Re: richard moore's essay

Thu, 13 Nov 1997 18:26:48 -0500 (EST)
Andrew Wayne Austin (aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)

On Thu, 13 Nov 1997, christopher chase-dunn wrote:

> 1. in Wallerstein's original usage there is a distinction between
> "world" and "global". global means Earth-wide. world means the world in
> which people live. in this sense world-systems were not always global.
> they got bigger over time. Tom Hall and I have developed a comparative
> world-systems perspective that looks at small, medium and large
> world-systems to see how and why they evolve (_Rise and Demise_ Westview
> 1997).

It follows from this that when capitalism has overturned virtually all
precapitalist modes of production it becomes a global system.
Globalization is the process, then, that leads to the complete
transnationalization of capitalist production as a dominant mode of
planetary production. In the world system we saw the globalization of
commercial markets and financial markets. It is with the
transnationalization of production that we arrive at a foundation that
will undergird, or already undergirds, world civil society. What remains
is the consolidation of transnational institutions into a global state.
All this was pretty much predicted by Marx in the Communist Manifesto and
in The German Ideology. Historical materialism proves once again to be the
superior framework for world-historical analysis.

Incidentally, I agree with Bill Robinson analysis of the global system at
this juncture particularly presented in the final chapter of his
*Promoting Polyarchy*. Robinson's scheme is moving us towards a
transcending of the world system model--which empirical reality probably
already has.

> 2. It is probably useful to distinguish between globalization as
> economic, political and cultural integration and globalization as a
> political project of the world bourgeousie. the latter is quite recent.

I agree with this. The globalization project is best understood as a
neoliberal program seeking the reconstitution of social structures of
accumulation to facilitate the most beneficial development of the global
system. The program is being advanced and guided by the political elite of
a transnational class configuration. This framework grows out of
trilaterialism. What is needed to analyze the world at this point is a
system that analyzes both objective historical-structural transformations
(globalization) and the policy behavior of elite agents who respond to and
guide the unfolding world order to secure the interests of the global
capitalist class. Bill Robinson, Stephen Gill, Robert Cox, and others
working out of a Gramscian framework offer the brightest future for this
task. This has the added benefit of transcending the old structure-agency
divide (ever a false divide). If you are unfamiliar with this mode of
theorizing, it is my view you cannot understand what is going on right now
in the global system. These fellows are explaining the world.

Andy