Re: Still "The Rise of China and WST"

Regardless of how many neoliberal policies China has adopted, its leaders have 
reserved the right to persecute voices they disagree with, trample on the 
rights of foreign capital (most capital invested in China is from the Chinese 
diaspora--the NYTimes business page regularly warns Americans of the risk of 
investing there, and of course, despite the obvious precedent of identical 
policy in the 19th century, complaints continue about violations of 
'intellectual property rights') and have not adopted an elections system that 
would clearly strengthen the hand of those highly integrated into multinational 
capital (perhaps also strengthening the hand of feminists, greens, independent 
unions, etc).  In this sense, it remains very much on its own terms--quite 
unlike the governments of latin America and Eastern Europe (the European Union 
also remains somewhat out of the consensus, although it allows much more room 
for multinational neoliberalism to make its case).

Socio-economic performance is a complicated thing--does a particular society 
offer a scheme that can be plausibly imitated by other countries/classes seems 
at least as relevant as whether it is leading in terms of per capita income.  
And size matters--China is presently the third largest economy in the world, 
and may move up in this ranking.

Being poor in Mississippi or some Indian reservations isn't all that unlike 
poverty in peripheral countries (perhaps more like poverty in Semi-peripheral 
countries).  Small towns and cities outside of the major growth poles are what 
I would consider the 'semi-periphery' of the US.


Some of the terms regularly used on this list--'the modern world system', as if 
it had a clear beginning, middle and end (something Wallerstein absolutely 
insists on, but which I've never found entirely convincing), 'capitalism' , may 
obscure more than they reveal about both the present and the period we are 
moving into.

Not believing in free will is not the same as believing in natural laws or 
predictability.  One may believe that everything is the product of what came 
before, but that causes interact in such a complex manner that it is 
unimaginable that one could actually predict them with any confidence.   

Steven Sherman