I wish to preface my remarks by saying that I'm not that conversent with
World Systems Theory (WST), though I do appreciate the intent of it.
I've also followed the latest discussion with some reservations as to
what was actually being debated. My cmments are both a response to this
particular post and I hope to also touch upon Mr Boswell's original
response to Wallerstein's argument about the state of WST (not directly
but by inference or that is the hope anyways).
To begin with I think that the following post has certain elements which
are both deterministic and not in keeping with the tenets of WST. For
the former I will indicate both the points as well as why I believe that
this is the case. As to the later I will be drawing exclusively from
Immanuel Wallerstein's "World System Analysis" in Giddens & Turners'
SOCIAL THEORY TODAY.
On Tue, 29 Oct 1996, Albert J Bergesen wrote:
> (i) The A and B phases of the Afroeurasian supra economy are system wide,
> such that the Euro-expansion of colonialism from 1400 was but the European
> element of an overall Afroeurasian expansion. It was not unique to only
> Europe, not a product of European events, social structure, crises
> of/in feudalism, inquiring minds, adventureness, and all the other
> exceptionalisms about the peninsula people that has formed the
> assumptional heart of modern social thought.
To begin with, and this may have more to do with my limited reading of
WST, I fail to see that a Afroeuraisn supra-economy existed, at least
within what constitutes WST. Wallerstein argues that WST has 3 "arenas
of collective human action - the economic, the political and the social
or sociocultural - [which] are not autonomus areanas of social action.
They do not have separate 'logics'" (pg313). He goes to argue that the
choice of the term "system" arises from problem with the term "society",
the later being basically collapesd into the concept of the state and
thus fixing social analysis with the boundaries of the state. He also
argues that by using the term "system" on can begin to see that there is
a 'logic' which pervades all arenas of social action; it also provides a
unity which spans both space and time and allows one to more effectively
to understand the underlying processes that not only 'drive' the system
but provides it with its particular analytical character.
Therefore, I have some initial problems with the idea of a "Afroeurasian
supra-economy". To begin with does the simple fact that trade existed
between different regional areas constitute a system, as defined by
Wallerstein? Obviously, it doesn't. To argue that the entire Eastern
Hemisphere was one world system is reductionist. It also fails to meet
the test of a system, as outlined by Wallerstein. It would be more
appropriate to argue that there existed several systems which had contact
with each other (and the extent of that contact would be miminal at least
viz-a-viz the logic of each system). To argue that Europe and East Asia
were part of the same system misuses the idea surrounding "system".
They may have both been agriculturally based, however, there is very
little else that evenly remotely be argued to say that they were
politically or socially or even economically organized in a similar
fashion which would enable the use of the term "system".
> Afroeurasian B phase in/around 1750. The Asian response of
> economizing--as everyone does here, not just the Weberian peninsula
> people--has different consequences because of different conditions in
> Europe and Asia. Higher labor costs in Europe make the
> invention/innovation/search for/put into us/etc. of labor saving machinery
> the economic response anyone would make. (again, economic rationality is
> universal--not a Weberian particularism of one religious system,
To begin with what do you mean by "economic rationality" let alone that
it is universal. I presume that by "economic rationality" you are using
the more current idea of maximization of utility. This is an idea which
is relatively recent as a foundation for economic organization and one
that is co-terminous with capitalistic thought. By before we address
this issue a little bit about your causal explanation of "higher labout
costs" as being the impetus for the development of "labor saving
machinery" and thus presumably the foundation for which you later argue
of industrial society.
To begin with de-population was nothing particullarly new to world
history regardless of time and space. Was the particular pressures that
existed in Europe particullary unique, possibly, however, can that sole
element explain the development of labour saving devices, the short
answer is no. Lewis Mumford in his 1838 THE CULTURE OF CITIES
illustrated that this wasn't the case but rather he argues that
urbanization had a more profound effect on the transformation of European
society -aka the European system. He illustrates that there was a
profound social conflict between the "the old protective economy, based
on status, mollified by religious precept, by a trading economy based on
individual enterprise and the lust for gain: the economic history of the
town is largely a story of the transformation of a group protected
producers living in a state of relative equality, into a small group of
priveldged merchants for whom the rest of the population ultimately
toils" (pg 22, 1970 edition). The book is an excellent exposition of how
urbanization was more fundemental to the development of the capitalist
system as opposed to the "high labor" costs.
