600-year Arcs - Capitalism, Astronomy/Astrology

In reading a very interesting piece by Morris Berman at Counterpunch:

The Waning of the Modern Ages, I noticed mention of the "arc" of capitalism, a period thought to be around 600 years long: 1500 to 2100.  Whenever I read about "arcs" I think of astrology.....anyway more on that later. A brief clip from the article:

La longue durée —the long run—was an expression made popular by the Annales School of French historians led by Fernand Braudel, who coined the phrase in 1958. The basic argument of this school is that the proper concern of historians should be the analysis of structures that lie at the base of contemporary events. Underneath short-term events such as individual cycles of economic boom and bust, said Braudel, we can discern the persistence of “old attitudes of thought and action, resistant frameworks dying hard, at times against all logic.” An important derivative of the Annales research is the work of the World Systems Analysis school, including Immanuel Wallerstein and Christopher Chase-Dunn, which similarly focuses on long-term structures: capitalism, in particular.

The “arc” of capitalism, according to this school, is about 600 years long, from 1500 to 2100. It is our particular (mis)fortune to be living through the beginning of the end, the disintegration of capitalism as a world system. It was mostly commercial capital in the sixteenth century, evolving into industrial capital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and then moving on to financial capital—money created by money itself, and by speculation in currency—in the twentieth and twenty-first. In dialectical fashion, it will be the very success of the system that eventually does it in.

The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, during which time the medieval world began to come apart and be replaced by the modern one. In his classic study of the period, The Waning of the Middle Ages, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga depicted the time as one of depression and cultural exhaustion—like our own age, not much fun to live through. One reason for this is that the world is literally perched over an abyss. What lies ahead is largely unknown, and to have to hover over an abyss for a long time is, to put it colloquially, a bit of a drag. The same thing was true at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire as well, on the ruins of which the feudal system slowly arose.

 I couldn't immediately relate a 600 year span to anything in astrology, but a little research soon brought up the following at sacred texts.com: 

An astronomical period of 600 years, spoken of as the "Naros," the Cycle of the Sun, the Luni-Solar period or Sibylline year, consisting of 31 periods of 19 years, and one of 11 years, is often referred to in old works on the Mysteries. It seems to have been known by the Chaldeans and ancient Indians; it is a period of peculiar properties. Cassini, a great astronomer, declares it the most perfect of all astronomic periods.

If on a certain day at noon, a new moon took place at any certain point in the heavens, it would take place again at the expiration of 600 years, at the same place and time, and with the planets all in similar positions. 

Hmmmm - not sure how that relates to any supposed arc of capitalism, but the fact that there is a definable 600-year arc in astronomy/astrology is interesting and food for further thought.  Perhaps that brush-stroke I mentioned in a previous post about the current set of Uranus/Pluto conjunctions is actually a brush-stroke in an oil painting covering a span of 600 years - or la longue durée.

 PS - Both linked articles are worthy of full investigation!