Re: Immanuel Wallerstein: America and the World: The Twin Towers as Metaphor

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> <URL: http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/wallerstein.htm >

A Bolivian living in Sweden wrote me about this article: "it leaves me kind 
of puzzled as to what its purpose really is". So let me try to explain what 
its purpose really is

The URL points to an article titled "America and the World: The Twin Towers 
as Metaphor" that is based on a talk given by Immanuel Wallerstein  at 
Brooklyn College in Dec. 5, 2001. It is basically a statement of 
Wallerstein's belief that the US is a declining hegemonic power and that it 
no longer has the power to dictate military or economic terms to the rest 
of the world.

This requires a bit of verbal and intellectual acrobatics since the attack 
on the Pentagon and the WTC were basically interpreted as and act of 
Islamic radical revenge against a hegemonic power. Although Wallerstein is 
not very clear on this, he seems to say that the collapse of the towers is 
a sign of weakness: "Technology turns out to be less than perfect as a 
protective shield." I am not sure how valid this argument is since the 
economic institutions housed in the WTC have by now cranked up to full 
capacity.

Wallerstein states:

"The story of U.S. and world power can be resumed quite simply at this 
moment. I do not believe that America and Americans are the cause of all 
the world's miseries and injustices. I do believe they are their prime 
beneficiaries. And this is the fundamental problem of the U.S. as a nation 
located in a world of nations."

I find this rather cryptic. My understanding of US imperialism is exactly 
that of a cause of all the world's miseries and injustices. By stating that 
the US is a beneficiary of the world's miseries and injustices rather than 
their cause, Wallerstein evokes the image of a driver on the Interstate 
loading up his car with goods that have fallen off the back of a trailer 
truck. Maybe he was trying to say something different. I don't know.

To my great astonishment, the powerful mandarin figure Wallerstein alludes 
to a couple of television figures. "Law and Order", a show he apparently 
finds the time to watch, is invoked to make a point that even anarchists 
can be labeled as "terrorist". A Chris Matthews book that refers to the 
"cowboy souls" of Americans is held up to gentle ridicule. Matthews is a 
cable news talking head who combines mainstream Democratic Party politics 
and the generic Fox TV barking dog style.

Referring to Matthews, Wallerstein poses the question thusly:

"The question before Americans is really the following. If American 
hegemony is in slow decline, and I believe it unquestionably is, will we 
lose the ideals because we will have less power to override them? Will our 
cowboy souls erect barbed wire around our national ranch in order to guard 
our privileges in danger of decline, as though they could not escape 
through the barbed wire? Let me suggest here another metaphor that comes 
from the Twin Towers. Towers that are destroyed can be rebuilt. But will we 
rebuild them in the same way - with the same assurance that we are reaching 
for the stars and doing it right, with the same certainty that they will be 
seen as a beacon to the world? Or will we rebuild in other ways, after 
careful reflection about what we really need and what is really possible 
for us, and really desirable for us?"

This seems like a rather inflated formulation of an age-old 
hypothesis--namely if the American economy collapses even further, will the 
US ruling class be forced to scrap its democratic pretensions. As they used 
to say in Houston, prolly.

Wallerstein has high hopes that the US can learn to get along with the rest 
of the world:

"It is not Osama bin Laden with whom we must conduct a dialogue. We must 
start with our near friends and allies - with Canada and Mexico, with 
Europe, with Japan. And once we have trained ourselves to hear them and to 
believe that they too have ideals and interests, that they too have ideas 
and hopes and aspirations, then and only then perhaps shall we be ready to 
dialogue with the rest of the world, that is, with the majority of the world."

This seems feasible only if Immanuel Wallerstein were President and James 
O'Connor Vice President--with David Harvey as Secretary of State and John 
Bellamy Foster Secretary of Defense (hope they don't have a falling out 
like Condi and Rummy). But in the meantime, with the cast of players in 
Washington--either Democrat or Republican--this seems like a dim hope 
tantamount to a shark becoming a vegetarian.

Wallerstein's speech ends up with a grand rhetorical flourish, invoking 
Sojurner Truth, Hillel, and Léopold-Sédar Senghor. I would have preferred a 
couple of statistics on oil depletion or infant mortality rates but then I 
have always been somewhat crass.



Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org