The Thirty Years' Wars of Historical Capitalism: Military Spending and Systemic Cycles of Accumulation

• In Event: 41020 - Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Hegemony and its Decline

Abstract

The literature on systemic cycles of accumulation has paid insufficient attention to the role of the relationship between military spending and the transition from CM’ to new MC phases of systemic cycles of accumulation. This paper argues that war spending plays a critical role in the relations of finance and technical innovation associated with the rise of a new phase of material expansion within the capitalist world-economy. It argues that moments of investment in war have proceed through successive “Thirty Years’ Wars of Historical Capitalism,” wherein the Genoese-Dutch Transition occurred through the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648,) the Dutch-British through the War of Austrian Succession through the Seven Years’ War (1740-1763), and the British-American transition through the World Wars of the Twentieth Century (1918-1945.) Noting the centrality of military spending to the (re)production and maintenance of systemic cycles of accumulation, the paper calls for attention to be paid to the specificities of American military spending in relation to its hegemonic decline.

Author

• John Peter Antonacci, SUNY-Binghamton