“Civil society not an ideal counter-weight to hegemonic powers”—Perry Anderson

Perry Anderson, author most recently of The New Old World, was in India this week to participate in a three-day meeting on "The Global Crisis and Hegemonic Dilemmas." Organized by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Madras Institute of Development Studies, the conference brought together world-renowned political and economic experts including not only Anderson but also Leo Panitch (whose book The Making of Global Capitalism, co-authored with Sam Gindin, will be published by Verso in Fall 2011), Vivek Chibber, Chaohua Wang (editor of One China, Many Paths for Verso), and Michael Löwy (author of Fire Alarm and The War of Gods for Verso) among others.

As reported by The Hindu, Anderson delivered a lecture on the theories of hegemony saying that

at the international level, the concept could not be dispensed with. In the United Nations, one bloc called the shots

The sanctions against Iran were adopted at the behest of the United States, and India too supported them.

On trans-national hegemony, he said that its structure was constituted by a dual existential structure and an inter-locking of production and consumption—half-real, half-illusory.

Visit The Hindu to read the article in full.