Spiral, Chapters 3 - 4

Continuation of prior posts on the Spiral (Boswell/Chase-Dunn) in response
to a request by a Third World member of wsn for an executive summary of the
book.

Chapter 3  "The Revolutions of 1989"

summary (provided by the authors on p. 14-15):

"The most recent world revolution occurred in 1989. Applying a world-systems
perspective ... compares these events to prior social transformations in the
governance structure of the world economy (Chapter 3). For the first twenty
years, forty in the Soviet Union, state socialism was a successful strategy
for promoting rapid industrial development. ... Yet the socialist states
faltered badly in the late 1960s, finally resulting in an economic crisis so
deep as to make them vulnerable in 1989 to the spread of popular revolution.
... What can we learn from this ...? ... a world-systems view shows that the
communist states never left the system. Communist states never constituted
an alternative 'second world', but rather were always pursuing a specific
political strategy for development within the system."


Chapter 4   "The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism"

summary (provided by the authors on p. 15):

"The next question...: How did the state-socialist strategy compare to other
strategies and what were the consequences of 1989 for other socialist
movements? We offer a world-historical explanation of the relationship
between capitalism and socialism in interaction with one another (Chapter
4). By lifting the unit of analysis from societies to the world-system, we
seek to place the life history of state socialism in a systemic context.
..."

Now comes the famous spiral. (Americans have a way with shortening
everything. Instead of a nice, long, mystical Teutonic expression like
"historical material dialectic", they call it a "spiral". One wsn'er even
called my "multilevel dialectical global totality" a MDGT.)

"We argue that economic development and social progress are neither linear
... nor cyclical ... but rather both. The combination of linear and cyclical
processes produces a spiral. Hegemonic and economic cycles repeat the
opportunity for social change as existing organizational structures break
down. But the conditions of cyclic breakdown and the opportunities they
produce are always different, depending on the current state of the ongoing
development of the system. The future is never predetermined, and it often
gets worse instead of better, but the opportunities for transformation are
greater at each critical turn in the spiral."

More on the "spiral" from p. 132:

"The metaphor of the spiral means this: both capitalism and socialism affect
one another's growth and organizational forms. Capitalist exploitation and
domination spur socialist responses and socialist organizations spur
capitalism to expand market integration, to revolutionize technology, and to
reform politically. Class conflict oscillates along the spiral between open
struggle, managed compromise, and repressive domination. While class
conflict of all types is omnipresent, open struggles proliferate in the
semiperiphery, managed compromise is the hallmark of the core, and
repressive class domination plagues the periphery."

These are the summaries for chapters 3 - 4 in the authors' own words. More
later.

Gert Kohler
Oakville, Canada