Vietnam, this effort
too was largely successful.
W e r e the counterrevolution all that h a d occurred poli-
tically, however, its effect w o u l d have b e e n m o m e n t a r y at
most. A second t h i n g occurred to d a m p e n t h e optimism of
the antisystemic forces. T h e m o v e m e n t s in power
p e r f o r m e d less well t h a n h a d been expected; far less well.
Already in the interwar period, t h e Soviet experience of t h e
1930s — the terrors a n d the errors — h a d shaken the
world's antisystemic movements. But in a sense Hitler a n d
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The Great Rehearsal
the long struggle of the Second W o r l d W a r washed away

m u c h of the dismay. However, the terrors a n d t h e errors
repeated themselves after 1945 in o n e C o m m u n i s t state
after another. Nor did t h e social-democratic governments
look that good, engaged as they were in colonial repression.
A n d , as o n e T h i r d W o r l d nationalist m o v e m e n t after
a n o t h e r created regimes that seemed to have their own fair
share of terrors a n d errors, t h e o p t i m i s m of t h e antisystemic
forces b e g a n to be eroded.
W h i l e the US, a n d m o r e generally t h e u p p e r strata of t h e
world-system, attacked the antisystemic m o v e m e n t s exo-
genously as it were, the m o v e m e n t s w e r e simultaneously
suffering ailments e n d o g e n o u s to t h e m , ailments which
increasingly seemed to be themselves "part of the p r o b l e m . "
It is in reaction to this d o u b l e (exogenous a n d endo-
genous) difficulty of the traditional old left m o v e m e n t s that
the new social m o v e m e n t s emerged, m o r e or less in the
1960s. T h e s e new m o v e m e n t s were concerned with the
strength a n d survivability of the forces that d o m i n a t e d t h e
world-system. B u t they were also concerned with w h a t they
felt was the p o o r performance, even the negative per-
formance, of the world's old left movements. In the begin-
ning of t h e 1960s, the concern with t h e power a n d the evil of
the p r o p o n e n t s of t h e status q u o was still u p p e r m o s t in t h e
m i n d s of t h e emergent new movements, a n d their concern
with the inefficacies of the old left opposition was still a
secondary consideration. But as the d e c a d e went on, t h e
e m p h a s i s began to shift, as the new m o v e m e n t s b e g a n to be
m o r e a n d m o r e critical of the old m o v e m e n t s . At first t h e
n e w elements sought to be "reformist" of the tactics of t h e
old antisystemic m o v e m e n t s . Later, they often b r o k e
outright with t h e m a n d even attacked t h e m frontally. We
c a n n o t u n d e r s t a n d 1968 unless we see it as simultaneously
a cri de coeur against t h e evils of t h e world-system a n d a fun-
d a m e n t a l questioning of the strategy of t h e old left oppo-
sition to t h e world-system.
101
At its height, and w h e n it had reached the highest level of

screeching, the new left accused the old left of live sins:
weakness, corruption, connivance, neglect, a n d arrogance.
T h e weakness was said to be the inefficacy of the old anti-
systemic m o v e m e n t s (the Social D e m o c r a t s in the West, the
C o m m u n i s t s in the East, the nationalist governments in the
South) in constraining the militarism, t h e exploitation, the
imperialism, t h e racism, of t h e d o m i n a n t forces in the
world-system. T h e attitude t o w a r d s the war in Vietnam
b e c a m e a touchstone on this issue. T h e corruption was said
to be the fact that certain strata h a d , t h r o u g h the efforts of
past antisystemic action, achieved certain material con-
cessions a n d allowed their militance to be softened by this
fact. T h e connivance was the charge of corruption taken
o n e step further. It was said to be the willingness of certain
strata worldwide actually to profit by t h e exploitation in the
system, albeit at a lower level t h a n that of the d o m i n a n t
strata. T h e neglect was said to be the obtuseness a b o u t , if
not conscious ignoring of, the interests of t h e truly dis-
possessed, the real lower strata of t h e world-system (the
subproletarians, the ethnic a n d racial minorities, a n d of
course t h e women). T h e a r r o g a n c e was said to be the
c o n t e m p t of the leadership of t h e old m o v e m e n t s for t h e
real p r o b l e m s of the lower strata, a n d their ideological self-
assurance.
T h e s e were h e a d y charges a n d they were not m a d e all at
once, or from the outset. It was an evolution f r o m the mild
questioning of t h e Port H u r o n f o u n d i n g statement of S D S
in 1962 to the W e a t h e r m e n in 1969 a n d after, or f r o m t h e
conventional views (if militantly i m p l e m e n t e d ) of S N C C in
the early 1960s to those of the Black P o w e r m o v e m e n t s of
the late 1960s. It was an evolution from t h e J e u n e s s e
E t u d i a n t e C o m m u n i s t e in F r a n c e in t h e early 1960s w h o
dared to be "pro-Italian," to the barricades of M a y 1968 in
Paris (and the virtually open b r e a k with t h e C G T a n d PCF).
It was an evolution f r o m the P r a g u e Spring which emerged
102
The Great Rehearsal
in late 1967 to the founding of Solidarnosc in 1980.

W h e n 1968 exploded — in C o l u m b i a University, in
Paris, in Prague, in Mexico City a n d Tokyo, in t h e Italian
O c t o b e r — it was an explosion. T h e r e was no central
direction, no calculated tactical planning. T h e explosion
was in a sense as m u c h of a surprise to the participants as to
those against w h o m it was directed. T h e most surprised
were the old left movements who could not u n d e r s t a n d how
they could be attacked from w h a t seemed to t h e m so unfair
a n d so politically dangerous a perspective.
But the explosion was very powerful, shattering m a n y
authority relations, a n d shattering above all the Cold W a r
consensus on both sides. Ideological hegemonies were chal-
lenged everywhere and the retreat, both of the powerful
strata of the world-system and of the leadership of the old
left antisystemic movements, was real. As we have already
said, the retreat turned out to be temporary and the new
movements were checked everywhere. But the changes in
power relations effected by the movements were not
reversed.
The Legacies of 1968
F o u r m a i n changes can be distinguished. First, while the

