FAIR WARNING:
I=AGF asked Terry and a couple other friends WHETHER I should pepare an
answer to Terry to post to WSN. He and they said YES. So I did - below.
In the meantime Terry and Al "jumped the gun" on me and started to
discuss, not Terry's, but MY position, which I had not even set out and
posted yet. So here it is, "in short", that is alas about TEN PAGES.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 16:26:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: FRANK@husc3.harvard.edu
To: agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca
Subject: GUNDER FRANK answers TERRY BOSWELL's challenge
INTRODUCTION TO NONE OF THE ABOVE and to
A HOLISTIC THEORETICAL ALTERNATIVE WST
I rise to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by PEWS President Terry
Boswell has. At the 1996 ASAs, Immanuel Wallerstein said "we have
NO World-Systems Theory." Now Terry answers that YES WE DO have
such a theory, and it has been GLOBALLY empirically confirmed.
Terry invites discussion, and I respond by saying NONE OF THE
ABOVE. To Immanuel I say NO, we YES have a [your!] theoretical
banana! To Terry I also say NO, this "World" systemic banana is
neither over- nor under-ripe theoretically; and it is certainly NOT
empirically "well confirmed" on a global level. Indeed, this
"World" system theory has NOT been GLOBAL at all, neither in
analytical theory, nor in empirical practice. For purposes of the
analysis of the GLOBAL REAL WORLD SYSTEM, this "world-systems
theory" [WST] is no more than than a pretty ROTTEN banana instead.
Terry's alleged WST "confirmation" is derived from examining a
EUROCENTRIC "world system" under the recent EUROPEAN historical
streetlight. As soon as we use any REAL WORLD system illumination,
that is really global and therefore primarily Asian, it becomes
immediately clear that the Braudelian "European World-Economy" and
the Wallersteinian "Modern World-System" are not only empirically
blind to most real world GLOBAL reality, but theoretically blindED
to the same by their own Eurocentrism. Indeed Braudel and
Wallerstein both explicitly recognize, but Terry Boswell apparently
does not, that their "world-economy/system" [with a hypen] is only
"world-LIKE" and is NOT INTENDED to and does NOT refer to the
real[ly] global WHOLE WORLD. Therefore, we are still in dire need
of a really GLOBAL THEORY of the REAL WORLD ECONOMY and SYSTEM
[without a hyphen]. Why?
Because the whole [world] is more than the sum of its parts AND
SHAPES its constituent parts. Therefore, no amount of study and/or
assemblage of the PARTS [including the European PART world-
economy/system] can ever lay bare the structure, functioning and
transformation of the GLOBAL WHOLE world economy/system. So the
real issue is not really whether Marx or Weber or anybody else,
including Braudel and still Wallerstein today, are right or wrong
about this or that part of the of the world system. The real
theoretical issue is that none of them have so far even sought
holistically to address the systemic global whole, and the real
theoretical challenge is to do so -- as Al Bergesen already pointed
out in his demand that we replace WST by GLOB-OLOGY.
WST A LA WALLERSTEIN IS ONLY EUROPEAN BASED AND THEREFORE
INSUFFICIENTLY GLOBAL AND NOT HOLISTIC
[excerpted from the Introduction and Conclusion of GLOBAL
DEVELOPMENT 1400-1800 by Andre Gunder Frank]
It was Immanuel Wallerstein's (1974) The Modern World-System [and
if I may say so also my own simultaneously written World
Accumulation and the companion Dependent Accumulation (Frank
1978a,b)] that sought to systematize these consequences of European
expansion and "capitalist" development for both Europe and the rest
of the world. Both books emphasized the negative "underdeveloping"
impact of European expansion in many other parts of the world and
their contribution in turn to capital accumulation and development
in Europe and then also in North America. Wallerstein focused more
on the core-periphery structure of the system, which of course I
also recognized under the terms center-satellite; and I focused
more than he on the structurally related cyclical dynamic in the
system.
