A theory of global power

Mehta Bhupal Day, Landscape 3, 2018
Whatsapp
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Telegram

By LEONARDO DE AMORIM THURY*

Commentary on the recently released book by José Luís Fiori

1.

José Luís Fiori referred to his latest book, A theory of global power as being “the history of an intellectual obsession with power”. And, in fact, this work presents the result of 40 years of research, developed by the author and accompanied by several books and hundreds of articles of historical-conjunctural analysis around the theme of “capitalist economic development”, “interstate competition”, “global crises and hegemonies” and the expansive dynamics of “global power”.

José Luís Fiori first worked on the theme of “comparative development”, then dedicated himself to researching the consequences of the crisis of American hegemony in the 1970s/80s, to finally propose a new research program on the theme of “Global Power”, especially after the publication of the book The American PowerOf 2004.

The author's reflection develops amidst a permanent tension between the “history of long durations” (in the style of Fernand Braudel) and the conjunctural history of political and economic struggles, between classes and nations (in the style of The 18th Brumaire, by Marx). According to José Luís Fiori, the researcher: “Must remain, at all times, alert and attentive because the same events that reveal the “historical permanences” are those that may be signaling, at any moment, a “change of direction”, or a great historical rupture that may already be in the process of gestation without the researcher having any law that anticipates the paths of the future capable of facilitating the diagnosis of the present. (Fiori, 2024, p. 27).

Furthermore, the theory that is being constructed through these successive and infinite analyses of the situation “[…] needs to be tested and subjected to a constant exercise of “falsification” of its hypotheses, which can only be done through the situational analysis itself, that is, successive analyses of the situation, which is why it will always be a “method” and a “theory in the process of construction”. (Fiori, 2024, p. 28).

2.

Now following the structure of the book itself, A theory of global power, in part 1, José Luís Fiori analyzes the importance of the conjuncture, but with a unique perspective, since “it has become, in common language, synonymous with 'current moment'” (p. 45). However, the “central objective of any conjunctural analysis” would be “the reduction of unpredictability in order to increase control over human behavior.” (p. 46).

This is noticeable in the works of José Luís Fiori, in which he organized a large part of his theory, and whose main texts and essays are gathered in this book, namely: “O poder global e a nova geopolitica das Nações” (Global Power and the New Geopolitics of Nations), from 2007; “History, Strategy and Development”, from 2014, and “A linfo de Babel e a disputa do poder global” (The Babel Syndrome and the Dispute of Global Power), from 2020. All of these works begin with a theoretical proposal and are completed by articles that are analyses of the current situation based on history and the theory proposed in the initial part of the book. History and current situation are intertwined.

It is indisputable, in this sense, that conjunctural analysis suffers from a lack of monuments. But it is also true to say that historical analysis often suffers from a lack of “uncertainty”. (Fiori, 2024, p. 51).

In part 2, José Luís Fiori focuses on the theme of the State and development, which is part of the intense battle of ideas that took place from the 1960s to the 1990s, in which his texts and books that countered the entire neoliberal ideology of the “conservative revolution” of the 1980s are included.

Part 3, “Hegemony and Empire,” is the continuation of this debate, now around the great power, the United States. In this debate Fiori rescues, from the work Power and Money: A Political Economy of Globalization (1997), the article by Maria da Conceição Tavares, “The Resumption of North American Hegemony” (1985), written when the main international analysts spoke of the “terminal crisis” of North American hegemony. At this moment in the author’s career, the theme of hegemony began to stand out.

In part 4, “Global Power and Wealth”, the articles “The Global Power of the United States: Formation, Expansion and Limits” and “Formation, Expansion and Limits of Global Power” are highlighted, both from the book the american power (2004). In them, Fiori describes the formation of “national economy-states” (Fiori, 2024, p. 491) through, among countless other historical aspects, the fusion of the owners of power with the owners of money. These “entities” become “true machines for the accumulation of power and wealth” and expand to other continents, forming “empire-states”.

National economy-states are born not only from the “game of exchanges” (Braudel), but mainly from the “game of wars” (Fiori, 2024, p. 385). Victories in wars allow for greater accumulation of power and, with more power, sovereigns conquer more territories, more resources via taxes, and in turn, more power.