balance of military power between West a n d East has not
changed appreciably since 1968, the capabilities of either
the West or the East to police the South have b e c o m e
limited. T h e T e t Offensive of early 1968 has remained to
this day a symbol of the impotence of capital-intensive
warfare in curbing the intelligence a n d will of T h i r d World
peoples. Within live years of the offensive, the U S A was
forced to withdraw from Vietnam, and a new era in N o r t h -
South relations began.
T h e most dramatic expression of this new era has been
the frustration of the US government's multifarious
103
a t t e m p t s to bring the Iranian people b a c k to "reason." It is

no exaggeration to say that events in Iran since the late
1970s have h a d far greater inlluence on the internal affairs
of the U S A (notably on the rise a n d d e m i s e of R e a g a n i s m )
t h a n events in the U S A have h a d on the internal affairs of
Iran. T h i s frustration is n o t t h e s y m p t o m of s o m e peculiar
weakness of the U n i t e d States as world power, or excep-
tional strength of the Iranian state as an antisystemic force.
R a t h e r , it is a s y m p t o m of the increased national sover-
eignty enjoyed by T h i r d W o r l d peoples in general since the
withdrawal of the US f r o m V i e t n a m . T h e close parallel
b e t w e e n the recent experience of the U S S R in Afghanistan
a n d that of the US in V i e t n a m provides f u r t h e r evidence
that the u n p r e c e d e n t e d a c c u m u l a t i o n of m e a n s of violence
in the h a n d s of the two superpowers simply r e p r o d u c e s the
b a l a n c e of terror b e t w e e n the two, but adds nothing to their
capabilities to police the world, least of all its peripheral
regions.
Secondly, t h e c h a n g e s in p o w e r relations between status-
groups such as age-groups, genders, a n d "ethnicities," a
m a j o r c o n s e q u e n c e of the 1968 revolution, have also proved
to be far m o r e lasting t h a n the m o v e m e n t s which b r o u g h t
t h e m to world attention. T h e s e c h a n g e s are registered
primarily in the h i d d e n a b o d e s of everyday life a n d as such
a r e less easy to discern t h a n changes in interstate power
relations. Nevertheless, we can say with s o m e confidence
t h a t even after 1973 ( w h e n most m o v e m e n t s h a d subsided),
t h e c o m m a n d s of d o m i n a n t status-groups (such as older
generations, males, "majorities") c o n t i n u e d in general to
b e c o m e less likely to be obeyed by s u b o r d i n a t e status-
groups (younger generations, females, "minorities") t h a n
they ever were before 1968. T h i s d i m i n i s h e d power of
d o m i n a n t status-groups is particularly evident in core coun-
tries b u t may be observed to varying degrees in semiperi-
pheral a n d peripheral countries as well.
Thirdly, a n d closely related to t h e above, pre-1968 power
104
The Great Rehearsal
relations between capital and labor have never b e e n

restored. In this connection, we should not be deceived by
the experience of particular national segments of the
capital—labor relation or by the short-term vicissitudes of
the overall relation. W h a t m u s t be assessed is the likelihood
t h a t the c o m m a n d s of t h e functionaries of capital be obeyed
by their subordinates over the entire spatial d o m a i n of the
capitalist world-economy, a n d over a period of time long
e n o u g h to allow for t h e interplay of c o m m a n d s a n d
responses to affect the relations of p r o d u c t i o n a n d the
distribution of resources. F r o m this point of view, the
central fact of the 1970s a n d 1980s has b e e n the growing
frustration experienced by the functionaries of capital in
their global search for safe havens of labor discipline. M a n y
of the locales that in t h e early 1970s seemed to provide
capitalist p r o d u c t i o n with a viable alternative to the restive
labor environments of the core zone have themselves
t u r n e d , one after a n o t h e r , into loci of labor unrest —
Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Iran, South Africa, a n d , most
recently, South Korea. We m a y well say t h a t since 1968 t h e
functionaries of capital have b e e n "on the run." A n d while
this heightened geographical mobility has t e n d e d to
d a m p e n the unruliness of labor in the places f r o m which
the functionaries of capital have lied, it has t e n d e d to have
the opposite effect in the places in which they have settled.
Finally, in the 1970s and 1980s, civil society at large has
b e e n far less responsive to the c o m m a n d s of the b e a r e r s (or
w o u l d - b e bearers) of state power t h a n it h a d b e e n before
1968. A l t h o u g h a general p h e n o m e n o n , this diminished
power of states over civil society has b e e n most evident in
the semiperiphery, w h e r e it has t a k e n the form of a crisis of
"bourgeois" a n d "proletarian" dictatorships alike. Since
1973, "bourgeois" dictatorships have b e e n displaced by
d e m o c r a t i c regimes in southern E u r o p e (Portugal, Greece,
Spain), East Asia (Philippines, South Korea), a n d in Latin
America (most notably Brazil a n d Argentina).
105
Alongside this crisis, indeed preceding a n d following it,

has developed the crisis of the so-called dictatorships of the
proletariat. Notwithstanding the m a n y a n d real differences
that set the P r a g u e Spring a n d the C h i n e s e Cultural Revo-
lution apart, the two movements h a d o n e thing in c o m m o n :
they were assaults on the dictatorship of the officials (pri-
marily b u t not exclusively on t h e dictatorship of the
C o m m u n i s t Party's officials) dressed up as a dictatorship of
the proletariat. In C h i n a , the assault was so violent a n d
u n r e s t r a i n e d as to deal a fatal blow to that dictatorship.
Subsequently, party rule could be re-established (as it has
been) only by a c c o m m o d a t i n g d e m a n d s for greater grass-
roots democracy a n d economic decentralization. In
Czechoslovakia, a nonviolent a n d restrained assault was p u t
down speedily t h r o u g h Soviet military intervention. Yet,
between 1970 a n d 1980 t h e challenge re-emerged in a m o r e
formidable fashion in Poland, eventually shaking t h e Soviet
leadership's confidence in the possibility of p a t c h i n g up a
c r u m b l i n g hegemony indefinitely by m e a n s of repression
a n d purely cosmetic changes in party dictatorship.
F r o m all these points of view, 1968 is alive a n d well in t h e
sense that its objective of altering the "balance of power in
the world social system in favor of s u b o r d i n a t e groups has
been highly successful. Yet, this success has been accom-
p a n i e d by an equally remarkable failure to improve the
material welfare of these s u b o r d i n a t e groups. To be sure,
some material benefits did a c c r u e to s u b o r d i n a t e groups as
a whole from the c h a n g e in the balance of power. But most
of these benefits have accrued to only a minority within
each group, leaving the majority w i t h o u t any net gain,
p e r h a p s even with a net loss.
T h i s t e n d e n c y has been most evident a m o n g T h i r d
W o r l d states. T h e oil-producing states w e r e able to take
advantage of the new balance of p o w e r in t h e interstate
system by c h a r g i n g after 1973 a m u c h higher rent for the
use of their natural resources t h a n they were ever able to do
106
The Great Rehearsal
before 1968. T h i s a d v a n t a g e lasted a b o u t ten years. A few

