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World systems, Anti-Systemic Liberation Movements and New Sovereignties

World Systems

‘World Systems’ is a “multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis.”

World-systems theory (sic analysis) was aiming to replace modernization theory, which Wallerstein criticised for three reasons:

World systems provides a grounding for New Sovereignties in a progressive, post-capitalist, post-Westphalian theory with a clear lineage. Having a lineage demonstrates a certain universality to the struggle (for perhaps better and worse, worse in the sense that it may not offer anything new), helps contextualize and historicize the libertory elements of the project, provides “coordinates” to understand the contingent aspects of the moment we’re in, and gives more material to draw on— perhaps even strategic material.

“Antisystemic” movements

“The” world system is “the modern capitalist world-system.” “Antisystemic” movements are movements against the modern capitalist world system. “Antisystemic” is a way of describing movements to fight modern capitalism that doesn’t doesn’t presume or reify the state, but can assess its role. It can also help us tie a thread between different movements by understanding them all AS “antisystemic” – as, on some level, fighting for the same thing. It also helps us theorize nation states: by not essentializing them, we can ask how they are produced, and where they sit with respect to other approaches.

“The ANC and South Africa: Past and Future of Liberation Movements in World-System” makes a link between African liberation movements and the new emergence of “non-state ‘groups’ which are assuming the role of protecting themselves and even of providing for their welfare.”

National Liberation Movements

“The French revolution transformed the geoculture of the modem world-system. It made widespread the belief that political change is ‘normal’ rather than exceptional, and that sovereignty of states (itself a concept that dates at most from the 16th century) resides not in a sovereign ruler (whether a monarch or a parliament) but in the ‘people’ as a whole.” This catalyzed a “world systemic process” in which “The principal political issue … has been the struggle between those who wished to see these ideas implemented fully [that change is normal and sovereignty resides in the people] and those who resisted such a full implementation.”

This initiated a “world-systemic process that [was] continuous since 1789, that of national liberation movements.” After 1848 (the so-called Springtime of Nations), “there was only one objective that was politically feasible and offered some hope of immediate alleviation of the situation. This was the objective of taking power in the state structures, which provided the principal adjustment mechanism of the modern world-system.” Though ultimately flawed, Wallerstein argues this was the best strategy at the time.

In 1994, following the World Wars, the end of primary colonialism, Indian independence in 1947, this culminated in the “achievement of power by the African National Congress in South Africa” But these antisystemic movements once in power, ultimately failed to offer liberation from the world system of capitalism. The ANC marked the end of a specific world-systemic process of national liberation movements– but not the end of liberation movements themselves; not the end of anti-systemic movements.

Non-State formations

The hope was that the national liberation movements would create the kind of autonomy and self determination needed to counter the power of capitalism. But in the end the ‘liberated’ nations just became subject to the same forces that all the other states had been. So what happened? Wallerstein believes that there are trends at play leading to the erosion of State hegemony: urbanization (or ‘de-ruralization’) pushing up wages and eroding dividends; ecological crisis requires accounting for externalities, which erodes profits; democratization– that is, the process of rooting power ‘in the people’ means they are actually succeeding at making certain redistributive demands, also eroding profits; the fourth is what he calls “reversal of trends in state power” which is perhaps the most interesting and novel of them.

Specifically - States are the dominant “adjustment mechanisms” for the world system– which is today, at the international level, liberal capitalism. Capitalism needs the state for these ongoing adjustments, and the State needs capitalism for its income. However, the first three trends are undermining dividends, and thereofre reducing income to the State, while the tings it needs to spend on- environment, social systems - are growing.

But the state’s public claim to legitimacy is “people’s power”– not capital. If the state were to be transparent about its needs for more capital, the people would not support it. And “if they reduce expenditures in order to meet the fiscal crises, they also reduce their ability to adjust the system.” So the States are in a bind.

Here’s where Wallerstein makes the intriguing argument: historically it’s been social movements that have validated the State: by focusing their demands on it as the legitimate mechanism for meeting their needs. Movements have “served as the moral guarantors” of the State. But because the States are failing, movements (and the people associated) are losing hope in them, no longer propping them up.

Wallerstien argues this was the turning point where non-state formations came into play. Movements basically widened their gaze, and started looking elsewhere for solutions.

New Sovereignties

World systems analysis offers a scholarly domain to draw upon for New Sovereignries that doesn’t presume the State as the structural basis for solutions, but stands outside of it to analyze its role and relative competitiveness as a solution. It is a theory that already decenters the state, and provides some historical context for other projects that have done the same. In particular what’s neat about this paper is that it offers an argument for how non-State formations might arise out of the States themselves. This doesn’t deny or erase the state, it actually situates New Sovereignties projects.

The conclusion to the paper is just so lovely I have to let it speak for itself:

Thus we see springing forth everywhere non-state “groups” who are assuming the role of protecting themselves and even of providing for their welfare. This is the path of global disorder down which we have been heading. It is the sign of disintegration of the modern world-system, of capitalism as a civilization.

You can rest assured that those who have privilege will not sit back and watch this privilege go under without trying to rescue it. But you can rest equally assured that they cannot rescue it merely by adjusting the system once again… The world is in transition. Out of chaos will come a new order, different from the one we now know. Different, but not necessarily better.

Those who have privilege will try to construct a new kind of historical system that will be unequal, hierarchical, and stable. They have the advantage of power, money, and the service of much intelligence. They will assuredly come up with something clever and workable. Can the movements, reinvigorated, match them? We are amidst a bifurcation of our system. The fluctuations are enormous, and little pushes will determine which way the process moves. The task of the liberation movements, no longer necessarily national liberation movements, is to take serious stock of the crisis of the system, the impasse of their past strategy, and the force of the genie of world popular discontent which has been unleashed precisely by the collapse of the old movements. It is a moment for utopistics, for intensive, rigorous analysis of historical alternatives. It is a moment when social scientists have something important to contribute, assuming they wish to do so. But it requires for social scientists as well an unthinking of their past concepts, derived from the same nineteenth-century situation that resulted in the strategies adopted by the antisystemic movements.

Above all, it is a task neither for a day or a week nor on the other hand for centuries. It is a task precisely for the next 25-50 years, one whose outcome will be entirely the consequence of the kind of input we are ready and able to put into it.”

Quotes from Wallerstein, “The ANC and South Africa: Past and Future of Liberation Movements in World-System”, 1996.