A complex system long of equilibrium: the complexities in the critiques of capitalism by Wallerstein and Mészáros
Guilherme Vieira Dias
Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Fluminense, Brazil
[email protected]
José Glauco Ribeiro Tostes
North Fluminense State University, Brazil
[email protected]
Summary
Ilya Prigogine's science of complex systems, originally developed in the area of physical-chemistry for non-equilibrium thermodynamics or long-term equilibrium and its “dissipative structures”, was adapted and incorporated into the critiques of capitalism by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and the Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros. It is possible to identify, in the works of both authors from the 1980s onwards, the use of systemic language that refers to the primitive complexity. No present work, it is presented that way Wallerstein and Mészáros explore concepts related to natural sciences to understand capitalism as a long-term complex system of equilibrium, mainly not that it says respect for cyclical crises and structural crises.
Keywords: science; system; complexity; capitalism; crises.
A complex system far from equilibrium: complexity in Wallerstein and Mészáros's critique of capitalism
Summary
Ilya Prigogine's science of complex systems, originally developed in the field of physical chemistry for thermodynamics far from equilibrium and its "dissipative structures," was adapted and incorporated into critiques of capitalism by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and the Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros. In the works of both authors since the 1980s, it is possible to identify the use of a systemic language that harks back to Prigoginian complexity. This article presents how Wallerstein and Mészáros explore concepts from the natural sciences to understand capitalism as a complex system far from equilibrium, especially with regard to cyclical crises and structural crises.
Keywords: science; system; complexity; capitalism; crisis.
A complex system far from equilibrium: the complexity in Wallerstein and Mészáros' criticism of capitalism
Abstract
Ilya Prigogine's science of complex systems, originally developed in the field of physical chemistry for far from equilibrium thermodynamics and their “dissipative structures”, was adapted and incorporated into the critiques of capitalism by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and the Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros. It is possible to identify, in works by both authors since the 1980s, the use of systemic language that refers to Prigoginian complexity. This paper presents how Wallerstein and Mészáros explore concepts from natural sciences to understand capitalism as a complex system far from equilibrium, especially with regard to cyclical and structural crises.
Keywords: science; system; complexity; capitalism; crises.
A complex system long of equilibrium: the complexities in the critiques of capitalism by Wallerstein and Mészáros
The science of complexity by Ilya Prigogine 1 (1984a; 1984b) was originally developed for research and applications in the area of natural sciences. However, since the 1980s, it has been appropriated by various authors in the area of social sciences, based on a diversified range of interests. 2 In this sense, we highlight two globally respected intellectuals for the quality of their works that adopt systemic perspectives supported by Prigoginian complexity, namely, the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and the Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros.
Wallerstein, since the 1980s, centrally used Prigoginian complexity for a profound critique of capitalism. Mészáros has used, since the late 1980s, certain traces of the science of Prigogine's complexity that can be implicitly reconfirmed in his vast and robust critique of capitalism, even though, as will be seen later, the author does not make explicit reference to Prigogine (Tostes, 2007). Both Wallerstein and Mészáros converge their respective criticisms for an alleged structural crisis of capitalism, which had already been underway since the 1970s.
It is intended to generate a synthesis of the appropriation of complex science by Wallerstein and Mészáros. With major emphasis, the authors will focus on the question of the structural or systemic crisis of capitalism in the last quarter of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century described in a complex way, exposing some of Prigogine's key concepts as used to reveal the capitalist “tradition” and its crises.
Wallerstein and complexity: an analysis of two world-systems
Wallerstein defends a common pattern, notwithstanding the specificities of each system, for each of two large and successive historical systems (at least if you are Westerners). In particular, the final stage or process of “systemic crisis” of each historical system would follow the same Prigoginean pattern of complexity. A large part of Wallerstein's work consists of deepening the application of this pattern to what he calls the “systemic crisis” of capitalism, to distinguish it from all his previous crises, just “conjuncture” or “superáveis” (essentially the same for Mészáros).
