What is world systems theory?

At 12:59 PM 3/30/99 -0500, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
>Louis,
>
>In what way is world-system theory any more disconnected from practice
>than other Marxist projects, say, for example, the one you are involved
>in? 

This is a good question. I was involved in sending computer programmers,
engineers and other skilled professionals to Nicaragua and Southern Africa
in the 1980s. I was also on the steering committee of the Greater NY
Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and editor of the newsletter. I relied
heavily on Marxist literature on Central America, including Carlos Vilas,
James Petras and Nicaraguan periodicals. Perhaps world systems theory had a
more advanced analysis that could have made my work more successful. If so,
I am open to persuasion.

>Despite problems, world-system theory does a better job of tackling the
>theoretical problems of the third world than most other Marxist
>orientations I have experienced. World-system, in part, and in a way other
>strands of Marxism did not, developed out of grounded historiographies in
>the periphery, frequently by intellectuals in the periphery. 

A very interesting question. I have a book at home that is a survey on the
literature examining imperialism, beginning with Lenin. There is a chapter
on what they call "dependency theory," which is seen as within the Marxist
tradition but pushing at its boundaries. It is based on literature of the
1960s and 70s, which was then commonly understood as Marxist, but now goes
by the name of world systems theory. When did this labeling change take
place and why? In general I tend to regard the notion of capitalism
providing benefits to the third world as a cruel joke, so the work of Samir
Amin et al appeals to me. However, what I am trying to establish is exactly
what has happened to this ideological current from the time it arose in the
60s--largely in response to the Vietnam war--to where it is today, with its
Gulbenkian foundation funding and its aggressive challenge to Marxism. It
is a highly contradictory ideological current, to say the least.

>Moreover, world-system has put at the center of its analysis the
>recognition of the totality of the bourgeois historical system in a way
>often implied in Marx's work yet erased by Marxist ideologues concerned
>with legitimating a narrow nationalist interpretation of Marx (even if in
>rhetoric they deny this).

Absolutely. My articles on the American Indian rely heavily on Eric Wolf.
Having stated that, I am by the same token interested in exploring the
theoretical differences between Marxism and world systems theory. Perhaps
there is some confusion over whether there is any. You regard it as the
avant-garde of historical materialism, while Jim Blaut takes exception to
being described as a world systems theorist. He is a Marxist, he said,
practically bristling when I labeled him as a world systems theorist. I
want to sort these matters out.

>The degree to which world-system theory is relevant for our struggle for
>socialism has to do with how well it captures historical reality and how
>willing we are to put it into practice. Here, like any other knowledge
>system, it has its pluses and minuses. But your point about practice is
>irrelevant, since world-system theory does not make the claim that it
>should not be used in practice. Indeed, to take one example, Wallerstein's
>theoretical claims are intrinsically oriented towards the building of a
>socialist world-system.

Unfortunately the art of politics is knowing what to do next, as James P.
Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, once said. World systems theory
seems like a headlong flight away from the task of knowing what to do next.
It is good to be for a socialist world-system. What is better is knowing
what concrete steps should be taken to advance us in that direction. Marx
and Engels wrote hundreds of articles in this vein, as did Lenin. You have
to wonder if world systems theory has either the motivation or the tools to
write such articles.

>World-system theory is a serious intellectual endeavor. I have seen no
>challenge to world-system theory in your post, Louis, although I imagine
>that list-members welcome such a challenge. I would only ask that such a
>challenge be a serious and rational one, not one based on slogans and
>flaming.

Perhaps it might be useful to give people here an idea of my approach to
these questions. This is a brief excerpt from my article "The Blackfoot and
the Barbarian" from the latest issue of Organization and Environment, a
work that I am proud of. When I finally get down to critiqueing world
systems theory, it will be on this level:

=========
Beginning in the mid 1800s and coming to a climax in the post-Civil War
period, rapacious gold prospectors, fur trading companies and ranchers
invaded Blackfoot territory. They came in the same fashion that
profit-oriented barbarians have come to the Amazon rainforest in recent
decades, with plunder in their hearts and a willingness to exterminate
anybody who got in the way.

