Sunday, October 20, 2024

APPALACIA

Mountain town confronts an unexpected public health catastrophe

Kim Dinan, KFF Health News
October 20, 2024 

Repair crews at work in downtown Chimney Rock, North Carolina on October 2, 2024 (Allison Joyce/AFP)

Before Hurricane Helene, had you stopped by one of the many breweries, art galleries, or award-winning restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina, and spoken with anyone who lives in these parts — including me — most would have told you they felt pretty safe from climate disasters.

The mountains of western North Carolina have been known to flood: The area is bursting with creeks and rivers and enjoys an abundance of rain. There are occasionally wildfires. But the ravages of the climate crisis’s worst impacts — including increasingly powerful hurricanes — felt like a problem for another place. Asheville sits almost 250 miles from the nearest coastline.

After Hurricane Helene roared across the state, causing historic flooding, downing trees, snapping power lines, decimating water infrastructure, and leading to the deaths of at least 72 people in Buncombe County alone, communities are still shaking off the shock of a storm they never thought could touch these mountains.

“People relocate to Asheville not just because it’s beautiful, but because it isn’t prone to natural disasters,” said Katie Gebely, an artist in Asheville. “But that sense of safety is gone.”

I live in Beech, a historic community in Weaverville, North Carolina, at the eastern end of a two-lane road called Reems Creek, which is named after the waterway running parallel to it. The town of Weaverville, just north of Asheville, is five miles down the road.

Helene’s destruction created a major problem for people dependent on insulin, power wheelchairs, oxygen CPAP machines for sleep apnea, or home dialysis equipment. Without electricity, their health is at risk.

To get to Weaverville from Beech in the days immediately after the storm, cars had to thump over dozens of downed power lines. Other lines were propped up with large, downed tree limbs or tied up with rope so cars could get under them. Utility poles were snapped in two. A transformer lay on the side of the road, as did a rather large boat, washed up from who knows where. Just last week, power crews arrived on Reems Creek Road, but there’s still no word on when everyone will regain electricity.

Jackie Martin of Canton, North Carolina, relies on supplemental oxygen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema. When the storm hit, she had four hours’ worth left. Because of her condition, Martin and her husband, David, have an electrical generator, which David checks every month to make sure it works.

“We keep enough gas to run about eight hours,” Jackie Martin said. But the Martins were without power for nearly a week. When they ran out of gasoline, their neighbors gave them the gas from their lawn mower. Then another neighbor evacuated and offered his propane generator. The Martins’ daughter came through with four tanks of propane.

“We went through tons of gas and propane,” Jackie Martin said. “Never did I think I would need every drop and then some. Thank goodness we got power back after a week.”

In Buncombe County, population 275,000, there were still more than 50,000 customers without electricity almost two weeks after the storm. Duke Energy reported that outages were down to about 1,600 customers in the Asheville area as of Wednesday.

In most places, the debris that littered the road has been cleared. Cars, trucks, and military vehicles can make their way through. But huge piles of trash still line the roadways. Buncombe County is asking residents not to burn it out of concern for air quality.

In a scene out of biblical end-times, yellow jackets swarmed in the days after the storm — displaced after falling trees and floodwaters destroyed their nests. Three or four days after the storm hit, an EMT drove through my neighborhood looking for Benadryl. My husband handed over what we had: a half-full bottle.

Overhead, helicopters fly day and night. The Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in my neighborhood two Sundays ago to deliver bottled water and food rations. Potable water in some areas of western North Carolina, including Asheville, may take weeks or months to restore.

Weaverville’s residents were under a boil-water advisory until Oct. 11.

“We had sewer and water line breaks,” said Patrick Fitzsimmons, Weaverville’s mayor. “We had a lot of infrastructure destruction.”

Households with wells have fared no better. Well pumps don’t work without electricity. And storm-damaged or flooded wells may be compromised. Officials are urging residents to disinfect their wells before consuming water. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has given residents kits to test their well water.

A physical therapist at Asheville Specialty Hospital, who asked not to be identified out of concern for losing their job, told me that in the first days after the storm, crews hauled trash cans full of water into the facility so that staff could flush toilets with buckets.

“The water got shut off and we managed. We took care of people the best we could,” the therapist said. “But the amount of water that it takes to run a hospital is unsustainable for the length of time they think we’ll be out of water.”

The hospital is a 34-bed long-term acute care facility down the street from Asheville’s Mission Hospital. Nancy Lindell, a spokesperson for Mission Health, which operates both hospitals, said in a statement that fewer than 100 “low acuity patients in stable condition” at the organization’s facilities were transferred “to hospitals outside of the areas hardest hit by this disaster.”

“This decision, which was made in collaboration with more than 50 physicians and nursing leaders, helps ensure we have the capacity to meet the most critical needs of our region,” she said. “It also provides relief for our caregivers, who have been working around the clock in the wake of the storm.”

U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents North Carolina’s 11th District, said FEMA has shipped 6 million liters of water and 4 million individual meals to western North Carolina. FEMA has promised 120 truckloads a day of food and water with no specified end date, the Republican congressman said.

The Biden administration has also opened an emergency program for uninsured North Carolinians to replace lost prescriptions and medical equipment.

Fitzsimmons, Weaverville’s mayor, said he’s concerned about the impact of the storm on mental health. “People are going for an extended period of time without power or water,” he said. “Their nerves are frayed.”

Richard Zenn, chief medical officer at North Carolina-based Vaya Health, said the recovery will be long.

“We’re now in the phase where we have to deal with the effects of this ongoing trauma we’ve all suffered,” Zenn said. “Connect with others. Don’t get too isolated. Eat. Sleep. Try to get back into a normal routine. Do whatever reduces stress for you.”

For me, that has always been hiking or running through these ancient mountains. But there are too many uprooted trees to safely do that now. Instead I take solace on my porch and give thanks that I still have a porch to sit on. It’s a near-perfect day in Appalachia. The sky is painfully blue. I listen for the songs of birds, but all I can hear are generators.


KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Signs of what will happen on Election Day are everywhere

D. Earl Stephens
October 20, 2024 

A young supporter of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris holds a sign during a campaign event, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., September 29, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. 

As this piece publishes, I will have started on the 1,200-mile trail home that bends hard to the northwest and connects the Battleground State of North Carolina to the Battleground State of Wisconsin.

