World Systems, Ideology, and Analysis ..

 Richard Hutchinson wrote:  (my comments follow each of his points)

 

<If you're studying world system transformations over thousands of years, obviously

morality and praxis have no immediate relevance.>

 

The Classical Greek and Roman historians would have agreed with you on your point

about morality/praxis having immediate relevance in the shorter term of history. Notice,

however, it goes back to Classical times . . . centuries before Marx and it’s traced to others

besides those in the Marxian tradition.  The Greco-Roman historians would also argue that

analytical history in the longer term – universal history as opposed to original history – is

a misplaced idea. You can’t have “history” except in the shorter term ... and that history must

be normative.

 

What then for larger-scale histories in the analytical sense?... If you’re granting

that normative concerns govern history in the shorter term, how can you posit a true

history in the larger sense and possibly say its analytical and/or historico-theoretical? ...

 

<But if you're responding to global events happening in real time, then A) it's too soon to

come to any definitive understanding of how it fits into the larger scheme of things, and B)

you might actually affect the outcome.  So given that, if you think you're NOT engaging in praxis,

you're mistaken -- "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.">

 

Yes, but please let us define “real time” here.  If it means just this instant, then anything

immediately preceding it isn’t really “real time” and doesn’t really exist. If real time means

anything up to a few days ago (or better yet) anything up to within the living experience of

either the historian involved and his/her contemporaries (historians and non-historians alike)

then “real time” as a means of judging whether history should be analytical or normative is

rendered meaningless still.  By virtue of what we know from Chaos Theory ALL minor changes

in human experience (via the historian or the drunk down the street)(and in the natural world)

affect the outcome of events. The historian in his/her work can’t help but influence the outcome

of events in the world around her/him. The individual – no matter who he or she is – can’t help

but affect the outcome of events in the world around him- or her- self.

 

The historian cannot help but engage in praxis, even in the midst of a more largely framed analytical study.  The same thing goes vice versa.  The historian even as he/she might try in the shorter term to avoid the larger issues and deal soley with the normative dimension cannot help but to at least touch on these larger issues and engage up to a point in larger scale “analysis.”

 

<My main interest in understanding how the world works is to better be able to change it (Marx's 11th

thesis on Fuerbach). I have developed a taste for theory in the abstract through my graduate school

training, but that is ultimately secondary.>

 

We all want to change the world for the better ... but notice here something interesting.  Notice the practical

issues at hand, the empirical matters, and the concrete historical content doesn’t really change as one moves from so-called “real time” into larger scale histories. The edifice of content remains largely the same. Thus, to some degree, a level of broader “analysis” on the level of world-(systems and subsystems) should still be possible. A purely normative, ideological study isn’t the only way to deal with recent events.    

 

<Perhaps you are unaware that the entire dependency/world system school of theory was a neo-marxist,

not neo-weberian, response to imperialism in Latin America, Vietnam, and elsewhere (never mind the earlier phase of Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin, Bukharin, Luxembourg, etc) and was formulated to assist the praxis of liberation movements?  If you've embraced WST as a form of positivism via U.S. sociology, in other words, you are probably in a minority on this list.>

 

I am well aware of the Neo-Marxian roots of dependency theory and world systems analysis. I also understand its roots are not in neo-weberian thought, but in Marxist thought. This distinction poses a problem though. It pushes all Marxian thought necessarily into a normative, ideological paradigm.  It a nice, neat analytical package to be sure – “is” (Weber)/”ought” (Marx) and so on. But, I’m not so sure it’s entirely correct.  The problem is that there’s both what can be called an “is” element to Marx’s thought and the “ought” element as well.  I even expect that were we to more closely scrutinize every modern and early modern thinker (from Descartes, to Voltaire, to Hegel, to Marx, to Nietzche and so on)(and beyond to the entire spectrum of philosophers in world history)  we would find elements of both “is” and “ought” in their work.  Weber may have supplied the designation but thinkers well before him understood the concept and theorized, even in a more concrete practical way, about it in their work.  

 

It’s another question of chicken & the egg ...which came first? ... Marxian theory or Marxian praxis ...It sounds as if you’re saying praxis came first and that it also logically precedes Marxian “analysis.” If that be the case, why – after the manner of Lenin and Chairman Mao in the 20th century – didn’t Marx and his cohort immediately organize activist, revolutionary parties all throughout Europe and proceed in haste in revolutionary struggle against the capitalists and the old order monarchies and landed establishments? I think the answer is ‘that’s not (entirely) what they were about.’ [It may have been what the Russian

Narodniks were about, but we aren’t talking about them or their tradition in this instance; we’re talking about Marx and his tradition – not Lenin, not the Russian populists, but Marx.] This is not to say they were entirely theoretical or analytical in their work; they were most certainly ideological and most certainly political and normative as well.  From what I understand, there was this ‘blend’ in their work

from the very beginning. But that blend, frankly, does not presuppose the predominance of a Marxian, activist tradition.  It certainly holds ideological and activist implications; but those logically follow from a Marxian analytical-theoretical tradition and not the other way around.   [The crisis of capitalism and the “revolution” by the proletariat were supposed to be organic developments; not jumpstarted elements in the tradition of Lenin, Mao, and the Narodniks in Russia] [If I’m wrong then please tell me, but from what I can tell a fine balance of theory and practice, normative ideology and activism, was already in place in Marx’s work right from the very beginning ...]

 

This leads me to my next point.  The work of the “analyst” and the work of the normative activist

trying to change the world (to make it a better) is contemporaneous in the true scholarship of the historian and social scientist. Whether we’re speaking about recent events or history thousands of years ago up until the end of the Middle Ages, the fact remains à The historian is both “analyst” and normative

thinker/activist; both a charter of large-scale patterns in great expanses of historical time and also of what occurs in periods in a person’s more immediate memory.  That two-edged function of the historian in his/her work applies both to the “here-and-now” and to the world 5,000 years ago ... and I'd even go further by saying that this is the case in both an “analytical” sense and even in a normative sense. [Radical statement, I agree; if you want I’ll go into more in an upcoming post.]

 

To sum up:  "analysis" is just as legitmate to the study of world systems as praxis is.  They're two ends of a coin - one no better than the other.  But tell me, what's best about the normative dimension, i.e., the praxis of world systems theory?  If it's to make the world a better place and to change the world, then specifically, change the world to what? ...  I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Luke R.

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