The Long and the Short of It: The Twentieth Century and Capitalism's Triumph: And Tragedy

The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm

Review by: Benjamin Schwarz
World Policy Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Fall, 1995), pp. 89-95
Published by: The MIT Press and the World Policy Institute
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B##KS
Benjamin
Schwarz is the
author,
most
recently, of
"The
Diversity Myth,
"
which
appeared
in the
May
issue
of
the Atlantic
Monthly.
He is a
former foreign policy analyst
at the rand
Corporation.
^^
The
Long
and the Short of It
^^H
The Twentieth
Century
and
Capitalism's Triumph
-
and
Tragedy
^^^
Benjamin
Schwarz
The
Age
of Extremes: A
History
of the
World, 1914-1991
Eric Hobsbawm
New York:
Pantheon, 1994
We can learn a
thing's
true
nature,
Aristotle
wrote, only
when it has reached
-
and
passed
-
its
maturation,
which is
why journalists
make
notoriously poor
historians. Contem-
porary
observers
invariably
confuse the char-
ismatic with the
great,
Friends with The
Mary Tyler
Moore
Show,
the
episodic
with
the
significant,
the trees with the forest.
Eric
Hobsbawm,
on the other
hand,
has in
The
Age of
Extremes taken a
long
view of
what he calls "the short twentieth
century"
(1914
to
1991).
Hobsbawm's
reputation
as one of Brit-
ain's three or four
greatest postwar
histori-
ans rests
largely
on three of his works
-
The
Age of
Revolution,
The
Age of Capital,
and
The
Age of Empire
-
which
together
form a
magisterial history
of "the
long
nineteenth
century"
(1789-1914).
That
history,
fa-
mously
described
by
the Observer as
"part
of
the mental furniture of educated
English-
men,"
is concerned with
long-term
eco-
nomic trends and broad secular
patterns,
not
with
great
men and dramatic events.
Apply-
ing
this same
approach,
Hobsbawm has
written a
history
of our
passing century
strikingly
different from the one with which
we are familiar.
In
trying
to
explain
the true nature
and
significance
of the twentieth
century,
Hobsbawm
gives
us little
political
or mili-
tary
narrative. There is no account of
plucky
Britain
during
the
Blitz,
no
attempt
to
jus-
tify
or condemn Roosevelt's actions at
Yalta
-
Hobsbawm's view of
history
is a
jolt
to the
narcissistic,
as it
relegates
our
politi-
cal
passions
and our heroes and villains to
the
background.
While we see the
long
twi-
light struggle
with the Soviet Union as the
defining
fact of the
period
from
1945 to
1991, Hobsbawm,
widening
the
focus,
sees
"the
extraordinary, unprecedented,
funda-
mental
changes
which the world
economy,
and
consequently
human
societies, [have]
undergone
in the
period
since the Cold War
began.
These
will,
or
should,
have a far
larger place
in the
history
books of the third
millennium than the Korean
War,
the Ber-
lin and Cuba
crises,
and the Cruise missiles."
Although
Hobsbawm's
history begins
in
1914,
it
is,
as the
quotation
above im-
plies, only
in the
post-
1945
period
that
he
really
hits his
stride,
for to
him, 1945
is Year
One,
when what was to become our
global economy
was born. Because of the un-
precedented
economic transformation that
the world has
experienced
since
then,
Hobsbawm
declares,
"historians... will
probably
see the
century's major impact
on
history
as the one made
by
and in this
astonishing period."
(The
first section of
his
book,
"The
Age
of
Catastrophe,"
which
concentrates on the death throes of interna-
tional
capitalism
in the
1920s
and the
autarkic era of the Great
Depression,
serves as a
lengthy prelude
to his account
The
Long
and the Short of It 89
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of
capitalism's
rebirth and
triumph
after
1945.)
Marx and
Engels
Revisited
The
Age of
Extremes is best understood as an
account of the consolidation and
long-term
dilemmas of the
global economy.
As
such,
it
is a
penetrating exploration
of two themes
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels
described
(not
cited
by
Hobsbawm)
when
they prophe-
sied the
emergence
of that
economy.
The
first is the scale and
scope
of the world mar-
ket,
its
integrative
and
cosmopolitan
charac-
ter and its
revolutionary implications
for a
world divided into nation-states. It has
drawn from under the feet of
industry
the national
ground
on which it stood.
