From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Wed Jul 31 23:52:36 1996 Date: Wed, 31 Jul 96 22:15:42 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: forgot persian yemen first letter; you may've missed seco To: World Systems Network ....second. Andrey, I was regrettably near-sleepwalking when I wrote that first letter, re inter-imperial warfare over (ie back and forth along) the Silk Route, with possible concominant or correlative effects upon the manner of waging war. I had, on that particular day, actually forgotten the Persian occupation of Yemen in question. A few days later, at such time as you say you were away, I did finally recall the Persian occuaption of the Yemen. Nevertheless and notwithstanding, I continued silk-obsessed, as before. It is true that the Persians found deposits of silver in Yemen, which they repatriated. The precipitating instigation was, however, silk: Justinian ["The Great" by immense self-promotion], prior (525) even formally taking power (527), sought to prevail upon the Negus of Abyssinia to procure silk from the Indian sea route for the factories of Antioch. [Note: objections, say, to the effect that Arabs traded in both imported and exported silk are irrelevant, in light of the vast manufacturing industry of Antioch. The "Broad Masses," as we used to characterize them, of this great industrial city were long-proletarianized, and constituted the *most riot-prone urban mob* in the Empire. The impact of food shortage facilitated even greater violence and destruction than did pagan-Christian conflicts, which is the late empire was quite noteworthy. The nailbiting of Libanius (late fourth century) over provisioning of the city was not misplaced. In 383 the food supply did, indeed, fail. This was the proximate cause of The Day Of The Statues, so-called because every statue of an Emperor was pulled down and destroyed. Theodosius' exalted vision of his Mission, uniformity in Faith and servility (enforced by massive repression) in public Order, Goths excepted, of course[!], impelled him to Do God's Will on Antioch as he had in Thessalonika, his previous killing-ground; yet somehow, the successive Patriarchs of Antioch, Felix and St John Chrisostom, averted the worst of imperial wrath. More routinely, the "Broad Masses" were bifurcated along lines of Green versus Blue, not merely in the Circus and Arena; the colour- moieties extended to the "theater clacques," where playwrights and thespians, however execrable, were sustained by partisan cheers against detractors; this intensified the riot-proneness, as if more contributions to the fund of rage were strictly necessary. As a fan of the revolutionary proletariat myself, I find it difficult to posture as a detractor of urban explosions; yet the absence of *convincing and compelling evidence* that political awareness extended beyond hatred of those who were Greenish/Bluish in a species of near-racist execration on one side of Blue costumes (or Green on the other) was a politico-cultural and institutional dead end. There wasn't, after all, the developed-capitalist social relations requsite for transcendence of this blockage. In addition, Antioch contained the HQ of the Praetorian Prefecture of Oriens, headquarters of Roman armies on the Mesopotamian front; as well as an Imperial Residence. These had subsidizing effects, and Command and Control in the event of war was based here. (It is the present writer's conviction that Valens, not very bright, entertained delusional fantasies based on prior (and foreshadowing future) policies, toward using Goths to win decisive victory against Persia, this time cheaply, with ferocious fighting men newly fallen into his lap. Who, after all, were better soldiers than Germans, his own Albanians now seemingly "over the hill." Those who have read Benjamin Isaac, The Limits of Empire, 1990, recall that, before and after Valens' time, the bedouin of the desert had supplanted commitment of main force units on both sides. This policy, on the part of both major powers, saved money in direct military expenditures. It also rendered the transit system, and its taxibility, problematic. The bedouin would not or could not be concentrated, rendering pointless the specification of, eg, Nisibis, Callinicum, and Dara for sole and exclusive border-crossings; and at which points, exclusively, there was customs duty paid. Isaac states, categorically, that it was in the fourth century that bedouin raids, herewith and hereafter, in the sources, called *Saraceni*, became major security problems. The withdrawal of regular troops, at war-readiness, from the frontier was both cause and effect. Units were dispersed throughout areas threatened by raids, sent to occupy road junctions hitherto unfortified, made to police caravan routes, and posted along roads to guard travelers or even tourists. It should be obvious from these dispositions that the collection of land revenue from caravans liable to customs duties was not easy. Much impost almost certainly was uncollectible, and the thinly-policed and -guarded routes the army was made responsible for garrisoning and policing placed the imperial forces at a disadvantage had a large mass of Saraceni refused payment. Their dissatisfactions, Late-Antique