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Page 1: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

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Page 2: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 11 on 13 pt Sabonby Toppan Best-set Premedia LimitedPrinted and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group Limited,Bodmin, Cornwall

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs forexterna] websites referred to in this book are correct and active at thetime of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility forthe websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live orthat the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if anyhave been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased toinclude any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:www.politybooks.com

Copyright © Michael Mann and John A. Hall 2011

The right of Michael Mann and john A. Hall to be identified asAuthors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UKCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2011 by Poliry Press

Poliry Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for thepurpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form orby any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5322-8ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5323-5(pb)

uction (John A. Hall)1

One: Powers in Motion

pter One: Capitalism

Cbapt:er Two: Militarism

pter Three: Political Power

pter Four: An End to Ideology?

pter Five: Patterns, Cages, Interstices,and a Dialectic

9

11274164

70

7981

107119132151

ature of Social Change

pter Six: States, Strong and Weak

pter Seven: Group Agency

pter Eight: Outcomes

Chapter me: Contingencies of Modernity

pter Ten: Our Looming Crisis

nclusion 169177rences

Page 3: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

1

MM:6ov1ar·.

•tC;

Capitalism

JAH: Let us begin this discussion of the sources of socialpower by considering matters economic. Your viewseems to be that capitalism is now firmly entrenchedas the dominant economic system of the age.

Let me first briefly place capitalism amid the sourcesof social power. My overall claim is that there are fourprincipal sources, .deologifal, coI.!2!!!ic,militar , and ~~- ..,.

olitica , and that in dealing with macro-sociological fW"O~r

pro ems one must normally take all four into account.In analyzing the world in the long twentieth century,up to today, the most fundamental social institutionshave been a italis , though it has been contested bysocialist and fascist modes of production, and ation- . s.states, though at first the leading states also possessedempires and one of them still does. Thus, for example,globalization (a word that should really be plural)involves three main principles: the globalization ofcapitalism, the globalization of the nation-state, andthe emergence of the first global empire, the AmericanEmpire. Capitalism generates class struggle, whilenation-states and empires generate geopolitics, wars,and sometimes civil wars. All generate ideologies,

Page 4: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

MM: !"faybe; it isn't over yet. But there are certainly twoimprovernents over 1929. First, overnments layamuch larger role in regulation now than then so it ise~sier =them to intervene with well underst;od poli-eres, which have been around for a long time, and take

~" short-~erm corrective action. Second, and perhaps~,..more l~portant, there is far more(illternauonal col-

_#tUN....... laboratio of the organization of capitalism today

12Capitalism 13

Power in the Twenty-First Century

which in this period have been mainly secular ratherthan religious. These are the subject matter of my mosirecent work, especially of Volume III of The Sourcesof Social Power, which 1 am currently finishing.

han in 1929. There were then competitive devalua-~'ons and tariffs in the 1930s which made it more~ifficult for the world economy to recover. It is difficultto say at the moment how quick the recovery will be,but so far this seems like a great recession ratherrhan a Great Depression, and will likely not be assignificant as that of 1929. It is also more global inthe sense that it shifted a little bit the internationalbalance of power within the global economy, awayfrom the West, more toward Asia. Recovery is beingled by Asia, not by the West. This reveals that capital-ism is more globally entrenched yet also more globallyvaried.

In answer to your specific question, yes, capitalism isvery firmly entrenched in the modern world, and ithas gotten more and more entrenched. As it has spreadacross the world, it has become the only economicpower game in town. But capitalism has changedthrough time and comes in several yarie ies. In par-ticular the ri hts rkers in the more advancedcountries today are enormously greater than those inthe nineteenth century. As capitalism has developed ithas become more sociall and le all constrained. Vir-tually the whole population has acquired ~t T. H.Marshall called "social citizenship," the right to sharein the socioeconomic life of the nation-that is within,capitalismo Of course, it is still "capitalism" in thesense that there is private ownership of the means ofproduction, the worker is separated from controlof those means, and more and more of social life hasbeen commodified, available for profit-seeking byeapitalists.

JAH: Is it likely that capitalism will be more regulated afterthis crisis, especially if it proves merely to be a greatrecession? Banks in the United States were vulnerableto regulation for a short period when Barack Obamabecame President, but they now seem capable of resist-ing it.