Both of us, Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989) and Frank (1978 a,b),
however limited our modelling and theoretical analysis to the
structure and process in the modern "world" economy/system. We saw
and Wallerstein still sees this system as centered in Europe and
expanding from there to incorporate more and more of the rest of
the world in its own European based "world" economy. That is the
limitation of this Wallersteinian/Frankian theory: It cannot
adequately encompass the whole world economy/system, as long as it
remains still Eurocentrically confined to only a part, and not even
the major part, of the whole world economy. It may be of some
empirical/historical use to show how "our" system incorporated the
Americas and parts of Africa into itself "early" on in the
sixteenth century already, and other parts of the world only after
1750.
Eric Wolf (1982) is rightly critical of others' neglect of the
impact of Europe [on] the People Without History. He shows that
people outside Europe did have histories of their own and how the
expansion of Europe impacted on them. However, he still
underestimates their mutual impact on each other; and he does not
ask how the one world in which all participate together impacts on
each of them. Moreover he retains, indeed even resurrects, the
primacy of "modes of production," from kinship, to tributary, to
capitalist based ones. That, I contend, still diverts attention
from where it is most needed on the whole world system as a whole,
as analyzed in Chapters 3 and 6.
Wallerstein (1974) did even more to incorporate the mutual
relations of the European core and its periphery elsewhere in the
world, in that he addresses the structure and transformation of a
single political economic division of labor and its impact on core
and periphery alike. However until 1750, most of the world still
remains outside of his "modern world-system" and the Braudelian/
Wallersteinian "European world-economy" on which it rests. In his
perspective, Europe's expansion did incorporate parts of Africa,
the Caribbean and the Americas into the world-economy/ system.
However as Wallerstein explicitly explains, this economy was only
world-like, and not at all world-encompassing. For in his view,
West-, South-, and East- Asia, and indeed Russia, were only
incorporated into this European world-economy/ system after 1750.
So Wallerstein's "world-system" perspective, theory and analysis
not only does not encompass most of the world before that. He even
claims explicitly that most of the world, including all of Eurasia
east of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe played no significant
part in his "world-economic/system" history.
Therefore of course, Wallerstein's very limited history and theory
of the modern "world" economy and system also precludes itself from
coming to grips with the real world economic system. Most of that
remained outside his purview until 1750, even though what happened
there was highly determinant of developments inside the Braudel/
Wallerstein "European world- economy/system," as this book seeks to
demonstrate especially in Chapters 3,4, and 6. To have or get even
the remotest chance of studying and understanding the genesis,
structure and function, not to mention transformation and
development, in this real world economy and system [including its
European "world-economy" PART], we need an altogether more holistic
theory and analysis, such as that presented in chapter 6.
Wallerstein (1974,1980, 1989), Frank (1978), Braudel (1979, 1992),
Wolf (1982), Blaut (1993)[The Colonizer's Model of the World],
Arrighi (1994) [The Long Twentieth Century], Sanderson (1995)
[Social Transformation], Modelski and Thompson (1996) [Leading
Sectors and World Powers], and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) [Rise and
Demise] have indeed offered a less Eurocentric and more helpful
"perspective of the world," as we have observed above. But for all
of the the early modern world remained Eurocentric. In this
tradition, only Abu-Lughod (1989)[Before European Hegemony] saw a
wider "thirteenth century world system," but she did not look
beyond 1350 and also supposes that the "modern world-system began
[again] in Europe. It did NOT.
Therefore, this European based model of a "world" system is
theoretically not only insufficient but downright contrary to the
whole real world economic/ systemic theory that we really need.
Alas, that does not yet exist, and one of the reasons it does not
is precisely because we have all, Marx, Weber, Polanyi, and still
Braudel, Wallerstein and Frank looked under the European
streetlight. However worldly we sought to be, our own still latent
if not manifest Eurocentrism made us think that that is where we
ought to look for evidence and construct our theory. Many other
students, pity for them, may not have thought about it at all and
only look there because thanks to the former and others the
[European and North American] theoretical and empirical light
shines brighter there.
Yet Wallerstein (1995) still writes "Hold the Tiller Firm!" against
the "nomothetic," "idiographic," and "reifying" "temptations" to
amend erase this "modern world-economy/system" theory and its
sacrosanct premise of its birth in Europe and the resulting "break"
in world history around 1500. Alas, according to Wolf (1982) that
happened in 1800, according to Marx and so many others sometime
between 1600 and 1800, and according to Braudel (1992) all the time
between 1100 and 1600. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) also insist that
the rise of Europe and the West must be understood as part and
parcel of more than two thousand years of Eurasian development.
