Re: WSN & Moderation

I received this from WSN subscriber David Beddggood in my mail this
morning: I know Louis Proyect from the Marxism lists. He and I don't agree
on lots of things but on this he is right." I have no idea why this list
was set up with the sender as default when you reply to a post, rather than
wsn@csf.colorado.edu.

In reality, this spat is about politics that go to the very heart of world
systems theory such as it is. I am trying to pull my thoughts together and
will probably have more to say.

Right now, one thing is clear to me. World Systems theory, as I understand
it, was supposed to be--in part--a response to Marxism's inadequacies. In
the work of A.G. Frank, it is a critique from the left. When Frank
participated in a Communist Manifesto cyberseminar last year, he explained
that he rejected Marx because of Eurocentrism. I happen to agree with much
of this critique, as does my colleague Jim Blaut, but I don't reject Marx.

Despite Marxism's failure to full theorize the nature of peripheral
societies, the one thing that it does put forward is the notion that
thought must be wedded to action.  "The philosophers have only interpreted
the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." (These on
Feuerbach)

Now, it is true that academic Marxism pays scant attention to this in an
existential sense. Most Marxish professors don't really think that "change"
is something that applies to them, only the unwashed and vulgar students
who pass through their doors. What interests them is the usual matters of
their trade: getting tenure, getting published, going to conferences where
they can let their hair down, etc. Camille Paglia has the last word on this.

Examining this phenomenon of world systems theory, one has to wonder if it
even pays lip-service to the notion of action. Spawned from the
revolutionary ideology of Marxism, it seems to have dispensed with the
rather awkward subject of social change like a vestigial organ.

There are some symptoms of this nature that I had been considering for some
while as I started lurking here. I was provoked into a premature airing of
my thoughts when Dr. Schott told me that he didn't want to be "bombarded"
by superfluous messages on Yugoslavia. Since I found his mail so jarring, I
of course made a point of tracking down who exactly he was. My suspicions
about the problematic status of world systems theory were certainly not
lessened when I discovered that Dr. Schott publicly admitted that he
received World Bank funding. I don't know a single Marxist scholar who has
those kinds of connections. Is it possible that the liberatory project of
Braudel, Wallerstein, Frank et al has become corrupted by the institutional
blandishments of foundations and the academy?

Another disturbing sign. The Fernand Braudel Center, administered by
Immanuel Wallerstein and run out of the University of Binghamton, NY, has
ties to the Gulbenkian Foundation. This is from a Financial Times article
on the foundation:

"For several years controversy has overshadowed the real business of the
organisation. 

"For a philanthropic foundation set up to "foster historical and cultural
links" between Portugal and Asia, especially China and Macao, the Fundacao
Oriente has provoked an unusual degree of political controversy and
diplomatic discord. 

"Opponents in Macao have called it 'a notorious example of a western power
seizing resources from a developing Asian country'. China and Portugal have
been discussing its future for six years, often acrimoniously, and are only
now nearing agreement."

 



Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)