WSNers--Terry Boswell raises some good substantitive questions/issues
about cycles and what affect the supra-Afroeurasian world economy might
have had upon the growth/devleopment of the the European peninsula. While
this is not entirely clear and may have to be revised as new information
on the synchronization of world wide economic events becomes more and more
the task of the world system perspective, the argument, in outline, is
something like this:
(i) The A and B phases of the Afroeurasian supra economy are system wide,
such that the Euro-expansion of colonialism from 1400 was but the European
element of an overall Afroeurasian expansion. It was not unique to only
Europe, not a product of European events, social structure, crises
of/in feudalism, inquiring minds, adventureness, and all the other
exceptionalisms about the peninsula people that has formed the
assumptional heart of modern social thought.
(ii) The A phase starting in roughly 1400 saw a dramatic rise in
production and population in Asia, that, through traditional mechanisms of
A phases truning of necessity into B phases, led to the start of an
Afroeurasian B phase in/around 1750. The Asian response of
economizing--as everyone does here, not just the Weberian peninsula
people--has different consequences because of different conditions in
Europe and Asia. Higher labor costs in Europe make the
invention/innovation/search for/put into us/etc. of labor saving machinery
the economic response anyone would make. (again, economic rationality is
universal--not a Weberian particularism of one religious system,
Protestantism). This is the industrial revolution, and mistakenly
conceptualized as "capitalism", that is as some unique set of class
relations/unique mode of production/unique belief system of
calculating, accumulating only for money's sake/etc. that no one else has.
Terry Boswells question of whether Bergesen is suggesting "capitalism is
anideological hoax perpetuated on all of us by Karl Marx" is, if
misunderstanding replaces hoax, closer to the mark than he thinks.
The Asian response to this B phase does not involve industrial
innovation/revolution because of the cheapness of labor and the economic
thing to do is not to work toward machine replacement.
In these two responses--and in a lot more that is not fully understood at
this time--lies the decline of the East and the rise of the West, and the
Euro-ascendence since 1800, that we all agree upon. Europe did rise, but
as a center shift from one part/zone of the Afroeurasian world economy
(Asia--China/India) to another part/zone (Europe and then N. America).
But not on its own; not because of its unique class or belief system.
That was the Euro-gloss put on their ascendence in the 19th century by
Marx and Weber, and its continuation in the 20th century with
modernization theory and the out-of-Europe-modern-world-system-theory of
Braudel/IW.
(iii) We are commencing another shift of the A/B sort in the always-world
economy, back to the zone that was down during the Euro/American
Ascendence of 1750-2050, namely, Asia.
(iv) This changes a lot of thinking: Asia is not getting its first
chance at hegemony in the world economy. Hegemony is returning to Asia
from whence it started. And, the "rise of the west" is now reduced to
its appropriate size, the few hundred year period that it is, and
understood as part of the larger global dynamics, rather than as something
that endogenously rose up. That is where Marx and Weber are wrong,
empirically, and we can add the judgement factor of Eurocentricism in that
their models did not acknowledge the obvious location of the peninsula in
the AFroeurasian dynamic but saw the peninsula as following its own
internal logic.
(v) Finally, this opens up the possibility to go beyond Marx and Weber in
a profound materialist way. This is not po mo as the answer to
vulgar economism. This is doing the materialist task correctly and
updating our conceptual models.
(vi) That this should generate resistance is understandable; no one likes
to let go of the models that not only they believed in all these years but
that their progressive sentiment had been wed to.
(vii) But it will all be determined on the ground. The record and facts
of actual Asian economic performance has been, by and large, outside the
record that has been the basis for constructing social theory. If it
turns out that no one but the Eurpeans did what Marx and Weber said only
they did, then the old paradigm will continue. If though, as it
increasingly appears, they downplayed if not dismissed the bureaucracies,
cities, work ethic and spirit of acculumation, and industrial productive
capacity of Asia as it appears they did , then these models cannot
continue unchallenged. If the record on the ground, if the facts of Asian
economic life does not turn out to be the record of the "asiatic mode of
production" in all its sluggishness and tradition ridden lack of
innovation and productive capacity, then there is no way that either the
class relations/mode of production of the West, of "capitalism" can be
considered unique. And if others calcualted, wanted money, and were
rational than the other side is wrong too, the Weberians. If there is/was
no difference, in the sense outlined here, then we have no choice but to
work toward a new understanding, no matter how attached we all are to
Euro-history and Euro-theory.
Albert Bergesen
Department of Sociology
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
Phone: 520-621-3303
Fax: 520-621-9875
email: albert@u.arizona.edu