Nonetheless, they too still regard the modern period as a new
departure since 1500 into capitalism, which was initiated in and by
Europe. All of their holding the WST tiller firm in THIS regard has
has therefore itself turned into yet still another obstacle and
resistance to be overcome!
Witness that all of my above-named colleagues and friends in the
social "sciences" shy away from looking at the whole, even when
they avow holism, which some but by no means even all of them do.
The most avowedly holistic [and friendly!] ones, like Amin,
Arrighi, and Wallerstein [with whom I have co-authored two books],
also start to assemble their own jig-saw puzzles at the center and
work outwards. Only they still chose their "center" in Europe. At
least these three colleagues themselves wish to reject Eurocentrism
but they say we have to start in Europe because that is where
"capitalism" started. However if we see that the world is round
and start at any of its outer edges, Europe turns out to be the
wrong place to place any, let alone the, center; and the
significance of the beginnings of "capitalism" there or anywhere
appear increasingly dubious, to say the least.
Since these social scientists and some historians start in the
wrong place and only look under the European streetlight and its
ever dimmer illumination, they also only work from Europe outwards
following its "expansion" as it "incorporates" the rest of the
world. Alas the farther they depart from their European lamppost,
the less they can see. According to Wallerstein and many others,
Asia was only "incorporated" into the European "world-economy/
system" and illuminated [Wallerstein himself might say "jaded" or
"distorted"] by it after 1750. The Asian and world economic
evidence, when examined under a non - or at least less -
Eurocentric light will reveal a wholly different picture: Chapter
4 will demonstrate that Asia already shone in the world economic
whole long before 1750 and even then still continued to outshine
Europe in the whole world economy. In fact within this whole world,
Asia provided far more economic, not to mention cultural,
illumination to Europe, than this then still marginal outpost [not
world lamppost!] had brought to any part of Asia.
SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR & EVIDENCE AGAINST RECEIVED WST
1. A European World-System or a Global Economy?
One derivative conclusion is that early modern history was shaped
by a long-since operational world economy and not just by the
expansion of a European world-system, as Braudel and Wallerstein
mistakenly allege. This conclusion is not only derivative both from
conclusions 1 and 2 above and from the evidence in all of the
previous chapters. By citing them chapter and verse, I already
demonstrated elsewhere how the model and theory of Braudel and
Wallerstein is already contradicted by the limited evidence and
analysis supplied by these authors themselves (Frank 1994, 1995).
Much more overwhelming still is the historical evidence reviewed
above: Chapter 2 showed how the world-wide division of labor was
operationalized through chain-linked trade relations and
[im]balances. Chapter 3 showed how money was the life-blood that
went through a circulatory system all the way around the world and
made the world go round. Chapter 4 showed not only that Asia was
preponderant in this global economy, but argued that its technology
and economic institutions and processes were derivative from and
adaptive to the world economy itself. Chapter 5 showed how common
cyclical and other processes simultaneously shaped the fortunes and
misfortunes of distant but interlinked economies, regions, and
polities around the world. Chapter 6 sought to analyze how the
structure and transformation of these links themselves generated
the in turn related Decline of the East and the Rise of the West.
Therefore its is only vain Eurocentrism to seek to account for or
hope to explain any of these events, processes, and their relations
within the framework of either "national" economies/societies or
even by the expansion of only a "European world-system."
For there is no way to see what happens at a distance anywhere
else in -- let alone in all -- the world by using a European or
Chinese or any other microscopic perspective. On the contrary, any
of these views are only possible with a telescopic perspective
capable of encompassing the whole world and all its parts, even if
the details of the latter may remain unclear from afar. Not only
are all perspectives in terms of European or any other
"exceptionalism" doomed to blindness. So are those using the
perspective of a European-based world-economy/system [or any Sino-,
Islamic-, or Afro-centric analogues thereof]. The very attempt to
find the "development of capitalism" or the "rise of the west" "or
the Islamic golden age" under the light shed by a European [or
Chinese or Muslim] light post is also doomed to blind failure.
