THE COLLAPSE OF LIBERALISM

Immanuel Wallerstein

The years 1989-1991 mark a decisive turning-point in contemporary

history. On that almost everyone seems to agree. But turning from what to
what? 1989 is the year of the end of the so-called Communisms in Eastern
Europe, and 1991 marks it for the erstwhile USSR. The years 1990-91 are
the immediate time boundaries as well of the so-called Persian Gulf war.
The two events, intimately linked, are nonetheless entirely distinct in
character. The end of the Communisms marks the end of an era. The
Persian Gulf war marks the beginning of an era. The one closes out; the
other opens out. The one calls for reevaluation; the other for evaluation.
The one is the story of hopes deceived; the other of fears still unfulfilled.
Yet, as Braudel reminds us, 'events are dust', even big events. Events
make no sense unless we can insert them in the rhythms of the conjonctures
and the trends of the longue dude. But that is less easy to do than it sounds,
since we must then decide which conjonctures and which structures are
most relevant.
Let us start with the end of the Communisms. I have called it the end of
an era, but which era? Shall we analyse it as the end of the postwar epoch
1945-1989, or as the end of the Communist epoch 1917-1989, or as the end
of the French Revolutionary epoch 1789-1989, or as the end of the
ascension of the modern-world system, 1450-1989? It can be interpreted as
all of these.
Let me put aside, however, the last possible interpretation for a while,
and start by analysing it as the end of the epoch 1789-1989, via 1848 and
1968. Note well, not for the moment via 1917. How may we characterise
this period: that of the industrial revolution? that of the bourgeois revolu-
tion(~)?that of the democratisation of political life? that of modernity? All
of these interpretations are commonplace, and all have some (even much)
plausibility.
A variation on these themes, one that would perhaps be more precise,
might be to call the era 1789-1989 the era of the triumph and domination of
liberal ideology, in which case 1989, the year of the end of the so-called
Communisms, would in fact really mark the downfall of liberalism as an
96
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN 97
ideology. Outrageous and implausible, amidst the revival of the faith in the
free market and the importance of human rights, you say? Not all that
much. But, in order to appreciate the argument, we must begin at the
beginning.
In 1789, in France, a political upheaval occurred to which we have given
the name, the French Revolution. As a political event it passed through
many phases, from the initial phase of uncertainty and confusion to the
Jacobin phase, and then, via the interim of the Directory, to a Napoleonic
phase. In a sense we can argue it was continued subsequently in 1830, in
1848, in 1870, and even in the Resistance during the Second World War.
Through it all, it had as its slogan 'liberty, equality, fraternity' - a clarion
call of the modem world that has proved to be superbly ambiguous.
The balance-sheet of the French Revolution in terms of France itself is
very uneven. There were irreversible changes that were real changes, and
there were many seeming changes that changed nothing. There were
continuities from the Ancien Rkgime via the revolutionary process, as
Tocqueville showed long ago, and there were decisive ruptures. This
balance-sheet for France is not, however, our concern here. The bicenten-
nial and its platitudes are over.
It is rather the impact of the French Revolution (interpreted widely) on
the world-system as a whole that is the theme I wish to explore. The French
Revolution transformed mentalities and established 'modernity' as the
Weltanschauung of the modern world. What we mean by modernity is the
sense that the new is good and that it is desirable, because we live in a world
of Progress at every level of our existence. Specifically, in the political
arena, modernity meant the acceptance of the 'normality' of change, as
opposed to its 'abnormality', its transitory character. At last, an ethos
consonant with the structures of the capitalist world-economy had become
so widely diffused that even those who were uncomfortable with this ethos
had to take it into account in public discourse.
The question became what to do about the 'normality' of change in the
political arena, since those who have power are always reluctant to cede it.
The differing views about how to handle the 'normality' of change are
located in what we have come to call the 'ideologies' of the modern world.
The first ideology on the scene was 'conservatism', the view that change
would be retarded as long as possible, and its extent kept as minimal as
possible. But note, no serious conservative ideologue has ever suggested
total immobility, a position that it had been possible to assert in previous
eras.
The response to 'conservatism' was 'liberalism', which saw the break
with the Ancien Rgime as a definitive political rupture and as the end of an
era of 'illegitimate' privilege. The political programme incarnated by
liberal ideology was the perfection of the modem world by means of the
further 'reform' of its institutions.
