China and the World System since 1945－by Immanuel Wallerstein

影片：China and the World System since 1945

文字稿：The world system after 1945

• 摘要：

在冷戰過後，世界體系發生了巨烈的變化，Wallerstein在演說中簡單敘述了這樣的變化：美國在世界體系中的霸權(Hegemony)地位、以及世界體系面臨的結構危機(crisis structure)。

• 重要摘句：

1. The United States would henceforth become an ever more direct actor in the Middle East, seeking to control everything and everyone, and in the long run discovering in this region the limits of the capacities of a hegemonic power.
2. The protestors proclaimed these movements to be not part of the solution but part of the problem. None of these movements would ever be able to recover from the political shock this caused. These movements ceased in fact to be movements and became merely parties. They lost the ability to mobilize the faithful who believed and were ready to sacrifice themselves for the certain glorious future the movements had promised.
3. In their anxiety to assert the primacy of "culture" failed to realize that, as long as we live in a capitalist world-economy, neither the economic nor the political underpinnings of our lives simply cease to matter.
4. The world Left passed the 1970s in search of new organizational forms that would replace those that the Old Left, the traditional anti-systemic movements (now in semi-disgrace), had institutionalized.
5. The answer to developmentalism, said the neo-liberals, was globalization – essentially embracing the opening of all frontiers to the free movement of capital and merchandise, but not labour. The key theme was the freedom of private firms to seek profit in any way they could.  If globalization resulted in exaggerated inequalities, this was inevitable, and perhaps even desirable. Globalization as discourse was, is, rightwing anti-modernism.

• 問題與討論：

1. 我們身為行動者，要如何對抗這樣的「霸權」？找出隱藏在典章中的權力，是否有助於我們推翻或批判這樣的霸權？或者說在這樣的霸權壓迫下，我們能做的只有服從？
2. 全球化提供了資本家「開發」的方便，其實世界的發展與否還是奠基在資本主義下，勞工的自我剝削與國際企業的壟斷決定了世界體系的「經濟」與「發展」。是否真如馬克思(Karl Marx)所言，資本主義最終會走向自我滅亡？或說這樣的依賴體系會不斷存在，達到自己的平衡？