Re: Weber and rationality

Dassbach:
Careful here - world-system theory (with the hyphen) does not, at least in
my mind, pertain to everyone who discusses the global economy but rather to
a body of theorizing connected with and departing from the premises of
Immanuel Wallerstein. In effect, I think (but I can not speak for) AGF has
broken with W-S theory.

ricardo: 
Never mind the hyphen, that's triffle stuff. Difference is 
Wallerstein says it started in AD 1500 whereas Frank says in 3000 BC. 
Frank has simply gone where the logic of his definition of capitalism 
took him: way to the past, right after the rise of the first civilization, with 
its wide networks of trade. So, as Wallerstein well understood, the 
difference is who has the biggest covering law.

Dassbach:  
I don't think anyone would claim that the logic of the world-system is
"autonomous". 

ricardo:
Re-Orient: "...this world economy/system appears also to have had a 
global structure and dynamic of its own..." (328);  
"...manifestations of the internal structure and dynamic mechanism 
that maintains the system and propels its continuity itself. ..." 
(347). He  even says at the end that we can only hope to "manage" our 
agency within this world-system once we understand those laws which 
propelled it forward! (352).


Dassbach:
Other than replacing the word "evolution" with "change", I don't see this
observation as problematic." Kindly provide an alternative, and from your
point of view, `acceptable' formulation to this observation.

ricardo:
Sanderson's claim that "social evolution is driven by purposive or 
intended human actions, but is to a large extent not itself a 
purposive or intended phenomenon" correctly reminds us that our 
intended actions do have unintended (macro) consequences. But he 
wrongly infers from this that the course of  macrohistory itself is 
unintended; an inferrence which runs counter to his definition of 
human nature and his interpretation of world history.  For
he says that humans, by nature, "seek to 
behave adaptively by maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs 
of any course of action...This egoistic and adaptive behavior must be 
the central focus of evolutionary analysis" (12-13). So that's our 
intention. And then he says, as we just saw above,  that social evolution 
is to a large extent not driven by that intention. Yet, as you go on 
reading the whole book, it becomes clear that for him social 
evolution has been motivated precisely by that intention on the part 
of humans to adaptively maximize benefits and minimize costs, 
so much so that he believes that the rise of modern capitalism was 
"necessary". 

Now, this point about Sanderson only became clear to me as I was 
writing this post - which is to say that Sanderson in his actual 
analysis of world history, as opposed to his formal methodological 
introducion, as evidenced in the  passage first cited above and 
yesterday, is actually better than I thought. Better because he 
recognizes, if only implicitly, that there is no point talking about 
human intentionality unless one is going to connect it to the course of 
history. My criticism would still be 1) that methodological he 
contradicts his own historical conclusions, and 2) that human 
intentionality/rationality includes more than practical adaptation.   

Dassbach: 
Again, what are your proposing instead?  Are you proposing that large scale
historical outcomes - e.g. the ascension of the US to a hegmonic position at
the end of World War II - is the result of actions that had this outcome as
their objective from the outset.

ricardo: Sanderson wouldn't choose such a specific case, but as a 
world historian, he draws the conclusion that capitalism was bound to 
develop once certain initial evolutionary steps had been taken. And I 
have shown above, despite Sandersons's own methodological objections, 
that his own views on the general lines of world history, are 
consistent with what he says about human intentions. But Sanderson 
himself, as I also said yesterday about the Neolithic revolution, is 
not consistent. 

Enough for today. ricardo