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The last of the ideologies to make its appearance was 'socialism', which
rejected the individualistic presumptions of liberal ideology, and insisted
that social harmony would not come about automatically by unleashing
individuals from all the constraints of custom. Rather, social harmony had
to be socially constructed, and for some socialists it could only be con-
structed after a further historical development and a great social battle, a
'revolution'.
All three ideologies were in place by 1848 and have conducted noisy
battles with each other ever since, throughout the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries. Political parties have been created everywhere, ostensibly
reflecting these ideological positions. There has to be sure never been an
uncontested definitive version of any of these ideologies, and there has also
been very much confusion about the dividing lines between them. But in
both learned and popular political discourse it has been generally accepted
that these ideologies exist and represent three different 'tonalities', three
different styles of politics with respect to the normality of change: the
politics of caution and prudence; the politics of constant rational reform;
and the politics of accelerated transformation. Sometimes we call this the
politics of the right, the centre, and the left.
There are three things to note about the ideologies in the period
following 1848. I say, following 1848, because the world revolution of 1848
-which combined the first appearance of a conscious workers' movement
as a political actor with the 'springtime of the peoples' - set the political
agenda for the next century and a half. On the one hand, the 'failed'
revolution(s) of 1848 had established clearly that political change was not
likely to be as rapid as the accelerators wanted, but neither would it be as
slow as the cautious hoped. The most plausible prediction (not wish) was
constant rational reform. Thus triumphed in the core zones of the world-
economy the liberal centre.
But who was to effectuate these reforms? This is the first anomaly to
notice. In the first blossoming of the ideologies, between 1789 and 1848, all
three ideologies had situated themselves in positions that were firmly anti-
State in the antinomy State-Society, whose centrality in political thought
was equally a consequence of the French Revolution. Conservatives had
denounced the French Revolution as an attempt to use the State to
undermine and negate the institutions thought to be basic to Society - the
family, the Community, the Church, the monarchy, the feudal orders.
Liberals however had also denounced the State as the structure which
prevented each individual - the actor considered to be basic to the
constitution of Society - from pursuing his interests as hetshe saw fit in
what Bentham called the 'calculus of pleasure and pain'. And socialists had
denounced the State as well on the grounds that it reflected the will of the
privileged, rather than the general will of Society. For all three ideologies
then, the 'withering away of the State' seemed an ideal devoutly to be
wished.
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN 99
Yet, and this is the anomaly we are noting, despite this unanimously
negative view of the State in theory, in practice, especially after 1848, the
exponents of all three ideologies moved in multiple ways to strengthen
state structures. Conservatives came to see the State as a substitute
mechanism to constrain what they considered to be the disintegration of
morality, given that the traditional institutions could no longer do it, or
could no longer do it unaided by the State police institutions. Liberals
came to see the State as the only efficient, only rational mechanism by
which the pace of reform could be kept steady, and oriented in the right
direction. And socialists after 1848, came to feel that, without obtaining
state power, they would never be able to overcome the obstacles to
fundamental transformation of the Society.
The second great anomaly was that, although everyone said there were
three distinct ideologies, in political practice, each ideological party tried
to reduce the political scene to a duality, claiming that the other two
ideologies were basically alike. For conservatives, both liberals and social-
ists were believers in Progress, who wished to utilise the State to manip-
ulate the organic structures of Society. For socialists, conservatives and
liberals represented mere variations on a politics of the defence of the
status quo and of the privileges of the upper strata (old aristocracy and new
bourgeoisie combined). And for liberals, both conservatives and socialists
were authoritarian opponents of the liberal ideal, the flourishing of
individuals in all their potentialities. This reduction of three ideologies to a
duality (but in three different versions) was in part no doubt mere passing
political rhetoric, but more fundamentally it reflected the constant recon-
struction of political alliances. In any case, over the course of 150 years,
this repeated reduction of the trinity to dualities created a great deal of
political confusion, not least of all in the meaning of these labels.
But the greatest anomaly of all was that in the 120 years after 1848, that
is, at least until 1968, under the guise of three ideologies in conflict with
each other, we really had only one, the overwhelmingly dominant ideology
of liberalism. To understand this, we have to look at what was the concrete
issue under debate during the entire period, the fundamental social
problem that required a solution.
The great 'reform' that was called for, if the capitalist world-system were
to remain politically stable, was the integration of the working classes into
the political system, thereby transforming a domination based merely on
power and wealth into a domination of consent. This reform process had
two main pillars. The first was the according of suffrage, but in such a way
that, although everyone would vote, relatively little institutional change
would occur as a result. The second was transferring a part of the global
surplus-value to the working classes, but in such a way that the largest part
remained in the hands of the dominant strata and the system of accumula-
tion remained in place.