other T h i r d W o r l d states have been able to step up their
own industrialization by taking advantage of t h e relocation
of industrial activities from core countries. H o w m u c h of a
gain this will constitute by the 1990s remains to be seen.
But most T h i r d World states, caught between higher prices
for energy resources a n d stiffer competition from newly
industrializing countries, have experienced even greater
impoverishment a n d u n d e r d e v e l o p m e n t t h a n they did
before 1968.
Similar considerations apply to the other s u b o r d i n a t e
groups. T h u s , over the last fifteen years t h e progressive
b r e a k d o w n of generational, gender, a n d ethnic barriers to
the circulation of elites (which has benefitted quite a few
m e m b e r s of each group) has been a c c o m p a n i e d by y o u t h
u n e m p l o y m e n t , d o u b l e exploitation of women, a n d the
immiseration of "minorities" pn an u n p r e c e d e n t e d scale. As
for the change in the balance of power between labor a n d
capital its benefits have accrued mostly to workers engaged
in stepping up t h e a u t o m a t i o n of labor processes, or in
servicing the e x p a n d e d markets for elites, or in r u n n i n g the
relocated plants in their new locations. For t h e rest, t h e
gains of the late 1960s a n d early 1970s have been eroded, at
first by t h e great inflation of t h e 1970s a n d t h e n by t h e
u n e m p l o y m e n t of the 1980s. It is p r o b a b l y too early to
assess w h o is benefitting a n d who is losing in material t e r m s
from the crisis of dictatorships. But h e r e too t h e preliminary
record seems to indicate that the material benefits of greater
d e m o c r a c y have a c c r u e d only to a small fraction of t h e
population.
In all directions we a r e faced with the a p p a r e n t p a r a d o x
that a favorable c h a n g e in the b a l a n c e of power has b r o u g h t
little or no c h a n g e in material benefit to t h e majority of each
s u b o r d i n a t e group. T h i s a p p a r e n t p a r a d o x has t h e simple
explanation that the reproduction of material welfare in a
capitalist world-economy is conditional u p o n the political
107
a n d social s u b o r d i n a t i o n of the actual a n d potential labor-

ing masses. To the extent that this s u b o r d i n a t i o n is less-
ened, t h e propensity of the capitalist world-economy to
r e p r o d u c e a n d e x p a n d material welfare is lessened too.
T h e history of the capitalist w o r l d - e c o n o m y since 1973
has b e e n the history of its a d j u s t m e n t to the social
upheavals of the previous five years. T h e a d j u s t m e n t has
been problematic, leading s o m e to speak of a general crisis
of capitalism, because of t h e scope, s u d d e n n e s s , a n d simul-
taneity of the changes in power relations ushered in by the
social upheavals. W h e n changes in p o w e r relations are
limited a n d piecemeal, as they usually are, the capitalist
world-economy can a c c o m m o d a t e w i t h o u t difficulty imper-
ceptible changes in the overall allocation of resources a n d
distribution of rewards. But w h e n the changes are n u m e r -
ous, significant, and simultaneous, as they were in t h e
period 1968-1973, their a c c o m m o d a t i o n involves long a n d
serious disruptions in established patterns of social a n d
e c o n o m i c life.
T h e i n a d e q u a t e access to m e a n s of production, of
exchange, a n d of protection t h a t characterizes s u b o r d i n a t e
groups makes the latter particularly vulnerable to these
disruptions. We should not be surprised, therefore, if m o s t
m e m b e r s of the s u b o r d i n a t e groups have experienced little
or no i m p r o v e m e n t over the last fifteen years in their
m a t e r i a l welfare, notwithstanding, nay even because of, the
i m p r o v e m e n t in their p o w e r position. O n e may w o n d e r ,
however, w h e t h e r this failure of a m o r e favorable balance of
power to deliver welfare might n o t be swinging t h e balance
of power back in favor of d o m i n a n t groups.
T h e cultural a n d political backlash of the late 1970s a n d
of the 1980s against everything that 1968 stood for seems to
suggest that this is indeed what is h a p p e n i n g . W h i l e still
paying lip-service to T h i r d W o r l d solidarity, T h i r d W o r l d
states have been engaged in widespread feuding a n d intense
e c o n o m i c competition a m o n g themselves. T h e y o u n g e r
112
The Great Rehearsal
generations, the w o m e n , the "minorities" have all switched,

albeit to different degrees, f r o m collective to individual
concerns, while class solidarity a n d unity of political
p u r p o s e a m o n g workers are in most places at an historical
low. A n d in the epicenters of the struggle for political
democracy, the desire for m o r e a n d greater f r e e d o m s is
often paralyzed by fears of economic disruption.
T h e r e is no denying t h a t f r o m all these points of view
1968 is d e a d a n d b u r i e d a n d cannot be revived by the
thoughts and actions of the nostalgic few. G r a n t e d this, we
m u s t nonetheless distinguish carefully between the move-
m e n t s a n d ideologies of 1968 a n d the u n d e r l y i n g structural
transformations that preceded and outlived those move-
ments and ideologies. T h e s e structural transformations are
the o u t c o m e of secular trends of the capitalist world-
economy, a n d as such cannot be reversed by any unfavor-
able c o n j u n c t u r e that might e n s u e f r o m their o p e n
manifestation.
T h u s , A d a m Smith (1961: II, 213-31) long a g o pointed
o u t the negative long-term impact of an ever w i d e n i n g a n d
d e e p e n i n g division of labor on the martial qualities of the
peoples t h a t a r e most directly involved in it. T h e greater
specialization and mechanization of w a r activities t h e m -
selves could c o u n t e r this negative impact, b u t only up to a
point. At the beginning of o u r century, J o s e p h S c h u m p e t e r
m a d e a similar point in support of his a r g u m e n t that capi-
talist d e v e l o p m e n t u n d e r m i n e s the capabilities (as opposed
to the propensities) of states to engage in imperialist wars:
The competitive system absorbs the full energies of most of the

