US Hegemony in the 1980s: Limits and Prospects

Abstract

This essay criticizes a conventional wisdom of both right and left that assumes that there has been a substantial relative decline in American power and hegemony. Indeed the conventional wisdom has significantly underestimated the capacity of the United States to engage in a strategy to re-constitute its international dominance, notably in the international economy, and as such obscures significant changes in the nature of US and capitalist hegemony. After making my critique, I will show how by using a Gramscian approach, important light can be shed on these changes. Indeed although material aggregates of US power indicate relative decline in the US position, the sheer scale of the United States in the global political economy means that it has wielded (perhaps since the 1930s), and continues to wield, substantial structural power. From a Gramscian perspective that focuses on national and transnational class and political formations, and on changes in forms of state, I argue that there has been a re-constitution or ‘crisis’ of hegemony, both internal and external since the late 1970s. I also argue that the form and coherence of the post-war US-centred world capitalist system have changed in ways increasingly congruent with material interests of the most dynamic, transnational fractions of capital, a process which US policies could have encouraged.

Mark Twain did die eventually, and so will American hegemony. But in both cases early reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated. (Russett 1985: 231)