thanks to david smith for his comment of dan chirot's "book review" in
Social Forces.
Chirot has done this before in an article that was published in the
Annual REview of Sociology. he is basically a rockefeller republican.
one answer is to write book reviews of Chirot's books (like _The Crisis
of Leninism and the Decline of the Left_ (1991). Unfortunately this is
a political debate, not a scientific one, though the two are certainly
connected.
Probably the best response is to continue to do good world-systems
social science and to educate our colleagues about this kind of work.
World-systems research has been attacked by both orthodox marxists and
rockefeller republicans, so we must be doing something right.
chris