Such are the highly charged political times we live in …

I am remembering a similar journey almost eight years ago to the day, when my wife and I made the drive to South Carolina and back. Those were less ominous days when I lived in a place inside my head that arrogantly ignored all the warnings, and was incapable of even considering the looming attack.


All along the route that cut through rural Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and finally South Carolina, there were thousands of signs cautioning of the impending storm that was coming.

They littered yards, highways, and strip malls … They were in front of building and along byways …

Those blasted blue, white and red signs stood planted in the ground one after another defiantly daring people not to stare at the them.

Trump/Pence … Trump/Pence … Trump/Pence …

They were in every predominantly white community we breezed through during our whirlwind ride, but we paid them no mind, because what on God’s green Earth did these people have to be so damn angry about, and what could possibly recommend such an obviously vile old man?

The economy had returned to what passes for normal in America after the terrible crash eight years earlier. We were finally the hell out of Iraq, and the United Kingdom was proving they were the misguided country by voting for something that was preposterously stupid, self-defeating, and racist called “Brexit.”

I mean, what kind of country is stupid enough to vote against its own interests …?

Besides, Hillary was going to win no matter what all these ridiculous signs said, because the alternative was just too impossible to even contemplate. I remember telling a variation of this, replete with a haughty shrug, to anybody who was foolish enough to listen to me.

We never did see even one Clinton/Kaine sign during the 1,150-mile drive.

Not one.

Then came the horrific blast on the evening of November 8, 2016, that rocked the world, and sent me spiraling. At four in the morning the next day, I sat alone in the darkness of my den, slugging from a celebratory bottle of booze that had now turned elixir for my pain. I called my daughters, but only got through to my youngest: “I’m sorry,” I said when she picked up. “I really didn’t think we had this in us 

I’m guessing you’ll have your own story.

Never forget …

For the past 28 days I have been on the windy Outer Banks of North Carolina pacing the beaches, and working feverishly to spread the good word about the accomplished woman, who simply must be the one who finally smashes the glass ceiling and claims the top prize.

Once again I’m telling people that the alternative is just too impossible to even contemplate. Only now I am saying it with an urgency that worries even me when I really get to thinking about it — which is pretty much all the time.


The warning signs are everywhere. The madman is once again on the loose. The guardrails that are supposed to keep such evil in check have been smashed to smithereens. There have been catastrophic failures by our Justice Department and the woeful press.

Trump’s very own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is telling us Donald Trump is the most dangerous man in America, and it is barely getting a shrug from people who should damn well know better.

I came to North Carolina searching for perspective, and to draw strength for this endless presidential campaign’s finishing kick. I’m not sure I found all that, or have even an inkling of what the majority of the good people in that state will do with their votes on November 5th.


But there are signs of hope …

The state has the look and feel of a classic toss-up, where the littlest thing could make an enormous amount of difference. The governor’s race is on the ballot, and though it seems impossible, the revolting Republican candidate, Mark Robinson, could actually be a drag on the bottom-feeding Trump, who has endorsed Robinson and all his hate and ugliness.

The Democrat Josh Stein will win that race, or I will eat every hat in my closet November 6th. The race for the presidency could well come down to how many Republicans split their votes, and somehow tap both Stein and the despicable Trump.

Signs are Robinson is only hurting the ghastly Trump, though.

I’m a big fan of the state’s Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton, and believe she is a generational talent who has her finger on the pulse of the voters in Carolina. She knows that turning out those voters will be the key to the kingdom. Too many people who should don’t vote in the Tar Heel State, and in the past that has spelled Big D Doom for the Little D Democrats.

This certainly isn’t specific to North Carolina, but in a state that is on the political knife’s edge, just a few votes here or there can end up making a clear-cut difference.


I departed the state just as early-voting was starting, and with the high hopes that buoyed my arrival: If not this year North Carolina, when?

There are more good signs that Carolinians are turning out and voting like never before. Experts in the state will point you to Mecklenburg County, the home of Charlotte, as Ground Zero for a real opportunity for Democrats to find thousands of new voters. For example, fewer than 19 percent of registered Mecklenburg County voters cast ballots in the 2024 primary in March, compared to 24 percent statewide. This disparity has played out in just about every election in recent memory.

Voting lines were long in Charlotte on Thursday, and Clayton and her lieutenants have made sure there are salaried boots on the ground in the city for the first time ever to keep driving this crucial Democratic turnout.

These voters have unique super powers because of their proximity to the front lines of this epic battle between good and evil. They have influence many of us don’t. If you’ve got some spare change jangling around in your pockets, or some time on your hands, the hard-working Democrats in Mecklenburg County could put it to good use ...

Now I have unpinned myself from the Atlantic Coast. I am once again working my way north/northwest, keeping my eye on the road, but always looking for the signs.

I am a far different man than the one who made this similar journey eight years ago. I am weary … less trusting. I know what my country is capable of now, both the good: “We must take that beach no matter the cost to beat back the Nazis …” And the bad: "We got a lot of bad genes in our country. They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats …"

We have it in us to do literally anything, but I once again have chosen to expect the best. Sure, I will give the worst its due because it has proven itself a devilish adversary, but I will not fear it, because I have far better things to do with what little time we have left in this election.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama will be coming to my town with the man Kamala Harris tapped to be her Vice President, Tim Walz.

I plan to be there with gusto.

I will be shoulder to shoulder in Madison, Wisconsin, with thousands of others who have done nothing but meet the moment the past eight years.

We have worked tirelessly and swapped out a bought-off Republican governor, Scott Walker, for a two-term, popular Democratic one named Tony Evers. We have put in the time to win a handful of huge elections that turned our State Supreme Court from hard Right to a steady Left. We have finally thrown out the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, and replaced them with fair maps that favor only the better candidates — Blue or Red.

We have beaten the traitor, Trump, and damn sure will again.

Wisconsin has done what North Carolina most certainly has it in it to do, and I bring news that there are signs everywhere that they will.