All old-established national industries
have been
destroyed
or are
daily being
destroyed. They
are
dislodged by
new in-
dustries... that no
longer
work
up indige-
nous raw
material,
but raw material
drawn from the remotest
zones;
indus-
tries whose
products
are
consumed,
not
only
at
home,
but in
every
corner of the
globe.
In
place
of the old
wants,
satisfied
by
the
productions
of the
country,
we
find new
wants,
requiring
for their satis-
faction the
products
of distant lands and
climes. In
place
of the old local and na-
tional seclusion and
self-sufficiency,
we
have intercourse in
every
direction,
uni-
versal
inter-dependence
of nations.
Hobsbawm also
explores
Marx and
Engel's
contention that this
economy
elevates radi-
cal individualism and thus
uproots
and
destroys
all traditional values and social
relations:
Uninterrupted
disturbance of all social
conditions,
everlasting uncertainty
and
agitation distinguished
the
bourgeois
epoch
from all earlier ones. All
fixed,
fast-frozen
relations,
with their train of
ancient and venerable
prejudices
and
opinions,
are
swept away,
all new-
formed ones become
antiquated
before
they
can
ossify.
All that is solid melts
into air. All that is
holy
is
profane.
Hobsbawm's dissection of
capitalism's
socially
corrosive effects is
detailed,
eccen-
tric,
and no doubt true
-
and should be read
by anyone
who would confuse a
1960s- (or
1990s-)
style
attack on "middle class values"
with serious cultural criticism from the Left.
It
fails, however,
to
go beyond
a variation on
Joseph Schumpeter's argument
in
Capital-
ism, Socialism,
and
Democracy
(1942)
that
capitalism
was
proving
an
astounding
eco-
nomic success but was
slowly committing
suicide
by destroying
the social institutions
and values
-
many
of them
precapitalist
-
that had ensured the social
stability
neces-
sary
for that success.
Hobsbawm's other
major
theme
-
the
development
of the
global
market and the
ways
in which it has
changed
the world
-
is
too one-sided. In his
view,
capitalism
acts
on
everything
but is
hardly
ever acted
upon.
He
neglects
the circular
ways
in which so-
cial forces within states
shape
international
politics
and
consequently put pressures
on
the international
economy,
which in turn in-
fluence social forces within states.
He
correctly
sees the
history
of
capital-
ism since
1945
as characterized
by
two re-
lated
and,
more
important, increasingly
contradictory developments.
The first was
the
emergence
in the West of mass
produc-
tion/mass
consumption
economies marked
by varying degrees
of state intervention de-
signed
to
manage aggregate
demand and
forestall
explicit
class conflict. The second
has been the
gradual flowering
of a transna-
tional
economy
-
"the decisive innovation"
of the
period
-
marked
by
an elaborate inter-
national division of labor and the
interpene-
tration of investment and
production
to
such a
degree
that "state territories and state
frontiers are not the basic
framework,
but
merely complicating
factors."
Hobsbawm, however,
does not ade-
quately explain
the
genesis
of these
develop-
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ments,
for he fails to consider E. H. Carr's
maxim: "The science of economics
presup-
poses
a
given political
order and cannot be
properly
studied in isolation from
politics."
While Hobsbawm has
thoroughly
described
how
precapitalist
social values have
helped
capitalism
to
flourish,
he does not take into
account the other extrinsic forces
necessary
to sustain it.
So, although
Hobsbawm ac-
curately emphasizes
the
unprecedented
economic
growth
that mass
consumption
economics and the
global
market have
per-
mitted,
he does not
emphasize
the
equally
unprecedented power
that the United States
has exercised in the
postwar period
that has
made these
developments possible.
Last
year,
former
Secretary
of State
James
Baker
put
American
foreign policy
in
proper perspective, declaring
that its
most
important postwar
achievement was
the creation and maintenance of "a
global
liberal economic
regime"
-
not
victory
in
the Cold War.
Indeed,
if one were to view
American
foreign policy
with Braudelian
sweep,
the end of the U.S. -Soviet
rivalry
pales
in
significance alongside
America's
awesome achievement: the United States re-
alized a world that has hitherto existed
only
in the dreams of classical economists and in
what V. I. Lenin called
"[the
German social-
ist
Karl]
Kautsky's silly
little fable about
ultra-imperialisms."
In the celebrated debate between Lenin
and
Kautsky,
Lenin
held,
in
essence,
that
any
international
capitalist
order was
per-
force
temporary
since the
political
order
among competing capitalist
states on
which it would be based would shift over
time. Whereas Lenin
argued
that interna-
tional
capitalism
could thus not transcend
the Hobbesian
reality
of international
poli-
tics, Kautsky
maintained that
capitalists
were much too rational to
destroy
them-
selves in internecine conflicts and that
enlightened
and cartel-oriented
capitalists
could choose
peace,
free
trade,
and the
cooperative development
of backward
areas.
America's
Hybrid Strategy
To a
great extent, then,
Lenin and
Kautsky
were
talking past
each
other,
since the lat-
ter's forecast of
ultra-imperialism
was based
on the common interest of the
"inter-capital-
ist class" whereas Lenin's
analysis
of interna-
tional relations was dominated
by competing
mercantilist nation-states. Lenin
argued
that
there was an irreconcilable contradiction be-
tween
capitalism
and the state
system;
Kaut-
sky
did not
recognize
the division in the
first
place.
America's
postwar global
strat-
egy
has been
based,
in
essence,
on a
hybrid
of Lenin's and
Kautsky's analyses.
U.S. ef-
forts since the late
1940s
have aimed at the
unified,
liberalized international
capitalist
community
that
Kautsky
envisioned. But
the
global
role that the United States has un-
dertaken to effect and sustain that commu-
nity
is determined
by
a worldview
very
close
to Lenin's. To
Washington,
Baker's
"global
liberal economic
regime"
has not been main-
tained
by
the common interests of an inter-
nationalized economic
elite,
nor
by
the
theories of academic liberal
institutionalists,
but
by
American
power.
American
policy-
makers have
fully appreciated
that,
as
politi-
cal economist Robert
Gilpin
notes,
"What
today
we call international economic interde-
pendence
runs so counter to the
great
bulk
of human
experience
that
only extraordinary
changes
and novel circumstances could have
led to its innovation and
triumph
over other
means of economic
exchange."1
They
have therefore held that the
global
role America must
play
is determined
by
the need to maintain those novel circum-
stances
-
U.S.
hegemonic supervision
over
the advanced
capitalist
states.
Ultimately,
of
course,
Lenin and U.S.
policymakers diverge,
for while Lenin
recognized
that
any given
in-
ternational
political
order was
inherently
impermanent,
America's
foreign policy
strategists
have
hoped
to
keep
that
reality
of international
politics permanently
at
bay.
The United
States, then,
created a new
kind of international relations
among
the ad-
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Long
and the Short of It 91
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vanced
capitalist
states. Whereas
they
had
formerly sought
to
protect
their national
economies from outside influences and to en-
hance their national
power
in relation to
their
rivals, they
would now seek their secu-
rity
as members of the U.S-dominated alli-
ance
system
and their economic
growth
as
participants
in the
(U.S.-secured)
open
world
economy.
In the stable world built
by
American
power,
their task was now to ad-
just
their national economies in the direc-
tion dictated
by
world market
tendencies,
to
facilitate
adaption
rather than to
protect
ex-
isting positions.2
But the United States not
only
funda-
mentally changed
the
way
the advanced
capitalist
states behaved in the international
arena,
it also transformed their domestic
po-
litical economies.
America's Vision
Hobsbawm
recognizes
that the
"peculiar
combination of economic
growth
in a
capi-
talist
economy
based on the mass
consump-
tion of a
fully employed
and
increasingly
well-paid
and
well-protected
labor
force,"
which the West
enjoyed
from the late
1940s
through
the late
1960s,
was based on a
"po-
litical construct"
-
"a consensus between
Right
and Left... and between
employers
and
labour
organizations."
This
construct,
how-
ever,
did not
simply emerge;
like the
open
world
economy,
it was an American crea-
tion,
based on a
peculiarly
American
"Fordist" vision.
According
to this
vision,
the mass
pro-
duction/mass
consumption economy
would
rest on an accommodation between
capital
and labor based on economic
growth,
in
which both sides
agreed
to increase the size
of the economic
pie
rather than to divide it
more
equitably
between themselves. The
United States
implanted
this
"political
con-
struct,"
and the economic vision at its
heart,
in its future economic
partners. Just
as
American
hegemony
over the advanced
capi-
talist states banished international
competi-
tion,
enabling
countries to work toward the
highest
level of economic
growth
for
all,
so
too,
U.S.
planners
believed,
would
corpora-
tist
arrangements
within these states fore-
stall the class conflict and redistributionist
policies
that would otherwise reduce eco-
nomic
growth internally,
and,
in an
open
global economy,
worldwide.
Given its enormous
power
in the
early
postwar years,
America could even
go
be-
yond directly influencing
the domestic
poli-
cies of the advanced
capitalist
countries to
shape
the balance of their social forces as
well. American influence ensured that
only
those labor
groups willing
to endorse
growth
and
productivity
over redistribution
would continue as a
component
of the Euro-
pean
coalitions,
and American business
and
labor-management
relations
practices
were
exported
to
Europe
in a drive to raise
productivity.
It was U.S.
intervention, then,
that so-
lidified liberal
capitalist regimes, excluding
both communist and economic nationalist
alternatives to the neoliberal state and clear-
ing
the
way
for a
"moderate,"
consensual
politics
of
growth.
As historian Charles
Maier
summarized,
"The whole thrust of
Washington's
efforts in the
emerging
Fed-
eral
Republic
[of
Germany],
the new
Japan
and the members of the
Organization
of
European
Economic
Cooperation...
was to en-
sure the
primacy
of economics over
politics,
to
de-ideologize
issues of
political economy
into
questions
of
output
and
efficiency."3 By
creating
an environment favorable to such
an
outcome,
American
planners
moved to-
ward the vision of a
vigorous,
liberal world
economy.
The Vertical
Economy
Although
the two central
aspects
of what
Hobsbawm calls
capitalism's
"Great
Leap
Forward"
-
the mass
production/mass
con-
sumption
"mixed economies" of the ad-
vanced
capitalist
states and the transnational
economy
-
were both
products
of the Ameri-
can-led
postwar
order,
their fortunes have
not coincided. The
former,
characterized
by
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near
full-employment
levels, steadily rising
incomes,
and an identification of the inter-
ests of labor with
productivity,
thrived until
the
early
1970s.
Since
then,
these founda-
tions have been undermined
by
chronic un-
employment
(even
during
boom
times),
flat
-
or
declining
-
real
wage
levels,
and ris-
ing inequality.
But,
if the
past quarter-century
has seen
the
gutting
of the
welfare-capitalist
state,
it
has also seen the
flowering
of the
global
economy.
The
growth
in international
trade,
investment,
and
capital
flows has been dra-
matic since the
1950s,
but
spectacular
since
the
early
1970s,
with the
emergence
of a
truly single, integrated global economy,
characterized
by
the rise of offshore finance
and the internationalization of
production,
distribution,
and
marketing
within the
large-scale, vertically integrated
transna-
tional
corporation.
(This
qualitative
shift
in the nature of the international
economy
is illuminated
by
the fact that in the
early
1990s,
over half of U.S.
exports
and im-
ports, by
value,
were
simply
the transfers
of
goods
and services within transnational
corporations.)
Hobsbawm
emphasizes
that this
global
economy,
which
uncannily
resembles Marx
and
Engels's
adumbration of
it,
could not
have
emerged
without the
rapid develop-
ments in
communications, transport,
and
data
processing
that have occurred since the
1960s,
and he is
generally
astute in describ-
ing
its
workings.
But two
things
mar his as-
sessment.
First,
in a book about the
global
econ-
omy,
Hobsbawm has almost
nothing
to
say
about East Asia's
emergence
as a
driving
force
-
and
increasingly
the dominant
force
-
in that
economy.
Nor does he assess
America's central role in
making
that emer-
gence possible. Washington actively
encour-
aged
South Korea and
Taiwan,
for
instance,
to overcome their nationalist resentment
and fear of
Japan
and to
open
their doors to
Japanese
trade and investment.
Thus,
under
American
hegemony, Japan
recovered the
economic hinterland it had
fought
so hard
to obtain
through
territorial
expansion
in
the first half of the
century
and had lost in
the Second World War.
Moreover,
Hobsbawm fails to
explain
what has made East Asia's economic
expan-
sion in the last 30
years
a true
capitalist
suc-
cess. In
describing "globalization" generally,
he
emphasizes
the
spread
of industrialization
from the "core"
capitalist
countries.
Indeed,
a
narrowing
of the
gap
in the
degree
of in-
dustrialization between
high-income
coun-
tries on the one hand and low- and middle-
income countries on the other has been a fea-
ture of the
global economy
since the
1960s.
But a
narrowing
of this industrialization
gap
has not been
generally
associated with a
narrowing
of the income
gap.
The East
Asian economic "miracle" is such
precisely
because several of the
region's
countries have
closed not
only
the industrialization
gap
but
the income
gap
as well. In these few
cases,
rapid
industrialization has been
accompa-
nied
by upward mobility
in the value-added
and
surplus-capital
hierarchies of the world
economy.
The
speed
and extent of
Japan's
ac-
quisition
of a
larger
share of the world's in-
come and
liquidity
is
comparable
to the
earlier
"great leaps
forward" of Britain and
the United States.
Capitalist Nostalgia
The second
problem
with Hobsbawm's
analysis
of the transnational
economy
is that
he is so
plainly appalled by
its social
impli-
cations that he fails to assess its achieve-
ments,
which at times leads him to under-
estimate the
difficulty
involved in
any
effort
to contain it.
Clearly nostalgic
for what he
terms the "Golden
Age"
of twentieth-cen-
tury capitalism
-
when the
(largely
nation-
based)
Fordist
regime
of mass
production
and mass
consumption
flourished
-
Hobs-
bawm does not
acknowledge
the attraction
that the
integrated global economy's
enor-
mous,
if
unequally
distributed, growth
holds for
many
of the West's
wealthy
and
most able and
powerful
citizens.
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Long
and the Short of It 93
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Thus,
Hobsbawm refers to the
history
of
capitalism
since
1970
as "the crisis dec-
ades." But a crisis for whom? The essential
point
too often
missing
from his assessment
is
that,
in the United
States,
for
instance,
U.S.-based transnationals and the wealthiest
Americans continue to
profit,
even as indus-
trial workers have been
squeezed
out of
their status as middle class. Hobsbawm
may
be
right
that if the "crisis decades"
proved anything
"it was that the
major
political problem
of the
world,
and
certainly
of the
developed
world,
was not how to
multiply
the wealth of
nations,
but how
to distribute it for the benefit of their
inhabitants."
But his assertion that therefore "social
distribution and not
growth
[will]
dominate
the
politics
of the
coming
millennium"
rather
naively ignores
the
prestige, power,
and influence of a bloc within and
among
the advanced
capitalist
states
that, adhering
to the liberal
ideology
that has
shaped
to-
day's
international economic
order,
strongly
supports
the internationalization of
produc-
tion and
exchange.
The entire
postwar
global
economic
system,
after
all,
was de-
signed specifically
to
promote efficiency
and
growth.
To the extent that this
system
sought
to increase affluence
generally,
it did
so not as a
good
in itself but as a means to
achieve that
growth.
That the advanced
capitalist
economies
have
largely
abandoned this formula for
growth
lies at the heart of the
burgeoning
social crisis that Hobsbawm discerns.
With real
wages
and
productivity
no
longer
rising
in
tandem,
and indeed
moving
in
opposite directions,
the United
States,
for
instance,
has witnessed the
passing
of
what
sociologists
call "Fordism and its
consumption
norms." This
means,
as
Hobsbawm
recognizes,
that a
large
num-
ber of
wage
earners are no
longer
viewed as
potential customers,
but rather as economic
inputs
whose cost
-
in an
increasingly
com-
petitive global
market
-
must be
ruthlessly
suppressed:
To
put
it
brutally,
if the
global economy
could discard a
minority
of
poor
coun-
tries as
economically uninteresting
and
irrelevant,
it could also do so with the
very poor
within the borders of
any
and
all its
countries,
so
long
as the number
of
potentially interesting
consumers was
sufficiently large.
Seen from the
imper-
sonal
heights
from which business econo-
mists and
corporate
accountants
survey
the
scene,
who needed the 10
per
cent of
the U.S.
population
whose real
hourly
earnings
since 1979
had
fallen by up
to
16
percent?
(Thus,
in their drive to
capture
world mar-
kets,
the need to maximize
profits
demands
that American transnational
corporations
re-
tain a core of
managers
and workers while
temporarily employing
and then
discarding
many
more of the
latter.)
Near the close of his
book,
Hobsbawm
asks his reader to
contemplate
a scenario
-
"not
utterly
fantastic"
-
in which
"present
trends
continued,
and led to economies in
which one
quarter
of the
population
worked
gainfully,
and three
quarters
did
not,
but af-
ter
twenty years
the
economy produced
a na-
tional income
per capita
twice as
large
as
before." What makes that scenario "not ut-
terly
fantastic" is
precisely
that,
even as its
social
consequences
would be
horrific,
its
economic
consequences,
in terms of effi-
ciency
and
growth,
would be
extraordinary.