The idea of a labour cost is predicated upon the idea that the economy is
based upon "competition between free producersusing free labour with free
commodities, 'free' meaning its availability for sale and purchase on a
market" (Wallerstein, pg 318) This was not the situation that existed in
Europe at the time of the Black Death, both the Church and secular law
governed the setting of prices, wages, ect. One final remark is that
though the Black Death may have taken as much as 1/2 the population of
Europe one must keep in mind that between the 10th and 13th century
Europe had experienced a population explosion, for example "the region
between the Rhine and the Moselle increased its population tenfold"
(Mumford, pg23) during this period.
Returning to the idea that "economic rationality" is universal is both
ethnocentric (as it takes a particular concept which has meaning under a
set of given circumstances and projects it upon a case where those
circumstances cannot be found; or in other words you're using a term
whose meaning arose within a capitalist system and which doesn't have
that same meaning, if at all, in another system.) The movie, Burn,
provides a nice illustration of how "economic rationality" is neither
universal nor constitutive of all systems. In that film Marlon Brando
plays a British naval operative whose purpose is to destablize a
Portugeuse colony; at one point in the film he provides an execllent
soliloque about the difference between capitalist economy and a slave
economy. He contrasts the systems by using the anlogy of the economic
utility of a wife vs a prostitute and illustrates that it makes more
economic sense to have a prostitute (ie. a worker) for that person is
only paid for the time that the buyer wishes to pay for and that there is
no other costs. If economic rationality was universal then anytype of
bonded labour would have been only a blip upon world history.
> Protestantism). This is the industrial revolution, and mistakenly
> conceptualized as "capitalism", that is as some unique set of class
> relations/unique mode of production/unique belief system of
> calculating, accumulating only for money's sake/etc. that no one else has.
> Terry Boswells question of whether Bergesen is suggesting "capitalism is
> anideological hoax perpetuated on all of us by Karl Marx" is, if
> misunderstanding replaces hoax, closer to the mark than he thinks.
To argue that capitalism is a hoax or misunderstanding by arguing that
everyone regardless of time or space is motivated by money is both
reductionist as well as functionalist. The idea that money is the sole
motivation or the dominant one for every historical system, especially as
understood in our current system flies in the face of history.
To begin with if every system is a coherent totality unified by a set of
internal logic(s) then you have simply eliminated the idea of systems by
asseting that the logic of every system is the same. Thus WST cannot
exist.
Secondly, the way that our social, economic and political are currently
constituted do have a unique logic has been illustrated by not only WST
theorist but others both those who have been informed by Marx as well as
those who are on the other side of the theoritical side (though 2 sides
do not truly reflect the theoritical options). The current system, which
is world-wide, has its own unique logic and it is capitalistic because
the system is predicated upon the way that the economy is organized (see
above quote of Wallerstein.)
> The Asian response to this B phase does not involve industrial
> innovation/revolution because of the cheapness of labor and the economic
> thing to do is not to work toward machine replacement.
Granted, labour is cheap, however displacement of workers by machinery is
occurring and is predicated by the system's economical rationality of
utility (ironically, you argue that there is this ethic which exists in
Asia, where earlier you argued that no such ethic existed, subsumed under
you idea of "economic rationality" as well as that we are all motivated
by money). Look at China and the increase of unemployment, or in Korea,
Taiwan, etc., workers are being displaced by machines when it is
economically viable. Also, one can look at the illegal garment trade in
North America where it is cheaper to purchase garments by the piece from
illegal immingrants than it is to have a factory. The rules of our
economic system govern the choices that owners make. That is a fact.
One could debate if that is a problem, but that is a separte issue both
in regards to the logic of our system as well as WST (though Wallerstein
argues that WST is politically and a moral protest, pg 309).
> (iv) This changes a lot of thinking: Asia is not getting its first
> chance at hegemony in the world economy. Hegemony is returning to Asia
> from whence it started. And, the "rise of the west" is now reduced to
> its appropriate size, the few hundred year period that it is, and
> understood as part of the larger global dynamics, rather than as something
> that endogenously rose up. That is where Marx and Weber are wrong,
> empirically, and we can add the judgement factor of Eurocentricism in that
> their models did not acknowledge the obvious location of the peninsula in
> the AFroeurasian dynamic but saw the peninsula as following its own
> internal logic.
