Re: Andre Gunar Frank & Marx

One problem with the articulation of modes of production position in
theories that appeal to Marxian concepts is that Marx himself argued that
production that occurs in the capitalist world-economy, whether it is
slave-, peasant-, or wage-labor, is capitalist production insofar as the
commodities produced are exchanged in the world market. According to Marx,
for example, slavery in the US South was not a precapitalist mode of
production but was capitalist production because the end-results were
primary commodities destined for British industry. Here Wallerstein's
thesis accords with Marx's and both appear to follow dialectical logic,
where the identity of parts is determined by the identity of the whole.

As for the underdevelopment thesis, the capitalist core creates and
underdevelops the periphery in the world-economy in much the same way
domestic cores create and underdevelop the peripheries in the
world-economic core. Social classes are created, perpetuated, and
transformed by basically the same processes. The dynamic of capitalism
concentrates wealth at one end of society by appropriating the products of
labor at the other end. This is Marx's principal insight and neither
Wallerstein nor Frank appear to deviate from this basis premise.
Everything still revolves around the social surplus, who produces it, who
appropriates it, etc.. What distinguishes capitalism from other historical
systems is the degree to which production of exchange-values dominates
economic activity.

Andy Austin