Next, here is a summary constructed by Wallerstein (2002, pp. 67-68), relating to the capitalist world-system: 1) the modern world-system is a capitalist world-economy, which means that it is governed by the impetus of incessant accumulation of capital; 2) this world-system was born throughout the 16th century and its original international division of work included a large part of Europe and parts of the Americas and expanded over the course of two centuries, successively incorporating other parts of the world into its division of work, leading to Eastern Asia being incorporated into it in the middle of the 19th century; 3) the capitalist world-system acquired a truly global extension, being the first world-system to integrate the globe; 4) the capitalist world-system is constituted by a world economy dominated by center-periphery relations and a political structure formed by sovereign States within a structure of an inter-state system; 5) the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system are expressed in the context of the systemic process through a series of cyclical rhythms , three of which serve to contain these contradictions; 6) the cyclical rhythms will result in slow, more significant geographic displacements , in the locus of accumulation of capital and power, without, meanwhile, changing the fundamental relations of inequality within the system; 7) These cycles are never perfectly symmetrical; Instead, each new cycle carries out small, more significant shifts in the particular directions that constitute the secular tendencies of the system; 8) the modern world-system, like all systems, is finite in duration and will end when its secular tendencies reach the point where its fluctuations will become sufficiently wide and erratic , leaving these fluctuations of power to guarantee the renewed viability of the institutions of the system; 9) When this point is reached, there will be a bifurcation , the system will be replaced by another or several others through a chaotic period of transition.
We intend to follow other excerpts of Wallerstein's texts that demonstrate the use of Prigogine's complex science concepts in his theory of the structural crisis of the capitalist world-system.
A historical system is both systemic and historical […] it has enduring structures that define it as a system – enduring, but not of course eternal. At the same time, the system is evolving second by second such that it is never the same at two successive points in time. […] Another way to describe this is to say that a system has cyclical rhythms (resulting from its enduring structures as they pass through their normal fluctuations) and secular trends (vectors which have direction, resulting from the constant evolution of the structures). Because the modern-world system (like any other historical system) has both cycles and trends – cycles that restore “equilibrium” and trends that move “far from equilibrium” – there must come a point when the trends create a situation in which the cyclical rhythms are no longer capable of restoring long-term (relative) equilibrium. When this happens, we may talk of a crisis, a real “crisis”, meaning a turning point so decisive that the system comes to an end and is replaced by one or more alternative systems. Such a “crisis” is not a repeated (cyclical) event. It happens only once in the life of any system, and signals its historical coming to an end. And it is not a quick event but a “transition”, a long period lasting a few generations. (Wallerstein and Hopkins, 1996, p. 8)
According to the section cited, it is understood that the uncontrolled expansion of internal flutuations , generated and confronted by capitalism, occurs when this system is lifted, with the accumulation of its own contradictions, for the long time of the balance that it then manages to sustain, when finally and inevitably the secular tendencies do not exist. More will be “re-equilibráveis” with the cyclical rhythms of capitalism. Here Wallerstein launches a geometric metaphor, translating this evolution of the system through a “trajectory” or “curve of life of the historical system.” As long as there are conditions of dynamic support or “systemic equilibrium”, such a curve is ascending asymptotically (this is, its growth is increasingly dampened). The text to follow will explain that this tendency towards imbalance in the “trajectory” of this system will imply a chaotic process (released by the uncontrolled expansion of its systemic flutuations ) that will cause an abrupt and irreversible decline in the “trajectory” and will finally lead to a bifurcation that It will extinguish – from now on – the very “trajectory” of the capitalist world-system and will open for new systemic possibilities, whose selection is still, in this stage, “unforeseen”:
All systems (physical, biological and social) depend on cyclical rhythms to restore a minimum equilibrium. […] But systems have [also] secular trends [which] always exacerbate the contradictions (which all systems contain). There comes a point when the contradictions become so acute that they lead to larger and larger fluctuations. In the language of the new science, this means the onset of chaos (which is merely the widening of the normal fluctuations in the system, with cumulative effects), which in turn leads to bifurcations, whose occurrence is certain but whose shape is inherently unpredictable. Out of this a new system order emerges. (Wallerstein, 1995, p. 27)
Is there any role for intervention or human counsel in the decision among more of a new possibility of systemic order (excluding at the same time the sustenance of the current historical system), those possibilities that are unfolding in this chaotic process that culminates in this bifurcation? Wallerstein summarizes his answer to the question:
A chaotic situation is, in a seeming paradox, that is most sensitive to deliberate human intervention. It is during periods of chaos, as opposed to periods of relative order, that human intervention [or choice] makes a significant difference. Chaotic situation is, in a seeming paradox, that is most sensitive to deliberate human intervention. It is during periods of chaos, as opposed to periods of relative order, that human intervention [or choice] makes a significant difference. (Wallerstein, 1995, p. 44)
Ou, from a point of view inherent to the mathematics of non-linear systems, another text by the author suggests that at these points of bifurcation, contrary to periods of relative order, “small inputs generate big products (in opposition to the normal development time of the system, when large inputs generate small products”). (Wallerstein, 2002, p. 33).