However, the real world economy/system also cannot quite be
squeezed into the procrustean structure of Wallerstein's European
centered "modern world-system." For the globe encompassing world
economy/system did not have a single "center," but at most a
hierarchy of "centers" probably with China at the top. Therefore,
it would also be difficult to establish the existence of a single
centered structure of center-periphery relations; although there is
evidence of such relations on intra-regional, and perhaps on some
inter-regional bases. It is doubtful that there were "semi-
peripheries" in Wallerstein's sense; but it has never been very
clear just what that they are supposed to be. Analogously as we
will note below, there was no clear hegemony and not much
leadership in the early modern world economy/system as a whole.
Yet the possible counter-charge that therefore there really was no
such [whole] world economy/system is not acceptable. On the
contrary, there clearly was a, indeed only one, world
economy/system. It had a global division of labor and commercial
and financial linkages, and especially through the world-wide money
market. Moreover, this world economy/system appears also to have
had a global structure and dynamic of its own, which still bears
much more study.
2. Hegemony and Incorporation?
The notion of European and then Western "hegemony" over the rest of
the world is implicit in most historical, social "scientific," and
popular/izing writing and perception. Political hegemony is
explicit in much recent international relations literature from
Krasner (1983) and Keohene (1983) to Modelski and Thompson (1988,
1996). [Political] economic hegemony is explicit in Wallerstein and
his followers. I have expressed doubts about the dubious
theoretical status of such "hegemony" before (Frank and Gills
1992,1993; Frank 1994,1995). The evidence presented in chapters 2,
3, and 4 above is enough to lay to rest any claim to historical
veracity of any such political, economic or political economic, or
indeed cultural, "hegemony" of [whole] world scope by any part or
even the whole of Europe before 1800. A no time during the four
centuries in review was any "economy" or state able to exercise any
significant degree of hegemony, or even leadership, over the
economy, political relations, culture, or history of the world as
whole. If the world economy had any regional productive and
commercial basis at all, that was in Asia and it was "centered" if
at all in China. Europe was to all intents and purposes entirely
marginal.
Still less was any part of Europe able to exercise any hegemonic
power or even economic leadership in or over the world. This was
certainly not possible for the Iberian Peninsula or little Portugal
with one million inhabitants in the sixteenth century, or for the
small Netherlands in the seventeenth century, nor even for "Great"
Britain in the eighteenth century. The very notion of such economic
leadership or political power or even balance of power [eg. after
the Peace of Westphalia in 1648] is itself only the effect of an
optical illusion from the myopic perspective of a "European world-
economy/system." It is just plain Eurocentrism. Arguably, the
above-mentioned economies and/or states may have been successively
relatively big fish in the small European and/or the regional
Atlantic economic pond, if we discount the Hapsburg, Russian and
other empires. However on the evidence above, the European and even
Atlantic economies, not to mention polities, themselves were no
more than backwaters in the world economy. They did not even
exercise significant technological leadership. The European states
were altogether small time players on the political checkerboard of
the empires of the Ming/Qing, Mughals, Ottomans, and even the
Safavids. In the face of the evidence, should we not review and
revise the entire concept of "hegemony"?
Similarly alarming is the question that Pearson [and also Palat and
Wallerstein (1990)] ask about when the "European world-economy"
"incorporated" India/the Indian Ocean and its possible separate
"world-economy." This whole question is analogous to the one about
"have you stopped beating your wife?". The answer is "I am not
married." The whole question is literally neither here nor there,
since there was no "European world-economy" separate from an
"Indian Ocean world-economy." If anything, the latter
"incorporated" the former and not the other way around (Frank
1995). Pearson and others are looking under the European street
light, when they should be inquiring under the Asian parts of the
world economic illumination. The only "answer" is to understand
that the European and Asian, as well as of course other parts of
the world as well, were part and parcel of the single same world
economy since ages ago, and that it was their common participation
in the same that shaped their "separate" fortunes.
3. 1500: Continuity or Break?