people at all economic levels. Constant application, attention,
and concentration of energy are the conditions of survival
within it, primarily in the specifically economic professions,
but also in other activities organized on their model . . . . In a
purely capitalist world, what was once energy for war becomes
simply energy for labor of every kind (1955: 69).
109
To this we need only to add that the spatial unevenness of

capitalist development has t e n d e d to u n d e r m i n e the martial
qualities of peoples precisely in those states w h e r e it has
tended to concentrate wealth. Up to a point, core states
have been able to counter the ensuing change in b a l a n c e of
power implicit in this tendency t h r o u g h an ever-increasing
capital intensity of war. But at a certain point — as the
experience of the US in Vietnam a n d of the U S S R in
Afghanistan have shown in exemplary fashion — f u r t h e r
increases in the capital intensity of war bring rapidly
decreasing returns, particularly w h e n it comes to policing
the periphery of the world-economy.
T h e s a m e processes t h a t u n d e r m i n e the p o w e r of core
states over peripheral states over the longue duree of the capi-
talist world-system also u n d e r m i n e the power of capital
over labor, of d o m i n a n t over s u b o r d i n a t e status-groups, of
states over civil society. An ever widening a n d deepening
division of labor m a k e s capital increasingly vulnerable to
workplace acts of protest a n d passive resistance on the part
of s u b o r d i n a t e workers, regardless of the level of class
consciousness a n d organization expressed by those acts
(see, in particular, chapter 1 above; a n d Arrighi & Silver,
1984). In order to reproduce, or re-establish, t h e c o m m a n d
of capital over labor in the workplace, t h e functionaries of
capital a r e i n d u c e d to mobilize an ever-growing p r o p o r t i o n
of t h e labor force in wage activities b u t by so doing they
revolutionize power relations between t h e genders and
a m o n g age-groups a n d "ethnicities." Last b u t not least, the
growing complexity of the division of labor within and
across political jurisdictions makes the exercise of state
power over civil society increasingly problematic.
T h e s e are the kinds of process that p r e p a r e d the g r o u n d
for, a n d eventually gave rise to, t h e m o v e m e n t s of 1968.
Being processes of t h e longue duree, t h e i r unfolding s p a n s the
entire lifetime of the capitalist world-economy. T h e explo-
sions of 1968 a n d their a f t e r m a t h can be interpreted as
110
The Great Rehearsal
symptom of the fact that the system is approaching its

historical asymptote. 1968, with its successes and failures,
was thus a prelude, better, a rehearsal, of things to come.
1968: A Rehearsal of What?
If 1968 is analogous to 1848 as a failed world-scale revo-

lution and as a world-historical great rehearsal, for what
sort of world-revolution may it be the great rehearsal? Can
we on analogy project today's underlying secular trends,
specify w h a t was new about yesterday's new social move-
ments, and thereby sketch in advance likely trajectories of
the confrontations and progressive social changes they
suggest? As we move chronologically towards the 1990s and
the 2000s, our historical social system, the capitalist world-
economy, continues to be faced with difficulties in four
principal arenas.
First, the interstate system is marked by a military stand-
off between the US and the U S S R and the evident inability
of either to control matters of consequence in states of the
periphery. Hegemony is giving way to its conceptual
counterpoint, the condition of rivalry. T h e possible realign-
ments of alliances between the live m a j o r actors — the US,
the U S S R , Western Europe, J a p a n , and C h i n a — are only
now beginning. And everyone is approaching such realign-
ments most gingerly and most fearfully. Hence, US
hegemony is being eroded without any clear, and therefore
reassuring, world order to replace it. Meanwhile, markets of
all sorts — capital, capital goods, labor, wage-goods (ord-
inary), wage-goods ("durable") — are evolving at a rapid
pace. T h e y are becoming less and less regulated social
m e c h a n i s m s of the circuits of capital and m o r e and m o r e
loci of speculation (what liberals call "market forces") and
increasingly show (as on 19 October 1987 in equity prices)
the kind of jagged price movements which are at once their
777
h a l l m a r k a n d the reason for their always a n d everywhere

being objects of regulation.
Possibly the G r o u p of Seven (with the I B R D , I M F , a n d
BIS) can impose renewed order. Possibly the trans-
nationals' ingestion of markets t h r o u g h vertical integration
(and the analogous organization of their c o u n t e r p a r t s in
countries of existing socialism) is sufficient for t h e m to
a b s o r b a n d so to d a m p e n the price m o v e m e n t s . W h e t h e r ,
in this sense, the world-scale centralizing of capital is his-
torically far e n o u g h advanced (as suggested by "the abso-
lute general law") to replace the interstate system's
market-regulation via h e g e m o n y , we shall all see.
Second, the contradiction between labor a n d capital,
given b o t h the increasing centralization of capital a n d the
increasing marginalization of large sectors of the labor
force, will remain elemental. T h e new social m o v e m e n t s
have increased the worldwide pressure for higher wage-
levels with world capital seeking ever m o r e to respond to
this pressure by reducing the size of labor input. As a result,
there has perforce been a rising level of material well-being
for a significant sector of workers a n d a d e e p e n i n g relative
immiseration of m a n y others, h e n c e an absolute a n d rela-
tive increase in the inequalities of well-being a m o n g t h e
world's workers. T h e r e has been t h u s a widening scope for
the m e c h a n i s m of u n e q u a l exchange in world-scale
accumulation.
At the s a m e time, capital's increasing search for safe
havens f r o m organized labor unrest carries with it of course
a growing relocation of industrial proletarianization a n d
hence of collective efforts to control that process a n d / o r to
ameliorate its effects. T h e net result m a y well be an increas-
ingly class-conscious focus to the nationalist sentiment that
pervades the zones outside the core, particularly in semi-
peripheral states (see chapter 3 above). Similar p h e n o m e n a
are increasingly occurring is socialist states, notably (but
certainly not only) in Poland.
112
The Great Rehearsal
Third, the ability of states to control their civil societies is