Mészáros ea complexity: the capital system
Mészáros is an author well known in the Marxist academic area. The author is in full agreement with what Marx called the capital-work contradiction and expõe such and the same contradiction now centered on the factor of work, now on the reading of value (Mészáros, 2002).
The core of his critical thinking about capitalism – this being encompassed by Mészáros in the system of capital – perhaps lies in a large comparison between a “phase I” of capitalism, in which production would progressively and essentially attend to human needs and would require planetary expansion of the production-consumption circle (according to Marx), and A “phase II” – triggered by the response of capital to the crisis of 1929 – gives “destructive production” (not foreseen by Marx) characterized by the taxa of decreasing use of production via, originally, the industrial-military complex, this is, as the State now assuming the role of “consumer” of such military production. It is a new era of “programmed obsolescence”. This new “productive” way of capitalism had managed to dislocate, with relative success, the central contradiction of superproduction – unleashed by the crisis of 1929 – only for some time, during the “Ouro Era” that lasted approximately from 1945 to the end of 1960.
From that point on, a “phase III” was outlined, which would be a stage of restriction (also not foreseen by Marx, not admitted by Wallerstein) to the geographical expansion of the production-consumption circle, excluding the growing ranks of workers from the periphery and the center itself (both as a productive force, as in a consumer status, two indissociáveis aspects). This is why the tax of decreasing use is also being applied to the “forced labor market” as an imperative means of continuing to sustain the destructive self-reproduction of capital. We would also be activated, in this “phase III”, second to the fundamental work of Mészáros (2002), the absolute limits of capital eo consequent unleashing of its structural or systemic crisis, an unsolvable crisis of the capital system.
Here is the form – even simplified – in which this crisis process unfolds for Mészáros who, according to the interpretation of the authors of the present work, is concerned with the complexity of Prigogine and, therefore, approximates at least partially the perspectives of Mészáros and Wallerstein. For Mészáros (2002, p. 797), in generic terms:
A structural crisis affects the entirety of a social complex in all the relationships with its constituent parts or sub-complexes , as well as other complexes that are articulated. Differently, a non-structural crisis affects only some parts of the complex in question and, therefore, no matter the degree of severity in relation to the parts affected, it cannot be considered a risk to the continued survival of the global structure . Thus, the displacement of contradictions is only possible in terms of a partial, relatively and internally managed crisis of the system , demanding only changes – just as important – not internally – of the system itself [ainda] relatively autonomous. Precisely, for this reason, a structural crisis seeks to the very existence of the global complex involved, postulating its transcendence and its substitution by some alternative complex [...] Therefore, the greater the complexity of a fundamental structure and the relations between them and each other as they are articulated, the more Varied and flexible will be their objective possibilities of adjustment and their chances of survival even in extremely severe crisis conditions. In other words, partial contradictions and “ dysfunctions ”, although severe, can be dislocated and become diffuse – within two ultimate limits of the system's structure – and neutralized, assimilated, annulled by contrary forces or tendencies, which can also be transformed by forces that actively sustain the system in questão. ( nossos taps )
Here are some central systemic characteristics of Mészáros' thought, perfectly related to Prigogine's science of complexity. First of all, parts of a complex may also possess systemic characteristics (“sub-complexes”). In turn, the “systemic totality” considered can, itself, form a dynamic part of a “super-system” (which would bring together this “totality” and “other complexes” articulated to it). Secondly, the previous quote is clearly exposed as a form of “self-organization” of complex systems , which can also be exhibited (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984a) under certain circumstances in inanimate matter and, necessarily, in living beings. 4 In the third place, I appeal to a metaphor of the physical-chemical process of diffusion of systemic flutuações (flutuações essas, as in Wallerstein, drawn for the social field by the label of “systemic contradições”). In short, there is – metaphorically – a Prigoginian mechanism of “diffusion of flutuações” as an instrument of damping or internal dissipação of certain flutuações perigosas to a complex system.
