Globalization or the age of transition? A long-term view of the trajectoryof the world-system

Globalization is a misleading concept, since what is described as globaliza tion has been happening for 500 years. Rather what is new is that we are en tering an 'age of transition'. We can usefully analyze the current world si tuation using two time frames: 1945 to the present and circa 1450 to the pr esent. The period since 1945 has been one long Kondratieff cycle, with an A-phase that ran through 1967-76 and a B-phase ever since. The economic and politic al developments of the last 50 years are easy to place within this framewor k. The period from 1450 to the present is the long history of the capitalis t world-economy, with its secular trends all reaching critical points. This article analyzes the long-term rise in real wage levels, in costs of mater ial inputs of production and of levels of taxation, the combination of whic h has been creating constraints on the possibilities of capital accumulatio n The long history of the antisystemic movements and their structural failu res has led to a serious decline in the legitimacy of state structures whic h is threatening to subvert the political pillars of the existing world-sys tem. For all these reasons, the modern world-system is in structural crisis and has entered into a period of chaotic behavior which will cause a systemic b ifurcation and a transition to a new structure whose nature is as yet undet ermined and, in principle, impossible to predetermine, but one that is open to human intervention and creativity.