Romano-Byzantine with the Ghassanids, Sassanid with the Lakhmids, took a long time to incite decisive action. Customs payments foregone were to be counterbalanced against insecurities in enemy territories induced by the very tribes whose back-tax liabilities were set against loot and pillage for one's own benefit, direct or indirect. Ghassanids and Lakhmids, in 545, did not hesitate to war on each other with no help whatever from their Great Power sponsors. The foregoing leads up to what I actually wished to discuss; that is, the Persian policy in Yemen. The silk purchased by Persians in Sri Lanka in the 520s, so as to frustrate the scheme whereinto Justinian inveigled the Negus' cooperation for silk-supplies was not to be confused with silk arriving in Persia by the land route. The sea route was dependent upon the possession of Jiaochi (Hanoi) by the Southern Empire (of the Six Dynasties), whose capital was in Jiankang (modern Nanjing). All analogies between the Southern Empire and the Byzantine, qua vestige of Civilization, ie, not in fact overrun by, first (in North China), Huns who, one statelet at a time, were in turn dispossessed. [Note: From 370, the Turks and Mongols were united by a figure they could trust - he was Proto-Tibetan - named Fu Jian, a larger-than-life hero.] The chaos and political fragmentation of the Hunnish states let to commercial disruption in the overaland silk trade. The Turco- Mongol forces (led by a proto-Tibetan), in 382 recaptured the central asian oasis of Kucha, site of the Stone Pillar, where caravans from North China had long rendezvoused with those from Persia via Afghanistan. This land route, thus, was early and authoritatively reduced to order. (Trade not guaranteed by some state structure or other, howevermuch pitiful, takes on the sporadicism and insecurity of the 5,000-year World System.) The Southern Empire (The Six Dynasties: Eastern Jin, 317-420; Liu Song, 420-479; Qi, 479-502; Liang, 502-549 whose distinction was overthrow and extermination of its ruling class by the latter having been locked in their palaces, fine raiment and all, but minus slaves and food; and Chen, 557-589, after the General Chen preoccupied with squashing a Vietnamese revolt, 552- 557) was, by contrast to the state to its north, which it stigmatized without letup as "the sixteen kingdoms of the five barbarians," was a slovenly, poor, wretched excuse for a polity. It notably fetured a ruling class which refused on principle to do the work of the high offices which, along with titles and emoluments, they inherited by right; the eunuchs had been exterminated in 189. Either hallucinating or fantasizing they were exemplars of the Traditions handed down from Real China, the South showed, if showing be required, the fatuity of Jefferson's adage, "That government governs best which governs least." Taxation (a rumour) and customs duties were laxly, if ever, collected. Which, curiously, proferred to merchants the benefits of secure harbours minus liabilities to harbour dues (criminality is a kettle of another colour of fish). The ships in the sea trade were Persian and Indian, with the Chinese catching up with breathtaking rapidity. A ship docked in India, as Crone reports, had preexisting ties between the sailors/traders and the merchant-purchasers. The latter, Persians, had a closed market being run to their advantage, and these Persians bought whole cargoes, which Byzantine agents were too ignorant in the trade to match. Thus did Justinian's appeal to the Negus flop entirely. What the Abyssinians' control of Yemen, to 540-ish, accomplished was the drawing of Persian interest in supplanting the Abyssinians. In the event of war, the land border between Byzantium and Persia was closed. Could the Persians afford to tell their suppliers, "We don't need the silk this year, as it happens there's no way to get it to Antioch?" No chance. These relations were established over years, decades, lifetimes. Response to the state of the market was sluggish, and embedded in what Chinese today call *guanxi*. Another obvious possibility was: Land the silk in Yemen. This birds two kills, and gets you stoned: ---a. The Persians faced the Abyssinians across the Bab-el-Mandeb; which rendered the passage of shipping up the Red Sea rather, uh, problematical; not necessarily impossible. Andrey Korotayev is almost certainly correct: Dollars to Betsy, it's the way to bet that the shipping landed in Aden, not Roman Aela (Aqaba). The two kills thus were: (1) depriving the Romano-Byzan- tines of raw silk for Antioch's industry; and (2) depriving the Romano-Byzan- tine state of suchlike revenues as the prevailing syutem of corruption would permit passing on to the appointing superiors of customs collectors. [Note: We lack the analogue of Alfred Taylor Mahan, who would, might, perhaps just write for us a set of massive tomes entitled, *The Influence Of Corruption, Crookedness, Embezzlement, Defrauding The State, Acceptance of Bribes (in lieu of revenue payment), Tax Subsidies, and Cooking The Books upon History*.] [Note: Be it further noted that Justinian's regime was crooked, top to bottom.] Say, speculating still, the silk has been landed in Aden. Who is to move the goods? Tribes tout entieres aren't likely, as there must