MM: I expect a compromise there. I think banks are actuallya little more vulnerable to political backlash in theUnited States than they are in Britain. Republicans andDemocrats alike counterpose "Wall Street" (the badguys) to "Main Street" (ordinary Americans). ca . 1 i in the USo But despite this,there is a third major difference between now and

(:) ()' 1929: the absence now of substantial organized ands-vl) ideological osition to ca ita Ism After 1929 there

were surges in both leftist and rightist opposition,socialism and fascismo It is difficult to see parallels tothat right now, another sign of how much moreentrenched capitalism is. There will probably be a littlemore regulation, varying somewhat between countriesthough amid a little more international collaboration.But as I said, we in the West have not solved ca' - \{i m's current problems.

JAH: But is capitalism also more entrenched in the sensethat when it faced a considerable crisis in 2007 and2008 it was possible to deal with that crisis much moreeffectively then had been the case in 1929?

Page 5: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

14 Pou/er in the Twenty-First Century

The main problem now is the much greater role andower of finance capitaP, the increasing financializa-

~on of the economy. This means that governrnentswith large debts and deficits feel the need to appeaseinternational finance capital. Their currencies or theirbonds may be vulnerable to an attack. So they tailorpolicies roward the needs of bankers more than theircitizens. To some extent this has always been true-wesee it in the political economy of the 1920s, forexample. But it is rampant right now. Keynesian-styledstimulus spending quickly gave way-in Europe atleast-to deficit reduction and deflation to protect thevalue of the currency and the government bondJhefirst need is th~ecurity of the investor, and never mindabout the .res.u1t:iulWlllelm~lo_y"meñt.And the banksthemselves oppose much regulation. They think theyhave got the perfect solution already: they make lotsof money in good times and when the bad times comethey get bailed out and capitalism gets saved. So whatcould be ~t~ but ~orse for u§..?

~ooVr\~\(tJ>.J.lAt

·~~f

JAH: If there is little new regulation, one can imagine afuture in which new tools are created that again causecrisis-Ieading again to bailout.

MM: Yes, it seems very likely that there will be another crisisof a similar nature a few years down the road. Weshould be entering a phase of far more regylation offulance capital by government, but we might not getmuch of it. Power, not efficiency, rules the world-in

J~OI;. (\ my terms, distributive power dominates collective, \0'-'1ou'~ ~c· ...J. power-and th.iLd~s rtlot')Jroduce optimal results for

- • the populatiou.as a whole. The US actually has thehighest level of debt but because it is the reserve cur-rency there is little speculative pressure against it. TheEuropeans-sterling and the euro, and especially theweaker economies of Europe-are under pressure.Governments are appeasing the speculators by intro-ducing deflationary measures that include slashing

~~

Capitalism 15

government expenditures. Many economists think thiswill prolong the recession, but their advice is ignored.

\l~l~

Sovereign debt currently worries governments morethan anything else. lt is not impossible that we mightnow get a repeat of the Great Depression, when astock market crash and some financial instability wasintensified into real depression by government cuttingof expenditure and tightening of credit. 1 think thatEurope's conservative governments, in Britain, ltaly,France, and Germany, are also taking advantage of thecrisis to introduce welfare cut s that they have longwanted, but t.be basic pressure is coming from the~, the IUOyeWelltS-Oifinancecapital.lt is bizarrethat a financial crisis caused by neoliberalism should-after a~rñ of Keyxiisian soliífin.ID-turn intomore neoliberalism. lt is even more bizarre that theUnited States, the real home (along with Britain) ofneoliberalism, should warn the Europeans against this.lt seems that the Americans have learned more lessonsfrom this great recession than have the Europeans.But, 1 repeat, power, not efficiency, rules the world.

JAH: The contemporary absence of trade wars and competi-tive devaluations is, for sure, so different from theinterwar periodo Is there any likelihood of the erner-gence of regional trading blocs, with a consequentattack on free trade?

MM: 1 don't think it's very likely. lt's just a possibility forthe United States itself. One could envisage a backlashwithin the United States against international freetrade, if the right kind of political coalition were puttogether, though it is so much against the interests ofbig American companies that 1 doubt it is going tohappen. But if you think about the interdependencethat is arising between Asia and the United States andEurope, and the important role of the overseas Chinesethrough Asia, you see that this is not a regionally

Page 6: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

16 Power in the Twenty-First Century

segregated economy. About two-thirds of the globe isignifica~tly interdependent, and some of this is simpl;transna tional.

JAH: Is that the case because the United States still regulatescapitalism? Does multilateral cooperation dependupon having a hegemonic leader?

