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The Crisis of U.S. Hegemony in the Twenty-first Century

Marco A. Gandsegui, Jr.
Latin American Perspectives 2007; 34; 5
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X06296323
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Introduction
The Crisis of U.S. Hegemony in the Twenty-first Century
by
Marco A. Gandsegui Jr.
Translated by Mariana Ortega Brea
The study of the United States by foreign specialists is not new. In the 1980s, for
example, a Mexican publisher brought together a set of articles that theorized about the
future of the United States as a world power (Wallerstein, 1984). This issue includes 13
essays by Latin American researchers on U.S. hegemony and its perceived current crisis that were originally presented at a meeting of the Latin American Association of
Social Sciences (CLACSO) U.S. Studies Work Group in Panama City in 2005.
The work group, consisting of some 20 researchers from 12 Latin American countries, focused on eight areas: twentieth-century hegemony, twenty-first-century challenges, culture and ethnicity, labor, science and technology, and hegemony and national
security. Issues regarding the environment, foreign trade, and armaments policies and
their relationship to the control of energy sources were postponed until a later meeting.
THE NOTION OF HEGEMONY
The notion of hegemony has a long history, from Classical Greece to Lenin and
beyond (Williams, 1985). Here, however, we are interested in retrieving Antonio
Gramscis sense of the term as it appears in his Prison Notebooks, where it is
employed to explain the failure of the proletarian uprisings in Europe that followed the
1917 Russian Revolution. How was it that, when the conditions were ripe for revolution, the European nations managed to reestablish, in one way or another, political
regimes controlled by the bourgeoisie? According to Gramsci, a party-organized proletariat was able to achieve key positions within the bourgeois apparatus but lacked the
power necessary to penetrate the fabric of society, which was still under the hegemonic influence of past ideological and material forces. Thus, the notions of hegemony and domination are coupled.
According to Perry Anderson (1976), Gramsci used the term to describe relations
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but also to depict the power structures created by the latter during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is in this context that the structures employed by the United States to exercise global hegemony
during the second half of the twentieth century must be understood. The obvious question is how solid these structures arewhether we can truly speak of a crisis of hegemony (understanding crisis as change). The answer is that we can indeed speak of
a hegemonic crisis (on a superstructural level) that is a product of the development of the
social relations of production (infrastructure) and the challenge that emerges from the
Marco A. Gandsegui Jr. is a researcher at the Center for Latin American Studies and the University
of Panama. The collective thanks him for organizing this issue. Mariana Ortega Brea is a freelance editor and translator based in Ithaca, NY.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 152, Vol. 34 No. 1, January 2007 5-8
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X06296323
2007 Latin American Perspectives

5
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

dominated classes under the leadership of the proletariat or a combination of classes.

The capitalist bourgeoisie has the tools necessary to counter this crisis, as we shall see.
The concept of hegemony was adopted by Marxist theorists focusing on revolutionary movements in the 1950s. Some saw the problem of change as occupying a
privileged position in the superstructure and the struggle for cultural domination. This
ideological interpretation was employed by theorists of the U.S. bourgeoisie such as
Samuel Huntington (1986) to develop models of capitalist struggles against subordinate classes and civilizations. Niall Ferguson has pointed out that these theorists
tended to confuse hegemony with imperialism. We have opted for a more comprehensive view of the concept.

GLOBALIZATION AND NEOLIBERALISM

Nowadays, the concept of hegemony cannot be isolated from notions such as globalization and neoliberalism, which have played a crucial role in social science theory for the
past two decades. At the same time, the notion of imperialism has regained popularity as
a theoretical tool for explaining the social processes that characterize todays world.
The crisis of capitalist development that affected the United States in particular during the 1970s required a global economic adjustment program to stop the decline of
profits. While there is ongoing discussion as to whether these policies were a success or
a failure, it is important to note that stopping the decline of profits has always been their
objective. More precisely, neoliberalisms success is measured in terms of its ability to
benefit a particular fraction of the capitalist class. Everything seems to indicate that the
workers of both the center and the periphery have suffered an enormous reduction of
their quality of life and their earning power, but empirical studies have yet to show
whether neoliberal restructuring has indeed managed to reverse the decline of profits.
More important, it is not clear whether capital has managed to consolidate its political
power. Imperialist wars seeking territorial expansion and dominion, the monopolization
of natural resources, and/or the subordination of rebellious states and nations are the
order of the day. Imperialism has acquired new currency as an explanation for capitalist
expansion and wars waged to consolidate markets and control natural resources.
To the surprise of some, the concept of imperialism has also reemerged among the
(neo)liberal ideologues in Washington who propose that the nation assume responsibility for undertaking an explicitly imperialistic policy. Washington, which is inclined
to favor hawks, is currently split into two camps: those who advocate a clear definition of U.S. capitals global power and those who think that that power should be
exercised in the framework of negotiations and transactions.
The papers presented here use the concept of hegemony to explore the tapestry that
constitutes U.S. society and discover some of the causes behind its apparent crisisa
crisis that can be observed from both an economic and a political perspective. They also
use it to describe the creation of symbols that spread through cultural interactions and
are adopted as their own by the various social classes. Although we understand the crisis as a global event, it is also important to analyze its effects on a domestic scale. In
other words, these papers deal with both the crisis of global hegemony and the apparent loss of internal legitimacy. What Wallerstein (2003) describes as U.S. hegemony is
its control over the global market, its lack of competition militarily, and its role as the
cultural center of the world. Giovanni Arrighi takes an additional step and lists the
alternatives open to the capitalist system for resolving its crisis of hegemony: (1) a halt
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Gandsegui / TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CRISIS

to the 500-year advance of capitalism, (2) the takeover of the global economy by Asian
capital as a result of the failures of the old guard made up of the capitalist countries
of Western Europe and the United States, and (3) continued increase in global violence,
eventually leading to a destruction of the world order.

