THAT = what Bergensen says = is what I have been trying to say,
first in my 1991 critique of Wallerstein [reprinted in Frank & Gills 1993]
then in my 1994/95 critique of Braudel and Wallerstein [eg. in Sanderson
ed. 1995] and now at much greater length and not limited to the CRITIQUE
of received theory from Marx Weber to Wallerstein [and Frank!], bur
extending to offering an ALTERNATIVE, which is also not limited to showing
that Asia did OK [as Bergesen correctly attributes to me] -- indeed did
MORE and BETTER until 1800 - but offering a WORLD economic analyis of
why the East "declined" and the West "rose" [cyclically=temporarily!]
and HOW they did so IN RELATION to each other, both as part and parcel of
a truly WORLD SYSTEM [NO hypen!] structure and dynamic, which far exceeds
in time and space the Wallersteinian "capitalist" "modern world-system"
[with a hyphen]. Only Bergesen and his literally literary skills say it
much better and much shorter! [When my son Paulo was 15 years old, he said
in one sentence what it took me several books to TRY to say: "If Latin
America was colonial, it could NOT have been feudal." In "our"
terminology, it could not have been feudal if it was part and parcel of
the "world-system." We [ I dunno if at the age of 33 Paulo now
wants to or not, but apparently Bergesen and I are doing so] might
extend the same idea/wording to read "IF EUROPE WAS PART OF THE WORLD
SYSTEM, IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN "capitalist." Much less could Europe have
been the locus/inventor of "capitalism"!
Happy Pearl Harbor Day!! - reflect on that!!!
Gunder Frank
n Sat, 7 Dec 1996,
Albert J Bergesen wrote:
> Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 12:34:51 -0700 (MST)
> From: Albert J Bergesen <albert@U.Arizona.EDU>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Subject: Re: eurocentrism
>
> Khay Jin and WSNers: What intrigues me at least with the idea of
> something of system, or
> society, or trade web, or world economy that is broader than east or west,
> that includes both, is the impication that has for classic social theory,
> and particularly Marx and Weber. The interest, then, is about the
> possibilities of a larger and longer web of east west ties than previously
> built into theories of capitalist development, the rise of the west,
> modernization, etc. There is a lot more to Marx/Weber than their
> separation of things western (capitalist relations of production, or
> protestat ethic rationalism) from things eastern (asiatic mode of
> production, traditionalism) but it has become a central taken for granted
> assumption, or received knowledge, about the world. I guess the
> appearance of economic dynamics in east asia today along with the years
> that have passed since the initial formulation by Marx and Weber have led
> to a growing questioning of some of their basic paradigmatic assumptions.
>
> >From this point of view I am the one doing the rarified analysizing,
> pulling out only certain parts of a rich body of thought to make only
> certain points. And from the ponit of view of your research in the
> village all this does seem pretty thin. I won't disagree.
>
> But a simplification is, I think, somewhat necessary to get the the heart
> of things, or of paradigms, and maybe it is an oversimplification or even
> a distortion that is necessary for one to leave one paradigm and propose
> another. I think of Marx's Robinsoe Caruso story to make fun of classical
> economic models. It was say overdrawn. Martin Luther's writings are often
> like a crazy mad man making all sorts of wild charges about the Pope and
> the church. Here, I think, at the end of the 20th century, haveing been
> saddled with the assumptions of Marx and Weber and all their descendants
> who have really only modifed and not replaced their basic outlooks, we, of
> thoretical bent in professional social science, are looking for a new
> framework, a new way of seeing things. What Gunder contributes is, among
> many things, is to present before us just a slice of the facts and
> realities of Chinese/Indian/Arabic economic activity, institutions, etc.
> that operated just fine and were not sloth-like, traditional, steeped in
> tradion, lacking innovation, and all the other things that are part of
> most all macro level social science thinking from Marx/Weber to Polanyi
> throughWittfogel to even Wallerstein (where it is in Europe, and from European
> crisises, that the world system emerges to spread elsewhere and
> incorporate others into this world economic system). Europe was already
> part of a world system--it did not create one.