MM: Not necessarily. It's true that in the postwar period theUnited States has been the leading power in interna-tional organizations, which have built up bit by bit. TheWorld Trade Organization (WTO) now has legallybinding restrictions on what countries can do in theway of tariffs and the like, to which the US is bound aswell. Indeed, the US has been fined by the WTO. Sothere is something gradually building up that is morethan just the United States, and indeed the kinds ofeconomic things that the world blames the US for, suchas structural adjustment programs, are done with the100 percent collaboration of the Europeans. Sorne-times the Japanese have deviated somewhat, but notthe Europeans. If this is a hegemonic order, it's not justof the United States. It's also of international capital-ism, especially finance ea italism, the most transna-tional form of capitalismo So 1see it as kind of a dualhegemony.:-of both a class fraction and an American-led geopolitical allianc; The American ~f this isalso just beginning to be eroded. In particular we nowsee emerging an economic interdependence betweenthe United States and China, plus Japan and the oilstates. Countries other than the United States are pullingthe world out of recession, especially China, whosemanufacturing industry and exports are recovering.

JAH: So this is a mixed system. Nothing could happenwithout the UnitedStates ecause it has such a prorni-nent role, but a multilateral element of agreement isneeded to make it work?

Capitalism 17

. Yes and that multilateralism is expanding. To the

. e){t~nt that there has been coordination, this has foralrnost rhe first time centered on the G20. It has beenupgraded from a meeting of finance ministers to oneof heads of sta te, and its composition reveals an exten-sion of power from beyond the old West and Japan tothe BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and espe-cially China. That is a sign of movement in geopoliti- -cal power across the world.

o

JAH: There is a counterargument to what you have said.The United States retains enormous power, seen in itscapacity to absorb most of the excess capital of theworld economy. America might be weaker, but it's apeculiar sort of weakness where most other leadingstates seem determined to prop you up.

MM: That's true, and ilie shifts in owe will ake a Iontime. The dollar is going to remain a reserve currencyfor quite a while yet. There's no possible replacementfor it. The euro has shown its weakness. It has nosingle directing force, other than the Bundesbank,which is not capable of leading a continent. Greecewas bailed out, but mainly by Germany, and theprocess was politically fraught and far from auto-matic. More important, it is far from clear that a largerEuropean national economy might receive such aidfrom Germany. And the Chinese currency is still con-trolled and restricted in various ways. Te·~tat~is going to remain the indis ensible econopower for a while yet. \,:)e ~

JAH: And nobody really has a fundamental interest Inknocking the United States off its perch?

MM: No. The world economy benefits from a stable reservecurrency and its principal actors are risk-averse. Theydo not want to go through what they fear would be a

Page 7: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

Capitalism 1918 Power in the Twenty-First Century

chaotic transition period from the dollar to a baskof currencies. That will eventually happen but rnosr ~~the relevant power actors hope it will be slow andlong-drawn-out.

rhe quantity of the patents in the United StatesSO Id dominate the world. I don't know the extent towou . d hi hlhich in reality the US dorninates new an 19 Yw ofitable technologies. I assume, like you do, thatpr me American dominance results from its relatively~~en immig:ation po.licy and its fine univ~~sities. I?,US engineenng faculues there are very few Anglos,as they say, among the graduate students; they aresubstantially Asians and other foreign students,perhaps Asian-Americans or recent migrants, thoughmost of them stay and become successful, and that isvery important. If you see figures of the ethnic originsof rhe Nobel Prize winners, the United States is notrhe biggest per capita winner of Nobel Prizes-Swedenand Switzerland top the listo

JAH: So. t~is situatio~ does not resemble that of GreatBritain at the beginning of the twentieth century facin. . ' ga major nval that had both economic and militarypower.

MM: That is correct, but in the British case, even beforeGermany became a serious threat, the pound as thereserve currency was being assisted by the other majorbanks, by the German bank, the Russian bank, theFrench bank. It had become a partly multilateralsystem, as Barry Eichengreen and others have shownwell before the rivalry with Germany became militar-ily threatening.

JAH: Still, some of the Nobel Prize winners from Sweden,Switzerland, and elsewhere end up working in theUnited States.

JAH: And the British case, in the end, is an example of beingknocked off your perch by military exhaustion andhuge debts incurred in war.

