Metin Guven
LONG READ
The 1960s saw the development of the struggles of various social groups as well as alternative politics in the Western world to the dogmatic Marxism that had previously dominated the Left. Social movements against racism and patriarchy emerged, and alternative culture blossomed in everyday life. These struggles led to the emergence of new ideas and syntheses. Social ecology began to take shape in this period as a synthesis of Marxism and anarchism that centered the idea of ecology. Murray Bookchin analyzed the poisons used in agriculture and their effects, assessed the impact of new technologies, and predicted early on that ecological destruction would threaten to wipe out the habitats of complex lifeforms. As a solution, he proposed creating libertarian organizations aimed at organizing society on the basis of direct democracy, creating a new understanding of politics.
The 1970s marked the beginning of the crisis of US-led capitalism, which had theretofore grown steadily since World War II. During this period, the Institute for Social Ecology was founded in Vermont and the ideas of social ecology were further clarified. In the 1980s, as neoliberal policies were implemented as a solution to the crisis of capitalism, postmodernist ideas became a widespread ideology. Within the ecology movement, the idea of deep ecology also spread and left its mark on the debates of the period. During this time, Murray Bookchin focused on the philosophy of social ecology and harshly criticized deep ecology, while at the same time elaborated the strategy of libertarian municipalism more explicitly.
In the 1990s, Bookchin continued to write on the philosophy of social ecology, clarifying his critique of postmodernism while engaging in polemics with so-called lifestyle anarchists. Eventually he began to criticize anarchism in general, preferring to call the politics of social ecology by the name “communalism.” While these polemics may have been important in terms of clarifying certain points, they seem to have caused him to ignore the debates that were taking place in other circles at the time. If we look at what these debates were, we can see that during this period there were detailed discussions on the cycles of capital accumulation and a re-examination of colonialism based on the concept of historical capitalism.1 In 1976, a group of scholars led by Immanuel Wallerstein founded the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilization at Binghamton University in New York to study the oil crisis of the 1970s and the deepening of the crisis of capitalism based on long historical processes. This work bore its most detailed fruits in the 1990s.
In the 2000s, as his health deteriorated, Bookchin concentrated on his earlier work The Third Revolution, a study of modern revolutions, and managed to publish 4 volumes of this book before his death. Bookchin, who was also working on the publication of The Politics of Cosmology, could not have been expected to focus on a new subject at the time. However, the crisis of capitalism entered a very critical phase during these years, and the debates on whether the hegemony of the US and the current cycle of capital accumulation led by the US was going to come to an end had begun.
As the name suggests, the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies aimed to study the development of capitalist economies since their inception on the basis of Braudel’s concept of the long durée. This concept means prioritizing long-term historical structures over short periods or events in historiography. On this basis, Braudel analyzed cycles of capital accumulation, starting with the economy of Venice in the 13th century. Although the Fernand Braudel Center focused on this approach, it has engaged in and produced other debates and analyses. The academics involved in these debates also challenged Eurocentrism, discussing what priority to give to internal European developments regarding the emergence of capitalism versus the role of colonialism.2 They also debated how far back in history the concept of capitalism should go. In this way different world-systems perspectives emerged.
In this period, Eurocentrism was another issue that Bookchin and other social ecologists avoided discussing. While on the one hand social ecology developed an alternative vision to developmentalism and criticized the determinist linear understanding of history on the other, to combine these insights with a critique of Eurocentrism could be an important contribution to the debates on Eurocentrism. It would also enrich the analysis of the legacy of domination, which is an important theme of social ecology, by including colonialism and racism. More importantly, if the hegemony of the US and the West has entered the period of terminal crisis and will end in the medium term, as the world-systems debates suggest, social ecology needs to develop a discourse that is appropriate to the new world that will emerge at the end of this process. If such a world-system transition takes place, it will be difficult for any Left movement to analyze the current situation correctly or reach the masses with old understandings and discourses in a reshaped world.