NOW READ: Not even ‘Fox and Friends’ can hide Trump’s dementia

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.
BLUE WAVE

New Louisiana record: Nearly 177,000 cast ballots on first day of early voting

Greg Larose, Louisiana Illuminator
October 20, 2024 

Early voting for the Nov. 5, 2024, presidential election runs from Oct. 18-29 in Louisiana. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)

Louisiana set a new record for the first day of early voting, slightly exceeding its total from four years ago when officials had to take measures for the coronavirus pandemic.

A total of 176,882 voters cast ballots Friday for the Nov. 5 election, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office. That’s 1.3% more when compared with 174,533 votes submitted on day one of early voting in the 2020 election.

This year’s early voting period in Louisiana ends Oct. 29, with polls open 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily except for Sundays.

Early voting has been available in Louisiana since 2008. Turnout by party has historically leaned heavily in favor of Democrats, who have accounted for roughly half or more of the state’s early voters in each of the past four presidential elections.

However, Republicans held a slight edge on day one of early voting this year. They totaled 75,455 votes to 74,311 for Democrats. “Other” voters accounted for 27,166 votes.

Another early trend: Far more women voted early than men in Louisiana, with 102,178 showing up on day one. That was 31% more than their male counterparts.

Black early voter turnout in Louisiana was down on day one from four years ago. They cast one-fourth of all ballots Friday compared with nearly one-third in 2020. Over the entire early period in 2020, Black voters made up nearly 30% of all voters.

The high mark over an entire early voting period in Louisiana was set four years ago with 986,428 for the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Louisiana governor’s elections have drawn far fewer people during the early voting period when compared to presidential election years. Just less than 369,000 showed up for the October 2023 primary that Jeff Landry won outright.


In the much closer 2019 governor’s election, more than 503,000 voters participated in the runoff between John Bel Edwards and Eddie Rispone, up from approximately 386,000 in the primary.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.
BOOK REVIEW

Explaining slavery in the era of industrial capitalism

Robin Blackburn, the premier chronicler of capitalism and the slave trade, returns with third volume
(Wikimedia Commons)

Robin Blackburn
Published by Verso, £29.99


By Ken Olende
Thursday 17 October 2024
SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2927


Chattel slavery—the buying and selling of black people as property—was a key part of capitalism’s development in the first half of the 19th century. Historian Robin Blackburn argues in his new book, The Reckoning, that the rise of industrial capitalism did not end slavery.

In fact, he points out, it “generated a more thoroughgoing slavery in the New World.” Blackburn calls this period the Second Slavery, “a turbo-charged and financialised version of servitude.”

In the earlier phase of the Atlantic slave trade, slaveowners could work the enslaved to death and replace them with people captured in Africa. But, by the 19th century this was no longer practical, and slavers had to rely on “breeding” new generations. And this in turn forced plantation owners to become more efficient.

These shifts meant that in the Southern United States cotton output per slave increased fourfold in the first half of the 19th century. In the early decades of the 19th century international exports from the US slave states were $34 million, while those from non-slave states were $17 million.

Blackburn does not argue that capitalism rose out of the slave trade, as banking and mercantile trade were already in existence. Instead, he says that slavery was a key part of the system’s early development.

However, Blackburn does show that for the system as a whole, slavery was not the most efficient way of making money and exploiting labour. That meant that its dominance became a problem in the future—and that its spread was uneven.

He comments that in South America, “slaves numbered only around 3-6 percent of the population in most of Spanish America at any point in the eighteenth century. However, in Cuba, slaves were about a third of the total population in 1770, rising to a half over the next 50 years.”

But slave owners everywhere faced constant resistance. Slaves would push to gain more time to grow food and be with their families, they would escape and they would lead armed rebellions.

The whole period exists in the shadow of the successful slave revolt in Sant-Domingue, in what is today Haiti. Led by Toussaint Louverture and later Jean-Jacques Dessalines, slave armies defeated the major powers of the day—France, Spain and Britain—to win independence.

Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 —though not in plantations across its empire. It then tried to suppress other traders, to stop them making profits that Britons could not.

Blackburn points out that despite this British companies continued to manufacture the shackles used in 19th century slave ships.

As well as describing these developments, Blackburn shows the people who fought slavery. He details those who led uprisings and the organisers of the Underground Railroad escape routes.

And he talks of the growing movement of “ultras”, militant abolitionists who believed in “uncompromising direct action” to end slavery. He adds that there is no hard and fast divide between “fugitive slave politics” and “revolutionary abolitionism” and the two strands often merged and radicalized one another.

The white revolutionary abolitionist John Brown led an assault on the military armoury at Harper’s Ferry hoping to inspire a slave insurrection. He and ten of his men were captured, put on trial and executed. The great black emancipator Frederick Douglass had warned him that “a slave insurrection could not be detonated by the exemplary actions of a small group of outsiders”.

Yet Brown became a hero to the radical wing of the anti-slavery movement and as the civil war broke out volunteer troops made John Brown’s Body their marching song.

After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, slave states left the Union, wrongly believing that his Republican party planned to free slaves. One slaver wailed, “If things go on as they are it is certain that slavery is to be abolished … we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything…”

Unfortunately, the Union generals’ plans were nowhere near so radical.

It was only as the Civil War that followed turned into a stalemate that the more radical leaders on the Union side came to the fore. They argued that the one section of society that would fight uncompromisingly for the Union were the enslaved—on condition that it promised an end to slavery.

Once the word got out that President Lincoln had said this in the Emancipation Proclamation, tens of thousands of enslaved people stopped working, ran away from the plantations and showed readiness to join the War.

The South collapsed.

In Charleston, victorious Union troops marched into town headed by two black regiments. One was “led by a soldier carrying a banner with the inscription ‘Liberty’, while Black infantrymen were singing John Brown’s Body to the enthusiastic cheers of the Black population, most of whom had been slaves the day before.”

This long, and sometimes academic book, is a vital to our understanding of how slavery and racism grew alongside capitalism, and the reasons why the system ended.

 

Britain Did Ban the Slave Trade, Mr Musk, but It Was 12.5m Slaves Too Late


In Britain slave owners were compensated for having slaves. But Britain was the biggest driver of the slave trade for over a century.


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George Galloway is a seven-term parliamentarian, freedom fighter, and man of the world. Read other articles by George, or visit George's website.