diminishing. Historically, it is t h r o u g h the constitution of
civil society, a n d its s u b s e q u e n t extension — notably,
t h r o u g h the 1848-engendered "incorporation of the working
classes into society" of the late nineteenth a n d early twen-
tieth centuries — that one traces the successive trans-
formations of the m o n a r c h i e s a n d patriciates of the nascent
capitalist world-economy into its constituent a n d still evol-
ving states. T h e organizing contradiction f r o m t h e inception
of stateness, state power versus civil rights a n d liberties,
r e m a i n s central to the state—civil society relation. O v e r time,
of course, the scope of each has greatly e x p a n d e d , t h u s
s h a r p e n i n g the struggle, which t h e post-1968 world-scale
" h u m a n rights" m o v e m e n t s profoundly reflect. T h e notion
t h a t ruling strata seek to legitimate their rule — so that they
are as morally obligated to c o m m a n d as those they claim to
rule are morally obligated to c o m p l y — is b o t h very old a n d
very widespread.
W e b e r ' s central theoretical claim (1968: I, 212-307) —
that certain beliefs in p o p u l a r consciousness are an indis-
pensable condition of routine c o m p l i a n c e a n d so of t h e
"stability" of the relational network administering the rules
— remains plausible. However, the very increase in the
efficiency of the ways in which each state controls its civil
society, the expansion of an i n s t r u m e n t a l bureaucracy, itself
creates the limits of its efficacy by generating an ever m o r e
widespread skepticism a m o n g those w h o m the b u r e a u c r a c y
is administering. T h e reach of authority has c o m e to be
m o r e a n d m o r e d e n i e d , a s b o t h t h e U S a n d U S S R govern-
m e n t s a m o n g others, have increasingly discovered. 1968
symbolized the outburst of such skepticism. F o r a while, t h e
c o m i n g to state power of old social m o v e m e n t s limited this
corrosion of authority. B u t these n e w regimes were quickly
swept up in t h e increasingly "anti-state" consciousness of
t h e m a s s of the population.
T h i s process has been spectacularly abetted by the
113
impact of new technology on the ability of states to control

their space. Electronification is physically different f r o m
electrification a n d does not so m u c h abridge the space of
social relations as abridge t h e capacity to control social
relations t h r o u g h controlling their space. T h e implications
for stateness remain to be explicated — and experienced.
But t h e control of populations t h r o u g h controlling t h e
space they a n d their relations with o n e a n o t h e r occupy —
as citizenry, as communities, as individuals — is in the
process of being f u n d a m e n t a l l y u n d e r m i n e d in the two key
directions formed by the m o d e r n world-system's spatial
jurisdictions; within states a n d between states.
F o u r t h , the d e m a n d s of t h e disadvantaged status-groups
— of gender, of generation, of ethnicity, of race, of sexuality
— will get ever stronger. We m u s t h e a r G a l l a u d e t here a n d
a d d the physically h a n d i c a p p e d , w h o c o m p r i s e t h e t r u e
pariah s t r a t u m of historical capitalism. All six status-group
relations are deeply different o n e f r o m a n o t h e r , a n d even
m o r e so in their specificities in the world's social structures,
b u t they share three features. Each was a g r o u n d of a new
left r e p r o a c h of the old left. Each in a very real sense is as
m u c h a contradiction a m o n g the people as an element of
the c a p i t a l - l a b o r or state-civil society contradiction. A n d
the oppressed of e a c h explicitly seek not t h e t u r n i n g of t h e
tables b u t social equality, not only structurally b u t ideo-
logically as well (in the sense of the elimination f r o m social
consciousness of presumptions of superiority/inferiority in
relations of g e n d e r , generation, ethnicity, race, sexuality,
able-bodiedness).
We therefore project p r o b a b l e realignments in the alli-
ance systems of t h e interstate system along with increased
s h a r p economic fluctuations, a s h a r p e n e d (and in particular
a geographically widened) class struggle, an increasing
inability of states to control their civil societies, a n d a
persistent reinforcement of the claims to equality by all the
disadvantaged status-groups. It is very unclear, in the
114
The Great Rehearsal
n a t u r e of things, where this will lead. After 1848, the world's

old left were sure that 1917 w o u l d occur. T h e y a r g u e d
about how a n d where and when. But t h e m i d d l e - r a n g e
objective of p o p u l a r sovereignty was clear. After 1968, t h e
world's antisystemic m o v e m e n t s — t h e old a n d the new
ones together — showed r a t h e r less clarity a b o u t the
m i d d l e - r a n g e objective. T h e y have t e n d e d therefore to
concentrate on short-range ones. T h e r e is clearly a d a n g e r
that if organizations concentrate on short-range objectives,
even in the n a m e of long-range ideals, they m a y sacrifice
m i d d l e - r a n g e success or even m i d d l e - r u n survival.
We have no answer to the question: 1968, rehearsal for
what? In a sense, t h e answers d e p e n d on the ways in which
the w o r l d w i d e family of antisystemic m o v e m e n t s will
rethink its m i d d l e - r u n strategy in t h e t e n or twenty years to
c o m e . 1917, for good or ill, was the result of an e n o r m o u s
a m o u n t of collective a n d conscious effort by the world's old
left in t h e years following 1848. No d o u b t it was also the
result of structural developments in the capitalist world-
e c o n o m y . But it would not have h a p p e n e d without h u m a n
organization a n d revolutionary p r o g r a m s .
T h e risks of drifting are very clear. T h e t e n a n t s of the
status q u o have not given up, however m u c h their position
is w e a k e n e d structurally and ideologically. T h e y still have
e n o r m o u s power and are using it to reconstruct a new
inegalitarian world order. T h e y could succeed. Or the
world could disintegrate, f r o m a nuclear or an ecological
catastrophe. Or it could be reconstructed in t h e ways in
which people hoped, in 1848, in 1968.
115
References
A m i n , S a m i r (1974). Accumulation on a World Scale. N e w