Eurocentrism
In an essay from 1999, Arif Dirlik writes:
For the last century, but especially since World War II, Eurocentrism has been the informing principle in our constructions of history –not just in EuroAmerican historiography, but in the spatial and temporal assumptions of dominant historiographies worldwide. EuroAmericans conquered the world, renamed places, rearranged economies, societies, and politics, and erased or drove to the margins premodern ways of knowing space, time, and many other things as well. In the process, they universalized history in their own self-image in an unprecedented manner.3
Although historiography is particularly emphasized here, Eurocentrism affects every aspect of our worldview. It is widely accepted that everything that is defined as modern in Europe is right and superior. Looking at the ideas underlying this, we can define Eurocentrism with two main points:
1. A developmentalist understanding of the entire history of humanity and putting the increase in production before everything else in terms of progress.
2. Looking at history based on a deterministic linearity and arguing that every society progresses through certain universal stages of social structures that point towards the developmental path of Europe.
This understanding posits that European industrial capitalism was more advanced than all previous societies in every way and legitimizes everything Europe did to achieve it. To this we can add a third point, which considers the origins of capitalist modernity as the product of internal developments that are essentially unique to Europe. If we look back as far as the Middle Ages, knowledge, technologies, and other influences from outside Europe are ignored or minimized at every stage. These developments are presented as being mainly the result of European dynamics, denying that they could not have happened in this way without intercontinental interactions. Actors from other continents are treated only in a passive role, neglecting the developments they determined. Thus, actors outside Europe are marginalized. Those regions are considered stagnant and not contributing to the modernization of the world.
However, we must note that many authors and thinkers who are not Eurocentric according to the first two criteria, which are more decisive, can be characterized as Eurocentric in terms of some of their discourses according to the third point. This is largely because the Eurocentric discourse of history has been dominant for many years, most notably in the Marxist literature. Moving away from this discourse requires a conscious and determined effort and detailed research. Murray Bookchin was also influenced by this discourse and was accused of Eurocentrism by some according to the third point. I think it is not especially fair to judge thinkers who have rejected Eurocentrism according to basic criteria in this way; however, it is an important task to appraise their writings and rectify the traces of Eurocentrism.4
In the meantime, some see Eurocentrism as a problem limited to culture and discourse. Nevertheless, Eurocentrism is neither just a cultural nor a mere historiographical problem. It is an important ideological tool of power struggles in the world and has been crucial in the establishment of Western hegemony. The imposition of US hegemony on postcolonial societies cannot be thought of without Eurocentrism. In this context, Arif Dirlik writes:
Eurocentrism as a historical phenomenon is not to be understood without reference to the structures of power that EuroAmerica produced over the last five centuries, which in turn produced Eurocentrism, globalized its effects, and universalized its historical claims.5
Another problem is that when thinkers try to strongly oppose Eurocentrism they sometimes help it by universalizing concepts created by Europe. Arif Dirlik criticizes Andre Gunder Frank on this issue as follows:
the representation as Eurocentrism of emphasis on the historical role of modern capitalism promises not only to erase the distinctiveness of modern history, but also to eliminate the capitalist mode of production as a distinct mode with its own forms of production and consumption, oppression and exploitation, and ideology. This is the case with Andre Gunder Frank’s “5,000 year world-system,” which, in the name of erasing Eurocentrism, universalizes and naturalizes capitalist development in much the same fashion as classical economics -that is, by making it into the fate of humankind rather than the conjunctural product of a particular history.6
Eurocentric Understanding of Civilization, History, and the State
According to the dominant Eurocentric understanding, civilization is identified with sedentary societies, “complex” centralized social structures are perceived as hierarchical, and is associated with advanced production techniques. The moral or ethical values of society are either absent or undervalued in this understanding of civilization. Civilization began in Mesopotamia and spread to Europe through Anatolia. It reached its peak with the Roman Empire, followed by a Dark Age when this empire collapsed. With the Renaissance, civilization began to rise again in Europe and is still heading towards new heights today. Civilization was led by Europe and other countries where Europeans have settled, such as the USA. An advanced civilization led by an Asian country is unthinkable because civilization has been led by Europe for 2,500 years. From this point of view, the developments in the Middle Ages after the fall of Rome and how the Renaissance began are insignificant details. Asia and other continents are stagnant regions of civilization.
