Product Description

Winner of the American Sociological Association PEWS Award (1995) for Distinguished Scholarship The Long Twentieth Century traces the epochal shifts in the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. Giovanni Arrighi masterfully synthesizes social theory, comparative history and historical narrative in this account of the structures and agencies which have shaped the course of world history over the millennium. Borrowing from Braudel, Arrighi argues that the history of capitalism has unfolded as a succession of "long centuries" -- ages during which a hegemonic power deploying a novel combination of economic and political networks secured control over an expanding world-economic space. The modest beginnings, rise and violent unravel-ing of the links forged between capital, state power, and geopolitics by hegemonic classes and states are explored with dramatic intensity. From this perspective, Arrighi explains the changing fortunes of Florentine, Venetian, Genoese, Dutch, English, and finally American capitalism. The book concludes with an examination of the forces which have shaped and are now poised to undermine America's world power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #412805 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
"A work of great theoretical sophistication and formidable range and depth ... Arrighi's synthesis is highly original and packed with illuminating and audacious insights." -- Geoffrey lngham, Cambridge University "[A] vivid, fact-filled expose of the cyclical monetary forces that surge through human society." -- Observer Review

From the Back Cover
Winner of the American Association PEWS (1995) Award for Distinguished Scholarship

The Long Twentieth Century traces the epochal shifts in the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year periol. Giovanni Arrighi masterfully synthesizes social theory, comparative history and historical narrative in this account of the structures and agencies which have shaped the course of world history over the millennium.

'A work of great theoretical sophistication and formidable range and depth ... Arrighi's synthesis is highly original and packed with illuminating and audacious insights.' Geoffrey Ingham, Cambridge University

'[A] vivid, fact-filled expose of the cyclical monetary forces that surge through human society.' Observer Review

About the Author
Giovanni Arrighi is Professor of Sociology at SUNY-Binghamton. He is the author of The Geometry of Imperialism, and has coauthored several books, including Antisystemic Movements and Dynamics of Global Crisis.

Customer Reviews

Erudite, comprehensive and compelling
Giovanni Arrighi's synthesis of Braudel, Wallerstein and Marx is masterful. His bibliography alone has given me years of reading material from Michael Mann to Barrington Moore, taking in Tilly, McNeil, and perhaps most nourishing of all, Fernand Braudel. THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY is a compelling analytic-historical overview of the protean, devouring and polymorphic nature of capital formation and its interpenetration with historical States. Arrighi questions the past to peer ever more perceptibly into the future. Do yourself a favour and read this book. You'll thank me.

Brilliantly dense reading
If you're only going to read one book in the next 30 years, read this one. It proposes (and supports with much detailed historical information) a general theory to explain the development of the modern capitalist world since the Italian city states, and is simply magnificent. It is not bedside reading, and requires a great deal of effort from the reader - so much the better! Anyone willing to put in the effort will be greatly rewarded. I find the Epilogue the only weak point of the book. Looking to an alternative to USA's fading hegemony, Arrighi proposes Japan (and East Asia), which is obviously incorrect. Instead one should look for a non-territorially defined hegemon in the vein of Jean-Marie Guehenno's "Empire without Emperor" (read his "The End of Democracy" if you have time for a second book!).

A cemetery of accumulations? Capitalism is a means, not an end
G. Arrighi's Twentieth Century is very long indeed. It begins in the fourteenth century.
The author wants to lay bare Braudel's third layer of economic power (the real home of the predators), which covers the self-sufficient economy (the 1st) and the market economy (the 2nd). The predators are those particular communities or governmental and business blocs who accumulate on a world scale an ever-increasing capitalist power.

The author sees 4 historical centers of global accumulation: 1. the Italian city States (Venice, Genoa); 2. the Seventeen Provinces (Holland); 3. Great-Britain; 4. US; 5. ?
Each of these global accumulations is characterized by three capitalist cycles: 1. financial expansion; 2. consolidation and accumulation; 3. renewed financial expansion and emergence of competition.

His analysis is profound and detailed. However, the author doesn't take enough crucial demographic and political factors or decisions into consideration.
There is a phenomenal difference between the first two and the third and fourth accumulation. The 3rd one caused a demographic explosion which is still going on. Its success for the human species is truly exceptional (E. Hobsbawm).
The fall of the British empire was at least accelerated by two world wars which were declared by foreign countries and which left Great-Britain bankrupt (Keynes, Skidelsky).
The basic of the US empire is the dollar (W.G. Tarpley). The fall of the dollar in 1971 was countered by a political decision to inflate the oil prize (W. Engdahl), whereby the dollar recaptured its lost central place in international finance and US banks and oil corporations were catapulted at the zenith of world power (the real predators).

This book is already partly out-of-date. It ends with the Japanese formidable but already extinct expansion, not with the lurking Chinese one (a truly perfect combination of State and capital).
Do we see actually the final capitalist crisis, so many times claimed by pure Marxists? Absolutely not. Engel (not Engels)'s law is still highly in force with a nearly unlimited supply of cheap labor at the disposal of all transnational corporations.
Adam Smith's (and Marx's) law of the tendency of a falling rate of profit is an illusion, because in the long run capital chases earnings.
Finally, in our society, capitalism is not an end but a means to grab power and power means survival. Through history, the members of the ruling class live much longer than the ruled.

This book is a very worth-while read, although its analysis and vocabulary is nearly pure Marxist.