Re: Podobnik, future conflicts and all

Arno,
Your projected contrast with the conflicts of the WW2 
phase unfortunately neglects the historical lesson of 
those conflicts for theorisation, ie. The economic 
determination of conflict which you advocate for studies of 
the present phase simply did not determine the conflicts of 
WW2. Rather, political factors proved determinant, 
suggesting your projections of the lines of conflict for the
present phase rests upon a highly dubious assumption of 
economic determination of conflict. 
There is also a problem in exactly how we define widespread 
conflict. Your post follows most conventional analysis by
assuming that world-systems conflict is indicated by 
conflict which affect major powers. However, such a 
perspective is surely relative? From a global 
perspective, we may already be in the midst of a period of 
violent convulsions in the world system, a convulsion which 
is taking other forms than those of conventional political 
economy can recognise. The present phase is marked by 
conflict along the lines of division between statist 
('legitimate') and non-statist ('non-legitimate') economic 
forms, networks and activities. This conflict reaches into 
the heart of the core state economies, but we do not 
recognise it as conflict in the usual sense because it does 
not take the form of 'legitimate' warfare between states 
(as an indicator of the current level of this conflict, we 
could take the level of the prison population of the USA, 
or the intensity and quantity of internal armed conflict 
in parts of the world where the state is less strong).
i don't think that political economy is redundant, but we 
do need to rework it in order to gain critical theoretical 
purchase on the present phase, and that requires us to give 
greater recognition to the political aspect of the term. 
The method you are using here seems to look only at 
economic exchange in terms of formal economies, as exchange 
between formal state entities.
Mick Drake

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:18:36 +0100 "Tausch, Arno" 
<Arno.Tausch@bmags.gv.at> wrote:
> Very interesting. Although I absolutely share the concern of most of you
> about continental Europe, the recent turbulences in Germanys  right wing,
> and the developments in other countries, whose developments I criticize as
> much as most of you do (you will understand what I mean and feel, ok), 
>there
> is serious reason to fear that conflicts in the world system will erupt
> along the present unequal exchange axis and not along the old WWII
> constellation. Since Gernot Kohler and I are involved in writing a joint
> book on the political economy of global exploitation, I began to look 
>again
> and again at those revealing tables in the World Tables of Unequal 
>Exchange
> Paper written by Gernot. Did you all notice, that China according to 
>Gernot
> is THE VICTIM of unequal exchange (350 billion $)? That does not say
> anything excusing on their terrible human rights record. But China,
> Indonesia and Mexico head the list of the victims of unequal exchange, 
>while
> Japan, the USA, Germany and France are the top dogs. These massive 
>phenomena
> will create, my hypothesis goes, terrible conflicts, all the more so since
> China by any standards is not a democracy in the western sense, it has a
> military force, prepared to go to combat, a massive navy build-up (always 
>a
> sign of global power projections) and we quantittative scholars should 
>start
> to look at Gernot's magnificent tables also from a conflict research
> perspective. How much, for example, do changes along Gernots Tables 
>explain
> changes in conflict intensity, both nationally and internationally?
> Generations of good Ph.D. work could be written on such models, and it is 
>up
> to you, colleagues around the world, to start such research and publish it
> in Journals like Journal of Peace Research and Journal of Conflict
> Resolution and to run your world events and interaction surveys, your 
>world
> handbooks of political and social indicators, your high-speed computers, 
>SAS
> software etc at full speed to create quickly scholary knowledge on these
> explosive issues, knowledge that serves also to act in favour of global
> peace and global Keynesianism. Certainly, such Ph.D. work at major
> Universities in North America would be more relevant than much of the 
>stuff,
> printed in many of our journals today. The primitive but pervasive
> hypothesis is that unequal exchange leads to instability, conflict and 
>war. 
> 
> Kind regards Arno Tausch
>