100 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1992
The geographical zone in which such social 'integration' was required
most urgently was that of the core states of the capitalist world-economy-
Great Britain and France above all, but the United States, other states in
Western Europe, and the White settler states as well. We know that this
transformation was steadily implemented in the period 1848-1914, and
that by the time of the First World War, the patterns of universal suffrage
(albeit still only manhood suffrage in most places) and the welfare state
were in place, even if not yet fully realised in all these states.
We could say simply that the liberdl ideology had realised its objective
and leave it at that, but that would be insufficient. We must notice as well
what happened in the process to both conservatives and socialists. The
leading conservative politicians turned themselves into 'enlightened con-
servatives', that is, virtual competitors with official liberals in the process
of the integration of the working classes. Disraeli, Bismarck, and even
Napoleon I11 stand as good examples of this new version of conservatism,
what might be termed 'liberal conservatism'.
At the same time, the socialist movement in the industrialised countries,
even its most militant exemplars such as the German Social-Democratic
Party, became the leading parliamentary voices for the achievement of the
liberal reforms. Through their parties and their trade-unions, they exerted
'popular' pressure for achieving what the liberals wanted, the taming of the .
working classes. Not only Bernstein but Kautsky, Jaurks, and Guesde as
well, not to speak of the Fabians, became what we might call 'liberal
socialists'.
By 1914, the political work of the industrialised countries was largely
divided between 'liberal conservatives' and 'liberal socialists'. In the
process, purely liberal parties began to disappear, but this was only
because all significant parties were de facto liberal parties. Behind the
mask of ideological conflict stood the reality of ideological consensus.
The First World War did not break this consensus. Rather, it confirmed
it and extended it. The year 1917 was the symbol of this extension of the
liberal consensus. The war had started by an assassination in a peripheral
zone of the world-economy, Bosnia-Herzogovina. The moment had come
for the core states to go beyond the narrower objective of integrating their
own working classes and think about the integration of that larger segment
of the world's working classes, those that lived in the peripheral and
semiperipheral zones of the world-system. In the language of today, the
issue had now become the taming of the South in ways parallel to the
taming of the working classes internal to core zones.
There were two versions of how to resolve North-South issues. The one
was put forward by that herald of the renewal of liberalism on a world
scale, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson asked the United States to enter the First
World War 'to make the world safe for democracy'. After the war, he
called for the 'self-determination of nations'.
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN
To which nations was Wilson referring? Obviously not to those of states
in the core zone. The process of the construction of effective and legitimate
state machineries in France and Great Britain, even Belgium and Italy,
had long since been completed. Wilson was talking of course of the nations
or 'peoples' of the three great empires in process of dissolution: Russia,
Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans - all three comprising peripheral and
semiperipheral zones of the world-economy. In short, he was talking of
what we today call the South. After the Second World War, the principle of
the self-determination of nations was to be extended to all the remaining
colonial zones - in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean.
The principle of the self-determination of nations was the structural
analogy at the world level of the principle of universal suffrage at the
national level. Just as each individual was to be considered politicallyequal
and have one vote, so each nation was to be sovereign and thus politically
equal and therefore have one vote (a principle today incarnated in the
General Assembly of the United Nations).
Nor did Wilsonian liberalism stop there. The next step after suffrage at
the national level had been the institution of the welfare state, that is, a
redistribution of a part of the surplus-value via governmental income
transfers. The next step at the world level after self-determination was to
be 'national (economic) development', the programme put forth by
Roosevelt, Truman, and their successors after the Second World War.
Needless to say, conservative forces reacted with their usual prudence
and distaste to the clarion call of the Wilsonians for global reform.
Needless to say as well, after the disruptions caused by the Second World
War, conservatives began to see the merits in this liberal programme, and
Wilsonian liberalism in practice became after 1945 a liberal-conservative
thesis.
But 1917 had of course a second significance. It was the year of the
Russian Revolution. Wilsonianism was hardly born when it was faced with
a great ideological opponent, Leninism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks ap-
peared on the political arena in protest primarily against the previous
transformation of socialist ideology into what I have called liberal social-
ism (the same thing as Bernstein's revisionism, to which Lenin attached the
Kautsky position as well). Leninism therefore was proposing a militant
alternative, initially by its opposition to workers' participation in the First
World War, and then by the seizure of state power in Russia by the
Bolshevik Party.
