Re: the Frank challenge

At 12:40 PM +0800 30/1/00, g kohler wrote:
>with reference to the posting of 25 Jan 2000 by Professor Frank, entitled
>"Gunder Frank's Response to Gang of 3 Reviews of ReOrient"
>
>the last paragraph, entitled "The Bottom Line" contains the
>statement: "None
>of the three is willing to contemplate or even examine the evidence
>that the
>theoretical concept -- indeed terminology -- of "capitalism" may be an
>ideological construct that is out of synch with world historical
>reality."
>
>This kind of iconoclasm appeals to my taste buds and I have two questions
>arising:
>(1) does this mean that the category of "capitalism" has the
>epistemological
>status of an "ideal type" a la Weber?


one can take the view that it's all ideology. but from the context,
i.e. "capitalism" is an "ideological construct", it would appear that
what's being contrasted is not ideology x against ideology y, but
ideology against something which might be called science, or
knowledge.

thus, from the "bottom line", wouldn't it mean that there's nothing
that provides any specific content to the term "capitalism" to
differentiate it from "non-capitalism"; that the term is deployed
purely for ideological reasons, with no real content, just to
castigate something that one doesn't like?

if so, it makes no sense to talk of the epistemological status of an
illusion, an ideological construct: it has none, except as "false
consciousness", and it's only standing would be as a term created by
a bunch of eurocentrics to dull us all into thinking that europe did
all those things "their way".

wrt Weber, then, wouldn't it be something along the lines that
"capitalism" you will always have with you, just like the poor?


>(2) if the category of "capitalism" is out of synch with reality, as
>Frank
>says, how can the left define (positively) what it is for and
>(negatively)
>what it is against? If Frank is right, then it would seem that "the left"
>would have a major task at its hands with respect to redefining itself --
>not only "reorient" the world-system, but also "reorient" itself
>(the left),
>given the fact that "capitalism" is traditionally a major component
>of the
>self-definition of the left (in an antithetical way).

if so, then there's no real left. only a bunch of eurocentric aging
people out of synch with reality.

capitalism was, is and ever will be. it has ever and always been only
capitalism. indeed, isn't it the argument that this ever and always
capitalism benefitted that which was formerly alleged to be
satellites, dependencies, and is doing so again? the rest is just
illusory eurocentric garbage?

or have i completely misunderstood, and need to re-orient, which
would end up looking west ;)


kj khoo