Re: Which Marxism? (fwd)

>> capitalism meant, for Marx, accumulation of wealth at the expense of
>> others, whether in England or elsewhere.  capitalism bothered Marx in
>> every context because it caused unequal distribution of wealth
everywhere.
>> he did NOT mean by development that the British model was ideal
(without
>> any problems) and that every country should imitate it to reach a
certain
>> level of prosperity. what you suggest above is a modernization
perspective
>> like Rostow's, which takes capitalism for granted, not Marx's views.
marx
>> was a critic of capitalism. he was not ALSO happy with the British
model.
>> he knew that the factory system in England was sucking. he knew that
this
>> developoment was a development benefitting the capitalists. he was
QUITE
>> awere that whoever goes under a same process will be subject to these
>> unhuman conditions. capitalism is a universal problem for Marx
regardless

elson ,i do not find this discussion productive or going anywhere, because
you have a tendecy to misread the posts. so, these are my last comments.

>For goodness sakes, no one is suggesting that Marx was happy with
>England.
>This isn't the WW. Rostow Listserv.

i find this reply bizarre. it was you who suggested that marx was wrong
because he assumed that every country in the world would follow the
british model of capitalism. i do not think that he was wrong, and i
believe in the orthodox marxist argument whatever the quasi-marxists say.
if you look at the world around yourself, you will see that capitalism is
penerating everywhere adjusting different social, political and cultural
structures into its logic. it is causing hysteria, tensions and conflicts
everywhere. capitalism and its _logic of accumulation_, which marx
predicted long ago, is happening in front of our eyes, historically and
currently.      

>> what the world system theory contributed was that the
>> conditions in the periphery were much worse than the conditions in the
>> core (coerced labor, slavery). i agree with this, of course. but i do
>>not
>> think Marx was totally blind to this problem. he was the one who first
>> pronounced slavery in native America, talking about the development of
>> capitalism and colonialism there.

>Nani kore?  Sociology 101 tells us that the core conditions are better
>(geez, I thought we were well past this).

am i saying _anywhere_ above that the core and periphery conditions are
equal? i was rather talking about the contribution of the world system
theorists. what i do not agree with your interpretation of the wst
is that(regardless of the theorists themselves), you are glorifying their
differences with marx as if there is a radical breakthrough between the
two. if there was no marx, there would not be any world system theory 
around. marx provided the inital inspiration, logic and sytemic thinking.
do not tell me that wst has a core-periphery model whereas marx does not.
even the elementary school children know that. this difference does not
make marx's thesis irrelevant to what the world system theorists say.

>The point here, as I mentioned in my response to Austin, is that Marx did
>not have a theory of underdevelopment.   I'm sure Marx was not the first
>to
>pronounce (or even to  denounce) "slavery" in North America.  From my
>reading of Marx, I agree he had many pregnant ideas on underdevelopment
>and
>imperialism, but no expectation of the persistant and growing gap between
>what we now call the periphery and core.

yes, so what? should we abondon marx? marx's contribution to the world
system theory is that capitalism is an _impoverishing force_. world
system theorists emphasize this hundred times. historically, many
countries in the periphery experienced the same stages of primitive
accumulation marx talks about in capital--exproptiation of peasent
population from the land,forced immigration to cities, cheap labor,
prolongation of working hours, coerced labor, night shifts, and 
incorporation of female and child labor into work force. two hundred years
go, in Britain, women were giving opium to their children to make them
sleep so that they could go to night shifts, NOW the countries in the
periphery are experiencing the same sucking realities of life.  

world system theorists applied marx's notion of exploitation to
core-periphery relations. their contribution can not be denied, and i am
NOT denying. however, marx is still the primary birth giver, who laid down
the major framework for them. 

Mine Aysen Doyran