be infiltration of the porous frontier by small groups of horse-and-camel merchants and traders who are required to make a considerable effort to evade detection, faking pay- ments of taxes if challenged. I have no notion of how many Quraysh there were in the tribe, an easier question by far than How many Mongols in a Horde (ten thousand); but the safest, most lucrative, policy was, necessarily, split up, sneak in and out, be inconspicuous, lie a very great deal, and at all times claim to be acting on one's own account. (That is, don't get the other guys mixed up in it.) By all means, then, had the Persians tapped the smuggling potential of South Arabia, they might have perpetrated considerable economic dislocation in Justinian's state finance, and they would have minimized dependence, as was their overall policy at the time, on any tribal entity. (602: Khushrau destroys Hira. Slightly earlier, Justin II discontinues subsidy to Ghassnids.) How much shipping did, actually, get through to Aela? What was the "bezzle"? What was the net collection? And nothing's yet been said on the historico-political eventoids I noted in my letter to Andrey with potential to affect the price of silk, commoditas commoditarum. Further studies are necessary, not least by me in the library. Daniel A. Foss From harlowc@tidepool.com Thu Aug 1 15:21:54 1996 Date: Sun, 03 Mar 1996 14:02:03 -0800 From: Christian To: WSN Subject: Re: the world party References: <59CF579F6@cnit.nsu.ru> Greetings Nikolai, I have heard your pleas for a legal system that would insure equity throughout the world system on a few different occassions and now I have assembled a few questions for you regarding this suggestion. Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: > > there is another alternative: to preserve monopoly of legitimate > violence of nation-states (or their united regional forces) on their > territories but only if these states (or unions) are appropriate to definite > globally accepted values and correspondent legal standards > (see my yesterday reply to Chris Robinson). > So not a world party but maximally wide coalition of all kinds of social, > political, economic, and cultural(f.e. religious) forces is needed for > working out and accepting this set of values and standards. Wasn't this done after WWII and isn't it called the UN? The subsequent global organzations such as the IMF, World Trade Council, etc. have also contibuted to legally institutionalizing the standards of the worlds core powers. Unfortunately their manifest missions correspond quite closely to to what you are calling for (development, education, human rights etc.) yet there actions perpetuate the globabl economic system which is responsible for the underdevelopment and immiseration so prevalent in the periphery. So in your global legal system what kind of state (or state-like apparratus, tribunal?) would be responsible for deciding the values and standards of the system and how would these values be enforced (consensus of all participants? majority rule? or a majority of the core powers? BTW this option is once again reminiscent of the UN Security Council). Notwithstanding your earnest desire to see this legal system be more humanistic than our current world system, this whole idea doesn't sound like anything new. And frankly, its a nice idea but it smacks of the neo-liberalism which is failing to change anything for the better and is actually maintaining the system by providing the the neccessary adaptations for the perpetuation of global capitalism. How on earth are you going to convince the capitalists to accept a global legal system which thwarts (halts?) accumulation and uneven development when these are the lifeblood of the entire sytem? > > to struggle now for ceasing warfare - yes, but to hope that having > destoyed capitalism we solve this problem seems to me now very naive. In the > eve of XX Bolshevics in Russia just in this way hoped that they cease > ALL warfare, ALL exploitation, ALL corrupcy, ALL classes, ALL crimes, > ALL prostitution, and even adulter by destroying capitalism, because they > considered all these sins to be its products. Aren't they? If not where do all these sins come from? > > To think so in the end of XX ? - strange... Its neither strange nor incorrect. If the distribution of surplus throughout the world system were more equitable these problems would be greatly alleviated, not solved immediately but perhaps eventually. I don't actually see this happening but I'm too young to throw in the towel just yet. If we do see a mass proletarian type movement I would argue that it will occur in conjunction with the imminent ecological disaster, which is likely within the next A phase of the Kwave and the concurrent rush to accumulation. Unfortunately, I see much more social/political movement towards fascism right now then socialism. (Prop 187, Clinton calling for school uniforms and curfews, three strikes etc...). Actually I think the achilles heel of Nikolai's proposal is shared with Wagar's and other's "world party" idea. It ain't gonna happen! There is simply no evidence of such movements or signs that the ideology of the current world system is being countered sufficiently to plant the seeds of systemic transformation