Another and derivative but inescapable conclusion is that the
alleged break before and after 1500 never took place. Historians
often mark a break in "world" history in 1500 (eg. Stavarianos
1966, Reilly 1989). Even Bentley's (1996) innovative proposals
for The American Historical Review to derive "Periodization in
World History" not only from European but from world-wide processes
still marks the beginning of the last period in 1500. Historians
and social theorists of Europe, both of earlier generations and
still contemporary ones mark this same break all the moreso. So do
world-system theorists like Wallerstein (1974), and still Sanderson
(1994), and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1996). The allegation that there
was a sharp break around 1500 was already reflected in the above-
cited opinions of Smith and Marx that 1492 and 1498 were the most
important years in the history of mankind. Perhaps they were
directly so for the peoples of the "New World" and indirectly so
for those of Europe. However, Braudel (1992:57) disputed
Wallertstein's allegation of this break in Europe, where Braudel
saw continuity since at least 1300 and even 1100. In doing so of
course, Braudel also rattled at the theoretical cages of Marx and
Weber, et al.
Indeed, Wallerstein (1992) refers to the widespread agreement that
an expansive "A" phase from 1050 to 1250 was followed by a
contractive "B" phase from 1250 to 1450 and then after that still
another expansive "A" phase in the "long sixteenth century" until
1640. The evidence above, however, suggests that this expansive
phase already began in much of Asia in 1400 -- and that it lasted
there until at least 1750. Wallerstein's "long sixteenth century"
probably was a belated and more temporary expression of this world
economic expansion itself. Indeed, the very voyages of Columbus and
Vasco da Gama themselves should probably be regarded as expressions
of this world economic expansion, to which Europeans wanted to
attach themselves in Asia. Therefore, the continuity across 1500
was actually far more important and is theoretically far more
significant than any alleged break or new departure.
Thus I suggest that it is not appropriate or even necessary, as the
so common argument has it, to regard early modern and still
contemporary history as the result and/or as the harbinger of a
significant historical break. The widespread dis-continuity theses
are far less a contribution, let alone a necessity, and far more
and impediment to understanding the real world historical process
and contemporary reality. These mis-leading discontinuity theses
have been presented in various forms, including the "birth of
capitalism," the "rise of the West," "the incorporation of Asia
into the European world-economy," not to mention the West's alleged
"rationalism" and "civilizing mission."
4. The Rise of the West
However, even the above more holistic than usual review of that
1400-1800 period serves to show that we can account for and
understand the subsequent "Rise of the West" only within the world
economic/ systemic scope within which it really took place.
Moreover, this world systemic process included the "Fall of the
East" as a conditioning factor, if not as the pre-condition, for
the "Rise of the West," which displaced the East within the same
one and only world economy/system.
For the comparative and relational real world historical evidence
examined above shows that, contrary to received historiography and
social theory, it was not the alleged prior European "development"
that poised it for "take off" after 1800. That is, the rise of the
West after 1800 was not really the result of alleged European
"continuous" preparation for and of the same since the Renaissance,
let alone thanks to any Greek or Judaic roots thereof. Instead, the
industrial revolution was an unforseen event, which took place in
a part of Europe as a result of the continuing unequal structure
and uneven process in and of the GLOBAL world economy as a whole.
That process of world development, however, also includes new
departures in some of its regions and sectors that may appear
discontinuous. It may indeed be the case that the industrial
"revolution," like the agricultural one before it, was an
inflection in a continuous global development, which marks a
"departure" in a vector and direction that is different from the
previous one and perhaps irreversible -- short of total cataclysm,
which may itself lie at the end of that vector. Thus, the systemic
global structure and continuity that generated the "rise" of the
West marked a departure around 1800 [and NOT in 1500!], which
allowed the West to emerge from its earlier MARGINAL position. This
GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION led to a discontinuous shift in the place of
the West in the system as a whole and moved the global economy into
a more industrial departure and direction.
The "Rise of the West" in Europe, therefore was not a case of
pulling itself up by its own bootstraps, not even by relying on its
American and African peripheries. More properly, the "Rise of the
West" must be seen as occurring at that time in the world
economy/system by engaging in NIE import substitution and export
promotion strategies to climb up on the shoulders of the Asian
economies. The [cyclical?] decline of Asian economies and regional
hegemonies, facilitated this European climb up.
