Dear Nikolai Rozov:
The central problem with a serious theoretical discussion of where the
capitalist world economy is going/transforming into, is that mostly people
have noted national changes as indicative of world transformations. The
pre-1989 example was that the WS was heading/changing/whatever toward
socialism, and the Soviet Union was used as an example. Now forget the
debate over whether the USSR was real socialism, the key issue is that if
one takes WS theory seriously, and assumes that capitalism is a
world-economy, then any sign of transition to any other world economic
system would have to show up in changes in the central structural
relations of world capitalism, which, in conventional WS theory, is the
core-periphery relation. But, in none of the "where is world capitalism
going" discussions is their a discussion of the transformtion of this
relation, and that is the central shortcomming of WS projections about the
future.
To put it bluntly: if one takes the global perspective seriously, then
one must identify global structural relations (the equivalent of class
relations within societies) that are
changing/intensifying/transforming/etc. if one wants to make a serious WS
prediction about the purported change in capitalism as a world system.
Talking about what happens/has happened in this or that country, is a
statement about relations within countries, not about global relations,
and, further, if one believes that it is the distinctly global,
wholeistic, nature of the world economy that is the key to understanding
its dynamic, then one must identify changes/trends/etc. at that level if
one is to make any sort of serious WS predictions about the changes in the
world economy. At present that is never/rarely done. I have not
seen/read the new Zed book IW has coming out. My guess, based on the
past, is that shifts/changes/etc. in the core-periphery relation will NOT
be at the heart of the predictions about the future of the world and that
this will remain a central shortcoming to that analysis as a distinctly
globalist understanding of the distinctly globalist character of the world
economy/system. Further, until we begin to identify such global
structural changes we will not be really talking about changes in the real
WORLD economy.
Yours,
al b.
Albert Bergesen
Department of Sociology
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
Phone: 520-621-3303
Fax: 520-621-9875
email: albert@u.arizona.edu