This discourse was very effective in legitimizing colonialism. Europe was presented as the power that will civilize other continents and it is legitimate to do so by any means. In this way, slavery and even genocide were legitimized. The first problem here is the linear approach to history, where it is assumed that civilization follows a linear path where humanity goes through different stages with corresponding social structures. Primitive societies were followed by slave societies, then feudal society, and finally capitalist society. This sequence observed in Europe is universal and valid for every society. According to this point of view, even in the absence of outside intervention, the evolution of every society would have led to capitalism along these lines. Capitalism is not a social structure specific to Europe emerging under its unique conditions: it is a universal social structure that every society will inevitably arrive at. Therefore, spreading capitalism to other societies was also a legitimate endeavor and served their progress.7
The second important feature of Eurocentrism is that it considers civilization only on the basis of developments in the material infrastructure of society. When comparing two civilizations or two stages of a civilization, the material production and consumption of those societies is taken as the most fundamental criterion. It doesn’t matter whether this consumption is used for war or in some other destruction, or whether it is just conspicuous consumption. The fact that a civilization offers a better life for all people in an egalitarian way and that it has built more livable cities does not make it more valuable. Moral and ethical values have no place in the comparison of civilizations. The fact that Roman civilization represents a decline in ethical values such as citizens equal participation of politics compared to ancient Athens and that the most important libraries in the world were burned during that period does not prevent it from being placed at a more advanced point in terms of civilization. Today this understanding emerges as the concept of developmentalism.
Inevitably, this approach leads to the marginalization of those outside Europe. First, it ignores the fact that civilization has developed through the interaction and contributions of many different regions. Second, and worse still, it tries to ignore the fact that the moral values developed in Europe are indirectly responsible for the destructive consequences that affect the whole of humanity and could cause the total destruction of its habitat. Other societies are stagnant and their scientific and intellectual contributions to civilization are insignificant, so their influence on how humanity develops will also be insignificant or negative. Therefore, European values should not be questioned and solutions should be sought within that framework, which today are the free market economy and representative democracy.
The discovery of Indus Valley Civilization, which emerged at approximately the same time as the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, was an important finding that refuted this discourse. However, information about this civilization was hidden from view for decades in anticipation that new evidence was going to appear proving it was also organized based on a hierarchical state. Despite widespread and detailed excavations, no such evidence was uncovered. Then the debate deepened. As a result, it is widely accepted that a civilization with more advanced technologies than its contemporaries was founded there by a society without a state, armies, or kings.8
On the other hand, while Murray Bookchin defined history in this way:
History is precisely what is rational in human development. It is what is rational, moreover, in the dialectical sense of the implicit that unfolds, expands, and begins in varying degrees through increasing differentiation to actualize humanity’s very real potentialities for freedom, self-consciousness, and cooperation.9
He wrote that he understood civilization as the realization of history: “These achievements, let us acknowledge quite clearly, are Civilization.”10 This is clearly a conception of civilization based on the development of freedom and self-consciousness, not merely on achievements in material production.
Eurocentrism assumes that states all over the world will evolve into capitalist states and ignores the existence of different state traditions.11 Even if there are different state traditions, they would acquire common features in the process of modernization and the differences between them would disappear. Although social ecology’s understanding of history does not support such an assumption, it seems to have fallen into this Eurocentric trap by ignoring different state traditions. One reason for this might be concentrating on struggles for freedom, but we also need to understand different state traditions in order to comprehend the developments that will unfold in the coming period. If we are to enter a period in which Asian states will be the most influential world powers that shape the global order, it will be impossible to fight these powers without understanding their state traditions.12
World System Perspective
The debates that began at the Fernand Braudel Center in the 1970s challenged Eurocentrism by questioning the perception of capitalism as a process that began with industrialization in the 19th century on the one hand, and the approaches that legitimized colonialism on the other. Based on Braudel’s analysis, it was generally accepted that the cycles of capital accumulation that began in the 16th century based on trade in the Mediterranean region initiated historical capitalism. Those who objected to this argued that the beginning of capitalism should be traced back even further and that its development must be analyzed from a world system perspective. This analysis revealed that capitalism developed beyond the internal dynamics of Europe, in conjunction with the dynamics of world trade systems and the process of colonialism. The flow of capital to England accumulated through these processes paved the way for the development of industrial capitalism there.
The first systemic cycle of capital accumulation began under the leadership of Genoa, with its capital accumulated through trade, and expanded when Spain (supported by Genoa) colonized South and Central America. As Spain plundered the gold and silver of the Americas, these precious metals were used mostly to procure weapons or to import luxury consumer goods from China. Precious metals transferred to Spain fueled wars with England and France, who wanted their share from that plunder; eventually the first cycle, led by Genoese capital protected by Spain, collapsed.