East Asia's rise to world economic prominence makes it all the more
urgent to focus much more on the long historical continuity of
which this process is a part. The now supposed dis-continuous but
really renewed rise of the "East" must also bee seen as part and
parcel of the fundamental structure and continuity in world
development. Recognizing and analyzing this continuity will reveal
much more than myopically focusing on the alleged "dis-
continuities."
Thus it seems to be this gospel about the European development of
the modern world capitalist economy and system since 1500 or
whenever that forms the Maginot line of defense behind which one
and all put of their greatest resistance to seeing the real world.
This book proposes an end run around that line of defense. The only
solution is to cut the Eurocentric gordian knot and approach the
whole question from a different paradigmatic perspective.
5. Capitalism?
Of late, that is since Marx, the "fascination" [as Braudel
(1982:54) called it] with 1500 as the date of a new departure that
makes a supposed break with the past is mostly a function of the
allegation that it ushered in a new, previously unknown or at least
never before dominant, "capitalist mode of production." That was of
course the position from Marx and Sombart to Weber and Tawney, and
all their still contemporary followers. It is still the position of
"world-system" theorists from Wallerstein (1974) and Frank (1978)
to Sanderson (1995) and Chase-Dunn (1996). Even Amin's (1991,1993)
and Blaut's (1993) vehement critiques of Eurocentrism stop short of
abandoning 1500 as the dawn of a new age of European born and borne
capitalism. All of the above, Marxists, Weberians, Polanyists,
world-systematizers, not to mention most "economic" and other
historians, balk at pursuing the evidence and the argument to
examine the sacred cow of "capitalism" and its allegedly peculiarly
exceptional or exceptionally peculiar "mode of production."
Therefore, the mere suggestion that perhaps this conviction might
or even should be open to question is already rejected as
unacceptable heresy. Having already broached this heresy to little
effect before (Frank 1991, Frank and Gills 1993), there is little
point in trying to pursue the argument further here. Suffice it to
point out that the same evidence and argument that support the
first four conclusions also have implications for the idea of
"capitalism." These conclusions deny the AMP and European
exceptionalism, but affirm a world economy and its continuity
across 1500. The first two above-cited conclusions about the AMP
and European exceptionalism are acceptable even to world-system
theorists and Blaut. The second set of two conclusions about a
global economy and its continuity across 1500 was de facto if not
de jure acceptable even to Braudel. Yet all four of the previous
conclusions must inexorably also lead to questioning the very
concept of a "capitalist" mode of production and the supposed
significance of its alleged spread from Europe to the rest of the
world. Indeed, we must question the very significance imputed to
different "modes of production," including of course also
"feudalism." At the very least, this conceptualization has diverted
our attention from the much more significant world systemic
structures and processes, which themselves engendered what these
observers [belatedly] perceive as "feudalism" and "capitalism."
As we have observed, not only was there no unilinear "progress/ion"
from one "mode" of production to another; but all manner of
relations of production were and remain widely intermingled. Many
different relations of production have "delivered" products that
have been competitive on the world market. However, it has not been
so much one relation or another, and still less any "mode," of
production that has determined the success and failure of
particular producers. Instead, competitive pressures and exigencies
on the world market have been and continue to be much more
determinant of the choice and adaptation of relations of production
themselves. The incessant discussions about non-, pre-, proto-,
blooming-, full blown-, declining-, post-, or any other "stage"
and quantity or quality of capitalism or the lack thereof have led
us down the garden path and diverted us from analyzing the real
world.
Therefore, it is much better to cut [out] the Gordian knot of
"capitalism" altogether. That was already my argument in Frank
(1991), Frank and Gills (1992, 1993), and Frank (1994,1995); and it
is well put by Chaudhuri (1990:84) writing under the title Asia
Before Europe: "The ceaseless quest of modern historians looking
for the 'origins' and roots of capitalism is not much better than
the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone that transforms
base metal into gold." Indeed, that is the case not only for the
origins and roots, but the very existence and meaning of
"capitalism." So, best just forget about it, and get on with our
inquiry into the reality of "universal history, wie es eigentlich
gewesen ist."