We know that socialists everywhere in 1917, including in Russia, had
expected the first socialist revolution to occur in Germany, and that for
several years the Bolsheviks awaited the fulfilment of their own revolution
by one in Germany. We know the German revolution never came and that
the Bolsheviks had to decide what to do.
The decision they took was twofold. On the one hand, they decided to
build 'socialism in one country'. They thus entered into a path in which the
 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1992
primary demand of the Soviet state vis-his the world-system became its
political integration as a great power in the world-system and its economic
development via rapid industrialisation. This was Stalin's programme but
it was that of Khrushchev. Brezhnev. and Gorbachev as well. Thus the
programme in practice was one of the Soviet state demanding its 'equal
rights' on the world scene.
What then of world revolution? Lenin initiallv founded the Third
International in theory to pursue in militant ways thd tasks that the Second
International had in effect renounced. The Third International soon
turned however into a mere foreign policy adjunct of the USSR. The one
thing it never did was stimulate real insurrections of the working classes.
Instead, the focus of activity shifted, beginning with the Baku Congress of
the Peoples of the East in 1921, to which Lenin invited not merely
Communist parties but all sorts of nationalist and national liberation
movements.
The programme that emerged from Baku, and that became in reality the
programme of the world Communist movement, was the programme of
anti-imperialism. But what was anti-imperialism? It was a translation into
more aggressive and impatient language of the Wilsonian programme, of
the self-determination of nations. And in the period after the Second
World War, as one after the other of these national liberation movements
came to power, what programme did they put forward? It was the
programme of national (economic) development, usually relabelled so-
cialist development. Leninism, the great opponent of liberal-socialism at
the national level, was beginning to look suspiciously like liberal-socialism
at the world level.
Thus, just as in the period 1848-1914, the liberal programme of the
taming of the working classes in core zones via universal suffrage and the
welfare state was implemented by a combination of socialist militancy and
sophisticated conservative astuteness, so in the period 1917-1989, the
liberal programme at a world scale, the taming of the South, was being
implemented by a combination of socialist militancy and sophisticated
conservative astuteness.
The second world revolution of 1968, just like the first world revolution
of 1848, transformed the ideological strategies of the capitalist world-
economy. Whereas the revolution of 1848, via its successes and its failures,
ensured the triumph of liberalism as an ideology and the eventual transfor-
mation of its two rivals - conservatism and socialism - into mere adjuncts,
the revolution of 1968, via its successes and its failures, undid the liberal
consensus. The revolutionaries of 1968 launched a protest from the left
against this consensus, and above all against the historic transformation of
socialism. even Leninist socialism. into liberal-socialism. This took the
form of a resurgence of various anarchist themes, but also, perhaps above
all, of Maoism.
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN 103
In the wake of the breaching of the worldwide liberal consensus by the
so-called New Left, conservative ideology was also renewed for the first
time since 1848 and became once again politically aggressive rather than
defensive. Sometimes this was given the name of neo-conservatism but
sometimes it was called neo-liberalism, which reflected the fact that its
programme was primarily to remove constraints on the market and
thereby to regress on welfare state reallocations, the first such significant
regression in a century.
How can we account for the world revolution of 1968, and its con-
sequences for ideological strategies? In terms of their structure of the
world-system as a whole, we can say that the politics of liberalism - the
taming of the world's working classes via suffragelsovereigntyand welfare
statelnational development - had reached its limits. Further increases of
political rights and economic reallocation would threaten the system of
accumulation itself. But it had reached its limits before all sectors of the
world's working classes had in fact been tamed by being included into a
small but significant part of the benefits.
The majority of the population of the peripheral and semiperipheral
zones were still excluded from the operations of the system. But so were a
very significant minority of the populations of the core zones, the so-called
'Third World within'. And in addition, the world's women became con-
scious of their profound permanent exclusion, at all class levels, from true
political rights, as well as, for the most part, from equal economic rewards.
What 1968 represented therefore was the beginning of the reversal of the
cultural hegemony the world's dominant strata had, with great assiduity,
been creating and strengthening since 1848. The period from 1968 to 1989
has seen the steady crumbling of what remained of the liberal consensus.