The second cycle began when the Netherlands started to accumulate capital through trade in the Baltic Sea and then took the lead after the wars of 1618-1648.13 The Netherlands had its own army and had been building more efficient ships. However, England and France also turned to colonialism in both Asia and America to compete with it. Eventually, the Netherlands’ labor and production potential became insufficient to maintain and expand its colonies and hegemony in trade. Unable to sustain the expansion of the colonial system, the economy became financialized, and the capital accumulated there began to flow to Britain where investments were more profitable.14 Also, even though the Netherlands was the leading country in terms of capital accumulation and dominated trade in the Indian Ocean, the wealthiest country in the seventeenth century was still India followed by China. Western powers were still far from establishing a world hegemony and their share of international trade remained small compared to trade between Asian countries.
The collapse of Dutch leadership led France to compete for leadership by launching the Napoleonic wars. Britain, the winner of this war, took the lead in 1814. It had already previously prevailed over France in India and had grown stronger by exploiting the textile industry and collecting taxes there. The third cycle that developed under the hegemony of Britain, which expanded its colonial system, entered a period of decline with the economic crisis of 1873-1879. This signal crisis was followed by an upswing of optimism with financialization and then a period of terminal crisis that began with World War I.15 Again, after nearly 30 years of chaos, the fourth cycle began under the leadership of the United States, which played the leading role in defeating Germany in the leadership race.
The US established a new world order characterized by new institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Classical colonialism gave way to neocolonialism. Direct occupation gave way to bilateral and regional agreements, political manipulation, and the threat of armed invasion; as a result, Keynesian policies and state interventions became dominant in the economy. After a long period of steady growth, the crisis of the 1970s, which saw soaring oil prices, was the signal crisis of this cycle. As in the previous two cycles, when the cost of labor rose in the leading country, industry shifted elsewhere and began to move to the global South. The neoliberal policies of the 1980s and new information technologies briefly halted the decline in profitability. The 1990s were years of optimism. But having lost the protracted Vietnam War in the 1970s, the US military and political power continued to erode. After the 2001 crisis, the US tried to strengthen its hegemony with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but these invasions cost trillions of dollars and turned out to be a fiasco.
This analysis, which I have tried to introduce very briefly, examines how capital accumulation has developed over cycles of more than a hundred years, revealing the common features that stand out in each cycle while trying to find patterns. It reveals how capitalism has been intertwined with colonialism throughout these processes. It demonstrates that capitalism could not have developed without the multifaceted contributions of the colonies and other continents in general. This analysis includes many lessons for us to understand the world today. It also allows us to make predictions about the end of the fourth cycle, which is now in its final crises. Without these predictions, it is not possible for freedom struggles to see in what kind of world we will be fighting during the decisive battles to come.
For example, world system perspective helped to predict rightly that during the currently emerging terminal crisis period, new powers would have a lesser role driving the transition to a new cycle compared to that played by the declining hegemon:
Our comparison of past transitions shows that the role of aggressive new powers in precipitating systemic breakdowns has decreased from transition to transition, while the role played by exploitative domination by the declining hegemon has increased.16
Today China and India play a role in providing a soft landing for the current systemic cycle by patiently building the institutions of a new world order, while the US as a declining power is trying to reinforce its hegemony rather than adjusting and accommodating.
Possible Scenarios after the Western Hegemony
Western world hegemony was established by the colonial system led by the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century. A US-led neocolonial world hegemony was then established after World War II. However, this hegemony was not stable for long due to competition between new and old powers.
Today, the Beijing consensus against the neoliberal principles known as the Washington consensus is being discussed and is gaining weight in various ways.17 After the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the G7 was replaced by the G20 as a forum to address major issues related to the global economy. This could be considered the beginning of “the age of hybridity,” in which “non-Western great powers (led by China) play an increasingly counter-hegemonic role in shaping new style multilateralism – ontologically fragmented, normatively inconsistent, and institutionally incoherent.”18 For example, Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asia, has seen a significant expansion of state capitalism since 2014 with the support of China.
