Arrighi’s Long Twentieth Century and Genealogy of

Giovanni Arrighi provided not only a novel model but also an ambitious, comprehensive genealogy of world-system capitalism (albeit with some loopholes and tensions). Reshuffling Braudel’s view of capitalism as the “top layer” of economic systems with Marx’s classical formula of MCM’, Arrighi emphasized that the nature of “capital”-ism was control and reproduction of capital itself as an end (as the short form MM’ indicates). Thus the spatial-chronological configuration of world-system capitalism could be divided into several extended periods of “hegemony” of particular configurations of capital-controlling economic and political “agencies”, be they chartered companies, joint-stock MNCs or states. The cyclical transitions between Genoese, Dutch, British and US capitalist hegemonies, according to Arrighi, involved initial material expansions, organizational evolutions brought by a combined “backward-forward” development strategy, cooperation coupled with competitions among capitalist powers, followed by massive transferring of capital to financial activities in pursuit of sustainable higher profits. These “long centuries”, marred by “systemic chaos” and “anti-systemic movements”, were marked by signal and terminal crises. Therefore, Arrighi viewed the financial crises of US-led post-WWII economic order as signs of yet another long century entering its end game.
Arrighi’s efforts in synthesizing historical capitalism with organizational shifts, territoriality, hegemony and Marxist theories had been marvelous yet incomplete. Arrighi believed that territorial and capitalist paths of expansion were in constant, dialectic relationship of divergence and mergence, that production models within particular territories of world-systems determined organizational configurations of different financial regimes, and that territorial expansion had enabled the enlargement of world-system viable for capitalism. However, his favor of space-as-flows over space-as-places description of financial development and emphasis of “networks” of financial exchanges and communities had highlighted on the other hand the “non-territoriality”, or the lack of territorial preconditions in emergence and of capitalism. The relationship between territoriality and capitalism, therefore, seemed to be one of constant confinements and jail-breaking. The image of cyclical “hegemony” also deprived the classical Marxist notion of imperialism of much of its political-economic vibrancy (indeed Arrighi suggested elsewhere that imperialism was largely a political concept referring to inter-state political relations and problems of national identities during the period of monopolistic capitalism; see Geometry of Imperialism). Moreover, the relationship between “systemic chaos” and “anti-systemic movements” remained unclear; it seemed the former was referring to lack of management of market and subsequent economic crisis, while the latter meant the consistent proletariat/propertyless class’ countermovement of capitalism. Their emergence within particular “long century” should be better explained. Finally, Arrighi’s model was undermined by its lack of clearer accounts of technological advancements and growth of state capacities. Technological capabilities may well had defined the boundaries of “viable organizational forms” of “capitalist agencies”, and state capacity was also critical in war- and state-making processes which Arrighi deemed as essential components of capitalism expansion.