THE U.S HEGEMONY CRISIS

This issue begins with Orlando Caputos unorthodox take on the U.S. economy and
its role in processes of global accumulation. Caputo argues that the U.S. economy has
undergone a profound transformation, leaving behind the decline of the 1980s and
moving on to productive restructuring that has enabled it to recover hegemonic power.
As a result of globalization, competition, and overproduction, he considers it quite
possible that the United States has overcome the cyclical crisis of the 1990s and begun
a long ascent. Carlos Eduardo Martins argues, in contrast, that the hegemony crisis is
key to an understanding of the contemporary world. His paper assembles empirical
data to substantiate both the nations loss of hegemony and the problems arising from
it. I hypothesize that imperialism is the result of global contradictions generated in
response to expansion and movements of resistance. Historically, these contradictions
have caused countries and even national regions to delink. I ask what the United States
is doing at present to block, prevent and abort these processes, which are the result of
capitalist accumulation.
Fabio Grobart posits that the contemporary techno-economic paradigm has developed since the 1970s amid contradictions involving the so-called productivity paradox, which is characterized by the limited correlation between massive investment in
high technology and any in situ rise in productivity and by slow growth in social productivity at macroeconomic levels. Jorge Hernndez brings this section to a close by
analyzing the historical continuity and contemporary forms of U.S. political culture,
highlighting its legitimizing power within a national context and its doctrinal outlook
in terms of foreign policy.

LEGITIMACY, CULTURE AND ETHNICITY

The second section is composed of four articles. It opens with George Priestleys
essay, which focuses on ethnicity in the United States, the growth of the AfricanAmerican and Latin American populations and its social implications, particularly with
regard to the perceived legitimacy of current ethnic relations and possible future
alliances between African-Americans and Latinos. For his part, Ddimo Castillo, studies the consequences of the labor model imposed by the state, its impact on working
conditions and social mobility, and its erosion of both the American dream ideology
and the credibility of U.S. hegemony. He dispels the myth of the United Statess boundless capacity to generate employment and points to an increasing tendency toward precarious employment opportunities, social inequality, and poverty.
Alejandro I. Canales analyzes the situation of Latin American immigrant workers.
He maintains that deregulation and flexibility in the labor market have resulted in new
types of labor differentiation and segregation. Finally, in one of this issues most original pieces, ngel Quintero explores the impact of Latin American culture on the
United States and the transformations brought about by Fordism in the U.S. way of
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

life. Quintero argues that the laborers who migrate to the United States bring with
them new forms of expression and historical experience that eventually become part
of the culture of their adopted country.

HEGEMONY AND NATIONAL SECURITY

The third and last section of this issue presents four essays that focus on U.S. foreign policy and its attempts to control the global market, if necessary through military
means. Daro Salinas points out that the strategies associated with the practice of free
trade have shaped a policy that, since the events of September 11, 2001, has been
implemented in openly hegemonic terms. According to Salinas, worldwide commercial expansion is part of the U.S. concept of security. Luis Surez explores the difficulties faced by the United States in developing a policy of commercial expansion and
the necessity of increasing its military presence. This combination of free trade and
military power characterizes the relationships between the United States and the rest
of the world.
Jaime Zuluaga examines the United Statess export of its free-trade democracy
and the different guises in which this endeavor has been presented: first as an anticommunist crusade, then as a war on drugs, and, nowadays, as a war on terrorism. He uses
the case of Colombia as a model for his analysis. Finally, Catalina Toro also uses the
Colombian case as an example of free-trade-based U.S. hemispheric security policies,
emphasizing issues of intellectual property and the appropriation of natural resources.
This issue is a joint effort between CLACSOs U.S. Studies Work Group and the
editorial team of Latin American Perspectives, which reviewed, revised, and translated
all the articles. During its most recent meeting, held in Rio de Janeiro in 2006, the
work group agreed to move on to a second phase and begin redefining the notion of
hegemony crisis. It will meet three times during 2007 to exchange views and results
and hopes to be able to publish another set of papers on the subject by 2008. The group
is open to new members who have similar research interests.

REFERENCES
Anderson, Perry
1976 The antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. New Left Review 100: 578.
Ferguson, Niall
2003 Hegemony or empire? Foreign Affairs, SeptemberOctober, 154161.
Huntington, Samuel
1986 Political development and political decay, pp. 95139 in I. Kabashima and L. White (eds.),
Political System and Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel
1984 Estados Unidos, hoy, Ed. Pablo Gonzalez Casanova. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
2003 U.S. weakness and the struggle for hegemony. Monthly Review 55 (3): 2329.
Williams, Raymond
1985 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University
Press.

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