After China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the era of emerging markets or economies began in 2002. In this period, which lasted until 2013, capital exports and direct investments from the West to emerging economies became much higher than in previous periods. The natural consequence was high economic growth in these countries, particularly in China, India, Brazil, and Russia. These countries formed a cooperation organization, which was later joined by South Africa in 2010 and became known as the BRICS. This cooperation is mainly aimed at ending US hegemony and establishing a multipolar world order. Efforts in this direction are multifaceted. They aim to eliminate the US dollar as the international reserve currency and the dominant currency used in trade. The BRICS countries are increasingly trading among themselves in their own currencies.
As a result of the sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, the BRICS countries have improved the mechanisms of financial exchange among themselves on the one hand, and the volume of trade between Russia and other countries has increased significantly on the other. In August 2023, Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were also invited to become members. Another 23 states are mentioned that are awaiting entry. The BRICS+ countries already have a GDP larger than the G7 combined on a purchasing parity basis. Considering the possible new accessions and the high growth rates of China and India, we can expect the BRICS+ to soon become an economic powerhouse as large as the G7 in nominal terms.
It is no coincidence that the leading BRICS countries, China and Russia, are dominated by state capitalism, while in Russia and India, crony capitalism has come to the fore. All these rising state interventions give a clue as to the direction in which capitalism will develop in the coming period.
The world system perspective shows that the transition period we are now going through is from the US hegemony to a multipolar world. The old power centers of the US and Europe are declining, China is the leading rising power, and India and others are extending their share of world economy and trade as well. But we have no way of knowing how this new world order will take shape and how capital accumulation will continue. Also there is a possibility that the current cycle of capital accumulation could be the last one and a new cycle may not be observed at all; we cannot know how this would unfold either. However, by looking at how past cycles have ended, we can say that we are arriving at the end of liberal capitalism. In the past, in order to overcome the crisis during the end of a cycle, policies dominated by state intervention were pursued. Importantly, a new cycle has always relied on expanding the colonial system in a new form. But this time there is no alternative to neocolonialism, on the contrary the idea of autonomy is being spread among old colonies and colonialism is being internalized by each state.
Also as we will explore more, the problems of the current world are so deep that there is no state that could establish hegemony over others and claim leadership in overcoming these problems. China has no intention in that direction either. We may presume that the end of the current cycle would mark the end of the Western-dominated hegemonic world order period and also the end of hegemonic world orders.
We need to look at all these developments in the light of the fact that this transition period is taking place at a time when the climate crisis is reaching its peak. Among the BRICS members, India is one of the leading countries that continues to invest in coal despite all international pressure. China’s leaders have long been discussing “ecological civilization” to deal with the growing environmental problems and the climate crisis. But they hope to solve these problems through top-down decisions and centralized projects. The end result is expected to be eco-authoritarianism. With liberal climate policies proving ineffective, eco-authoritarianism may trigger eco-fascism in the West. If the global South increases solidarity within itself and greatly reduces the power of the West, this may fuel nationalism and racism in Europe and the US.
Notably, we should remember how oppressive policies like McCarthyism were developed after the end of the third cycle. The competition between the US and USSR was the main cause of it. The US and Europe supported military coups in the Global South while USSR supported armed national liberation movements. We will see a different type of competition between the Western and BRICS+ countries. That competition already creates unexpected results such as military coups in Africa supported by Russia.19 Another example is both Western powers and Russia support an undemocratic dictatorial regime in Turkey out of the fear that withdrawing support may push Turkey to the other side. It is exceedingly difficult to predict how that competition will evolve in the future.
Beyond all these possibilities, both the measures necessitated by the climate crisis and the competition between state blocs could reduce capitalism to a system controlled by the state and function within the limits it sets. When national markets in Asia reach a size that would shape the global market, we cannot be sure that the West will accept this and leave the market unhindered. Even now Biden talks about restricting smart cars made by Chinese companies on the pretext that they may gather sensitive information.20 In such an environment, products will be shaped according to Asian demands and Asian companies will be advantaged in many ways. As a result of all those, capital accumulation may turn into a state-controlled process, as in Venice in the 13th century; or it may turn into a post-capitalism in which accumulation of capital as the main goal would be replaced by accumulation of state power.