Here, we focus more on how Mészáros understands the forms of amortization/dissipação of contradições perigosas to the complex capitalist system. It will now be demonstrated how he understands, systemically, the process of structural crisis of the capital system, where it would no longer be possible for this system itself to dampen the “perigorous contradictions” that it itself engenders. Initially, Mészáros (2002) reminds us that:
In the course of historical development, the three fundamental dimensions of capital – production, consumption and circulation/distribution/realization – tend to strengthen and expand over a long time, also stemming from the internal motivation for their reciprocal dynamic reproduction on an increasingly expanded scale. (p. 798)
More to follow, the author points to the end of this relative systemic “balance” of capital:
The structural crisis of capital that we began to experience in the 70s […] simply means that the triple internal dimension [of the previous text] of self-expansion of capital exhibits increasingly greater disturbances . It [such a crisis] does not just tend to break the normal growth process, but also presses a failure in its vital function of dislocating the accumulated contradictions in the system […]. The situation changes radically when […] the interests of each one [daquelas três dimensões] must coincide with the others, and also in the last analysis [read: such a “lack of coincidence” is not more than just conjunctural]. From this moment on, as perturbações […], instead of being absorbed/ dissipated /deconcentrated and disarmed, they tend to become cumulative and, therefore, structural , tracing with them or perigorous blockage to the complex mechanism of dislocating contradições . In this way, here we are [now] confronted […] and […] potentially very explosive. This is because capital never resolves the least of its contradictions. We cannot do it, to the extent that, by its very nature or capital, it prospers (certainly soon, with relative security). In its normal way of dealing with contradictions and intensifying them, transfer them to a higher level, relocate them to a different plane, delete them when possible, and when they can no longer be deleted, export them to a different sphere or country. (Mészáros, 2002, pp. 799-800; taps and colchetes nossos )
Now, as in Wallerstein's description, the turbulences (or flutuações, ou perturbações) imposed on the capitalist system tend to become cumulative, or that in the systemic language of science of complexity it means non-linear dynamic mechanism of positive feedback of a small Initial flutuation in the system.
The term “negative feedback” refers here to systemic mechanisms that counterbalance and overcome a relatively small, for the dimensions of the system, initial flutuação; Já “positive feedback” refers to the reverse process, precisely that in the fabric now, of a “structural crisis”. A small flux is amplified uncontrollably by the system and ends up generating a chaotic transition process , which in turn leads to a bifurcation point that extinguishes this system that is still in force, as previously analyzed here. “structural” of the capitalist world-system by Wallerstein. Newly found, now in Mészáros, a typical causality of non-linear systems (in “crise”): in the aforementioned chaotic process , small causes (“microscopic” disturbances in the system) can generate large effects in the total system. In another text, the Hungarian thinker works on this same process of systemic rupture through an angle very similar to that of Wallerstein's “curve of life of the historical system”, a curve that grows asymptotically (this is, increasingly dulled growth) as a result of “secular and contradictory tendencies” of the system itself, with an abrupt and irreversível decline from a (unique) structural crisis of the system. Compare now with the text of Mészáros (2002):
The more we change our own historical circumstances, pointing to the direction of a necessary change of contradictions and increasingly devastating irrational structural assumptions of the capital system, more categorically the operational imperatives must be reinforced and more stretish must be the margins of two oil adjustments [...]; Apart from the displacement of the contradictions of the system, it becomes increasingly more tense. (pp. 217-219)
Finally, in the original text from 1989, Mészáros (1996, pp. 391-393) used the language of complexity in a significant way through a specific complementary relationship (“dialectic reciprocity” in his own words) of opposing tendencies (tendency x counter-tendency): it is a relationship equilibrium x collapse of equilibrium. Mészáros distinguishes the “conjunctural” inter-relationship between these pairs of tendencies, which can even lead to the alternation of dominance of one or another of the tendencies, from their relation to the limits of the development of global capitalism, where it ends up being established “in the last instance” or what Marx called the “dominant moment (ou tendency). Not in the case of the specific relationship of tendencies “equilibrium x collapse of equilibrium”, Mészáros concluded that the “limits” of capitalism to disorganization and collapse of equilibrium appear to be the fundamentally dominant tendency of the capital system, rather than the complementary tendency of equilibrium.