So the socio-cultural history of Europe was governed by Asia; that it
was both culturally and politically, or just one of them, controlled by
"Asia". And this is empirically true?? This is not only highly
reductionist but smacks of the vulgar determinism which was in vogue in
the 19th century and totally discredited.
It isn't Eurocentric to argue that it arose and was the location of a
system which eventually became world-wide. It is Eurocentric to
evaluate, judge other people located in other systems as inferior
because they are different. Or as you have done (though yours isn't
eurocentric) that other peoples' social organization is the same as
yours, as Radcliff-Brown did when he argue that all family structures,
world-wide, were in reality nuclear families (e.g. that all people were
organized the same way; he did this to legitmate the Colonial Office's
practices in impossing British values upon conquered peoples.) It seems
you have a "eastern hemispherian centrism at work here".
> (v) Finally, this opens up the possibility to go beyond Marx and Weber in
> a profound materialist way. This is not po mo as the answer to
> vulgar economism. This is doing the materialist task correctly and
> updating our conceptual models.
Not! It is simplistic, reductionist and wants to be vulgar. How can you
argue that your's isn't vulgar economism when the only thing that grounds
your perspective is that members of a system are determined if trade
existed between them and that the hegemony is determined by where the
largest GNP exists.
> (vi) That this should generate resistance is understandable; no one likes
> to let go of the models that not only they believed in all these years but
> that their progressive sentiment had been wed to.
Thus anyone who disagrees with you is simply resisting the "truth", how
convient.
> (vii) But it will all be determined on the ground. The record and facts
> of actual Asian economic performance has been, by and large, outside the
> record that has been the basis for constructing social theory. If it
Doesn't "economic performance" have a bit of a vulgar economism.
Granted, we need to take into account what other systems and people,
besides Europeans, have contibuted but lets not through out the baby with
the bath water.
> turns out that no one but the Eurpeans did what Marx and Weber said only
> they did, then the old paradigm will continue. If though, as it
> increasingly appears, they downplayed if not dismissed the bureaucracies,
> cities, work ethic and spirit of acculumation, and industrial productive
> capacity of Asia as it appears they did , then these models cannot
> continue unchallenged. If the record on the ground, if the facts of Asian
That's not the point. There is nothing Eurocentric nor invalid to say
that colonialsim, explotation, etc. occurred and that it came out of
Europe. That IS a fact. One can argue that that was wrong but to put
forward the arguement that we should eliminate the old "paradigm"
because one dosen't like what happened flies in the face of historical
fact. Europeans went world-wide, conquered, stole, destroyed, whole
other peoples/systems and imposed their world view upon them.
> economic life does not turn out to be the record of the "asiatic mode of
> production" in all its sluggishness and tradition ridden lack of
> innovation and productive capacity, then there is no way that either the
I would agree that characterization legitimated, in European eyes, their
conquest (and that characterization is and was Eurocentric.)
> class relations/mode of production of the West, of "capitalism" can be
> considered unique. And if others calcualted, wanted money, and were
> rational than the other side is wrong too, the Weberians. If there is/was
This is not only reductionist but is also Eurocentic in that is imposes
one set of values upon every human being, European ones at that. It also
says that there is only one type of rationality, instrumantal at that,
which underpins every system/society/everyone.
> no difference, in the sense outlined here, then we have no choice but to
> work toward a new understanding, no matter how attached we all are to
> Euro-history and Euro-theory.
The point is that there was and still continues to be differences,
however, the system that orginated in Europe is now one that is accepted
worldwide. It may no longer be the sole "property" of Europeans but that
doesn't mean that our theories are necessarily Eurocentric. The TV show
Millenium (not the new one) though one which tries to find a spritualism
"lost" in our modern age, provides some insight into how other systems
operated.
I would agree that when it comes to evaluation of one system or another
we should not use the current capitalist-world-system as the benchmark,
but that each system needs to be evaluated on its own terms. However,
your argument fails in that you do use the European-based values as the
foundation for your argument by attempting to say that human history has
been governed by the same values/logics.
it may be this unrelexive theorizing that Wallerstein saw and was
commenting upon.