[OPE-L] Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Fri Nov 02 2007 - 01:19:13 EDT


Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century
by Giovanni Arrighi | originally published in: Verso 20 aug
In the late eighteenth century, the political economist Adam Smith
predicted an eventual equalization of power between the conquering West
and the conquered non-West. In this magisterial new work, Giovanni Arrighi
shows how China's extraordinary rise invites us to read The Wealth of
Nations in a radically different way than is usually done. He examines how
the recent US attempt to bring into existence the first truly global
empire in world history was conceived in order to counter China's
spectacular economic success of the 1990s, and how the US's disastrous
failure in Iraq has made the People's Republic of China the true winner of
the US War on Terror. In the 21st century, China may well become again the
kind of non-capitalist market economy that Smith described, under totally
different domestic and world-historical conditions.


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