The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the
Origins of Our Times, by Giovanni Arrighi
https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/1483-the-long-twentieth-century
(1994 and 2010)
From the Verso web page:
"A comprehensive analysis of the development of world capitalism over seven hundred years. The Long Twentieth Century traces the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. Arrighi argues that capitalism has unfolded as a succession of "long centuries," each of which produced a new world power that secured control over an expanding world-economic space. Examining the changing fortunes of Florentine, Venetian, Genoese, Dutch, English and finally American capitalism, Arrighi concludes with an examination of the forces that have shaped and are now poised to undermine America's world dominance."
From page 10, of The Long Twentieth Century (2010):
Braudel... sees capitalism as being absolutely dependent for its emergence and expansion on state power and as constituting the antithesis of the market economy. He conceived of capitalism as the top layer of a three-tiered structure - a structure in which, "as in all hierarchies, the upper [layers] could not exist without the lower layers on which they depend." The lowest and until very recently broadest layer is that of an extremely elementary and mostly self-sufficient economy. For want of a better expression, he called this the layer of material life, "the stratum of non-economy, the soil into which capitalism thrusts its roots but which it can never really penetrate." (Braudel 1982: 21-2, 229) Above this layer lies the "market economy" - supply, demand, prices along side, or rather above this layer, comes the zone of the anti-market, where predators roam and law of the jungle operates. This, today as in the past, is the real home of capitalism (Braudel 1982: 229-30).
Page 11:
Capitalism only triumphs when it becomes identified with the state; when it becomes the state. The obverse of this process has been inter-state competition for mobile capital.
Page 18:
Capitalist power in the world system cannot expand indefinitely without undermining inter-state competition for mobile capital on which the expansion rests."
So in that description "anti-market, where predators roam..." you have a good description of capitalism - privatizing the profits while socializing the expenses, theft by colonialism, etc. - all very selfish and anti-social. For a great commentary on the entire rotten system, see Col. Douglas MacGreggor on George Galloway's YouTube.
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