Commentary No. 31, Jan. 1, 2000
"Century Past, Millennium Past"
As we all celebrate the millennium, the media are filled with reflections about the past which are in fact statements about what is hoped for the future. Much of it is hype. Time magazine has decided that the man of the century is Albert Einstein, celebrating therewith the progress of scientific knowledge in this century. It is a safe choice, since Time can thus avoid a delicate choice between various political figures - they tell us the candidates were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Mahatma Gandhi. But it is also a tribute to the magic of science, the God if there was one of the twentieth century.
The real question is not what we think in 2000 were the essential happenings of the 20th century or of the past millennium. The real question is what answer would be given in 2100 about these periods. I would bet on the following: The twentieth century will be remembered for three things - the hegemony of the United States; the political resurgence of the non-Western world; the world revolution of 1968. And the thousand years will be remembered for the coming into being of a capitalist world-economy, which may seem in 2100 to have been a less positive transformation than it does to many people in 2000, and which may even seem by 2100 to be classified as a phenomenon of the past.
Henry Luce famously called the twentieth century "the American century." He said this circa 1945, and of course it was truest then. The year 1945 marked the triumphant end of a 70-80 struggle of the United States with Germany to assume the succession to British hegemony in the world-system. At its high point (1945-1960's), the United States could outproduce any country in the world, had the highest standard of living for its citizens, and obtained its way in the world political arena with ease. It was the strongest military power, and never had to prove it. It managed even to become the world center of cultural activity. Whether as model to emulate or object of fear and repulsion, its centrality in the world-system was universally recognized. The Cold War is not an exception to this, but rather its best confirmation. For the Cold War was a carefully choreographed program of symbolic rivalry hiding underlying collusive arrangements, and a recognition by the Soviet Union that they were unable to challenge the United States directly.
To be sure, before 1945, the United States was on the ascendant but not yet hegemonic. And after 1970, the United States has been on the decline, but still as of 2000 the most powerful country in the world. So calling the twentieth century the American century is not mere rhetoric but an analytical statement devoid of moral content. To be sure, many propagandists wish to stop the story there. But this is not the whole story.
It is also true that the entire century has been one of the resurgence of the non-Western world. We need to remember that the nineteenth century was the century of the final and total political submergence of the non-Western world, the culmination of a process that had begun in the late fifteenth century. In 1905, Japan defeated Russia. In the years leading up to the First World War, there were "modernizing" revolutions in Mexico, China, Afghanistan, Turkey/Ottoman Empire, Persia, and major political events in India, the Arab world, South Africa, the Philippines, and Cuba. The Russian revolutions (1905, and two in 1917 including and especially the Bolshevik revolution) are best appreciated as part of this upsurge against Western domination of the world.
After 1917, the story goes on uninterrupted throughout the century. The meeting in Bandung in 1955 can be taken as the symbolic moment in which the non-Western world said quite loudly that it had to be taken seriously in world politics. That the non-Western world remains the oppressed two-thirds of the world-system even in 2000 does not mitigate the reality of this resurgence, which can be expected to grow ever stronger in the next hundred years, to the point where in 2100 it will be hard to believe how the world was organized in 1900.
The great contradiction of the twentieth century is that U.S. hegemony and the resurgence of the non-Western world were coterminous. One would have thought that the first militated against the second, and vice versa. But not at all. To explain this, we have to come to the symbolic moment of 1968. What was behind U.S. hegemony and the resurgence of the non-Western world up to 1968 was the common belief of the protagonists of both happenings in the litany of hope embodied in the liberal centrist expectation that gradual, state-directed reformism led by experts would somehow bring about the end of economic and social polarities and achieve a democratic, more or less egalitarian world-system.
But with the United States in unquestioned hegemonic status and the national liberation movements in power virtually everywhere in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it began to be obvious in the 1960's that the expectations of the end of polarities was totally mistaken, that in fact polarization - both economic and social - was steadily increasing, and indeed would become spectacularly greater in the last 30 years of the century. Thus set in the great disillusionment - with the liberal centrist reformism of the world Establishment and with the self-styled revolutionary movements who put forward a similar program clothed in more radical rhetoric - and we have been living ever since the consequences of this great disillusionment. It has bred anti-statism. It has bred the defensive arming of "groups" against other "groups". It has bred fearfulness in place of hopefulness. It is the harbinger of the chaotic period into which we have entered.
It is the great disillusionment symbolized and expanded by the world revolution of 1968 that puts into bold relief the great happening of the past thousand years, the creation of a capitalist world-economy. This creation, historically unexpected and defying the odds, is undoubtedly the most transformative human phenomenon since the invention of agriculture some 8-10,000 years ago. For it did two things which were fundamental.
It made the globe into a single historical system. This did not happen immediately. But the logic of the capitalist system, its steady expansionism, the material rewards it offered for technological change, its destructiveness of alternative historical systems led to its incorporation of every remote corner of this planet into its operation. This did not fully happen until the middle of the nineteenth century. But the crucial thing to see is that nothing comparable had ever happened before, or could have happened before.
The second great change was moral. The capitalist system is one is which the ceaseless accumulation of capital is not only possible, but legitimated and given social priority. Those who do not play by its rules lose out - economically, politically, and culturally. The genie, which was always there, was let out of the bottle. And all those who had kept it bottled up before then - religious leaders, rulers, and the masses of the world's population - stood by somewhat helplessly. Never did this genie seem so strong as in 2000. A few celebrate this; many deplore it; most people simply suffer it. The stability of this kind of system depends in large part on the passivity of most persons. This is where the disillusionment of 1968 and after comes in. Disillusion undoes passivity.
So, in 2100, we may see the genie put back in the bottle. But we may not. We may see the planet more closely knit together than even now. But we may see quite the opposite. The real point is that we have entered a moment (a long 50-year moment) of historical choice. The outcome is totally uncertain. But the outcome can be affected by each of us, for the order that comes out of chaos is the result of moral and political struggle. It is on this that we should reflect as we enter the new millennium.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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