On the right, conservatives increasingly sought to destroy the liberal
centre. Compare the statement of Richard Nixon - 'we are all Keynesians
now' - with the campaign of George Bush in 1988 against the 'Lword', L
for liberalism. Witness the virtual coup d'Ctat in the British Conservative
Party where Margaret Thatcher ended the tradition of enlightened conser-
vatism that had gone back beyond Disraeli to Sir Robert Peel in the 1840's.
But the erosion was even greater on the left. It took the form most
tellingly of the disintegration of the liberal-socialist regimes. In response to
the patent inability of almost all of these regimes, in peripheral and
semiperipheral zones, even the most 'progressive' and rhetorically militant
among them, to achieve national development to any significant degree,
one after the other of regimes with a glorious past of national liberation
struggle lost their popular legitimacy. The culmination of this process was
the so-called 'Collapse of the Communisms' - from the advent of Gor-
bachevism in the USSR and of 'special economic zones' in the People's
Republic of China to the fall of the one-party Communist systems in all the
countries of eastern Europe.
104 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1992
In 1968, those who were frustrated with the liberal consensus turned
against the liberal-socialist ideology in the name of anarchism and/or
Maoism. In 1989, those frustrated with the liberal consensus turned
against the quintessential exponents of liberal-socialist ideology, the
Soviet-style regimes, in the name of the free market. In neither case was
the alternative proposed one to be taken seriously. The alternative of 1968
quickly proved meaningless, and the alternative of 1989 is in the process of
doing the same. But, between 1968 and 1989, the liberal consensus and the
hope it offered for gradual improvement in the lot of the world's working
classes was fatally undermined. But if it is undermined, there can then be
no taming of the working classes.
The true meaning of the collapse of the Communisms is the final
collapse of liberalism as a hegemonic ideology. Without some belief in its
promise, there can be no durable legitimacy to the capitalist world-system.
The last serious believers in the promise of liberalism were the old-style
Communist parties in the former Communist bloc. Without them to
continue to perform this function, the world's dominant strata have lost
any possibility to control the world's working classes other than by force.
Consent is gone, and consent has gone because bribery had gone. But
force alone, we have known since at least Machiavelli, is insufficient to
permit political structures to survive very long.

Thus we come to the meaning of the Persian Gulf crisis, the beginning of
the new era. In this era, the only effective weapon of the dominant forces is
becoming force. The Persian Gulf war, unlike all other North-South
confrontations in the twentieth century, was an exercise in pure Real-
politik. Saddam Hussein started it in this fashion, and the United States
and the coalition it put together responded to it in the same way.
Realpolitik was never absent of course from previous conflicts. It in-
formed the Congress of Baku in 1921 as well as the arrival of the Chinese
Communist Party into Shanghai in 1949. It was part and parcel of the
Bandung declaration of 1955, of the Vietnam war, and of the Cuban
confrontation of 1962. It was always an integral part of the strategy of the
antisystemic movements - witness Mao's maxim, 'political power comes
out of the barrel of a gun' - but force was always an adjunct to the central
organising motifs of antisystemic ideology. The South, the peripheral
zones, the world's working classes had fought their battles under the
banner of an ideology of transformation and hope, in which there was a
clear ideological appeal to popular power.
We have been arguing that the forms this ideological struggle of the
world's antisystemic movements took were less militant than they seemed
or than they claimed. We have said that the world's antisystemic forces had
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN 105
in fact been pursuing, in large part unwittingly, the liberal ideological
objectives of homogenising integration into the system. But, in so doing,
they at least offered hope, even exaggerated hope, and invited adherence
to their cause on the basis of these hopes and promises. When the promises
were finally seen to be unfulfilled, first there was fundamental uprising
(1968) and then there was the anger of disillusionment (1989). The uprising
and the disillusionment were directed more against the presumably anti-
systemic liberal socialists than against the pure vintage liberals. But no
matter, since liberalism had achieved its objectives via these liberal-
socialists (and to be sure the liberal-conservatives as well), and had always
been able to be effective alone.
Saddam Hussein drew the lesson of this collapse of the liberal ideologi-
cal carapace. He concluded that 'national development' was a lure and an
impossibilityeven for oil-rich states like Iraq. He decided that the only way
to change the world's hierarchy of power was via the construction of large
military powers in the South. He saw himself as the Bismarck of an
eventual pan-Arab state. This was not the Bismarck of enlightened
conservatism, but the Bismarck who was the leader of a state fighting an
uphill battle in the interstate system. The invasion of Kuwait was to be the
first step for Saddam Hussein in such a process, and would have as a side
benefit the immediate solution to Iraq's debt crisis (elimination of a main
creditor plus a windfall of looted capital).
