Prem Shankar Jha
The Twilight of the Nation State: Globalisation, Chaos and War
London, Pluto Press, 2007
An impressive book. Prem Shankar Jha is a well-known Indian journalist and economist, with academic experience in three continents, Asia, America and Europe. In this massive volume (374 pages) he sketches out an ambitious macrohistorical sociology of capitalism and the state, by drawing on authors as diverse as Marx and Braudel, Schumpeter and Polanyi. He also provides a detailed empirical analysis of the world economy of the last three decades. Furthermore, he relies on two giant social scientists, Eric J. Hobsbawm and Giovanni Arrighi, whose main publications have respectively been devoted to 'the short' and 'the long' twentieth century. How to reconcile them?
Hobsbawm, an engaged Marxist historian, has expressed a deeply pessimistic opinion about the fate of modern ideologies and the future of the capitalist system. In his view, despite the apparent neoliberal victory, capitalism is undergoing a phase of increasing chaos and demise. A phase whose roots can be traced back to the early 1970s. Arrighi, on the other hand, has proposed a long-term history of 'cycles of accumulation', each of them driven by a new hegemonic power. After the rise and fall of such hegemonic powers as Genoa, the Netherlands and Britain, the 1970s have heralded the early symptoms of the decline of the fourth world leader, the United States, and the onset of a period of 'systemic chaos' which would end with the domination of a fifth hegemonic power, possibly Japan or another East Asian country.
Is Arrighi right? To some degree. Certainly his theoretically-informed reconstruction of centuries of economic history is an excellent starting-point. Certainly the early 1970s unveiled the signs of crucial transformations. But it is not just about the demise of a hegemonic power and the surge of the following one. A qualitative turn has occurred: the rise of 'global capitalism'. Jha challenges several interpretations which are common in the mainstream economic literature. The 'end of the golden age' is no by-product of factors such as oil shocks, crises in productivity or transformations in the relations of production. The core element which explains the onset of turbulences and chaos has to be found in the genesis of truly global production processes, which bring about de-localizations, breakdown of the welfare system in the 'developed' world and disruptions in the newly-developing 'peripheries'. Such process has so far entailed painful consequences in terms of continuous marginalization, exclusion and deprivation in both the rich and poor regions of the world. Jha follows a clear-cut theoretical hypothesis and provides a substantial amount of data to support it. So far we have, however, a thorough economic history; but what about politics? What about the states?
Global capital requires a military arm. More precisely, a power capable of breaking down boundaries and imposing liberal institutions and the free market, either by consent or by force. Such a role so far has been played by the USA, and in a distinctively imperial fashion. This holds true as far as both Democratic and Republican presidencies are concerned. Though Bush Jr and his fellows have probably gone much beyond any sustainable hegemony, the seeds of the empire can be traced back to Clinton's administration. How to explain otherwise the sequence of tragical military undertakings, especially in Iraq and the Balkans? How to read otherwise several declarations by Democratic officers, such as Madeleine Albright and Anthony Lake, who are still playing a role in Washington's big game? Furthermore, Jha does not subscribe to Hardt and Negri's understanding of empire. Instead of a blurred overarching constellation of corporations, international organizations, agonizing nation-states and would-be global rulers (America), he prefers referring to the 'empire' as the political and military arm of what he appropriately labels 'globalization'. Despite their different interpretations of what the 'empire' actually is, Hardt, Negri and Jha share the analysis of the crisis of nation-states and of the strains put on them by the dominance of transnational productive forces.
In political terms, Jha concludes by calling for 'a commonwealth' to deal with global concerns and provide a minimum framework to address the tragical inequalities which are currently shaking the world order. In his view, such commonwealth is needed urgently, in order to tackle the American bid for world primacy and offer the US itself a channel through which to express its interests. To this goal, the current redistribution of world power towards multipolarism (especially in the light of the rise of the Asian powers) seems to offer a possible framework. The 'global commonwealth' should be based on consent - so, according to such perspective Jha comes close to a federalist interpretation.
From a scientific viewpoint, one might object that his combination of different approaches is not always consistent. Cyclical theories are usually rather mechanistic, and the interplay between 'the economic' and 'the political' in 'the long twentieth century' is far from being clear. An interpretation of capitalism based on the modes of production and their inherent social relations could be heuristically more fruitful. The most interesting legacy of Braudel and Arrighi's thought is, however, the idea of a 'container': that is, capitalistic relations are embedded in political institutions which contain them, serve their purposes and change over time according to the changing size of the markets. The most appropriate 'container' of global capitalism must therefore be a 'global polity', like the commonwealth he is referring to in the last chapter. Such an interesting idea could, though, be developed further, to both scientific and political aims. In other words, Jha comes close to a kind of federalist vision, but does not work it out extensively.
Why is Jha's thick volume a worthwhile reading? Among many reasons, we can single out this one: it's a challenging book. Challenging because, instead of providing simplistic and fashionable hypotheses (such as the ones by Fukuyama and Huntington, which he briefly discusses), he tries to combine various perspectives, draw on their insights and build a coherent construction. Many passages would deserve deeper investigation, but a kind of overall theory clearly emerges. Global capitalism, the rise of the US Leviathan and the lack of overarching world institutions are the main aspects of the planet we are living in. Furthermore, Jha's book is topical. 2008 is an important year. The USA and Russia choose their new presidents, while the European countries have to ratify the Reform Treaty. Are the incoming younger leaders, from Hillary Clinton to Obama, from Medvedev to Sarkozy himself, really aware of the turbulences which the world might soon face? A final remark. In Jha's account Europe's role is rather overlooked. Western scholarship has long been charged with 'Eurocentrism' - and with very good reasons. However, Europe is not only composed of decaying nation-states or greedy corporations. A transnational polity of decent European citizens is slowly emerging and looking for political solutions other than the states we have been used to live in. Disregarding it would be a mistake and possibly a real shame.