It should come as no surprise that the US Army defended the invaders on the
basis of protecting private property and "civilization." In the summer of
1865 the Pikuni (Southern Blackfoot) signed a treaty in Fort Benton,
Montana that pushed their southern boundary north to the Teton River. They
received annuities of $50,000 a year for a period of twenty years. If the
United States did not have the benefit of a superior armed force, the
Blackfoot never would have signed such a treaty since it amounted to theft.
As Woodie Guthrie once said, some men will steal your valuables with a gun
while some will do it with a fountain pen. The United States used both gun
and fountain pen.

Clashes with gold prospectors continued, who refused to respect Blackfoot
rights within the newly redefined territory. When some prospectors under
the leadership of the racist thug John Morgan killed four Pikuni men just
for sport, Chief Bull's Head organized a large revenge party and the
prospectors got their comeuppance.

In 1868, when a Pikuni elder and a small boy were in Fort Benton on an
errand, white racists shot them down in the street. Alfred Sully, who had
responsibility for upholding the law in the tense area, said that because
of tensions between the two groups he could not convict the killers in any
court. This gave other white settlers a license to continue killing. When
the Pikuni resorted to self-defense, the authorities decided that some kind
of state of emergency existed and called in outside help. 

Having decided that the Indians rather than the rapacious invaders were at
fault, the army ordered Colonel E.M. Baker to put down a rebellion led by
Mountain Chief. "Strike them hard" were his instructions. He pulled
together four companies of cavalry, augmented by fifty-five mounted
infantrymen and a company of infantry, and marched on the Indians. On
daybreak of January 23, 1870, the US army under Baker's command attacked a
village on the Marias river. They killed 173 Indians, seized 300 horses and
took 140 women and children into custody. There was only one problem. This
was not Mountain Chief's village, but one that was friendly to the United
States. Many of the villagers were sickly victims of a recent smallpox
epidemic. To add to their misery, the troops burned the lodges and camp
equipment.

This was a Blackfoot My Lai. The eternally sanctimonious New York Times
editorialized on February 24, 1870, "The question is whether a wholesale
slaughter of women and children was needed for the vindication of our
aims." One wonders if the New York Times keeps a file of such sentiments
recyclable for suitable occasions, such as the recent bombing of a medicine
factory in Sudan.

The consequences of this mass murder were as would be expected. It panicked
the Pikuni into signing another compromised treaty. The whole purpose of
military repression was not to restore "law and order" but to push Pikuni
into the marginal portions of the state of Montana. All of these treaties
from the 1860s and 70s lack legitimacy and should be reviewed, just as the
annexation of Hawaii is being reviewed by the United Nations today.

The information that appears above is drawn from John C. Ewers's flawed but
essential history, "The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains" (U.
of Oklahoma, 1958). Its flaw is visible in its very title, which depicts
the Blackfeet as "raiders." Ewers draws a picture of Blackfeet (the
Blackfoot people prefer not to use this term since it refers to "feet"
rather than people) as warriors who enjoyed stealing horses from Indians
and white settlers alike. In the very chapter where he decries the massacre
at Marias river, he refers to the problems involved in "the pacification
and civilization of western Indian tribes." This is said without irony.

More recent scholarship steps back from the "warlike" image fostered by
Ewers on the Blackfoot and other Indian tribes. Margaret A. Kennedy, in
"The Whiskey Trade of the Northwestern Plains" (Peter Lang, 1997) roots the
conflicts in the fur and whiskey trade:

"The whiskey trade was far more than the exchange of buffalo robes and
other furs for whiskey and trade goods. This exchange was conducted within
a diverse and often hostile social and ethnic context. The interactions
between native and non-native were heightened by the existence of intense
rivalries within each of these groups, band against band, Americans against
British, trader against trader. The origin of some of the intense
intergroup hostilities that characterized the whiskey trade can be traced
back throughout the fur trade, but much of it was deeply accentuated in
this late period by the pressures wrought through fear of loss of the
buffalo, tribal territorial infringement, American and British competition
and of course, the deleterious effect of liquor."

To put it more bluntly, the British and American fur traders lured the
Indians into the cash trade by offering them whiskey, the one thing that
was not available on the open range. They used whiskey in the same way that
the British used opium in China. It was a way of breaking down the doors of
a local economy that had little use for the lure of imported goods. One of
the most notable things about opium and alcohol is that they are addictive.
This is exactly what the East Indian Company or the Hudson Bay Company
could use to best effect: a substance that hooked the unfortunate native
into becoming unwilling accomplices to his own destruction. As the fur
trade began to decrease the number of available buffalo, the various tribes
fought with each other for control over the scarce resource. They stole
horses from one another because the horse was necessary for the wholesale
collection of hides. Pressures from fur and whiskey traders goes much
further in explaining the Indian wars than any lack of "civilized" values.
Who needed civilizing were the entrepreneurs who used such poisons to make
the Indian dependent.

