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.

I think this oversimplifies Marx's views.  Certainly he noted that slavery 
was necessary for the modern factory.  But he doesn't seem to have argued 
that modern slavery is a form of capitalist production.  This is where Marx 
did not push the analysis of historical capitalism as far as 
world-systemists have.

On the other hand, this was Marx's strength: focusing on factory as the 
most advanced form of capitalist accumulation that organizes and transforms 
all other forms of capital (e.g. high finance) and production (and the 
world economy and world market) around it, and thus stands on its own feet, 
unlike earlier sporadic forms (Venice).  However, having not completed his 
analysis of this form, he did not get around to examining the totality as a 
historical entity.   World-systemists have -- which is their strength.  But 
they nonetheless have neglected the historical specificity of forms of 
capitalist production (including the mediation of states, struggles, etc.) 
and social life as they evolve in mutual transformative relation over the 
course of the system.

This is the major the weakness of world-systems analysis as I see it.  For 
instance, to collapse the entire communist experience into a matter of 
national-developmentalist policies, or into the category of state 
enterprises, due to the political structure of the modern world-system, as 
IW does, is to flatten historical experience and the evolution of the 
system into the overly generalized categories.  It is a brilliant insight, 
but one sided.  A violence of abstraction, to borrow from Sayer.  I'w's 
work is a starting place for more specific analysis of the history of the 
system.

Thus, I'm inclined toward works that recoup critical theory, experience 
(E.P. Thompson, et al), specificity, feminism, etc. within world-systems 
frameworks.  I think world-systemists need to focus in on the specificities 
of social systems -- this one in particular -- rather than even more 
general analyses than IW's.

elson

On Sunday, October 31, 1999 9:06 PM, Andrew Wayne Austin 
[SMTP:aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu] wrote:
>
> 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