caused by the subjects of said system. So heres my question to all who feel that any of the options we've been discussing are possible: How? And what is the role of WS (or those that share similar views) scholars in the carrying out of these missions? What is our praxis? Best Regards, Christian Harlow UC Santa Cruz harlowc@tidepool.com From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Fri Aug 2 04:15:07 1996 Date: Fri, 02 Aug 1996 18:12:11 +1000 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: McFarling on Wagar In-reply-to: <625B5276B8@cnit.nsu.ru> To: "Nikolai S. Rozov" On Tue, 30 Jul 1996, Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: > I strongly support Christopher's suggestion. Just some notes. > > From: Christopher Robinson > > Possibly, a more functional goal would be a decentralized system of > > increasing economically (and thus potentially socio/politically) > > autonomous "regions" > why not to begin with EU, NAFTA, Russia with CIS, Japan with S-East Asia, > India with South Asia, etc? [This is actually a continuation of my South Atlantic posting in disguise. Except, I guess that writing this here spoils the disguise.] Let's look at NAFTA as a particular case. By a simple page count, NAFTA is less than 1/5 a trade treaty, and more than 4/5 an international investment treaty. So, as a rough approximation, we can consider NAFTA to be a treaty regulating international property rights and capital account transactions between Canada, the US, and Mexico. A "community of community" strategy would be to build upon NAFTA by developing additional such Trade / Corporate investment zones: Mercosur gives a kernel to build upon in the Southern Cone; CARICOM and CACM give a kernal to build upon in the Caribbean and Central America; and the Andean Pact gives another (though less active) kernel to build upon in Northern South America. One way to promote the development of these zones would be to for the signatories of one zone -- say, NAFTA -- to enter into trade or other negotations with the signatories to another zone on a zone - to - zone basis. This might help balance the bias in intra-zonal relationships where the zone was originally established in recognition (whether or not valid 8-)# of common interests, but the focus of relationships within the zone is normally on individual, national interests. The process of negotiation with another organization provides broadnes the focus to include identifying and pursuing interests as common interests, and if the zone is originally perceieved by its residents as an arena for organized conflict with their neighboring countries, expansion of its role in multi-lateral economic negotiations may help recast it as the resident's common front in the hostile international environment. >> that are "bound" by a centralized global system of standards > am I right that these standards should have the status of > international law? >> and values If the deconstruction of large nation-states is not feasible, the next best alternative may be construction of entities with enough size to act as counterbalances, and in sufficient numbers to avoid polarization into a few large, mutually antagonistic group. An example that comes to mind is the success of Mobutu in Zaire in the 1960's and 1970's (and it must be noted that none of his successes, individually or in aggregate, apologize, excuse, or compensate for the devastation that has accompanied his struggle to remain in power despite the wishes of the majority of Zairian people) in avoiding the 'tribal conflict' that was a constant problem in many of the newly independent African states of the time. And a big part of the success was due to the fact that no single or small group of Zairian tribes had sufficient numbers to challenge to represent a significant independent political force on the national scene. In terms of praxis, since this approach also implies that such organizations as NAFTA or the EC should be deepened and democratrized rather than broadened, it may be possible to work toward this goal in coalition with already - active opponents to the expansion of the membership of these systems. Using NAFTA to develop inter-zonal relationships with CACM / CARICOM, the Andean Pact, and Mercosur is also a bulwark against efforts to incorporate the memberships of these groups into NAFTA. And the reduction of the democracy deficit of these regional organizations also seems to be an immediate strategy we can pursue in order to promote the development of democratic governance institutions at the global level (whether or not we see these governance institutions as forming a coherent system). Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From rkmoore@iol.ie Fri Aug 2 06:35:43 1996 Fri, 2 Aug 1996 13:34:53 +0100 (BST) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 13:34:53 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: the world party 7/30/96, chris chase-dunn wrote: >...in this regard things are somewhat worse than wagar imagines. because he >accepts the position that world wars occur during Kondratief downswings >he thinks the likely time for the next one is 2044. unfortunately >goldstein has shown that world wars are most likely to occur at the end >of k-wave upswings. that would be some time in the 2020s. To ignore all the uniquely new realities of the modern world, and depend on "k-wave upswings" for predictions, makes no more sense than reading tea leaves. Allow me to re-iterate A Austin's comment in this regard... 