Using a similar resource to Marx in his masterwork The capital (chapter four of the first volume), José Luís Fiori defines the formula for the expansion of power. Where P = Power, T = Territory, D = Money:

P – T – P'

T – P – T'

Read the formula above: with power (P) we conquer territories (T), which represent more power (P'). And with territory (T), we conquer more power (P) and with this, more territories (T').

The same reasoning with money D:

P – D – P'

D – P – D'

D – D'

The difference vis-à-vis Marx's formula, according to José Luís Fiori, is that “in our case, it is not the labor force that explains the increase in initial value, it is the surplus value created by power and its capacity to multiply itself in various ways, but above all through the preparation of wars and conquests in the event of victory” (Fiori, 2024, p. 399).

Within part 4, the book “expands” again, with the insertion, in item 4.3, of the “Preface to the theory of global power”.

3.

In his historical study of the “world system”, one of José Luís Fiori’s discoveries was the anticipation of the sovereign’s power in creating the surplus for paying taxes, which goes against William Petty and Marx, in their primitive accumulation.

This is why it is so difficult to reconcile Marx’s historical vision of the “origin” and “primitive accumulation” of Capital with his theoretical deduction of value and the laws of capitalist primitive accumulation. It is also difficult to move directly from Braudel’s history of the “game of exchange” to his theory of “great profits” and capitalist “great predators” without the mediation of power and wars, which have little prominence in his history of the European birth of capitalism (Braudel, 1996). (Fiori, 2024, p. 482-483).

And he continues: “In this sense, William Petty – the father of classical political economy – inverted the order of factors. According to the author, taxes were created because there was a surplus of available production, when, in fact, taxes were created because there was a sovereign with the power to proclaim and impose them on a certain population, regardless of production and labor productivity, at the time of the proclamation of the tax”. (Fiori, 2024, p. 486).

Another aspect of José Luís Fiori’s book, central to his work, is the theory of the “expanding universe” and the characteristics of power. Every expansive explosion that occurred in the world system (European and later global) was preceded by an “increase in competitive pressure”. This “phenomenon” of “expansive explosions” would have occurred in the long 1150th century (1350-1450), the long 1650th century (1790-1914), and the “long 1970th century” (between XNUMX-XNUMX). And we have been witnessing yet another “expansive explosion” since the XNUMXs.

Each of them occurred in a different scenario. The first two were specifically European, but with an expansion to the other continents (Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania); the third was more global, as the non-European powers – the United States, Germany and Japan – and the “periphery” of the system – the subjugated world of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania – were already included.

Another interesting point about the expansive explosions is the characteristic that precedes them, which is added to the “increase in competitive pressure”: the “exhaustion”, the “disintegration” of the world system. This is what happened in the European system (Fiori, 2024, p. 25), in its first explosions (long 1th century and long 2th century). The same goes for the countries that stood out at some given moment in History and also expanded their powers – in this case, with the presence of revolutions or wars and going through processes of “exhaustion” and “disintegration”: (3) Portugal and the Avis Revolution; (4) Spain and the Wars of Reconquista; (5) England and its Civil War or Puritan Revolution; (6) France and the French Revolution; (7) Russia and the Russian Revolution; (8) China and the Chinese Revolution; (9) the United States and its Civil War; (2024) the Meiji Revolution in Japan; and (498) the Prussian wars of unification that gave rise to Germany (Fiori, XNUMX, p. XNUMX).

In the current expansive explosion, which initially (1970s) focuses on hegemon – the United States – this “degradation” is done differently from previous explosions. It is the very hegemon that destabilizes the system (such as the Vietnam War, the end of the dollar-gold parity in 1971, Paul Volcker's interest rate shock policy, among other actions) to expand its power.

Every hegemonic situation is transitory and self-destructive, because the hegemon itself ends up getting rid of the rules and institutions it helped to create in order to continue expanding and accumulating more power than its followers. (Fiori, 2024, p. 495).

For José Luís Fiori, power has ten characteristics: it is asymmetrical; limited; relative; heterostatic; triangular; it is flux; systemic; expansive; indissoluble; and dialectical.

José Luís Fiori is influenced by Karl Marx, Firederich Engels, Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, Max Weber, Von Clausewitz, Fernand Braudel and Carlo Ginzburg. But he goes beyond these authors, studying and theorizing global power. Highlighting just a few of these authors, “Marx’s essay on The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte exerted a very important initial influence on our method of historical-conjunctural research.” (Fiori, 2024, p. 26).

