Old news?

Maybe especially to Roger, but Wallerstein's *The End of the World as We Know It* is giving me cause to re-think some of my assumptions. Like liberals and social democrats everywhere, my default position has been toward an incrementalist and "lesser evil" politics & for all its flaws, to look to the state as an arena where the struggle for a better world takes place, as a (potential) countervailing power to the forces of capitalism...

Not that I'm completely persuaded--(for one thing I haven't finished the book yet), but I am particularly struck by the force of his argument that the state is the ultimate friend to, and guarantor of, capitalism.

The problem of capitalism these days is that the state is losing legitimacy, even at the hands of a right wing populism originally stirred up and maintained as a tool of the status quo--but the beast is getting out of hand.

Increasing demands are made on the state, yet because of an increasing legitimacy crisis, the state is more and more powerless to meet those demands, thereby exacerbating the legitimacy crisis...

So Wallerstein believes that capitalism is entering its final--and only real--crisis. It will play out over the course of the next 50 years and the nation states even in the developed world could fall apart & within them violent conflicts reminiscent of Afghanistan or the Balkans could erupt.

Per Wallerstein the process actually represents an increase in democratization, but one that will contribute to the disorder as the process plays out.

Wallerstein is not a pessimist. His view is informed by the Marxist analysis, but he is willing to talk about morality and such. But he believes the outcome of the collapse of capitalism is anything but certain and barbarism may be the result. Neither Leninism, social democracy or liberalism can provide solutions based on the structures of the current world-system of states--and certainly not contemporary conservatism.

David Graeber and Noam Chomsky's anarcho-Marxism? Anarcho-syndicalism itself? Guild socialism? The folks at Parcecon (Participatory Economics). Do any of those point the way?

I don't know. I will finish the book.

Assuming Wallerstein's diagnosis is correct, I don't know if that will help either.

R.