7/31/96, Andrew W. Austin wrote: > ...I think much of what goes on this channel suffers from a >very intellectually bounded view of the world, one where some very broad >concepts and theories reduce the ability to think about the world to very >narrow eschatologies. ...illegitimate teleologies with all >the trappings of a Nostradamus. chris chase-dunn continues: >...given the high probability of nuclear annihilation, that means looking >hard at possible substitutes for the world state. one possibility, though >it may not be much more likely than a world state, is a renewed US >hegemony. yes folks. that is what i said. this is a hard conclusion >for someone who spent his youth opposing US imperialism. talk me out of >it. What's this about "renewed" US hegemony? The U.S has global hegemony, has had it since 1945, and has it more totally now than ever before. The hegemony has been so pervasive that use of the nuclear arsenal hasn't even been necessary. But it's always there as a backup, in case any real threat arises to American power. As for a world state, that's exactly what we're getting, because that's what the U.S. elite wants. Having achieved military hegemony in 1945, they had strategic options as to how to exploit that in the post-war world. They could have opted for a classical U.S.-centric imperialist system -- an enlarged British Empire, if you will. But they chose not to, partly because (I imagine) it would have been difficult to manage PR-wise, partly because it would have created the seeds of global rebellion, and partly because such empires are problematic to manage and maintain. But they weren't going to fritter away their advantage either. They did decide to maintain U.S. military hegemony, manufacturing the "Soviet threat" as an excuse for the necessary expenditures. But in the economic realm, they had more subtle designs for their new world order than an unwieldy U.S.-centric trading empire. What they chose instead was to dismantle the trappings of classical European imperialism, create lots of little fledgling "independent" nations, and thereby create a "level playing field" for global capitalism. To use a metaphor from American mythology, you might say capitalism graduated from a Wild West stage of existence, and that the time had come to urbanize the Western Frontier -- banks and marshalls instead of shoot-em-up anarchy. What we see in the current globalist initiative (GATT and all that) is the codification of what has been an ad-hoc set of U.S.-sponsored arrangements for this new world order. This is the world government we're heading for, and it has no trappings of democracy, and it won't be needing core-power warfare -- k-waves or tea-leaves notwithstanding. The problem with cycle-based theories is that they can't anticipate the impact of change-of-state paradigm shifts. IMHO, rkm From TBOS@socsci.ss.emory.edu Mon Aug 5 14:42:01 1996 5 Aug 96 16:44:16 EST5edt From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Emory University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 16:43:48 EST5EDT Subject: world-system meeting I would like to initiate some discussion over what topics people think global research should focus on in the near future. At the upcoming American Sociological Assoc. meetings in New York, discussing research topics is a main purpose of the business meeting of the world-system section as it prepares sessions for the subsequent year [The world-system section holds its business meeting on Sat. , Aug. 17, 3:30-4:30 pm]. Although an important and sometimes hotly contested subject, we rarely have time at the business meeting to discuss the merits of different topics or to entertain suggestions from people who could not attend the meetings. Also, the decision of what topics and organizers to select for sessions must be sent to the ASA in a scant few weeks after the meeting, with no time for further input. Even for non-ASA members and non-sociologists, the session topics are important as they define in some part what current research is considered important and help frame the direction of future research. Let me start the discussion with my own suggestion, about which I welcome comments and alternatives. I find the work of John Meyer and associates on the international organizations that constitute a "world polity" to be some of the most interesting new research developments in recent times. This includes research on long term trends in the global pattern of international nongovernmental organizations, international women's rights organizations, environmental organizations, and so on. While I think of this research as a needed extension of world-system theory into global institutional and cultural fields, the proponents of "world polity" research have not much engaged world-system theory or participated in PEWS sessions. I would like to see a session on "world polity" research, with criticisms and discussion on its relation to the broader field of world-system theory. From wwagar@binghamton.edu Mon Aug 5 15:20:50 