York: M o n t h l y Review Press.
Arrighi, Giovanni, H o p k i n s , T e r e n c e K., & Wallerstein,
I m m a n u e l (1987). " T h e Liberation of Class Struggle?"
Review, X, 3, Winter, 403-24.
Arrighi, Giovanni & Silver, Beverly J. (1984). " L a b o r
M o v e m e n t s a n d Capital Migration: T h e U n i t e d States
a n d Western E u r o p e in World-Historical Perspective," in
C. Bergquist, ed., Labor in the Capitalist World-Economy.
Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 183-216.
Carr, E . H . (1969). The October Revolution, Before and After.
N e w York: Knopf.
Fröbel, Folker, Heinrichs, J ü r g e n & Kreye, Otto (1980).
The New International Division of Labour. C a m b r i d g e :
C a m b r i d g e University Press.
H o p k i n s , T e r e n c e K. & Wallerstein, I m m a n u e l (1981).
"Structural T r a n s f o r m a t i o n s of the W o r l d - E c o n o m y , " in
R. R u b i n s o n , ed., Dynamics of World Development. Beverly
Hills: Sage Publications, 249-59.
Lin Biao (1967). " M a o T s e - t u n g ' s T h e o r y of People's W a r , "
in F. S c h u r m a n n & O. Schell, eds, The China Reader: III,
117
Communist China, Revolutionary Reconstruction and Inter-

national Confrontation, 1949 to the Present. New York:
Vintage Books, 347-59.
Marx, Karl (1959). Capital, Vol. I, Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House.
Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich (1967). The Communist
Manifesto. Harmondsworth: Penguin/NLR.
Marx, Karl (1959). Capital. Vol. I. Moscow: Foreign Langu-
ages Publishing House.
Namier, Sir Lewis (1944). 1848: The Revolution of the Intel-
lectuals, The Raleigh Lecture in History, British
Academy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polanyi, Karl (1957). The Great Transformation. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph (1955). Imperialism and Social Classes.
New York: Meridian Books.
Smith, Adam (1961). The Wealth of Nations. 2 volumes.
London: Methuen.
Thompson, E.P. (1964). The Making of the English Working
Class. New York: Pantheon.
Wallerstein, Immanuel (1980). "The States in the Insti-
tutional Vortex of the Capitalist World-Economy," Inter-
national Social Science Journal, XXXII, 4, 743-81.
Weber, Max (1946). Essays from Max Weber, ed. H. Gerth &
C.W. Mills. Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press.
Weber, Max (1968). Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth & C.
Wittich. New York: Bedminster Press.
118
Index
a c c u m u l a t i o n , social relations of Baku, C o n g r e s s of 56, 98

41-2,70 B a n d o e n g 98
Afghanistan, Soviet U n i o n a n d banks see under capital
104, 110 BIS (Bank for I n t e r n a t ' l
A m i n , S a m i r 68 Settlements) 49, 90, 112
anarcho-syndicalism 81 Black Power 102
antisystemic m o v e m e n t s Bolsheviks 5 5 - 6 , 65
concept of 1 B o n a p a r t e , N a p o l e o n 55
counterrevolution 100-01 bourgeoisie 6 - 7 , 9 - 1 0
f u t u r e of 115 Brazil 105
national-liberation 27, 3 0 - 3 2 bureaucracy, antisystemic
old swept out by new 102-3 movements and 37-8
organize against state 3 7 - 8 ,
99
perceived to have failed 40 Capital (Marx) 9, 11
rebellion a n d revolution capital
29-30 banks and banking 49-50, 90
r e c e n t 35 capitalist d e v e l o p m e n t of 9 1 - 3
social m o v e m e n t s 3 0 - 3 3 d e b t o r a n d creditor states
state p o w e r and 50 72-4
V i e t n a m as epicenter ol proprietors of 4 - 5
a s y m m e t r y 36 warfare a n d 103, 109-10
see also 1968; revolutions capitalism
a n d rebellions centralization of 4 8 - 5 0 , 72,
antiwar m o v e m e n t s 35 77-8,94-5,112
A r g e n t i n a 105 d e v e l o p m e n t of capital 9 1 - 3
aristocracy 9 monopolistic 12-14, 19
77 9
Index
m u l t i n a t i o n a l firms 47—8, c o m m u n i t y , vs state 4 5 - 6

71-72, 90-91 Czechoslovakia, P r a g u e Spring
new relationship with l a b o r 102-3, 106
91,105, 107, 112
nineteenth-century 1 deindustrialization 49
r a p i d evolution of 111-12
see als o e c o n o m y ; p r o d u c t i o n Eastern Europe, C o m m u n i s t
Carr, E , H , 68 p a r t i e s o f 33
C h i n a 48, 100, 111 Economy and Soaety (Weber)
C u l t u r a l Revolution 36, 37, 14-15
89, 106 economy
n a t i o n a l i s m 56 class a n d 26, 67
r e v o l u t i o n o f 1911 99 effect of 1968 on 107-8
V i e t n a m a n d 35 groupsand 22-3
citizenship 83 intra-elite struggles 6 1 - 3
civil rights 113 M a r x on 11
class 1 national-liberation a n d 7 0 - 7 1
an sich/ftir sich 16-17, 21, 23, 26 separation f r o m state 4 6 - 7
historical analysis of 2 5 - 7 structural t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of
M a r x ' s analysis of 6 - 1 0 18,46-51
S m i t h ' s analysis of 3 - 6 , 10 transterritorial 63
Weber on 14-20 see also capital; capitalism
see also status g r o u p s e d u c a t i o n 83, 84-5
class struggle egalitarianism 5 4 - 5
c o n d i t i o n s for existence of E g y p t 55
63-5 1848
distinct from struggle for clarity of expectations from
wealth 6 1 - 3 115
government indebtedness and effects of 9 8 - 1 0 1
73-4 origin of antisystemic
historical processes 6 7 - 8 m o v e m e n t s 30
nationalist liberation a n d revolution of p o p u l a r
5 3 - 4 , 6 6 - 7 , 69 sovereignty 9 7 - 8
within a state 6 0 - 6 1 electronic village 7 4 - 5
colonialism 57 Engels, F r i e d r i c h 9 1
c o m m u n i c a t i o n 7 4 - 6 , 91 a n d K . M a r x , Communist
television's p o w e r 5 0 - 5 1 Manifestos, 11,50,51,68,
Communist Manifesto ( M a r x & lb
Engels) 9, 11^50,51,68,75 e t h n i c groups 21, 23, 25, 104, 107
C o m m u n i s t parties 37, 100 in workforce 83, 88
achievements of 3 4 - 5 E u r o c e n t r i s m 68
new m o v e m e n t s reject 88, 102 E u r o p e 111
p r e s e n t c o n c e r n s of 4 0 - 4 1
strength of 33 F r a n c e 33, 78, 97, 102
terrors a n d errors of 100-01, M a r x on class in 10
106 Frobel, Folker 71
120
Index
Gaiiev, Sultan 55 change in c o m p o s i t i o n of

