The Larger Shift

Over the last year or so, we have discussed, on this blog, a significant geopolitical issue: the tectonic shift from West to East. Mao Zedong predicted it around 1970, and now it is clearly coming to pass. The US and Europe are losing power and influence; Russia, India, the BRICS network—which includes some of the Islamic nations—and China especially, are gaining in power. The latter nations are, to a varying extent, creative and innovative, while the US, if we are not going to mince words, is stupid and self-destructive, for the most part going nowhere. Few people (especially in America) understand that this is happening, but it will become increasingly obvious as time goes on.

And even fewer perceive what I call the Larger Shift, which we have also discussed on this blog for several years now. The last time a shift of this magnitude occurred was the one from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Reformation and into the modern age. This shift also coincided with the rise of the West, and of capitalism as the dominant socioeconomic formation. Because of its magnitude, this shift has been the major focus of the World Systems Analysis School, based in SUNY Binghamton and closely associated with the late Immanuel Wallerstein. Its take on the reign of capitalism is that it constitutes an “arc” stretching from about 1500 to 2100 A.D.—600 years, now coming to an end. (The more astute economists, such as Wolfgang Streeck, have analyzed this closure in great detail.) This is a shift that is comparable to the shift from the medieval era to the modern one.

When we examine that previous Large Shift, as Johan Huizinga did in The Waning of the Middle Ages (original Dutch edition 1919), certain things stand out. The foremost of these is disorientation: millions were confused by the events taking place—events that had no precedent (or so they believed). Accompanying this was widespread depression, both economic and psychological. The 200-year period Huizinga describes was not the greatest time to be alive.

What about today, then? If the World Systems Analysis School is right, we are shifting out of capitalism and the modern age to something else, the outlines of which are slowly coming into view. Economically speaking, I imagine capitalism will persist, but in a very different form. But the psychological shift we are now living through is characterized more by anxiety than depression, although the latter is certainly with us. This time around, the confusion has made it nearly impossible for those living under capitalism to feel OK in their own skin, because capitalism is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. To calm their anxieties, these people—we—are caught up in a whole battery of anodynes: religious or quasi-religious cults (e.g., Scientology), Manichaean politics, suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, cell phone addiction, neurotic consumerism and wealth addiction—the list goes on and on. None of this will work, of course; it’s all treating symptoms rather than causes. As with the previous Large Shift, we will just have to muddle through, until things stabilize once again. The exact nature of that new geopolitical formation is, at this point, something of a black box.

And this was the conclusion Wallerstein finally came to, that change is, paradoxically, the only thing that is constant. All we know for certain about change, he said, is that things will be different. Not necessarily better; in fact, they could be worse. Many are hoping for a world based on generosity and cooperation, rather than ego and competition, but there are no guarantees. For all we know, stabilization could take the form of widespread autocracy. History follows its own logic; our desires have only a limited effect. And so, as far as the future goes, amigos, your guess is as good as mine.

©Morris Berman, 2025