While in one sense, we have become inured to the idea of alcohol being a
symptom of American Indian despair, it is important to understand how this
substance entered their society. Today, there are all sorts of
investigative journalists reporting on how the contras introduced crack
cocaine into the United States in order to fund the war in Nicaragua. An
investigation of the introduction of whiskey into the northwestern Plains
states would also be a good idea. This is clearly the purpose of Margaret
A. Kennedy's scholarly treatment.

She points out that prior to the 1830s buffalo robes had been a minor
commodity in the fur trade. Beavers were the preferred good. When the
avaricious trading companies caused the near-extinction of the beaver, the
buffalo became a substitute. So whiskey lured the Indians to the trading
post, where the highly desired bison robes were exchanged for toxic drug.
Kennedy explains:

"The business was fairly simple. Fort Benton merchants were willing to
commission individuals and supply them with an outfit. In return, the
trader and clerks would remove to Indian Country and exchange goods as
cheaply as possible for buffalo robes, wolf, antelope, elk and other animal
pelts. The quiet inclusion of alcohol in the trader's outfit, seldom
accurately recorded on the manifests, was the magnet guaranteed to draw
native clientele. In 1867, the selling price of buffalo robes was $8.00,
the highest amount it had yet reached. The trader's cost was only $3.00,
thereby guaranteeing a healthy profit even after commissions, inventory and
transportation costs were considered."

Just as British capitalism used rum, sugar and slaves to drive its
commercial expansion into the Caribbeans and American south, so did the fur
trading companies use a combination of whiskey, furs and alcohol-addicted
Indian hunters to increase their wealth. Wealthy and jaded Europeans' taste
had shifted from fur to buffalo, just as people today decide to use one
cologne rather than another. Image back then was as important as it is
today. It was of course no consequence that the very source of Blackfoot
and other Indians' survival was being destroyed in the process. The buffalo
was no longer a source of clothing, shelter and food. It was instead a
luxury item to generate profits for the seller and alcohol addiction for
the unfortunate hunters.

Unfortunately, not only could the Indian become addicted to alcohol, he
could also suffer the consequences of "bad" drugs, just as occurs on the
streets of New York City today when the occasional bag of heroin contains
poisonous adulterants. Margaret Kennedy describes the horrors that took
place frequently:

"The movement of American traders into the last stronghold of Blackfoot
territory could only have been accomplished through the extensive
availability of alcohol. The Blackfoot north of the border had fervently
and successfully protected their hunting territory from intruders--native
and non-native alike--until 1869. Now the destructive results of the
whiskey trade began to make themselves evident, as the people traded
anything they owned for alcohol, which left them destitute and defenceless
against winter temperatures. This was not quality alcohol. The so-called
whiskey given out by traders for buffalo robes and other furs was a lethal
concoction of alcohol mixed with anything that would give it colour and
substance--bluestone, burnt sugar, castile soap, Jamaica Ginger, Perry
Davis Painkiller, tea, ink, and sometimes, horrifically, strychnine. George
McDougall, the Methodist missionary who was so outspoken against the
whiskey trade, reported the same traumatic death for the native drinker as
was experienced by the wolf consuming strychnine: foaming at the mouth,
followed by convulsions and the body turning black after death. If people
managed to survive the concoction, their faces were later horribly
disfigured by blotches. Untold numbers of native people, well into the
hundreds, died from the drink itself, exposure to winter conditions during
intoxication, or violently at the hands of traders or each other."

While the Southern Blackfoot were suffering the combined effects of
military repression and alcohol addiction, a more subtle form of genocide
was being carried out against their Canadian brothers and sisters of the
Bloods and the Northern Blackfoot tribes. They became the victims of a vast
conspiracy by the Canadian government and the church to rob them of their
cultural identity through residential schooling. Residential schooling, as
J.R. Miller points out in "Shingwauk's Vision" (U. of Toronto, 1996), was a
tool used to rob the Indian of his birthright. The blackboard and the rod
joined the fountain pen and gun as instruments of genocide:




Louis Proyect

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