On the other hand, popular mass movements demanding a relatively just and sustainable economy instead of a blind growth economy that destroys nature would place pressure in favor of limiting capital investments and movements. Increasing food prices, widespread precarious employment, and other problems related to climate change and ecological dislocation will most probably push more people to agitate in that direction.
Multiple Modernities or Global Modernity?
During the financialization period of the third cycle of capital accumulation in the late 19th century, the wave of globalization spread the Eurocentric mentality throughout the world. This was a period when the science and technology developed in Europe were spread out as part of modernism. In this period, while the capital concentrated in the UK flowed to the colonies, it was the US that received an even bigger share from capital outflow. In former empires such as the Chinese or the Ottoman, elites began to blame Confucianism or the Islamic religious system for their backwardness. They expected to overcome it by adopting a European understanding of civilization. The early 20th century witnessed the implementation of this approach. Nationalism and the nation-state mentality thus became increasingly widespread. Modernity’s claim to universality seemed to be coming true.
After World War II, the United States began to be perceived as the final phase of civilization, the goal to be emulated. The only alternative was the socialist system. Countries that gained independence first took the socialist system as an example, but both their own failures and the collapse of the socialist system eventually brought them under the ideological hegemony of the USA. In this way the US got the world to adopt the idea of developmentalism that was introduced after World War II.
In the late 20th century, another wave of globalization, which emerged with the financialization of the fourth cycle of capital accumulation, brought a period of the weakening of the nation-state and the strengthening of transnational corporations. However, as we have seen above, this time the capital accumulated in the West began to flow to emerging markets, that is, to countries dominated by different cultures. The flow of capital and economic empowerment of these countries, which had adopted developmentalism, resulted in the creation of their own modernity, even if they had adopted some of the basic features of the Eurocentric mindset. Traditional mentalities and structures, which had previously been seen as the cause of backwardness, were now seen as values that would pave the way for their own development. In fact, it cannot be said that there has been much modernization in these countries in areas such as family structure or the way the state is organized through an authoritarian bureaucracy.
In this sense, the revival of traditional cultures is referred as “multiple modernities,” but this designation is more associated with the fact that this development is limited to culture, independent from power and domination, and handled with an approach similar to postmodernist relativism. Considering this and the fact that these modernities complement and extend modernity at the same time, Arif Dirlik proposes that this development should be called global modernity and explains his reasons as follows:
What needs urgent attention is the everyday production of values against a preoccupation with reified notions of cultures and civilizations, as in the case of the “multiple modernities” idea, which perpetuates a hegemonic modernization discourse by other means, or concerns with multiculturalism in the organization of knowledge, which renders into questions of culture complicated questions of class, gender, and ethnic/racial inequality that cut across cultural divides, and require for their reckoning closer attention to the structures of political economy that produce not only the inequalities, but also the mystifications of those inequalities.21
He further clarifies:
The globalization of modernity needs to be comprehended not just in the trivial sense of an originary modernity reaching out and touching all, even those who are left out of its benefits, as in the ideological deployments of globalization but, more important, as a proliferation of claims on modernity. So-called traditions no longer imply a contrast with modernity, as they did in modernization discourse. Nor are they the domain of backward-looking conservatism, except in exceptional instances—such as the Taliban. They are invoked increasingly to establish claims to alternative modernities (but only rarely to alternatives to modernity). They point not to the past but, taking a detour through the past, to an alternative future. They have taken over from a now defunct socialism —even in formally “socialist” societies, such as the People’s Republic of China— the task of speaking for those oppressed or cast aside by a capitalist modernity and pointing to different possibilities for the future.22
Modernity thus lost its claim to universality. On the one hand, it has become a global phenomenon; on the other hand, it has turned into a global modernity in which different modernities develop themselves. However, it is difficult to predict what these modernities will bring to the world since it is uncertain how each of them will unfold differently. While these modernities have the potential to reproduce Eurocentric developmentalism and a teleological understanding of history in different forms, they can also produce alternative trajectories.