Note here more one of the similarities between Mészáros and Wallerstein's text, when the latter author dealt with “secular tendencies” and intrinsically contradictory long-term (and, ultimately, dominant) tendencies of capitalism, those dominant tendencies that would inexorably end by dragging down the “trajectory” of the historical system “for a long time.” equilibrium” and, likewise, for “chaotic” conditions of “structural crisis” (Wallerstein and Hopkins, 1996, p. 8).
Western-modern foundations of the articulation between the critique of capitalism of Wallerstein and Mészáros and the science of complexity of Prigogine: relations with socio-environmental questões
The first theoretical foundation, emerging from Western modernity, is to see how a “universal-particular” relationship corresponds to the project, perhaps fundamental, of the second generation of German Idealism (devidly appropriate to the “German side” of Marx): rearticulating reason (logic; necessity; universal) and history (time; contingência; perhaps; particular), separated – to put it simply – by Platão and Aristoteles.
Both in Wallerstein and in Mészáros, the trajectory of the capitalist world-system (or the system of capital) is marked from its beginning by internal structural contradictions (and apart from the systemic logic of capital: the universal “constituinte” of its trajectory), you never eliminate the system itself, 5 and that generate successive historical crises, 6 that vão being dissipated/dislocated/diffused – never fully resolved – and which subsequently and gradually inexorably expand the barriers to the central cumulative process of capital, the systemic process of self-reproduction , raising such a system for each time longer than its healthy and original healthy equilibrium. In the language (complexa, avant la lettre ) of Marx himself, as emphasized by Mészáros (2002), the structural (systemic) dialectical pair of equilibrium/disequilibrium moments, the dominant tendency towards the end of the trajectory of the capital system will be to do disequilibrium.
In the language of complex science, as cyclical crises , always linked to the structural contradictions of the system, arise as small fluctuations threatening the stability of the system throughout its trajectory, but always pass "regress" through dissipação/deslocamento/difusão/exportação (“negative feedback” from small flutuações) before it expands uncontrollably and affects the system as a whole (“positive feedback from flutuações”). But this continuous process of dissipation of cyclical crises, always initially beneficial to the system, produces – both for Wallerstein and for Mészáros and, ultimately, for a systemic Marx – in increasing barriers to the central cumulative rotation of capital, accentuating its central contradictions. Because small fluctuations have no more secure dissipation mechanisms (there is no more time to dislocate cyclical crises) and thus inexorably rises to a (unique) structural or terminal crisis in the fabric system: all the escape valves to sustain the accumulation of capital as “Entopem” and those small flutuations can now spread, “infecting” the entire system and becoming highly instável. Atinge-se, in prigogineana linguage, a point of bifurcação where the capitalist systemic trajectory ends and então in course and opens up multiple possibilities (in a non-deterministic process) of successive bifurcações (in Wallerstein's interpretation) até até emergência de um novo world-system (which Wallerstein considers impossible to specify during the terminal crisis of the dying system) or of just a big bifurcação: socialism or barbarism (Mészáros), isto é, ou a new world-system (socialist) or the chaos of barbarism.