If this was an exercise in pure Realpolitik, then we must look at the
calculations. How must Saddam Hussein have evaluated his risks and
therefore his chances of success? I do not believe he miscalculated. Rather
I believe he reasoned in the following manner: Iraq had a 50-50 chance of
winning in the short run (if the US hesitated to respond), but if Iraq
moved, the US would find itself in a no-win situation where the US had a
100% chance of losing in the middle run. For a player of Realpolitik, these
are good odds.
Saddam Hussein lost his short-run 50-50 gamble. The US reacted with
the use of its maximal military strength, and of course was unbeatable.
Iraq, as a country, has emerged much weakened from the war, albeit less
totally knocked out than the US seemed to think it would accomplish. But
the political situation in the Middle East is fundamentally unchanged from
that of 1989, except that the political responsibility of the US has increased
considerably without any significant increase in its political ability to
defuse the tensions. Whatever the short-run developments, the continued
erosion of the US middle-run political role in the world-system will
continue unabated, given the continuing erosion of the US competitive
position in the world-market vis-his Japan and the European
Community.
The long-run question that is open is not what developments will occur
in the North, which are fairly easy to predict. When the next long upturn of
106 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1992
the world-economy occurs, the likely poles of strength will be two: a
Japan-US axis, to which China will be attached, and a pan-European axis,
to which Russia will be attached. In the new expansion and new rivalry
among core powers, each pole concentrating on developing its principal
semiperipheral zone (in the one case China, in the other case Russia), the
South will in general be further marginalised, with the exception of
enclaves here and there.
The political consequence of this new economic expansion will be
intense North-South conflict. But if the North has lost its weapon of
ideological control of the situation, can the antisystemic forces, in the
South and those elsewhere supporting the South, that is (in older lan-
guage), the world's working classes, reinvent an ideological dimension to
their struggle?
As the ideological themes of yesteryear, those incarnated in socialist and
anti-imperialist doctrines, have used themselves up, we have seen three
principal modes of struggle emerge. Each has created enormous immedi-
ate difficulties for the dominant strata of the world-system. None of the
three seems to pose a fundamental ideological challenge. One is what I
would call the neo-Bismarckian challenge, of which Saddam Hussein's
thrust has been an example. The second is the fundamental rejection of the
Enlightenment Weltanschauung, whose strength we have seen in the forces
led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The third is the path of individual attempts
at socio-geographical mobility, whose major expression is the massive
unauthorised ongoing migration from South to North.
Two things stand out about these three forms of struggle. First, each is
likely to increase manyfold in the 50 years to come, and will consume our
collective political attention. Secondly, the world's left intellectuals have
reacted in extremely ambiguous fashion to each of these three forms of the
struggle. Insofar as they seem to be directed against the dominant strata of
the world-system and to cause the latter discomfort, left intellectuals have
wanted to support them. Insofar as each is void of ideological content, and
hence politically reactionary rather than progressive in middle-run politi-
cal consequence, left intellectuals have taken their distance, even consid-
erable distance, from these struggles.
The question is what choice left forces have. If 1989 represents the end of
a cultural era that ran from 1789 to 1989, what will be, what can be, the new
ideological themes of the present era? Let me suggest one possible line of
analysis. The theme of the era just past, that of modernity, was the virtue
of newness and, in the political arena, the normality of change. This theme
led, as we have tried to argue, steadily and logically to the triumph of
liberalism as an ideology, that is, to the triumph of the political strategy of
conscious, rational reform in the expectation of the inevitable perfecting of
the body politic. Since, within the framework of a capitalist world-
economy, there were (unrecognised) inbuilt limits to the 'perfecting' of the
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN 107
body politic, this ideology reached its limits (in 1968 and 1989), and has
now lost its efficacity.
We are now into a new era, an era I would describe as the era of
disintegration of the capitalist world-economy. All the talk about creating
'a new world order' is mere shouting in the wind, believed by almost no
one, and in any case most improbable of realisation. But what ideologies
can exist if we are faced with the prospect of disintegration (as opposed to
the prospect of normal progressive change)? The hero of liberalism, the
individual, has no significant role to play amidst a disintegrating structure,
since no individual can survive very long in such a structure acting alone.
Our choice as subjects can only be that of groups large enough to carve out
corners of strength and refuge. It is therefore no accident that the theme of
'group identity' has come to the fore to a degree unknown before in the
- -

modern world-system.