MM: Exactly. There has also been considerable governmentassistance in the United States for high-tech industries.Part of it is military spinoff and part of it is just afederal government commitment to j}.igh techo Thisdoesn't fit well with the image of the United Sta te s asbeing a country of very little government regulationor intervention in industry. In th eGt:oF-..alliJ,

hi h tech more ~zlL ther . evel ofovernment sponsorship o & D. J

MM: Yes, not merely by any intrinsic logic of capitalistdevelopment, since that war was a product not ofcapitalism but of older great-power rivalry.

JAH: A further question about the United States concerns itsre~aining economic strength. Reports about patent-taking seem to suggest that at the higher end of productcyc!es the United States still does very well. Further, theUnited States has a notable capacity to absorb brain-powe~, most recently that of Indian engineers. Surely,Amencan capitalism stilllooks rather strong?

MM: With patents I'm never quite sure if there is a bias inthese statistics, since the Americans developed thepatent system and rush to patent things immediately,

JAH: I have some questions about capitalist behavior. Thereis a sense in which your works suggests disappoint-ment in capitalists: they spend their time makingmoney, and lack larger geopolitical visions. Have youchanged your mind about that?

MM: Well, I wouldn't go quite as far as you've said, but Ithink I would view their behavior 'along those lines.

Page 8: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

20 Power in the Twenty-First Century

Of course, there are institutions of collaborafamong capitalists, like think tanks and the World E

lon. F d co.norruc orum, an. some of the major industries do

plan years ahead, like the energy industry, for exarn 1But I don't see them playing a large role in geopolPt, e.

d. forei . 1 lesan m oreign policy unless firms have theirb line jn vi OWnottom me m view, In foreign policies relating. l' toparticu ar countnes there are business lobbies. Buroverall, I don't see the directions of foreign poi'bei d . ley. eing eterrnined by the views or interests of capital-ism as a whole.

JAH: The other w~y I can put this issue to you is to say tharthe world might be safer if it thought more in termsof economic advantage and disadvantage. That is asofter language than that of pure power, which hasended up killing so many more people.

MM: I think that is to an extent true, at least of advancedor successfully developing countries, though acrosslarge swathes of the world capitalists are using coercedforms of labor. ~ut ca italists are dealing with inputsand outputs which are calculable and they obviouslytry ver~ hard to calculate profit and loss, so theyengage m more rational behavior than do state elit sand political constituencies mobilized by the elites.There has be en so much motion-driven irrationa 1t~n fore~gn policy in the long twentieth century, andit connnues today in the case of the United Statesand its enemies. I tend to see that in most casesfew capitalists have wanted war. Had the state lis-tened to capitalists they wouldn't have gone into somany wars.

JAH: I'd like to take a step backwards, away from thismoment of triumph for the capitalist model to askabout the failure of socialismo Should we concludethan nonmarket systems simply do not work?

Capitalism 21

fi there is a long line of research stretching: ell, D~st Senghaas through Linda Weiss and John

f rn leter hli h .ro Ha-Joon Chang and Atul Ko 1 s owmgI-Iobson te . . h hes ful econormc development, W1t t e pos-that succ d ni hible exception of eighteenth- an mneteent -centurys .' has never been entirely the result of freeBntaln, d h U . d Sroarkets. From early Germany an t e d~lteh tates

Jn and the East Asian Tigers to In la, t e most \]

to .adP

la developing capitalist economies have all •

rapl y ..o ed a high level of overnment rotect1on mc -)e~ Y . .tives, an d overal!llluc~lLQlW.í:l..tUlD-

It is also the case that state socialism enjoyed ~ fairmeasure of economic success during its hey~ay m ~hecatch-up phase of industrialization. The Soviet Unionírorn the 1930s to the 1960s grew its GDP more thanany other country in that period except for Japan. AndChina's later growth "grew out from the plan," asBarry Naughton has shown. Of course~ ~e must setthat success against the terrible atrocines wr~u.ghtespecially on peasants by Stalin's forced collectlvlza-tion and Mao's Great Leap Forward. GDP growtñachieved the cost of millions dead is not a benefitto its citizens. However, both regimes did at least learnnot to do such things again, and Vietnam learned fromthem how to grow without massive atrocities. The firstand second industrial revolutions had seerned to rnapout quite well what a desirable economic [uture ~oul?be so that centralized lannin could hel bnn •about. It specifically required sur pluses to be take~from agriculture and invested in industry, and ~uthon-tarian governments had sorne advantages m. t~atrespecto I the indust ializin e' d state sOClahsm

aid o f.