G a l l a u d e t , T h o m a s H. 114 82-3,85
G a r i b a l d i , G i u s e p p e 55 c o m m o d i f i c a t i o n of 3 8 - 9 , 40
G e r m a n y 78, 89 divisions of 4 7 - 8 , 68, 7 1 - 2
G e r t h , H a n s 15 new relationship with capital
Gramsci, A n t o n i o 13 91,105, 107, 112
The Great Transformation (Polanyi) o c c u p a t i o n s of 86-7
16n polarization of 85
G r e e c e 100, 105 strength a n d weakness of
G r e e n Party ( G e r m a n y ) 89 9-10,78-80
G r e n a d a , US invasion of 51 l a n d o w n e r s 4, 5
Latin A m e r i c a 89, 105
Haiti, revolution 55 Lenin, V.I.
Heinrichs, J i i r g e n 71 n a t i o n a l vs class liberation
historical process, class struggle 55-6
67-8 ' political e c o n o m y a n d 12-14
Hitler, Adolf 100-01 Lin Biao69
h u m a n rights 9 3
M a o i s m 89
I B R D ( I n t e r n a t ' l Bank for market relations 5, 6, 16, 19-20
Reconstruction a n d M a r x , Karl
D e v e l o p m e n t ) 49, 90, 112 a n d F. Engels, Communist
I M F (Internat'l M o n e t a r y F u n d ) Manifesto 9, 11, 50, 51. 68,
4 9 - 5 0 , 90, 112 75
i m m i g r a n t workers 91 Capital 9, 11
imperialism 13-14, 102 class a n d 6 - 1 0 , 91
I n d i a 55, 100 critique of political e c o n o m y
b o u r g e o i s i e of 2 4 - 5 6-12,26
I n d o n e s i a 100 historical g r o u p s a n d 21
I r a n 104, 105 retreat t o S m i t h i a n p a r a d i g m
Ireland, workers in Britain 24 10
Italy, C o m m u n i s t Party of 33 Marxism
l a b o r m o v e m e n t a n d 81
J a p a n 37, 111 political e c o n o m y a n d 12-14
Jeunesse Etudiante Communiste M e x i c o 37, 99
102 Mills, C. Wright 15
Keynesianism 35
Korea, S o u t h 100, 105 national-liberation
Kossuth, L a j o s 55 achievements of 5 6 - 7
Kreye, O t t o 71 class struggle a n d 5 3 - 4 , 6 6 - 7 ,
69
l a b o r 5, 7 - 8 , 83, 110 e c o n o m y and 7 0 - 7 1
A d a m Smith on 4, 109 ideological t h e m e s of 27, 5 4 - 6
b u r e a u c r a t i c organization realism vs revisionism 59—60
37-40 state sovereignty a n d 5 7 - 6 0
727
Index
n a t i o n a l i s m 93 racism 57, 102