In summary, here is a Marxist appropriation of the science of prigoginean complexity by Wallerstein and Mészáros, this is the characterization of a deterministic trajectory (quase) of the capitalist world-system or of the system of capital (the dominant side of the “reason” via “permanent” elements of the historical system), interspersed – face The emergence of a new trajectory of a future world-system – due to uncontrolled instabilities/final bifurcation point with non-deterministic characteristics (is a “history”, with its face of chance, unforeseen, “chaotic”, a scale of “cycles of civilization”).
For Wallerstein and Mészáros it was established (although for different reasons), since the beginning of the 1970s, in the terminal crisis of the capital system (Mészáros) or of the capitalist world-system (Wallerstein). Ou seja, as secular tendências mortais que perpassam todo a trajetória desse system (é a sua “ logic ”) we would finally be finding not in our time its specific historical conditions of explosions (in flutuações/crises locais) and propagação (throughout the entire system) uncontroláveis. In passage, the authors of this work agree that the “prigoginian” trajectory of the capitalist world-system or the system of capital will inexorably lead it to a terminal crisis (point of bifurcation); But it does not corroborate the claim that this crisis that began in the 1970s is necessarily a terminal crisis. It may not be: it is understood here that there are still possible “escape valves” (including, in an original way, environmental ingredients) for such a crisis that has been going on for fifty years.
The second foundation is to (re)articulate the thought of Western modernity: rearticulate society-nature (SN) with its corresponding epistemological patamar: rearticulate social sciences-natural sciences, process in the course of Western thought – in a more substantial way from the beginning of the 20th century – and now long from its conclusion.
Before the dawn of Western modernity, society(S) and nature(N) are, in general, organically articulated in any civilization of the planet, essentially via religion and, more particularly in the West, by the Aristotelian way of reason that addresses nature – both as regards humanity – and as permeated by “causais finais.” (teleology).
Western modernity has a Cartesian separation or (dis)articulation between SN – a process that is inaugurated at the beginning of the 17th century – two of its most expressive aspects, which are perpetuated, even, in academia through the epistemological face of that separation, namely, a consequent separation between social sciences and natural sciences . The nascent conceit of nature in the 17th century as a neutral, objective “being”, devoid of any project, destiny or “final causes”, in short, totally devoid of anthropomorphic “contaminações” (Monod, 1977), turns into the (supposedly) ontological matrix of “natural sciences”.
The history of modern SN relations, especially in recent decades, is deeply articulated with the history of the capitalist world-system. According to what Marx himself understood (cited in Mészáros, 1989) in “O Capital”, o capitalism two primórdios of the industrial revolution need to sustain – “cunningly”, according to Marx – that separation is (epistemologically) corresponding “neutrality” and consequent desacralization of science: the squares of nascente urban proletariat provinham do campo, where old and medieval religious/mystical/anthropomorphic traditions two camponeses referring to nature power become seriously empacilhos to the factory work of unlimited exploration of nature.
Pissed hairs of the 19th century, Marx and Engels – opposed to capitalism – seek to (re)articulate society and nature through history, or better, through the articulation between natural and human histories.
In the 20th century, the capitalist system faced a crisis of devastating proportions starting in 1929. One of their systemic exit strategies ended up raising a (re)articulation, not expected or detected – between society and nature through violence (Tostes, 2006).
Finally, and most importantly, in the second half of the 20th century, several initiatives of (re)articulation between society and nature (including via two environmentalist movements) and, epistemologically, of rearticulation between human sciences and natural sciences come (Pinguelli Rosa, 2005; 2006). Among these epistemological initiatives, Prigogine stands out here (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984a, 1984b). Starting from the Thermodynamics of no equilibrium or long period of equilibrium and of its “dissipative structures”, 7 which can only exist in open systems (this is, exchanging energy and matter as “environment”), Prigogine is raised, a central point of his work, to contrast the relationship between society and nature. in a mechanistic (Newtonian) world view with a systemic world view founded on the science of complex systems. This last science involves an interdisciplinary project par excellence, because the separation of human sciences and natural sciences is the matrix or original 17th-century trunk of all the subsequent disciplinary separations that still exist in the academy.