But the Soviet regime never managed to get beyo.ndthe industrial phase into post-indus~rialism, t~ whichcentralized state lannin seems less a ro nate. Its

Page 9: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

22 Power in the Twenty-First Century

economy was stagnating from the 1970s onwChina and Vietnam then learned from this to d ardotralize and marketize while still retaining some me ecen_f 1

- asuro ~ntra control: We don't .know .ret w~ether th:consequent boost m growth will contmue within th .present framework of hi hly mixed form f pro elrownership, or whether they will move into a va ~rtyform of capitalismo But c um ete argued that cna~tr 11d apl-t~ lS~ ehxceb.e

l. at what he ca11ed "creative destruc_

non, t e a 1 ity to shift gears to go through crisis int. h oa. n:w :conom.l~ pase, and that does seem to be thedistinctive ability of a decentralized, com e .. e

~omy such as capitalismo

Capitalism

. [jsrn and it rnay not even be on the road tot cap1ta 1 .'ye . l' Chinese institutions that might seem capi-Plta 1sm·ea . like rhe stock exchange, do not operate autono-

tahst'll and are substantially phony. The Parry has(llous y . h fl' k fin rhe last two years that lt can, at t e ic oshown . . fit h move massive resources mto m rastructurea SWl c , hn l . .. cts and alternative energy tec o ogies m a wayprole .' . . 1 .haf overnments m capltahst economles can?ot. t ist t state capitalism in Trotsky's sense smce theno nomv is not controlled by a unified state elite. Theeco f . ffici lParty has actually lost control of ~any o ~ts o era swho are making money out of rheir effective poss~s-sion of enterprises, though this is often shared with~o le who reall "are ~a ~talist. 1 call t~~S heteroge-neouS regime the Capltahst Party-State. It controlsover 10 percent of the world economy, a percentagethat will likely double over the next two decades.

B~t the world pe.rceives something much simpler thanthls.-that socialism ~ailed and capitalism succeeded,penod. That percepnon has much more force in theworld than any more nuanced judgment. So socialismas centralized planning is almost dead as an ideal. Butm! own final judgment is different: t at it.S¡;oliticalfall~~ was much clearer than its economic failure.Socialist revolu~ion. brought swift and seerningly inevi-table degeneration into authoritarianism since it neverpossessed any mechanisms by which an a11-conqueringrevolutionary elite would cede ower to more demo-cratic forces.

1 think most Chinese would regard its transition awayfrom state socialism as being pretty close to optimal.Most would wish to have more children and ideallythey would like more civil and political ~reedoms, ~utthey seem willing to trade these for growmg ~ros~ent.rwhile maintaining social order. nüs combmatlOn lSmost threatened b massivel growing ine uafitbetween town and country, between regions, andbetween classes. At the top the Party is aware of the ~need to rever se these trends but it is unclear if they ~will be able to do rnuch, given their commitment togrowth and their oss of control over their own cadres

JAH: But is capitalism really the only game in town? Thesuccess of contemporary China seems to suggest agreater future for state-directed political economiesthan you a11ow. JAH: Is this to be contrasted to the way in which the market

spread within postcommunist societies?MM: Ca~italism is almost the only game in town. The

Chinese gam~ is a little different, since it_ ñinhinesmuch c~ntrahzed planríin by a ruling communistparty with e~terprises acting alrly ~mouslYJonmarkets, which are themselves mixtures of privateproperty and local officials' de facto property. It is not

MM: For Russia it is a different story. Here the transitionwas to capitalismo It was also rapid and involved whol-esale seizure of public assets by private individu~ls,especially by former Party and NKVD apparatchlks.

Page 10: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

24 Power in the Twenty-First Century

It brought not growth but collapse at first, and then 'brought only growth based on natural energy res o 1tA d j b h ", ureesn it roug t massive inequaliry, Putin is po l'because he provided minimal order out of much Ph

uar

d b hcaos

an ecause e seemed to be taking on the new cap', l' h ' Ital_1Sto igarc s. eoliberals played a considerable rol 'hi f fail e1nt lS story o al ure, though one must concede that R, , , , Us-

sia s transinon was much more difficult than Ch1' ,, , "na ssince 1tSeconomy was dominated by inefficient ind

, 1b h us-tn,a e emoth,s. Neoliberals respond to accusations offaIlu~e by saymg that their models were never fullyapplied. The latter part of the statement is true, sinepragmatic politicians realized they could never sta ein power if they did introduce the whole neoliberalpackage.