If the subjects are groups, these groups are in practice multiple in
number and overlapping in very intricate ways. We are all members (even
very active members) of numerous groups. But it is not enough to identify
the theme of the group as subject. In the 1789-1989 era, both conservatives
and socialists sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to establish the social primacy
of groups, in the one case of certain traditional groupings, in the other case
of the collectivity (the people) as a singular group. We must in addition put
forward an ideology (that is, a political programme) based on the primacy
of groups as actors.
There seems to be only two ideologies one can conceivably construct,
although at this point neither has been fully constructed in fact. One can
put forth the virtue and legitimacy of the 'survival of the fittest' groups. We
hear this theme announced in the new aggressivity of proponents of neo-
racist themes, which are often clothed in meritocratic garb rather than in
the garb of racial purity. The new claims are no longer necessarily based on
old narrow groupings (such as nations or even skin-colour groups), but
rather on the right of the strong (however ad hoc their grouping) to hold on
to their loot and protect it within their fortress localities.
The problem with the neo-Bismarckian and the anti-Enlightenment
thrusts in the South is that they are inclined eventually to come to terms
with their compeers in the North, thereby becoming merely one more
fortress locality of the strong. We see this clearly in the politics of the
Middle East of the last 15 years. Faced with the threats represented by
Khomeini, Saddam Hussein was supported and strengthened by all sectors
of the world's dominant strata. When Saddam Hussein moved to grab too
large a share of the loot, these forces turned against him, and Khomeini's
successors were happy to rejoin the dominant pack. This easy switching of
alliances says something about the politics of the dominant strata (and the
hypocrisy of their cant about concern with human rights), but it says
something as well about Khomeini and his group and about the ~ a a t h i s t
party under Saddam Hussein as well.
108 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1992
There is an alternative ideology to the 'survival of the fittest' groups that
can be constructed around the primacy of groups in an era of disintegra-
tion. It is one that recognises the equal rights of all groups to a share in a
reconstructed world-system while simultaneously recognising the non-
exclusivity of groups. The network of groups is intricately cross-hatched.
Some Blacks, but not all Blacks, are women; some Moslems, but not all
Moslems, are Black; some intellectuals are Moslem; and so on ad infini-
tum. Creating real space for groups in the social system necessarily implies
creating space within groups. All groups represent partial identities.
Defensive frontiers between groups tend to have the consequence of
creating hierarchies within groups. And yet, of course, without some
defensive frontiers, groups can have no existence.
This then is our challenge, the creation of a new left ideology in a time of
disintegration of the historical system within which we live. It is no easy
task nor one that can be accomplished overnight. It took many, many
decades to construct the ideologies of the post-1789 era. The stakes are
high. For when systems disintegrate, something eventually replaces them.
What we now know of systemic bifurcations is that the transformation can
go in radically divergent directions because small input at that point can
have great consequences (unlike in eras of relative stability such as that
which the modern world-system enjoyed from circa 1500 to recently, when
big inputs had limited consequence). We may emerge from the transition
from historical capitalism to something else, say circa 2050, with a new
system (or multiple systems) that is (are) highly inegalitarian and hier-
archical, or into one that is largely democratic and egalitarian. It depends
on whether or not those who prefer the latter outcome are capable of
putting together a meaningful strategy of political change.
In the capitalist world-economy, the system works to exclude the
majority (from benefits) by including in the work-system in a layered
hierarchy all the world's potential work force. This system of exclusion via
inclusion was infinitely strengthened by the diffusion in the nineteenth
century of a dominant liberal ideology which justified this exclusion via
inclusion, and managed to harness even the world's antisystemic forces to
this task. That era, happily, is over. Now we must see if we can create a very
different world-system that will include all in its benefits via the exclusions
involved in the construction of self-conscious groups that nonetheless
recognise their interlacing.
The definitive formulation of a clear antisystemic strategy for an era of
disintegration will take at least two decades to develop. All one can do now
is put forward some elements that might enter into such a strategy without
being sure how all the pieces fit together, and without asserting that such a
list is complete.
One element must surely be a definitive disjuncture with the past
strategy of achieving social transformation via the acquisition of state
 IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN 109
power. It is not that assuming governmental authority is never useful, but
that it is almost never transformatory. The assumption of state power
should be regarded as a necessary defensive tactic under specific circum-
stances in order to keep out ultra-right repressive forces. But state power
should be recognised as a pis aller, which always risks a relegitimation of
the existing world order. This break with liberal ideology will undoubtedly
be the hardest step to take for antisystemic forces, despite the collapse of
liberal ideology I have been analysing.