And regarding Fernand Braudel, he states that the historian must work, at the same time, in the three temporalities: the “short time”, of immediate political events, journalistic – the most capricious, the most deceptive of durations, according to Braudel; the “cyclical time”, typically economic; and the “long duration”, the time proper to structures and great historical permanences. (Fiori, 2024, p. 27)

The work is rich and opens spaces for questions, studies of its intriguing proposals, the elaboration of articles based on its theses, etc. For example, in the “expansive explosions” of the “world system” and later of the “capitalist interstate system”, Fiori highlights the elements of “increased competitive pressure” prior to them, but there is a lack of studies that describe aspects such as: what expanded in the “long 1970th century”, in the “long XNUMXth century” and in the “long XNUMXth century”? And what is currently expanding in the XNUMXst century, with the “competitive pressure” that began in the XNUMXs?

And since power is always expanding, what would the inauguration of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 (“the new silk roads”) be if not an event of power expansion? to the China, a country with a thousand-year history, but which needs to expand? As Norbert Elias said: “those who don’t rise, fall”. And the expansion of NATO, the “eternal wars”, the “rules-based world” of the “West” (read United States and European Union/NATO), the expansion of the BRICS (now BRICS more) are movements that refer us to this same “expanding universe”.

4.

Part 5 is dedicated to the theme of War and Peace, analyzed in his works about the war (2018) and about peace (2021) and all the complex issues surrounding ethics, both in war and in peace. Fiori develops a theory that is not meant to be left on the shelf, but that helps us understand the decisions of the great makers of the world, or of major events, involving wars, peace, agreements, power blocs, etc. It is possible to “see” José Luís Fiori’s theory when we read and see the newspapers daily.

When reporting on Russia's intervention in Georgia (a country in the former Soviet Union), José Luís Fiori stated, based on Hans Morgenthau's theory: “Therefore, the current [August 2008] war in Georgia is not an 'old war'; on the contrary, it is an announcement of the future.” (Fiori, 2014, p. 175). On February 24, 2022 (approximately seven years after Fiori wrote this), the war in Ukraine (also a country in the former Soviet Union) began, which has similar foundations, despite its specificities: an attempt to expand NATO in a country that belongs to Russia's sphere of influence and, therefore, represented and represents a threat to it.

It is common for José Luís Fiori to quote himself in more recent articles, from 2020 to 2024, with phrases from his works from 2008, 2014, etc., because his theoretical arsenal is based on history and current affairs, which allows him to foresee the movement of the pieces on the chessboard of global power and detect the patterns of war, peace and power.

Thus, the work of José Luís Fiori is essential for those who enjoy (and often regret) following the movements of the pieces on the board of world power, together with a good theoretical-historical-conjunctural basis.

*Leonardo de Amorim Thury holds a PhD in economics from the Institute of Economics at UFRJ.

Reference


Jose Luis Fiore. A theory of global power. Petropolis, Vozes Publishing, 2024, 670 pages. [https://amzn.to/4jAT2ys]

REFERENCES


Braudel, F. The game of exchanges. 1996a.

Braudel, F. The time of the world. 1996b.

Elias, n. The civilizing process. Jorge Zahar Publishers, Rio de Janeiro. 1993

FIORI, JL Power and money: a Political Economy of Globalization. Ed. Vozes, Petropolis. 1999.

FIORI, JL Globalization, hegemony and empire. In: TAVARES, MC and FIORI, JL (org.) Power and Money: A Political Economy of Globalization. Ed. Voices, Petropolis. 1999.

FIORI, JL American power. Petrópolis: Voices, 2004.

FIORI, JL Global power and the new geopolitics of nations. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2007. 

FIORI, JL History, strategy and development: towards a geopolitics of capitalism. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2014.

FIORI, JL The Babel syndrome and the global power struggle. Petrópolis, RJ: Voices, 2020.

FIORI, JL A theory of global power. Vozes Publishing. 2024.

FIORI, JL About the war. Petropolis: Voices. 2018.

FIORI, JL About peace. Petropolis: Voices. 2020.

MARX, Karl. Capital. Critique of Political Economy. Book 1. Volume 1. The Process of Production of Capital. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 2006.

MORGENTHAU, H. Politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

TAVARES, MC The resumption of American hegemony. In: TAVARES, MC; FIORI, JL (orgs.) Power and Money. A Political Economy of Globalization. Petropolis: Voices.


the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE