Fourth footnote to the post titled “Interlinking Hegemonic Powers”

It follows that world order amounts exactly to financial networks, given that accumulation is the “cardinal principle” of world order. Moreover, the stuff of world history is none other than “cycles of accumulation and cycles of hegemony.” And what prompts a shift from one cycle to another is class struggle according to certain world systems analysis scholars and theorists. There is a direct and strong correlation between accumulation on one hand and social rebellion on the other hand. There is also rivalry between private elites and state elites at a certain point in time during the cycle. A core state in the world system goes through two phases or life stages. First is its ‘centralization’ phase whereby the state becomes bureaucratized and strong. And second is its ‘decentralization’ phase or its ‘aristocratization’ phase or ‘feudalization’ phase whereby private elites seize the surplus of the state. The outcome of the decentralization phase of the core state in the world system is inevitably a crisis of the world system. Political fragmentation, social rebellion, and war on a global scale and scope result from this crisis of the world system which stems from ‘parasitic accumulation’ on the part of private elites to borrow from one scholar. One should also note that every region of the world has experienced this cycle of accumulation and hegemony at least once. And this is where we are at the moment, namely, at the end of the Western cycle. Also, when one region of the world goes through decentralization while another goes through centralization as is the case now, private elites and state elites of the decentralizing region will try to join forces to challenge the centralizing region. But the advantage is always with the region that is centralizing.