 

The Myopia of Anglo-American Rulers

How They Can’t Face Their Loss to the “Eurasian Miracle”

International Relations (IR) theory fails to deliver on one of its key promises, specifically to produce positivist, value free analysis. What we encounter in the vast majority of international theory is the provincial or parochial normative purpose of defending and celebrating the ideal of the West in world politics. IR theory can no longer be represented as positivist, objective or value free.
~ John M. Hobson

Orientation

In 1981, Eric Jones wrote a very powerful book called The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. He was not alone in claiming there was something unique about Europe compared to the rest of the world. Though I doubt it was his intention, his work perhaps unintentionally supported a Eurocentric, paternalistic, racist orientation of a Wren theory which claimed to explain world politics. This is called International Relations Theory which claimed to be positivist, objective and value free. International relations theory is so deeply embedded in Western triumphalism that it has failed to notice that the West has been losing to China, Russia and Iran for the last 20 to 30 years. International  relations theory barely understands that this has happened and it has no theory to explain it. What we are witnessing today is a “Eurasian Miracle.”

In my article “Neocon Realists and Global Neoliberals Dead on Arrival,” I identify five international relation theories: Neocon Realists; Neoliberal Globalists; Liberal Institutionalists; Constructivists and World-Systems Theorists. Most of my criticism in that article was leveled at the first three theories for their inability to account for the rise of China, Russia and Iran and the whole multipolar world. In this article, following the work of John A. Hobson in his book “The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics,” I point out a good reason for this is because of the Eurocentric nature of Neocon Realists, Neoliberal Globalists and Liberal Institutionalists theory. However, Hobson’s criticism of Eurocentrism does not stop there. He argues that even left-wing theories like constructionism and world-systems theory are guilty of Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism, not only because it takes different forms, but that some of these are even anti-imperialist. The conventional contrast of a Eurocentric or racist conception of imperialism from a constructivist and Marxist point of view is too simple and Eurocentrism is too deep.

What is Eurocentrism?
Hobson’s claim that there two steps in Eurocentric big-bang theory of world politics:

  • Europeans single-handedly created a European capitalist international state system through their pioneering and exceptional institutional genius.
  • They export their civilization to remake the world in their own image through globalization, imperialism or hegemony.
    To add to this, Eurocentrism claims the Eastern and Southern part of the world had no independent status. There was no East or South big bang. In the West the various movements of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation the scientific revolution, capitalism, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution or socialism were purely Western. The East and South either helped out or they were left behind. With rare exceptions. Eastern and Southern parts of the world system never led Western development.

What is paternalism?
Historians of the modern West sought to explain social evolution. In doing so, they divided societies into three stages:

  • savagery (hunter-gatherers);
  • barbarism (horticultural and agricultural states) and
  • civilization—industrial capitalist societies

Supposedly Europeans hoped that all societies would want to become civilized. But when societies of the East and South did not aspire to this, they were labelled either savages or barbarians. However, some historians and anthropologist thought it was their duty (white man’s burden) for the savages and barbarians to see the light. This led to paternalism.

An example of well-intentioned paternalist Eurocentrism: Rawls
John Rawls believed that his liberal vision has genuinely universalist criteria that do not offend cultural sensibilities of non-Western people. He was interested in culturally converting Eastern people rather than containing them as in Western liberal realism.

Yet there are five key Eurocentric dimensions of his theory:

  • All well-ordered hierarchical societies must exhibit a separation of church and state (this will not work for Muslims).
  • Imposition of free trade (free trade can only work with wealthy societies).
  • Governed by a liberal law of peoples (teaching Eastern women to have less babies won’t work if they are being blocked by the IMF and the World bank from industrializing.
  • Eastern states receive only conditional sovereignty because they are classified as despotic states and “failed” states are deemed uncivilized.
  • Developed societies have a duty to assist burdened societies (paternalism).

Hobson’s claims

Hobson’s explicit claims are first that International Relations Theory contains six myths:

  • the noble identity and foundational myth of the discipline;
  • the positive myth of International Relations Theory;
  • the great debates myth and reconceptualizing the clash of IR theories;
  • the sovereignty or anarchy myth;
  • the globalization myth; and
  • the theoretical great traditions myth.

Hobson’s 2nd claim is there are six types of imperialism which are laid out over 250 years. His third claim is that Western racism was not always triumphant but was based on fear of what would become of Europe if Easterners and Southerners of the world  got the upper hand. Lastly, I close out with theories that are exceptions to the rule and are not Eurocentric or paternalistic and with a minimum of racism.

Hobson’s implicit claim is that without “the rest” there might be no West. The West was not an early, but a latedevelopment. This topic will be covered in my future article based on another of Hobson’s books, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization.

Six Eurocentric Myths of International Relations Theory
Hobson tells us the conscious or unconscious moral purpose of IR is to be a defender and promoter of Western Civilization. The key of disciplinary assumptions that are presently revered as self-evident truths really are largely Eurocentric myths. As stated above, these include the above myths.

The noble identity foundation myth: Whig and progress theory of history
International Relations Theory has embedded in a Whig an interpretation of its intellectual history. Whiggish means that the past is reorganized to make it seem that the present was the only possible passage that could have led to contemporary life. The Whig theory of history has the theory of progress embedded in it. The theory of progress claims that the later in time we go in social evolution the better societies get in material wealth, less labor, higher morality and happiness.

It is a now conventional assumption that the discipline of International Relations was born in 1919. Supposedly, it had a moral purpose to finding ways to solve the universal problem of war. This now conventional view was originally constructed by E.H. Carr in his classical text The Twenty Year’s Crisis (1946).

Contrary to this convention, IR theory did not appear all of a sudden after WW I out of the head of Zeus. It continued from its pre-1914 roots which were neither positive, objective nor value free. Rather they were paternalist, Eurocentric and intentionally or unintentionally racist. There are deep continuities that the 1919-1945 period of international theory has with the pre-1914 period of international theory. The Eurocentric racism and paternalism that underpinned it had been forged in the previous century. In addition, there is a continuum of imperialism that goes all the way back to the middle of the 18th century. Thirdly, there was an explosion of anti-colonial resistance. What were colonists resisting – those noble Western powers that colonialized them. In this larger scheme of things, the end of World War I was not the only game in town. As positivists, what Neocon realists and liberal globalists ignore is that the noble identity myth can also be a ideological justification for Eurocentrism, capitalism, racism and imperialism. The four stages are of Hobsons history if International relations include:

  • 1760-1914 Manifest Eurocentrism and scientific racism
  • 1914-1945 Manifest Eurocentrism and scientific racism
  • 1945-1989 Subliminal Eurocentrism
  • 1989-2010 Manifest Eurocentrism

The positive myth of IR of theory of liberalism as emerging between the wars

This myth was that the between the wars IR theory was dominated by liberal globalists who searched for a new cooperative global order as a reaction to the Neocon realism of World War I. It was characterized as a harmonious and optimistic theory because it stands for peace. But as Hobson points out, interwar international theory was not monopolized by idealism or liberalism because it also exhibited a vibrant racism realist stream that emerged after 1889, especially in the world of geopolitical theorists, Ratzel, Mackinder, Mahan and others.

IR claims to be positivist with a value free epistemological base. This has been challenged by African-American Marxists Ralph Bunche, WEB Dubois and CLR James. They say that when viewed through a non-European lens, the vast majority of international theory produces a parochial or provincial analysis of the West that can masquerade as if it were universal. Further, the imperialist aspect of interwar idealist theory has not been widely noticed among modern IR scholars. Realist and so-called Liberal Idealists were united by the concern to restore the mandate of Western civilizational hegemony in one guise of another.

The great debate myth and reconceptualizing the idea of the clash of IR theories

These debates include the controversy between realism and idealism in the interwar period between history and scientism in the 1960s and between positivists and post-positivists in the 1990s. The first two appear as if these were great qualitative struggles, but like with Republicans and Democrats in Mordor, all parties have far more in common than they have in differences. The struggle between positivists and post-positivists are real but it are presented in too stark a manner. There were post-positivists as far back as the 1960s and those political scientists who were more statistical and quantitative also go back to the 50s and 60s. In other words that debate did not begin in the 1990s as IR theorists claim but thirty years earlier. In spite of these differences, there is consensus of virtually all parties concerning the politics of defending and celebrating Western civilization in world politics. These theories supported the Western powers. Their differences were small compared to the paternalism, racism and imperialism that they all shared.

Sovereignty vs anarchy myth
The sovereignty vs anarchy myth claims that in International Relations Theory all states are sovereign. But because there is no world-state the relations between nation-states are characterized as anarchistic. In the first place, IR theory limits which nation-states are considered sovereign to European countries. Eastern and Southern states are not considered sovereign because they lack the proper Western European credentials such as voting systems, more than one party, and capitalism. The school of Realism operates with universalist analytical principles that supposedly apply to all states regardless of how 2nd class some states are treated in practice. The problem for IR theorists is that the post the 1648 era there had been a proliferation of international imperial hierarchies, which were comprised of a series of single sovereign colonial powers, many of which were not nation-states. Its supposedly universal and ideologically unbiased principles of state-centrism sovereignty directly contradict its practice. For example, in 1878 the conference in Berlin divided Africa between European imperial powers. These sovereign states had colonies.

Furthermore if by anarchy they mean disorder, the relationship between sovereign states without a world state is by no means disorderly. There are shifting alliances between states rather than a Hobbesian war of all single states against each other. Secondly, to characterize this disorder as “anarchy” reveals either complete political bias or ignorance of anarchism as a respectable political tendency on the socialist left. Anarchism has involved thousands of people in many countries around the world since the late 1840s. It has had some success in the Paris Commune, the Russian and especially the Spanish revolutions. To characterize this as disorderly is an unforgivable omission from theorists who claim to be political scientists.

The globalization myth
The myth is that globalization has only recently (the last centurybecome an issue for international theorists. But to Hobson’s own surprise in his initial research, in many areas including some though not all realists, international theorists since 1760 have placed considerable emphasis on globalization. In his book The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization,Hobson points out that there were globalizing trade networks of, Africa, West Asia, India and China as far back as 500 CE.

The theoretical great traditions myth
IR theorists are no different than those who initiate artistic or spiritual movements in their search for origins. All political, artistic or spiritual movements seek to find their origins in the deep past rather than the recent past. In the IR traditional textbooks realism is claimed to go back to Thucydides in the ancient world and then forward to Hobbes and Machiavelli to culminate in Waltz, Gilpin and Mearsheimer via Carr and Morgenthau. But each of these theories are not air-tight. In fact IR theories mix with other theories within a given moment in time and each theory changes internally due to  changes in history.

Defining Imperialism and Anti-imperialism International Theory
Hobson claims that the vast literature on imperialism and anti-imperialism generally lacks conceptual precision. Here Hobson confront two broad definitional approaches:

  • Narrow Eurocentric
  • Expansive postcolonial

Most of modern Eurocentric international theory embraces a narrow definition and allows for considerable wiggle room when confronted with a charge of imperialism. It sees Eurocentrism and imperialism as distinct. You can be Eurocentric and not imperialist and conversely imperialist without being Eurocentric. At the other extreme, by contrast, post-colonial theorists seek to completely shut down this wiggle room by assuming that being Eurocentric is inherently imperialist and imperialism is always Eurocentric.

In table 1 I have a divided a spectrum of imperialism throughout history into 6 types. The three types on the left accept that they are imperialists and don’t apologize for it. The theories on the right deny they are imperialists. The theories on the left are formal empires, while the theories on the right are informal liberal empires. The people in the last cell are the theorists of various types of imperialism. The cell above it include the nature and justification of their mission. The names of the theorists are not important for now, but some of the more famous ones might be familiar to you. The importance of this table are not the theorists but rather the systems of justification, none of which are value free, universal and objective.

Table 1 The Definitional Continuum of Imperialism, Past and Present

Definitional Consensus
Most coercive definition
Accept they are imperialists
Definitional Controversy
Least coercive definition
Deny they are imperialists
Formal EmpireInformal liberal empire
Tributary relations, political containment conquest of barbarismNational civilizing mission/cultural
conversion
Civilizing mission, via international government
protectorates
Anglo-Saxon hegemonyTo protect, duty to prevent, duty to assist concept of democraciesUniversalization

of Western civilization and global empire of liberal democratic peace

Gumplowicz, Ward, Mahan
Mackinder,
K. Pearson, Hitler, Von Treitschke, Kidd, Spykman
Haushofer
Cobden, Bright, Angell, Mill, Marx, Reinsch,
W.Wilson
Hobson, Buell, Woolf
Krasner, Fukuyama
Gilpin
Kindleberger Kagan, Brzezinski,
Cooper, Ignatieff
Slaughter, Ikenberry, Wheeler, Risse, Finnermore Rawls, Held
Nussbaum
Friedman, Wolf, Russet, Owen

Eurocentric Imperialism: Liberal and Marxism

In Table 2 below, one interesting but expected difference between liberalism and Marxism is that liberals see imperialism as benign. J. A. Hobson and John Stuart Mill see imperialism is benign at an international level, but Cobden, Bright and Angell see imperialism as benign at a national level. The fact that Marxists thinks imperialism as coerced rather than benign should not come as a surprise to anyone. Traditional International Relations Theory sees liberal internationalism and classical Marxism as the antithesis of imperialism. However, John Hobson’s main point is what Marxism and liberals have in common. They all agree that:

  • The East can be characterized as “barbaric oriental despotism”
  • The capitalist peripheral countries (Third world) are savage, anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of nature
  • Western agency is always pioneering, learning nothing from the rest of the world
  • Eastern agency even at its best is conditional, always learning from the West

It is these four points that show how deep Eurocentrism of all Western theories, even Marxism. These are the type of deep assumptions, hundreds of years old the keep Western theorists of world politics that the BRICS world of the East is bypassing them.

Table 2 Paternalistic, Eurocentric. Institutional Imperial Concepts of World Politics

MarxismLeft LiberalLiberal
MarxMill and HobsonCobden, Bright, Angell
Coerced national civilizing missionBenign international missionBenign national mission
East as barbaric Oriental DespotismEast as barbaric Oriental DespotismEast as barbaric Oriental Despotism
South as savage—3rd world anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of natureSouth as savage—3rd world anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of natureSouth as savage—3rd world anarchistic societies residing in a domestic state of nature
Pioneering Western agencyPioneering Western agencyPioneering Western agency
Conditional Eastern agencyConditional Eastern agencyConditional Eastern agency

Here are some further examples of Eurocentrism. In the 19th century, even when IR theory was sensitive to interdependence, it wasn’t world interdependence. Rather it was interdependence among the civilized states of Europe. Outside of Europe there was no recognition of interdependence. Eastern societies only got recognition once they became colonies or only if these countries were at war with Europe. It is something like calling the ultimate baseball playoffs “the World Series” even when it only includes the United States.

At the same time, the Eurocentrists had no problem imagining war with the East if it was profitable. But when it came to the civilized states of Europe, war was seen as unprofitable. Also, as we shall see later, racist theories bemoaned Europeans fighting because this would result in the depletion of the white race. Colonial annexation was entirely appropriate when it come to Europe’s relation with the East. The East has  conditional agency, such as Japan during World War II. However, the East cannot take the lead in historical development without being predator (as in the Yellow Peril).

As for the Global South, (Africa) for it  to be a respectable civilized state, Western core countries took a page out of Calvinism and insisted that these “savage societies” have a duty to develop their land productivity (meaning agriculturally) and abandon their primitivism (hunting and gathering). Non-Western politics, whether they be monarchies without constitutions or the egalitarian political consensus societies of hunting and gathering, are not recognized as sovereign. It was representative bourgeois state politics that was the “civilized” norm. As late as 1993 Paul Johnson said most African states are not fit to govern themselves. Their continued existence and the violence of human degradation they bring are a threat to the stability and peace as well as an affront to our moral sense. As of today Zionist Israel has massacred over 200,000 Palestinians. Yet there is no call from the United Nations (controlled by the West) to intervene in this “failed state”.

European imperialists hide their protectionist policies. As Friedrich List remarked, once imperialists have attained their summit of greatness, they kick away the ladder by which they climbed up in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up afterwards behind them.

Both the US and Britain industrialized on the back of extremely protectionist regimes and only turned to free trade once they arrived at the top of the global economic hierarchy. Thus, the imposition of free trade on developing countries by Britain after 1846 and the US after 1945 prevents Third World states from using tariffs to protect the infant industries. The projection of “free trade” by Americans…constitute an economic containment strategy to keep the Third World down.

A Century of Marxist Eurocentrism

Karl Marx’s paternal Eurocentrism and the political necessity of the Western civilizing mission
Marx appears to have had little appreciation for the complexity of ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations. For him China and India were the home of “Oriental Despotism”. The East could only be emancipated from its backwardness by the British colonialists. India stands outside world history and China was understood as a rotting semi-civilization. Believe it or not, for Marx, opium wars were emancipatory for China. Without British intervention there would be no future emancipatory socialist revolution. Imperialism was an instrument for both political progress and a requirement of global primitive accumulation. Was the result of British colonization Chinese emancipation? No, it was a century of Chinese humiliation (1839-1949). The imperialist engagement with China did not lead to order but to massive social-dislocation. The various Chinese revolutions were in part stimulated by a reaction against the encounter with the West.

For Marx and Engels, the East could belatedly jump aboard the Western developmental plane as Hobson says as “The Oriental Express”. It could participate in the construction of world history. But they could never lead the train in a progressive direction. They only had conditional agency. The Western states on the other hand had hyper-sovereignty. Sadly, Hobson says there hasn’t been much effort to reconstruct Marx’s theory along non-Eurocentric lines in traditional Marxism.

Lenin has no theory of Eastern emancipation
According to Hobson, Lenin says the East is inherently incapable of self-development. Lenin discusses how the period of free competition within Europe was succeeded after 1873 with the rise of cartels which intensified after 1903 into full-fledged monopoly capital and finance capital. But the causes of the crisis lay in the West whether underconsumption (Hobson) or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Marx and Engels). There was no mention of resistance in the colonies. Lenin discussed the right of self-determination of nations, but those nations would never influence the West or provide leadership.

World-systems theory
Wallerstein
Immanuel Wallerstein was heavily criticized by Robert Brenner and other classical Marxists for overstating the interdependence of trade and hierarchy between societies and understating the class struggle within societies. But he maintains his traditional Marxian orientation in emphasizing the dynamics for the evolution of the world-system clearly in the Western part of the world. The West represents the civilized world, the core countries. The second division in the world is occupied by the regressive redistributive world empires in Asia. Division three of the world system is occupied by primitive reciprocal mini-systems found in North America, parts of Africa and Australasia (savage societies in the 19thcentury parlance).

World-empires mainly in Asia saw their state structures weakened while their boundaries underwent a forced contraction and the surviving mini-systems of North American, Caribbean and Australia underwent wholesale destruction. 

Arrighi and Chase-Dunn

Other world-systems theorists like Giovanni Arrighi and Christopher Chase Dunn suggested that the world-system didn’t consist of just a core and a periphery but consisted of a semi-periphery which may or may not be Western. They argued that when core Western countries experienced crisis and decline, it was the semi-periphery countries that provided a new resource which allowed them to become a new core.

Exceptions to the rule Gunder Frank, Abu-Lughod

To be fair, both a sympathizer and an arch-critic of World-Systems theory, Andre Gunder Frank accused Wallerstein of Eurocentrism in his writings culminating in hisbook Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. The work of Janet Anu-Lughod Before European Hegemony was so very powerful in showing the advanced state of non-Western trade networks  between 1250 and 1350 CE.

Exceptions to the Rule Outside of Marxism: James Watson

Watson’s analysis starts out with typical Eurocentrism with the Westphalian origins of European international society. He emphasizes the uniqueness of European restlessness and exceptional turbulence. Dynamic and enterprising as it is, it is  contrasted to the closed or isolated world of Asian cultures. The rise of the West is located in Weberian liberalism, neorealism and Marxism. Watson’s unusually explorative book The Evolution of International Society moves from the Italian city-state system and then proceeds with the emergence of sovereignly at the Westphalia conference by way of the Renaissance and the Reformation to arrive at the balance of power in 1713 at Utrecht. Yet he does talk about Eastern developments as reacting back on Europe as in a dialectical way. What the East contributed from the West included:

  • the Italian city-state system was dependent on Eastern trade;
  • financially cheques, bills of exchange, banks and commercial partnerships which had been pioneered in the Islamic and pre-Islamic Middle-East;
  • overseas expansion which began in 1492 was only possible with the navigational and nautical techniques that were pioneered by Chinese and especially Muslims; and
  • Industrialization, centerpiece of “British genius” was significantly enabled by Chinese innovations that stem back several millenniums.

Further, Watson analyzes in considerable detail many non-Western political formations prior to 1648.

Western Fear of Eastern and Southern Power

Most interesting is that many anti-imperialist racists argue against imperialism because it brings the white race in racially fatal conflict with the contaminating influences of non-white races. The impossibility of Eastern progressive development renders the Western civilizing mission all but futile.

Charles Henry Pearson: the decline of white supremacy and the barbaric rise of the yellow peril
Charles Henry Pearson (1830-1894) achieved immediate fame with the dire prophesy that he issued for the  white race in his book National Life and Character, a Forecast.  He argued that white racial supremacy was being superseded by very high levels of predatory Eastern agency. But in Pearson’s racist imagination it is the white West that has been fated to remain within its stationary limits while the yellow races are destined to expand and triumph over the higher whites. The barbaric threat also came from within as a result of the socialist states’ preference to prop up the unfit white working classes and from without via the Yellow Peril were all leading to deterioration.

James Blair and David Jordan

Jordan’s defensive social Darwinist racism was a pacifist’s eugenics. It had three components:

  • The white race cannot survive in the topics.

It serves to affect a degeneration of the physical and intellectual energy of the Europeans. He gives an example of that as the Philippines lie in the heat of the torrid zone which he called natures asylum for degeneration. Benjamin Kidd argued though we in Europe have the greatest food-producing regions of the earth, we want to administer the tropic from a distance. The white races needed to wake up because the topics will lure them to their death. Kidd wanted to absolve the West of its home-grown liberal imperial guilt syndrome. His key concern about colonizing the tropics was the degenerative impact that the climate would have on white imperialists.

  • The second anti-imperialist argument concerned the perils of immigration.

The Oriental is of the past. They have not progressed for centuries. The Easterner hates progress. He contends that the constitution of China is said to not have been changed for thousands of years. One the other hand, the West is progressive, energetic and intolerant of the very thing which is the East’s most marked characteristic, indolence. The two races should never amalgamate.

  • Anti-war because the fittest white people would get kille

Jordan argues that warfare selects the best or fittest elements of the civilized white race to go out and fight, but in so doing leads to a reduction in the numbers of the fittest element as they lose their lives in futile colonial wars. Meanwhile the infirm and cowardly and feckless stay home, away from the battlefield. Some defensive racists were against the war between white countries so they could preserve white unity.

To summarize the threat from the East:

  • Domestic white barbaric threat – unfit working class
  • Racist interbreeding threat – contamination
  • Tropical climatic threat
  • Threat of European wars depleting the white race

The crisis of Western self-doubting and deep anxiety was reflected in a host of books which included:

  • Spengler’s Decline of the West (European Institutionalist) (1919,1932)
  • Madison Grant’s the Passing of the White Race (1918)
  • Lothrop Stoddard The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (1920)
  • Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)

 Stoddard

Eurocentrism and racism do not always deny non-white race’s agency. The climax of eugenics reflected not the moment of supreme white confidence but an acute  sense of anxiety regardless the future hegemony of the white race. For Stoddard, globalization is a real threat. The greatest threat to white racial existence lies

  • in colored immigration problem
  • a demographic explosion

The white races are under siege and disunited within their inner sanctum excavated by the Trojan horse of Western liberalism. Stoddard takes the notion of predatory Eastern agency beyond Mahan and Mackinder. He wants to call out the hubris of the white race. He is nervous and panicked about the Japanese victory over the white Russians in 1905. Further, rise of communism dealt a cruel blow to white racial unity. He is afraid of the white wars in which the best white stock would be lost on the battlefields. The white need to retreat from their imperial bases in Asia and leave the land to yellow and brown rule.

Madison Grant
Grant claimed colonialism weakens the white races. The Nordic race is unable to survive south of the line of latitude on white Virginia because of the detrimental impact of the hot climate. Nordics must keep away from the native population for fear of racial contamination from the sun’s actinic rays. Grant says the rapid decline in the birthrate of native white Americans is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which they once conquered and developed. The man of the old stock is being crowded out.