China and India in particular, as two old, deep-rooted civilizations, are likely to develop their own alternative lines of development against the current Eurocentric modernity based on their traditional system of thought. China is already giving priority to rural revitalisation and improved environment over GDP growth. “China’s new Rural Revitalisation Promotion Law to advance the work of rebuilding the rural economy came into effect in June 2021.”23 This, of course, will be more clear after they move along a developmentalist path they currently adopted to put an end to US hegemony. After achieving this and establishing a post-hegemonic era, a paradigm shift to resolve the climate crisis would be imperative. However, such a paradigm shift based on traditional institutions(such as a neo-Confucian bureaucracy) would only support authoritarian governments: it cannot promise any hope for emancipation and democratic solutions. Nevertheless, they may create different paradigms and overcoming them will likely require different discourses and methods of struggle.
A Social Ecology Relevant for the 2030’s
During 1980’s and 1990’s since social ecology focused on the root causes of ecological crisis and the question of how to overcome multiple intertwined crises, its theory was overwhelmed by the critique of deep ecology, anarchism, and postmodernism as they have distracting ideas to develop a coherent framework to overcome these crises. As a result, certain gaps occurred in analyzing colonialism, historical capitalism, and global modernity. These gaps also left traces of Eurocentrism in social ecological theory even though it included a clear critique of developmentalism and the linear understanding of history.
As we go through a critical transition period which seems to conclude Euro-American world hegemony, it is an important task to close these gaps in social ecology to distance it from Eurocentrism. It would provide a better understanding of racism, as colonialism could be put in a more coherent framework in this way as well. I suggest that integrating social ecology with a world-systems perspective –with a critical view— would help to develop social ecology in this direction. Such an endeavor would also provide a coherent understanding of world history, as Arif Dirlik has suggested that “conceiving world history [requires] … the world or the globe as the ultimate frame of reference in the investigation and explanation of the forces shaping the past and the present… Rather than organize the world in terms of the spaces of nations and civilizations, this perspective calls for a view of nations and civilizations in their historicity, not only with beginnings and ends of their own but more like processes rather than finished products in their very constitution.”24
The struggle to resolve the climate crisis is likely to converge with the global resistance against Euro-American hegemony in all its aspects. As a result of these struggles, a new world order may create a relatively just world globally, but it is more likely to lead to regression than progress in terms of the struggle for freedom and democracy. To overcome these difficulties the scope of social ecology needs to be broadened to be effective in the coming period.
Social ecology should include an analysis of the power shift from Euro-America to the global South and the possible outcome and ramifications of this shift. The imminent period of sharp struggles against the climate crisis is also likely to be a period in which Western dominance will give way to a multipolar world. This context must be considered in order to make progressive forces ready for the challenges of that power shift. The world-system perspective would help to develop such an analysis although it requires a critical review of the previous analyses and to update them by considering recent developments and rising social movements (For example environmental justice movements should be included more in these analyses or focus on economy needs to be complemented with the idea of global modernity).
A new theory of the state that incorporates different state traditions is needed to understand an era in which Asian countries will be more influential in global politics. It would be a naive approach to assume that the old civilizations follow similar policies with Euro-American states. They have their own rationalities and state traditions based on their values. It is better to understand them on their own terms in order to deal with them during a period of critical struggles.
The main problem seems to shift from the expansion of capital to concentration of power in the state. The emphasis of the struggle for freedom should also shift to the legacy of domination and state domination – and struggle against the state domination. This would also require developing different minimum programs in different regions according to how global modernity is adopted in that region.
Social ecology provides a coherent framework to raise a libertarian ecological struggle while avoiding the traps of Eurocentrism and postmodernism. But in an ever-changing world its theory needs to be expanded to cover urgent issues other than the ecological crisis, as these conflicts and related forms of domination must be eliminated with all other forms of domination. In this article certain areas of such an expansion have been suggested. Without such additional analysis, social ecology may become an ossified theory relevant to the past rather than a theory helping to strengthen the struggle for freedom. It is best to start discussion on these topics and build a more comprehensive theory before we need it urgently.Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, “Historical capitalism involved therefore the widespread commodification of processes —not merely exchange processes, but production processes, distribution processes, and investment processes— that had previously been conducted other than via a ‘market’. And, in the course of seeking to accumulate more and more capital, capitalists have sought to commodify more and more of these social processes in all spheres of economic life” (Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism [Verso, New York, 1983], 15). Wallerstein considered these processes starting from when capitalism was established as a system in the sixteenth century “based on a structural priority given and sustained for the ceaseless accumulation of capital” (Immanuel Wallerstein, “World System Versus World-System” in André Gunder Frank, Barry K. Gills [eds], The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? [Routledge, 1996], 293).