But the Soviet-Rus sia transition reveals the failure ofm~dels that regard economic modes of production asp~l~ary and sel~-sustaining rather than having precon-ditions emanatmg from the other sources of socialpower. !n this case political power was crucial. TheChinese Communist Party retained political powerand managed a transition, to great effect. In contrast,the Soviet Communist Party was deliberately disman-dedo It then collapsed and there was a botchedtransition.

JAH: What does this tell us about the chances of develop-ment for poorer countries within the newly dominantcapitalist world order?

MM: We can obviously be more optimistic now than atmost points in the last forty years. Many countries arenow achieving some growth. It is not just the rnuch-publicized BRICs, but also the whole of SoutheastAsia, Eastern Europe, Turkey, and even some Africancount.ries such as South Africa, Botswana, Uganda,AIgena, and Nigeria. After the failures of both "African

Capitalism 25

'1' "and neoliberalism, it seems that a mixedOClaISrn di d '1' d 1s rnode of state-coor mate capita ist evei-

econorny '1 1 ' ht varying accordmg to oca resources, mig topmen e' legitirnate and more successful, though obvi-be mor , ' h Id W

1not in umform Iashion across t e wor. e

ous Y '1 b 1, ht be shifting finally mto a near-g o a economy.mlg

. 1have one final question. To what extent are we reallyJAJ-I. Iking about capitalism in any case? Sure1y the system

ra a whole is American-dominated? Isn't it worth::membering that both Karl Polanyi and MaynardKeynes stressed the way in which markets are made

by states?

MM: It remains capitalism, though in the advanc,ed c?un-tries it is a reformed capitalism, one from Wh1Chnghtsfor workers and for the community have been wrested.It is only partially American, for it actually containsthree principal elements: transnational, national (andtherefore also international), and American imperial.Indeed a fourth element often surfaces, the "macro-,regional," so that the capitalisms of the Nordic coun-tries or the Anglophone countries share a certain sryle.There is a big debate about "varieties of capitalism"that has not yet been resolved. But 1think it is safe tosay that there are certain national and macro-regionalstyles that withstand some of the pressures imposedby the tendency of capitalism to escape all nationalboundaries, and by the dollar and US dominance ofsome international agencies.

Some variations through time are also evident, and thetension between plan and market sometimes appearsto have a cyclical element, as Polanyi noted. This isnot quite as regular as he suggested, however, for itcomes from rather specific processes of interstitialemergence in each period, and it is not dear that theseare actually solved by more state regulation. The

Page 11: Mann Michael-Power in the 21 Century Pag 11-26

26 Power in the Twenty-First Century

1920s were beset by the entwining of economi1" 1 ' e and

geopo mea cnses; the 1970s by the interstitia1f transnati emer_gence o transnational finance capital networks:

h 1 fi,a~

t e ear y twenty- rst century will be beset by the ud' Ldestructi nex_pecte environmenta destructiveness of capital'

Th fi ' , ISme rst crisis was managed by more regu1 t' .d

' a IOnsumme up m the word "Keynesian'" the second ", '11 ith ' , ' CrISIS~ssn wit us, and capitalist market interests are fight-ing a very ,stron? ,batt~e against more state regulation;a~d the third C~ISIS might end with disaster, not plan-mng. But we will talk about this particular crisis late r.

2

Militarism-

JAH: The word "revolution" is much abused, and certainlyoverused. But in military affairs, there has been agenuine revo1ution. Do you agree that the creation ofnuclear weapons has fundamentally changed the

nature of war?

MM: Yes, it has. And this is a case where a major crisis wasmore or less solved with great success. Atomic andhydrogen bombs were the first really socio10gicallysignificant thing about globalization. G10balization isoccurring and is important, but it is for the most partnot particu1arly socio10gically interesting because itinvolves the expansion of all the social structures thatwe've ana1yzed in the pasto If you 100k at the literatureon globalization it still concerns classes, enterprises,states, demographic transitions, idealism versus mate-rialism, major structura1 identities against multip1eidentities, and so on. Yet if human activity fills up theworld and then rebounds back against human societyrather like a boomerang, transforming the conditionsof action, then we need distinctive theories. At thatpoint globalization itself has become causally impor-tanto Weapons that cou1d destroy the world constitute