Patrick Moynihan
In Patrick Moynihan book Pandemonium, he explores a  Malthusian logic in predicting the demographic doomsday scenario at the hands of the Eastern Hordes as does Paul Kennedy in his book Preparing for the 21st CenturyFor them, the greatest challenge to world order in the coming century is the rising relative demographic gap between West and East. Western civilizations will have stable or declining populations and would be swamped by the East and the South. While Malthus in his day did not prevent a rising demographic to Europe from the East, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries these became a staple of much of racist Western thought.

Huntington and Lind on demographics
In the work of Huntington and Lind a close parallel can be drawn between their work and the racist imperialist thinker Mahan. But an even closer link can be found with CH Pearson’s National Life and Character, a Forecast; Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920);  Clashing Tides of Color (1935).  In Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations (1996). The roots of the barbaric threat that the Chinese and Muslims pose for the Western Civilization are located within a neo-Malthusian framework. It begins with the Eastern population explosion. This surplus population is problematic because it will seek to flood into the heartlands of the West.

For Huntington and Lind, non-Western societies were increasingly becoming the movers and shakers of their own history and of Western history. This meant in their ability to economically develop as well as resist imperialism. Lind writes that with the break-up of the Soviet “empire” the West’s great right flank will almost certainly be endangered as the Islamic republics will seek to join their Muslim brothers. Islam will be at the gates of Vienna as either immigrants or terrorists. Domestically multiculturalism in the West today is a “political virus” for it serves to boost the vitality of foreign cultures within the West.

Conclusion
The purpose of this article is to expose the theoretical blockages to the West’s understanding that they are being left beyond by the multipolar world of BRICS.

First, their Western International Relations Theory history has hardly been a positivist value free theory. It oozes Eurocentrism, paternalism, racism and imperialism. Secondly International Relations Theory only dimly perceives that these theories are not 100 years deep, starting after World War I, but have a 250 year history as Table 3 below shows. Thirdly, table 3 shows over 50 theorists over that 250 years, thus cementing a deep ideological commitment to “the rise of the West”. Those international theorists who have really understood that the East and the South are not merely passive recipients of the wisdom of the West but are themselves innovators. These theorists are isolated and could be counted on two hands.

Table 3 Eurocentrism, Paternalism and Racism  in International Theory 1760-2010

1760-1914
Manifest Eurocentrism
Paternalism
Cobden/ Bright, Angell, Hobson, Mill, Marx
Ant-paternalism
Smith, Kant
Scientific racismOffensive racism
Ward, Reinsch, Kidd, Mahan, Mackinder and von Treitschke
Defensive Racism Spencer, Sumner, Blair, Jordan, CH Pearson, Ripley, Brinton
1914-1945
Manifest Eurocentrism
Paternalism
Wolff, Zimmern, Murray, Angell
Anti-paternalism
Subliminal Eurocentrism
Laski/ Brailsford, Lenin, Bukharin
Scientific racismOffensive RacismDefensive racism
 Wilson, Buell, Kjellen, Spykman, Haushofer, HitlerStoddard, Grant,
E. Huntington
1945-1989
Subliminal Eurocentrism
Paternalism
Gilpin, Keohane
Walz, Bull, Watson
Anti-Paternalism
Carr, Morgenthau
1989-2010
Manifest Eurocentrism
Paternalist
Rawls, Held, Nussbaum, Fukuyama
Anti-paternalist
World-system theory, Cox
 Offensive Eurocentrism
Kagan, Cooper, Ferguson
Defensive Eurocentrism
SP Huntington, Lind

 

Below is the Conventional linear narrative of Liberal great tradition:

  • From 1760 to 1816 there is classical liberal internationalism of Smith, Kant and Ricardo.
  • From 1830 to 1913 classical liberal internationalism continues in the work of Cobden, Bright, JS Mill and Angell.
  • Between 1900 to 1945 the emphasis switches to interdependence theory of liberal institutionalism of Hobson, Wilson, Zimmerman and Murray.
  • Between 1989 and 2010 liberal cosmopolitanism is embodied in the theories of Fukuyama, Held and Rawls.

The Table 4 below shows Hobson’s very different breakdown of liberalism, calling it “paternalistic imperial liberalism”.

See Table 4 Hobson’s history in international Liberalism on Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

Table 5 shows that history of realism has also been filled with political activity about as far from positivism as one can imagine.

See Table 5 Hobson’s history of international realism on Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

Lastly Hobson charts the history of Marxism from 1840 to post 1989.

  • With classical Marxism of Marx and Engels between 1840-1895. Hobson calls it explicit imperialism which is paternalist Eurocentrism.
  • Between 1910 and the 1920s classical Marxism continues with the work of Lenin, Luxemburg, Hilferding and Bukharin which Hobson characterizes as anti-imperialist, but a subliminal anti-paternalist Eurocentrism.
  • Between 1967 and 1989 although World-Systems Theory differs from classical Marxism with its emphasis on conflicts between states more than class struggles within states, it shares the same combination of anti-imperialist, subliminal, anti-paternalist Eurocentrism of the Marxists of 1910-1920. The same is true for Robert Cox’s Gramscian hegemony theory.
  • In the post 1989 period we find in the work of Giovanni Arrighi and Christopher Chase-Dunn a continuation of anti-imperialist, anti-paternalist emphasis on Europe, but both are more willing to grant autonomy to non-Western countries. If Eastern or Southern countries  occupy what both call the capitalist  semi-periphery of the world system. Arrighi’s last book was called Adam Smith in Beijing, showing his interest in China as the new global hegemon
  • In the same period It is in the work of Andre Gunder Frank and Janet Abu-Lughod that we finally theories that challenge any Eurocentrism or paternalism. Gunder Frank has always contended that World Systems Theory is Eurocentric and claims, as Hobson argues in another book that Europe only surpassed China after 1800. His book Re-Orient claims, correctly I think that the new Asian Age is on the horizon.FacebookRedditEmail
Bruce Lerro has taught for 25 years as an adjunct college professor of psychology at Golden Gate University, Dominican University and Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has applied a Vygotskian socio-historical perspective to his three books found on Amazon. He is a co-founder, organizer and writer for Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. Read other articles by Bruce, or visit Bruce's website.