Thomas E. Reifer, “Histories of the Present: Giovanni Arrighi & the Long Duree of Geohistorical Capitalism,” Journal of World-Systems Research (Vol. 15, No. 2, 2009), 249–256; and Carlos Eduardo Martins, “Marxism and World-Systems Analysis in the Transition to the Long Twenty-First Century,” in World-Systems Analysis at a Critical Juncture (Routledge, New York, 2023).
Arif Dirlik, “Is There History after Eurocentrism?: Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,” Cultural Critique (No. 42, 1999), 1-34.
For example Bookchin’s reason that he “omitted from this book any account of the ‘Third world’ revolutions that have occurred since the Second world war”’” is understandable in The Third Revolution. But he doesn’t explain why he omitted the first revolution against colonialism in Haiti in 1804, which started as a slave rebellion during the French Revolution period. See Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution, Volume One (Cassel, New York, 1996), 17.
Arif Dirlik, ibid.
ibid.
For a detailed discussion on the historical origins of this “social evolutionist” perspective on human history, persisting through imperialist, conservative, liberal, and Marxist ideological frameworks, see David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021), 18.
I have mentioned on this issue in a previous article: Metin Guven, “Do We Need a New Theory of the State?,” in Social Ecology and the Right to the City, (Black Rose Books, Montreal, 2019), 121. For a more recent detailed assessment, see David Graeber and David Wengrow, “In Which We Consider Whether The Indus Civilization Was An Example Of Caste Before Kingship,” in The Dawn of Everything (2021).
Murray Bookchin, “History, Civilization, and Progress: Outline for a Criticism of Modern Relativism,” in The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism, (Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1995).
ibid.
I have explored how states were evolved differently in three core regions of civilization during the axial age in my article mentioned, “Do We Need a New Theory of the State?”
I have especially included how state capitalism is developing differently in China in the above mentioned article (ibid).
Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 40.
Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century, (New York, Verso, 2010), 146; and Giovanni Arrighi, “Hegemony Unravelling-2,” New Left Review (Vol. 33, May/June 2005), 95-96.
According to world system perspective each cycle of capital accumulation is characterized by a productive/trade expansion ending in a ‘signal crisis,’ and a following financial expansion ending in a ‘terminal crisis.’
Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century (2010), 288.
For more detail see Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century (New York, Verso, 2007), 379.
Ziya Öniş and Mustafa Kutlay, “The New Age of Hybridity and Clash of Norms: China, BRICS and Challenges of Global Governance in a Post-liberal International Order,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political (Vol. 45, No. 4, 2020).
Theodore Murphy, “Middle Powers, Big Impact: Africa’s ‘Coup Belt,’ Russia, and the Waning Global Order,” European Council on Foreign Relations (6 September 2023). https://ecfr.eu/article/middle-powers-big-impact-africas-coup-belt-russia-and-the-waning-global-order/.
David Shepardson, “US to Probe if Chinese Cars Pose National Data Security Risks,” Reuters (1 March 2024). https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-says-investigate-national-security-data-risks-chinese-vehicles-2024-02-29/.
Arif Dirlik, Culture & History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity (Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2012), 61-62.
Arif Dirlik, Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, CO, Paradigm, 2007), 90–91.
Kalpit A. Mankikar, “Decoding Rural Revitalization, Xi Jinping’s New Priority,” Observer Research Foundation Issue Brief (16 August 2023). https://www.orfonline.org/research/decoding-rural-revitalisation-xi-jinping-s-new-priority. More detailed discussion can be found in Hongzhang Xu, Jamie Pittock, and Katherine A. Daniell, “China: A New Trajectory Prioritizing Rural Rather Than Urban Development?,” Land (Vol.10, No. 5, 2021), 514. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/5/514.
Arif Dirlik, “Performing the World: Reality and Representation in the Making of World Histor(ies),” Journal of World History (Vol. 16, No. 4, 2005), 396.
Metin Guven has, since the 1980s, been involved in social ecology groups and other libertarian organizations in Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. He was one of the founders of the Istanbul Social Ecology Group (ISEG) in late 1994. He was on the editorial board of the social ecology journal "Toplumsal Ekoloji" published in Turkish between 2002 and 2007, and has also written for newspapers, magazines and other journals.
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