>
> And the issue really becomes paradigmatic. You know, one can see the
> ancient near east, the early modern west, or 1500-1800 China/Asia as
> separate systems, or as hegemonic centers of one humanocentric system.
> The center could have been in the ancient hear east, then China/India,
> then Europe/North America and now back to China/Japan/East Asia. That is
> a different perspective than seeing these as separate systems which rise
> and fall because of their own internal dynamics. And that is the key
> theoretical point being implicitly raised: the rise of the west is the
> rise of capitalism is the rise of the capitalist mode of production from
> the feudal mode of production is the story Marx tells. Everything is
> endogenous to the West. For Weber the reply or counter is still
> intra-west: it is that the rise of the west is the rise of rationalism is
> the rise of protestantism is a change in western religious systems is,
> therefore, endogenous to the west. So, from a global point of view Marx
> and Weber are the same--endogenists. Wallerstein was supposedly a world
> system, but where did it come from: again endogenistic origin--the crisis
> of feudalism in the west led it to reach out to the rest of the world.
> So, from Marx to Weber to Wallerstein they differ, of course, but they are
> also the same in that they all believe in the endogenous nature of
> fundamental change in the west that led to its altered state in the world.
>
>
> Standing against this position is the new paradigm that has the west
> already in an alrready existing world system--the afroeurasian long term
> world economy. So, from this assumption (i) Europle/the west could not be
> the origin of the world-system, for it already existed; (ii) change in the
> west did occur, yes, but since it was part of a larger system that must be
> factored in to understand the change that took place, and (iii) that
> change may actually be a consequence, not a cause, of changes in the
> largher encompassing afroeurasian world economy. Therefore (iv) the
> distinctiveness or exceptionalism of the west AS THE ORIGIN OF ITS RISE is
> probably not so, for those differences (if they do exist and there is a
> debate here) are probably the CONSEQUENCE of changes within the
> afroeurasian system as a whole. Global systemic change led to the shift
> in centers, or the few hundred year ascendence of the west, and global
> system ic changes are leading to the return of centerness to Asia.
>
> This is not to say that during those years there wasn't colonialism, or
> pain, conquest, control exerted by Europe over the rest of the
> world--thats a fact. But surges of peoples, conquests, terror has gone
> bacvk and forth across parts of the world, and it may very well be that
> with technological development the European expansion was more severe than
> others prior--although arguments about the Huns and Mongols could be made.
> But looking to the future, and lets assume an Asian dominated 21st century
> who is to say that the use of weapons there, or holocausts there, will not
> lead to things being done that were not done before, and for the 21st
> century to be considered the most brutal yet. Is that Asians? Was 19th
> century colonialism, 20th century nuclear war and holocaust European?
> Yes. But it is also the world historical system with power centere in
> different parts and being exercised by those parts. I don't want to
> dismiss responsibioity for what was done, but the world continues to
> unfold and what will be done will have to wait and be seen.
>
> So, that is some of the reasoning behind this disquiet with
> Marx/Weber/Wallerstein. It is some of the reasoning behind this search
> for a broader view and for some social science paradigm that closes the
> east west divide. Not to eliminate the differencesw that are there, but
> to better understand the interconnectedness that has been there and to try
> and grasp the effects it may have had upon the way to have lived.
>
>
> Theorizing capitalism by Marx and Weber was such an effort at what they
> thought was the collective totality in their time. But their totality
> only went as far as the west--the east was different in essential belief
> and mode of production. The more we know about eastern economies, the
> more we know about the actual connections between east and west, about how
> the silver from Peru ends up in China, the more we now question the
> reality of that divide between the so called capitalist, modernist, west
> and the tranditionalist, backwardnest, rest.
>
>
>
>
> Albert Bergesen
> Department of Sociology
> University of Arizona
> Tucson, Arizona 85721
> Phone: 520-621-3303
> Fax: 520-621-9875
> email: albert@u.arizona.edu
>