Sorry for my late feedback to responces on collapse
of communism by Prof.Chase- Dunn and Prof.Wally.
Dear Chris, I never told that USSR escaped inter-state
system or was fully isolated from capitalist world-economy.
Chinese, Japanese or Spanish Empires were never fully
isolated from world-economy, but for centuries they had
THEIR OWN LOGICS OF FUNCTIONING AND DEVELOPMENT, thus they
were autonomous world-systems (namely world-empires) and only
during XVIII-XX they were involved as PARTS of capitalist w-
economy (not at once but in some asynchronical steps).
Without fixation of such critical points we will lose much
of real historical picture.
Raising of tariffs cannot be sufficient criteria
for identification USSR as an ordinary semipheripheral
zones of world capitalism.
The very logic of political strategy of world-empires is
different from logic of semiperiphery. The last tries to win
in market games, to grasp some production monopoly, to get
maximum of market territory, to
deposite capital for further profitable investments, to enter
into core and to reach hegemony MAINLY by economic means
(surely never excluding political and military means).
On the contrary, world-empire tries to win political-
military game, to grasp monopoly of political power over
maximum of territory, to deposite capital not for further
investments but only in prevailing in future war in order to
grasp all other capital deposites by coercion, not to
enter into the core but to destroy the core absolutely,
MAINLY by military and political means (surely not excluding
some economic competition).
Please correct me if I made mistakes in sketching the main
differences between semipheriphery of world-economy and
autonomous world-empires. Now it seems rather clear
that by each of given criteria USSR behaved as world-empire,
not as a semipheripheral zone.
Dear Prof. Wally. I never argued against world-system
interptretations as a whole or world-wide influence of
Condratieffs. Comparing behavior of world-empires and
semipheropheral zones includes main WS-approach concepts,
surely all w-empires as far as they are economically
connected with world-economy are influenced by phases of
Kondratieffs. I also did not try to reduce all events of
USSR and its collapse ONLY to endogenous factors.
It's also true that the core of world-economy tries to
consider ALL OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD as its periphery
and constructs the economic connections
just in this mode. This fact is reflected in the
cited writings of Wallerstein, Moulder, etc.
At the same time every world-empire consideres ALL OTHER
PARTS OF THE WORLD (including world-economies) as its yet not
conquered provinces or as competitive world-empires.
Any talks about "intense commodifying" in USSR are
ridiculuous. As far as I know commodity is a good produced
for selling in a market, but almost all goods were only
redistributed in Russia for decades. Maybe somebody can tell
that the arms production in Ural organized by Peter the
great, or construction the Great Chinese wall were also
"intense commodifying"?
According to Wallerstein the main economic logic of world-
empire is extracting and redistributing tribute. Namely this
tribute grasped by elite of world-empire then goes to world-
markets and only their becomes a real commodity. What
Russian
commodities in Europe do you remember in Europe in XVIII-XX?
Wood, furs, oil, coal, gas - it all was tribute but in no way
real capitalist commodity production. It is a typical export
of periphery and it is very typical for all world-empires to
grab it own population for changing these peripheral export
goods for prestige goods for the elite of empire (say,
mandarins, dvoriane or nomenclatura).
Is there now intense commodifying in China and
South-Eastern Asia? Surely! And all of you can feel it in any
American and European store.
I will not give much for
any "20 (or even 200!) years of theoretical and empirical
work" if it does not allow us to make clear conceptual
differentiation between world-empires and semipheripheral
zones, between Stalin's industrialization and recent Chinese
raise of export commodity production.
My very best wishes to Baltomore and Santa Cruz.
Maybe anybody else also makes some contribution?
Nikolai S. Rozov
Professor of Philosophy
PhD., Dr.Sc.
Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI
(PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history)
Dept. of Philosophy Tel.: (3832) 397488
Novosibirsk State University Fax.: (3832) 355237
630090, Novosibirsk E-mail: rozov@nw.cnit.nsk.su
Pirogova 2 rozov@adm.nsu.nsk.su