The articulation between the Marxist perspectives of criticism of capitalism by Wallerstein and Mészáros and the science of complex systems by Prigogine occurs within the major process in the course of rearticulation between society and nature or, epistemologically, between social sciences and natural sciences. In other words, Prigogine's complex science leads into the Marxist universe, via Wallerstein and Mészáros, a more “ecological” perspective of analysis than the “Newtonian world machine” perspective. It is conjectured that such a rearticulating process between SN – pointing to a distance between western modernity and its central separation SN – will probably be more accelerated in the coming years due to growing socio-environmental problems.
The third and last foundation, forming a sequence with the other two, is to be seen as a facet still poorly explored in the history of the 20th century. Prigogine's complex science can be seen as the advanced point of a more general process of emergency and construction of an alternative European model of civilisation, which we will call the “cyclical model of chaotic transitions”, in progress since the end of the First World War. At the same time, the capitalist world-system would be the product and driving force of its own European modernity and would be centered on a hegemonic model (this is, in a civilization project) axial-progressive enlightenment – and profoundly anti-ecological – of transforming the planet into a market society. Same as the “English” side of Marx (or “scientific Marxism” of Marx as “Newton da economia”), real socialism (and its “state capitalism”) from 1917 essentially appropriated this axial-progressive model.
Roughly speaking, the alternative model defends a “biological” analogue for each civilization: birth, growth and decay and a discontinuity between each one of them, not giving rise to a line or a continuous conduit articulating – progressistamente or not – a trajectory of these civilizations. This model comes with traces – quite linked to the respective German conjuncture of 1918 – of extreme pessimism in the work of Spengler (1959) and is revealed in general in the same negative cores not between European wars, trying to involve the English historian Toynbee and the strategist Sorokin in the USA – the latter adding a more “neutral” perspective (Capra, 2006). But I did not manage to firmly grasp the status of a “civilization project.”
During the capitalist “Ouro Era” (1945-1973), the cyclical model evidently lost space for the “progress” project, but returned in new ways from the 1980s onwards, being appropriated and transformed into a “civilization project”, for example, by physical and environmentalist Capra (2006) and, more relevant for the present work, even just in the condition of model, for the analysis of two world-systems of Wallerstein (2004), appropriating that in both cases occurs consciously and mainly through the same prigogineano that both authors imprinted on this model. Between two authors, this is clear when we use Prigogine's alternation between different well-defined ( deterministic ) systemic trajectories with periods (“ indeterministic ” bifurcações) of “ chaotic ” inter-system transitions.
Mészáros have a differentiated position. On the one hand, in the end of the trajectory of the multi-millennial system of capital, there is a unique and typical bifurcação prigogineana (socialism or barbarism) with an unforeseen result from that previous trajectory that is exhausted, on the other hand, there is – apparently – an enormous trajectory that continues throughout the long part of the history of civilizations. Given the increasingly socio-environmental nature of a capital crisis that has only been unfolding for nearly fifty years, it can be conjectured that the cyclical model of civilization has the greatest chance of being signed as a “project” in the coming years to the detriment of the classic civilizational project of linear progress of “forças” productive” via science/technology.
In summary, Prigogine's science of complexity – an advanced point of the cyclical civilizing model of chaotic transitions – leads into the Marxist universe, via Wallerstein and Mészáros, a more “ecological” perspective than that of the hegemonic model of linear-cumulative progress.
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Wallerstein, Immanuel and Hopkins, Terence (Ed.) (1996). The age of transition: trajectory of the world-system, 1945-2025 . London: Zed Books.
1 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.
2 We can cite as examples Pablo G. Casanova, Enrique Leff, among others.
3 Here, all the highlighted words in italic say we respect the concepts of complex science, originally developed for natural sciences, and which appear in the texts of Wallerstein and/or Mészáros to deal with historical systems.
4 Note the metaphor – also biological – of “systemic survival” used by Mészáros.
5 Pois emergem das secular tendencies – Wallerstein's concept – cumulative/permanent systems of capital.
6 Cyclical economic crises and successive conflicts between powers due to political hegemony are not the process of capital accumulation: both processes characterize Wallerstein's “cyclical rhythms” that constitute the historical plot, always contingent, given the world-system.
7 Term used to distinguish between the two “equilibrium structures”, which can exist even in isolated systems.
