from G. Arrighi & B. Silver (1999) Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp.272, 275, 278, 282, 286
Proposition 1
‘The global financial expansion of the last twenty years or so is neither a new stage of world capitalism nor the harbinger of a “common hegemony of the global markets”. Rather, it is the clearest sign that we are in the midst of a hegemonic crisis. As such, the expansion can be expected to be a temporary phenomenon that will end more or less catastrophically, depending on how the crisis is handled by the declining hegemon.
Proposition 2
‘The most important geopolitical novelty of the present hegemonic crisis is a bifurcation of military and financial capabilities that has no precedent in earlier hegemonic transitions. The bifurcation decreases the likelihood of an outbreak of war among the system’s most powerful units. But it does not reduce the chances of a deterioration of the present hegemonic crisis into a more or less long period of systemic chaos.
Proposition 3
‘Unlike the global financial expansion, the proliferation in the number and variety of transnational business organizations and communities is a novel and probably irreversible feature of the present hegemonic crisis. It has been a major factor in the disintegration of the U.S. hegemonic order and can be expected to continue to shape ongoing systemic chance through a general, though by no means universal, disempowerment of states.
Proposition 4
‘The disempowerment of social movements - the labor movement in particular - that has accompanied the global financial expansion of the 1980s and 1990s is largely a conjunctural phenomenon. It signals the difficulties involved in delivering on the promises of the U.S.-sponsored global New Deal. A new wave of social conflict is likely, and can be expected to reflect the greater proletarianization, increasing feminization, and changing spatial and ethnic configuration of the world’s labor forces.
Proposition 5
‘The clash between Western and non-Western civilizations lies behind us rather than in front of us. What lies in front of us are the difficulties involved in transforming the modern world into a commonwealth of civilizations that reflects the changing balance of power between Western and non-Western civilizations, first and foremost the reemerging China-centered civilization. How drastic and painful the transformation is going to be - and, indeed, whether it will eventually result in a commonwealth rather than in the mutual destruction of the world’s civilizations - ultimately depends on two conditions. It depends, first, on how intelligently the main centers of Western civilization can adjust to a less exalted status and, second, on whether the main centers of the reemerging China-centered civilizaiton can collectively rise up to the task of providing system-level solutions to the system-level problems left behind by U.S. hegemony.’