antisystemic m o v e m e n t s m o v e m e n t against 35
30-32 reform, vs revolution 32
g r o u p i n g s 23, 25 revisionism 5 9 - 6 0
1968 revolutions and rebellions
c o n f u s i o n a b o u t objectives 115 C u l t u r a l 36, 37, 89, 106
cry against evils 98, 101-3 non-continuity o f 2 9 - 3 0
legacies of 103-11 r e f o r m vs 32
o u t c o m e of ? 111-15 state m a c h i n e r y to control
Nixon, R i c h a r d M. 35 98-9
N o r t h e r n Ireland, labels for unfulfilled 3 3 - 4 1
p e o p l e 24 w o r l d 97
R u s s i a n Revolution 55-6, 65, 68,
98,99
oil, effect on n a t i o n a l powers
see also Soviet U n i o n
106-7
Paris C o m m u n e 9 8
p a u p e r i s m , official 91, 95 S c h u m p e t e r , J o s e p h 109-10
peasants 79 S D S ( S t u d e n t s for a D e m o c r a t i c
Philippines 105 Society) 102
Poland 103,106 Second I n t e r n a t i o n a l 32, 81, 100
Polanyi, K a r l , The Great S m i t h , A d a m 10, 13
Transformation 16n on division o f l a b o r 109
political e c o n o m y Wealth of Nations 3 - 6 , 7
M a r x ' s critique o f 6 - 1 2 SNCC (Student Non-Violent
M a r x i s m a n d 12-14 Co-ordinating Committee)
politics 102
intra-elite struggles 6 2 - 3 social d e m o c r a t i c parties 8 9 - 9 0 ,
labor movement and 8 1 - 2 100, 101
r e s h a p i n g of s t r u c t u r e 2 2 - 3 achievements of 33, 3 4 - 5 , 40,
Portugal 105 85, 88
power n e w movements reject 88, 102
antisystemic m o v e m e n t s gain social m o v e m e n t s 7 7 - 8 2 , 95
31-3 effect o f l 9 6 8 104, 107, 114
Weber on 15 react against old left 8 8 - 9 0
production, socialism 94
class struggle 64, 67 Soiidarnosc 103
control of 7 - 8 , -108 S o u t h Africa 105
over- 8, 13 Soviet U n i o n
see also capital; capitalism A f g h a n i s t a n a n d 104, 110
proletariat 13, 79 class struggle 6 5 - 6
d i c t a t o r s h i p of 106 repression by 106, 113
Marx on 6-7, 9-10 revolution in power 82
suffers from g o v e r n m e n t seealsoCommunist parties;
indebtedness 73-4 Russian Revolution
property 15,59 Spain 33, 55, 105
722
Index
state T h o m p s o n , E.P, 23
capital vs welfare 9 2 - 3 Turkey 48, 50
civil society a n d o b e d i e n c e 98,
105,113-14,115 unions, b u r e a u c r a c y of 3 7 - 8
class struggles within 15-20, United Kingdom
60-61,64 L a b o u r Party 100
c o m i n g t o power 3 1 - 3 w o r k i n g class 23—4, 78
vs c o m m u n i t y 4 5 - 6 U n i t e d N a t i o n s 44
control of economics 5 U n i t e d States
d e b t o r s a n d creditors 7 2 - 4 economic hegemony 26-7,
illegitimate interference 58 48-9,71
interstate system of 4 2 - 4 erosion of h e g e m o n y 111-12
intrastate n e t w o r k 44 political h e g e m o n y 69, 100,
l a b o r seeks power in 8 1 - 2 103-4
obsolescence of 11 state vs society 113
property 59 s t u d e n t m o v e m e n t 37
r e s h a p i n g of political televised social m o v e m e n t s
structure 2 2 - 3 50-51
restraints on sovereignty of V i e t n a m a n d 3 5 - 6 , 103, 104,
57-60 110
w i d e n i n g a n d deepening of W a r for I n d e p e n d e n c e 55
42-5,51
status g r o u p s 1, 104, 114
value-systems 17
contrast w i t h class 14-20
Vietnam
m o n o p o l i e s 19
epicenter of forces 35—6, 49,
nationalist 25
89, 100, 102, 103
reification of 2 0 - 2 2
national-liberation m o v e m e n t
i^aZfoethnic groups
56
s t u d e n ^ C S , 37
U S a n d 3 5 - 6 , 103, 104, 110
Sweden, reformists in power 82
Switzerland, g r o u p s within 24
Wealth of Nations (Smith) 3 - 6 , 7
technology, t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of W e a t h e r m e n 102
e c o n o m y 18 Weber, M a x 14, 113
T h i r d I n t e r n a t i o n a l 32, 82, 100 Economy and Society 14-15
T h i r d World 100 welfare 9 1 - 2
class struggle a n d 67 Westernism, anti- 9 3 - 4
effect o f l 9 6 8 106-7 w o m e n 104, 107
feuding a m o n g s t n a t i o n s 109 l a b o r a n d 83, 88
national sovereignty of 104 world e c o n o m y . ^ e c o n o m y
new social m o v e m e n t s a n d
88-9 Yugoslavia 100
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Antisystemic Movements

Verso is the i m p r i n t of N e w Left Books

3 T h e Liberation of Class Struggle? 53

5 1968: T h e Great Rehearsal 97

T h i s set of essays is the fruit of a collaboration of m a n y

T h e concept of antisystemic m o v e m e n t s is one which

we could not analyze the movements, either historically or

Rethinking the Concepts of

In his well-known b u t often neglected conclusion to Book I

general one. They also have a better knowledge of their

can find duplicated in c o n t e m p o r a r y class analyses.

to the powers and influence of particular classes or

T h e m o d e r n history of capital dates f r o m the creation in the

T h i s was not a m e r e m a t t e r of trade relations between

compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to a d o p t the b o u r -

T h e world so created was characterized by a highly strati-

J u s t as it has m a d e the country d e p e n d e n t on the towns, so it

T h e second shift implied that the a n t a g o n i s m between the

literature after M a r x : even if we a s s u m e that in the

by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the

It would seem from the above that t h e u n e q u a l relation

subordination in the workplace, a n d c o n s e q u e n t weakening

N o w a n d then the workers are victorious, b u t only for a time.

Alongside this scenario, however, as we indicated, M a r x

A l o n g with the constantly d i m i n i s h i n g n u m b e r of the m a g -

slavery, degradation, exploitation, b u t with this too grows the

T h e essential condition for the existence, a n d for the sway of

Here, therefore, the strengthening of labor in the workplace

Moreover, even at the theoretical level, the shift of focus

Since the proletariat m u s t first of all acquire political

M a r x ' s empirical retreat into political e c o n o m y did not,

of political e c o n o m y by Marxists after M a r x , however. T h e

the twentieth century, undoubtedly warranted a revival of

monopoly capitalism and imperialism were theorized as t h e

of power within the political c o m m u n i t y , " a n d subtitled,

1. W e b e r scholars will k n o w that most h e a d i n g s in the R o t h - W i t t i c h

T h e structure of every legal order directly influences t h e distribution

of honorifically r a n k e d c o m m u n a l groups, t h e basic cate-

2. It is not until Polanyi (in The Great Transformation [1957] and

u n a m b i g u o u s l y the p r e - M a r x conventional political eco-

not entailed in, those that constitute them as classes in

that claims to prestige have always played into the origins of

But extending the scope of stratifying processes,4 so that

3. Weber's one theoretical claim in this section, Section Six of the

their operation within the interstate system of t h e world-

t h e wheel slows down, the white will dissolve into its

5. T h i s t h e m e is developed in Wallerstein (1980).

c a n n o t be explained by the struggle of classes t h a t c a m e

t h e states also h a d to be strong e n o u g h to e n s u r e the very

Of course, t h e exent to which t h e r e e m e r g e d an English

In assuring their "class" interests vis-a-vis both workers in

several h u n d r e d years of the existence of t h e capitalist

ticularly outside of the C o m m u n i s t world, the emphasis in

Opposition to oppression is coterminous with the existence

In t h e early history of t h e capitalist world-economy, the

Social Movements and National Movements

In the course of the nineteenth century, two principal

could be realized, they felt, by replacing capitalism with

be state p o w e r in a particular state. To be sure, the juris-

If one looks at the geography of the movements, one

The Unfulfilled Revolution

H o w are we to appreciate t h e consequences? In gross terms,

different directions. O n the o n e h a n d , these movements,