Capitalism's
Contradictions
What
emerges clearly
from Hobsbawm's ac-
count of the short twentieth
century
are
capitalism's
internal contradictions.
Capital-
ism's
very
successes
beget potentially
lethal
challenges
to itself:
today's global economy,
which Hobsbawm terms "a
predictable prod-
uct of the Golden
Age,"
is inimical to the
Fordist
regime
of accumulation that defined
the "Golden
Age"; capitalism
is
destroying
the social foundations essential to its
integ-
rity;
the world market is "an
increasingly
powerful
and uncontrollable
engine"
that,
94 WORLD POLICY
JOURNAL
FALL 1995
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by engendering gross
social and environ-
mental
inequities,
will
provoke
(Hobsbawm
clearly
wishes)
the
state,
"or some other
pub-
lic
authority,"
to subdue it
-
and hence
pos-
sibly destroy
it.
That
today's integrated global economy
could be
endangered by
what is now fashion-
ably regarded
as such a feeble anachronism
as the state
may
seem farfetched.
But, just
as "war made the
state,"
so
capitalism's
un-
precedented autonomy, power,
and
perva-
siveness
pose precisely
the sort of
challenge
that could
provoke
the
expansion
of the
state's
capabilities
and
prestige
(which,
of
course,
raises the
specter
of
totalitarianism).
In
short,
as the
"increasingly powerful
and
uncontrollable
engine"
of
capitalism goes
from
strength
to
strength,
the state must
subdue it or be
destroyed by
it.
More
important,
it is
precisely
because
capitalism
has reached its
highest stage
that
the state
may
have a chance
against
it. As
the
global economy
has matured
-
that
is,
as
it has become more
complex
and interde-
pendent
-
it has become more
fragile.
For
instance,
the
emergent high technology
in-
dustries are the most
powerful engines
of
world economic
growth,
but the cost of
their
development
and the scale of these
technologies
necessitate a level of demand
that is
possible only
in an
integrated
world
market.
Capitalism's dynamism,
then,
de-
pends
on a web of
global
trade, production,
and
finance,
a web that is
perforce
tenuous,
as its strands remain anchored in
states,
enti-
ties that are
(normally) perversely
unmoved
by appeals
to
comparative advantage
and
global
economic
efficiency.
By failing
to consider
fully
the
political
order
upon
which
post-
1945
capitalism
rests
-
an order that has
suspended
the "nor-
mal" behavior of states
-
Hobsbawm is un-
able to
appreciate why
that
fragile
web is
increasingly
vulnerable and hence
neglects
to
recognize
another
way
in which the
global economy
has
perhaps
sown the seeds
of its own destruction. The
problem
with
the American
"global
liberal economic re-
gime"
is that it has been all too successful.
Through
trade,
foreign investment,
and the
spread
of
technology
and
managerial exper-
tise,
economic
power
has diffused from the
United States to new centers of
growth.
With a shift in the international distribu-
tion of economic
strength,
American
hege-
mony, perforce,
has been undermined.
Thus,
the
global economy
has bitten the
hegemon
that feeds it.
Paradoxically,
eco-
nomic
interdependence,
which rests on the
stability
the United States has
provided,
has
dispersed power
and
thereby
undermined
America's relative dominance.
If the
premises
of
power politics upon
which America's
post-
1945
foreign policy
strategy prove correct, then,
as the Pax
Americana further
weakens,
the normal con-
ditions of international relations will re-
emerge. Independent
and
jealous
states
jockeying
for
power
and
position
will of ne-
cessity
shred the web of the
integrated
global economy. Capitalism
-
at least the ad-
vanced state of
capitalism
whose
develop-
ment is the focus of Hobsbawm's book
-
will
collapse
as the
ephemeral political
or-
der that
rehabilitated, protected,
and nur-
tured it crumbles.
Notes
1 . Robert
Gilpin,
War and
Change
in World
Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), p.
130.
2. On this
point,
see
Benjamin Schwarz,
"Ar-
cane of
Empire," Salmagundi,
no. 5
(winter-spring
1994), pp.
101-2.
3. These
efforts,
of
course,
were
anything
but
apolitical.
As Maier
points out,
"The
concept
of
growth
as a
surrogate
for redistribution
appears,
in
retrospect,
as the
great
conservative idea of the
past
generation."
Charles
Maier,
"The Politics of Produc-
tivity:
Foundations of American Economic
Policy
after World War
II,"
International
Organization
31
(fall 1977), pp.
628-29.
The
Long
and the Short of It 95
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