What goes with such a rupture with past practice would be a total
unwillingness to manage the difficulties of the system. It is not the function
of antisystemic forces to solve the political dilemmas that the increasingly
strong contradictions of the system impose upon the dominant strata. The
self-help of popular forces should be seen as quite distinct from negotiating
reforms in the structure. This has been precisely the trap into which all
antisystemic forces, even the most militant ones, were led during the
liberal ideological era.
Instead, what antisystemic forces should be concentrating upon is the
expansion of real social groups at community levels of every kind and
variety, and their grouping (and constant regrouping) at higher levels in a
non-unified form. The fundamental error of antisystemic forces in the
previous era was the belief that the more unified the structure the more
efficacious. To be sure, given a strategy of the priority of conquering state
power, this policy was logical and seemingly fruitful. It is also what
transformed socialist ideology into liberal-socialist ideology. Democratic
centralism is the exact opposite of what is needed. The basis of solidarity of
the multiple real groups at higher levels (state, region, world) has to be
subtler, more flexible, and more organic. The family of antisystemic forces
must move at many speeds in constant reformulation of the tactical
priorities.
Such a coherent non-unified family of forces can only be plausible if each
constituent group is itself a complex, internally democratic, structure. And
this in turn is only possible if, at the collective level, we recognise that there
are no strategic priorities in the struggle. One set of rights for one group is
no more important than another set for another group. The debate about
priorities is debilitating and deviating and leads back to the garden path of
unified groups ultimately merged into a single unified movement. The
battle for transformation can only be fought on all fronts at once.
A multi-front strategy by a multiplicity of groups, each complex and
internally democratic, will have one tactical weapon at its disposal which
may be overwhelming for the defenders of the status quo. It is the weapon
of taking the old liberal ideology literally and demanding its universal
fulfilment. For example, is not the appropriate tactic faced with the
situation of mass unauthorised migration from South to North to demand
the principle of the unlimited free market - open frontiers for all who wish
110 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1992
to come? Faced with such a demand, liberal ideologues can only shed their
cant about human rights and acknowledge that they do not really mean
freedom of emigration since they do not mean freedom of immigration.
Similarly, one can push on every front for the increased democratisation
of decision-making, as well as the elimination of all the pockets of informal
and unacknowledged privilege. What I am talking about here is the tactic
of overloading the system by taking its pretensions and its claims more
seriously than the dominant forces wish them to be taken. This is exactly
the opposite of the tactic of managing the difficulties of the system.
Will all of this be enough? It is hard to know, and probably not, by itself.
But it will force the dominant forces into more and more of a political
corner and therefore into more desperate countertactics. The outcome
would still be uncertain, unless the antisystemic forces can develop their
utopistics - the reflection and the debate on the real dilemmas of the
democratic, egalitarian order they wish to build. In the last period,
utopistics was frowned upon as political diversion from the priority tasks
first of gaining state power and then of national development. The net
result has been a movement based on romantic illusion and hence subject
to angry disillusionment. Utopistics are not utopian reveries, but the sober
anticipation of difficulties and the open imagining of alternative institu-
tional structures. Utopistics have been thought to be divisive. But if the
antisystemic forces are to be non-unified and complex, then alternative
visions of possible futures are part of the process.
The year 1989 represented the agonising end of an era. The so-called
defeat of antisystemic forces was in fact a great liberation. It removed the
liberal-socialist justification of the capitalist world-economy and thus
represented the collapse of the dominant liberal ideology.
The new era into which we have entered is nonetheless even more
treacherous. We are sailing on uncharted seas. We know more about the
errors of the past than about the dangers of the near future. It will take an
immense collective effort to develop a lucid strategy of transformation.
Meanwhile, the disintegration of the system goes on apace, and the
defenders of hierarchy and privilege are wasting no time to find solutions
and outcomes that will change everything in order that nothing change.
(Remember that di Lampedusa said this as a judgment of Garibaldian
revolution.)
There is reason neither for optimism nor for pessimism. All remains
possible, but all remains uncertain. We must unthink our old strategies.
We must unthink our old analyses. They were all too marked with the
dominant ideology of the capitalist world-economy. We must do this no
doubt as organic intellectuals, but as organic intellectuals of a non-unified
worldwide family of multiple groups, each complex in its own structure.