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From a materialist perspective, why did the the global north, the western global north in particular, become so powerful it could loot the rest of the world with borderline impunity? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've recently read"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World" and want to hear what all of you think the answer is, because I feel like the book was missing something in its thesis and I am not very sure what that is.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

World Systems Theorists have some interesting takes on this. In particular, Giovanni Arrighi's The Long Twentieth Centrury lays out an interesting theory about how the nexus of hegemonic power shifts geographically and temporally through the rise of capitalism to an epochal "signal crisis" and through its financial sublimation leading to a "terminal crisis". It takes an absurdly long durée view, tracing the development of capitalism from the Italian city states of Florance, Venice, and Genoa, through the Dutch, England, and finally to the US, examining this cycle of accumulation and crisis in each case as the mechanism which drives these tectonic shifts in hegemony.

World Systems Theorists aren't strictly Marxist, but they aren't allergic either and do cite a lot of Marxist sources.

Terrance Ray and Sean K.B. gave a pretty good summary of the book in a dusty old podcast episode: https://soundcloud.com/user-972848621-463073718/year-zero-the-thousand-year-stare-w-special-guest-sean-kb

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thank you, that book sounds really interesting.

I like how the “shifting of capitals…capital” sort of uses material anaylysis to deflate the story the west tells itself about “Greeks, Roman’s, anglos/french, Americans” (depending on who does the telling)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

I also highly recommend Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris, as it goes into great detail about the history of the settlement of California in the 1800s and the roll it played in accelerating indigenous genocide and capitalist accumulation, and continues to do so to this day in the form of Silicon Valley.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Thanks for the link to the podcast episode, I'll give that a listen.