First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers

The extent and irreversibility of US decline is becoming ever more obvious as America loses war after war and as one industry after another loses its technological edge. Lachmann explains why the United States will not be able to sustain its global dominance. He contrasts America's relatively brief period of hegemony with the Netherlands' similarly short primacy and Britain's far longer era of leadership. Decline in all those cases was not inevitable and did not respond to global capitalist cycles. Rather, decline is the product of elites' success in grabbing control of resources and governmental powers. Not only are ordinary people harmed, but also capitalists become increasingly unable to coordinate their interests and adopt policies and make investments necessary to counter economic and geopolitical competitors elsewhere in the world. Conflicts among elites and challenges by non-elites determine the timing and mould the contours of decline. Lachmann traces the transformation of US politics from an era of elite consensus to present-day paralysis combined with neoliberal plunder, explains the paradox of an American military with an unprecedented technological edge unable to subdue even the weakest enemies, and the consequences of finance's cannibalisation of the US economy.

About the Author :
Richard Lachmann is a Professor at the University of Albany-SUNY and the author of Capitalists in Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe, States and Power and What Is Historical Sociology?

Review :
Praise for Capitalists In Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2000): Received 2003 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award (i.e. best book of the year) of the American Sociological Association. Praise for Capitalists In Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2000): The volume is an exemplar of comparative analysis. Lachmann's work is an excellent recent treatment of the transition to capitalism. Praise for Capitalists In Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2000): Lachmann's analysis of historical economic change is astute and pathbreaking. Empirically, this is comparative historical sociology at its best. An important book that is essential reading for those interested in understanding social change. Praise for Capitalists In Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2000): Capitalists in Spite of Themselves synthesizes and extends elite theory and Marxian class analysis in a remarkably inventive way. Capitalists in Spite of Themselves is historically rich, theoretically rigorous and architecturally elegant. Praise for Capitalists In Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2000): Capitalists in Spite of Themselves is a major tour de force, which will lead scholars to think very differently than they have until now about the making of modern Europe. Praise for States and Power (Polity 2010): This is an excellent book. It is all the more remarkable because in spite of its relative brevity (little more than 200 pp. of text) it addresses its theme in a manner characterized among other things by its scope. Lachmann's substantial and original book is also characterized by an exacting methodological approach. Praise for States and Power (Polity 2010): States and Power provides a wonderful starting point for someone seeking to understand the development of states and political power. An entertaining and informative read. Praise for States and Power (Polity 2010): Richard Lachmann provides the reader with a comprehensive sociological analysis of state formation from antiquity to modernity. This text is an excellent read and would certainly be of interest to individuals studying power, state formation, political sociology and nationalism. Praise for States and Power (Polity 2010): A mini-classic, indispensible for those who are interested in the history and future of the nation-state and the international system. Essential. Praise for States and Power (Polity 2010): In this highly readable and informative book, Richard Lachmann provides a wide-ranging survey over 500 years of state formation and transformation. He covers many epochs and five continents, addresses many theorists and numerous forms of state and regime, and explores multiple aspects of state capacities from war-making and taxation through public works and social benefits to changing forms of political legitimacy. Beginning with the distant origins of states, States and Power ends with informed speculation on the likely future of states and the state system. In short, this is an excellent introduction to a complex topic in historical sociology. Praise for States and Power (Polity 2010): This book is concise, marvelously erudite and clearly written. Lachmann succeeds in presenting both the diverse theoretical constructs regarding state power and the analytically organized historical narratives which flesh out his own synthetic understanding of state power. To the best of my knowledge, Lachmann's achievement has no peer - States and Power has all the elements of an intellectual bestseller. Praise for What Is Historical Sociology? (Polity, 2013): Petitions for a sociology that takes social change as its central object. Praise for What Is Historical Sociology? (Polity, 2013): Richard Lachmann's excellent, readable short survey of historical sociology gets to the heart of the enterprise: understanding the ongoing transformations that have created the world in which we live. Lachmann provides incisive reviews of the major fields of research to which historical sociologists have contributed. The book will be a very useful text for those who would bring the concerns and approaches of historical sociology to the larger discipline - who want to historicize sociology in order to render it more vital and more grounded. Praise for What Is Historical Sociology? (Polity, 2013): One of the major contributors to the 'historical turn' in late twentieth-century social sciences guides us through a fascinating journey in a discipline. By examining exemplary works in different sociological domains, Lachmann skillfully sketches the varied concerns of historical sociology. Written in a readable and engaging style, What is Historical Sociology? is a must read, and not just for those interested in (historical) sociology. 'Hegemonic decline,' to borrow a phrase from one of Trump's ancestors, makes one want to release the safety catch on one's Browning. A petrified debate whose time had come and gone.... or so I believed until I opened Lachmann. This is a highly original synthesis that blends world systems theory and comparative history with an astute analysis of contemporary US politics to draw powerful and uncomfortable conclusions. In this historically deep and richly cross-national study of empires and hegemons, Richard Lachmann brings forth new information and a highly original analysis to cast a bright light on the United States and its likely future. Whether social scientists and historians are inclined to agree with him or not, they will have to deal with the fact that his analysis shows that all of them are at least partially wrong about empires and hegemons in one way or another. Working on a strikingly broad comparative canvass Lachmann bridges two genres that are usually widely separate: serious comparative historical sociology, and public engagement. His book asks "what is the connection between the structure of elite relations and the durability of hegemony, understood as a form of power in which the leadership of the dominant group is 'perceived by subordinate groups as serving a more general interest'?" Hegemons, unlike simple empires, set the global rules of the game. Their power "thus...extends beyond their formal and informal territorial possessions to encompass the entire world". Lachmann's answer to this question is that hegemony is possible where there exist plural elites combined with a low level of elite conflict. Where, in contrast, elites are singular (as in the Nazi or Napoleonic empires) or where there is a high level of conflict (as in the Absolutist cases), hegemony is impossible. In the first sort of case elites simply dominate the lands that they conquer in order to extract resources without gaining any local allies. In the second case elites entrench their own interests at the expense of the general interest; they thus become "autarkic" and their own interests split apart from the general interest. This brilliant book, written in the venerable tradition of C. Wright Mills, will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and to the educated public at large. Lachmann shows that comparative and historical sociology is alive and kicking. Bravo! This is a powerful, often brilliant, comparative account of the rise and especially the decline of hegemonic powers, focusing most on the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. Emphasis is placed on the way in which competing elites within the hegemon pursue their own narrow interests to block effective coping with decline. Particularly sobering and convincing is the bleak outlook presented for the future of the United States. One of the most important developments in recent times is the American elites' loss of influence in global affairs, concurrent with its consolidation of power at home. In this brilliant, sweeping analysis, Richard Lachmann connects the dots and explains how the two processes are related. Placing the United States in the context of its imperial predecessors, he helps us understand America's place in the rogues' gallery of global powers. And most importantly, he helps us see that the American oligarchs will be perfectly happy to see the rest of the nation sink, if that's what it takes to hold on to their dwindling possessions. A work of great depth and moral clarity, it deserves the widest possible audience This provocative and sobering indictment often hits its targets. Masterful...Lachmann shows us that, far from being unique to the period of British denouement, the destructive pursuit of such narrow self-interest by elites has repeatedly caused the decline of great powers throughout historical capitalism.