Empire and Hegemony

In his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Bo) , Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the modern world-system is fundamentally a capitalist economic system, the states being within in. On this model, he explains why the various efforts at modern world-empire (Charles V, Napoleon, Hitler) have failed and why hegemons don’t last.

Empires fails because they run head-on into the over-arching capitalist impulse, which Wallerstein defines as a system designed to give priority to the endless accumulation of capital: “A world-empire . . . would in fact stifle capitalism, because it would mean that there was a political structure with the ability to override the priority for the endless accumulation of capital . . . . whenever some state seemed intent on transforming the system into a world-empire, it found that it faced eventually the hostility of most important capitalist forms of the world-economy.” A world empire has political and perhaps cultural priorities that clash with the priorities of money-making firms, and the system wins out.

Hegemons don’t last because they, like the quasi-monopolies on which (Wallerstein claims) global capitalism depends, self-destruct: “To become a hegemonic power, it is crucially important to concentrate on efficiencies of production which lay the base for the hegemonic role. To maintain hegemony, the hegemonic power must divert itself into a political and military role, which is both expensive and abrasive. Sooner or later, usually sooner, other states begin to improve their economic efficiencies to the point where the hegemonic power’s superiority is considerably diminishes, and eventually disappears. With that goes its political clout. And it is now forced to actually use its military power, not merely threaten to do so, and its use of military power is not only the first sign of weakness but the source of further decline. The use of ‘imperial’ force undermines the hegemonic power economically and politically, and is widely seen as a sign not of strength but of weakness, first externally and then internally.” Other nations try to replace the hegemon, but the process is slow and usually ends in war.

Whatever the accuracy of Wallerstein’s larger theory, this last sounds terribly familiar.