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 13:06:29 -0400 (EDT) To: Christian Subject: Re: the world party In-Reply-To: <313A16DB.44DB@tidepool.com> Dear Christian, Yes, that is exactly the question. How? And yes, there is no hint in 1996 of anything like a World Party forming anywhere. But you can't leap from this observation to the conclusion that "it ain't gonna happen." The more people who believe that the best way to confront the challenge of a proliferating globalizing capitalism aided and abetted by the nation-state system is to build a global political formation to oppose that system, the more likely it is that a nucleus of activists here or there will begin to build one--or several. We have to start with some kind of rough consensus about what must be done. Never mind the odds. They're pretty low. So what? We don't have the option of moving to Mars. You play with the hand you've been dealt. What comes first is a climate of expectation for authentically antisystemic global political action. The more people who share that expectation, the more likelihood it can provoke serious attempts to move from theory to praxis. In short, you gotta believe! Warren From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Mon Aug 5 15:47:03 1996 Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 17:46:42 -0400 (EDT) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: Terry Boswell Subject: Re: world-system meeting In-Reply-To: <9B3D881472@ssmain.ss.emory.edu> Gunder Frank responds: My answer to Terry is obvious: To continue/extend/deepen the "discussion" between Terry and me that began at ISA San Diego, which focuses on the implications for REstudying the "modern world-system" since 1500 from the longer perspective of the WORLD economny/system [without a hyphen!] already long before that. In a word, I suggest that shifts the focus AWAY from Europe, to various parts of Asia, where it belongs! Only incidentally, it also calls into question the "exceptionality" and "development" of "capitalism" in Europe AND the whole historical basis of the social "theory" [i would say Eurocentric IDEOLOGY] of Marx, Weber, Polanyi, Braudel, Wallerstein -- not to mention Boswell!! cheers gunder frank who also asks if ther is any support for this "discussion" out there! On Mon, 5 Aug 1996, Terry Boswell wrote: > I would like to initiate some discussion over what topics people > think global research should focus on in the near future. At the > upcoming American Sociological Assoc. meetings in New York, > discussing research topics is a main purpose of the business meeting > of the world-system section as it prepares sessions for the > subsequent year [The world-system section holds its business > meeting on Sat. , Aug. 17, 3:30-4:30 pm]. Although an important and > sometimes hotly contested subject, we rarely have time at the > business meeting to discuss the merits of different topics or to > entertain suggestions from people who could not attend the meetings. > Also, the decision of what topics and organizers to select for > sessions must be sent to the ASA in a scant few weeks after the > meeting, with no time for further input. Even for non-ASA members > and non-sociologists, the session topics are important as they define > in some part what current research is considered important and help > frame the direction of future research. > > Let me start the discussion with my own suggestion, > about which I welcome comments and alternatives. I find the work of > John Meyer and associates on the international organizations > that constitute a "world polity" to be some of the most interesting > new research developments in recent times. This includes research on > long term trends in the global pattern of international > nongovernmental organizations, international women's rights > organizations, environmental organizations, and so on. While I think > of this research as a needed extension of world-system theory into > global institutional and cultural fields, the proponents of > "world polity" research have not much engaged world-system theory or > participated in PEWS sessions. I would like to see a session on > "world polity" research, with criticisms and discussion on its > relation to the broader field of world-system theory. > > From albert@U.Arizona.EDU Mon Aug 5 16:30:49 1996 Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 15:31:04 -0700 (MST) From: Albert J Bergesen To: Terry Boswell Subject: Re: world-system meeting In-Reply-To: <9B3D881472@ssmain.ss.emory.edu> Terry--John Meyer isn't all that separte from "world system" theory, since Bergesen, Chase Dunn, et. al. all come from the same Stanford roots, but it is true that world polity ideas have not been as prominent on the Pews billboard of recent. So, yes, featuring some more is fine. Mostly it is a descriptive enterprise so "engaging" is a little tricky. You will get a, "yes there is of course core-periphery division of labor, but our interest here, though, is in world polity formation". Which is fine. So many the world system scholars so many the approaches. I might put it a little more like "evaluating evidence for world polity formation" or something like that. Let folks do their thing, since, learning can and should go both ways. Second, as to Gunder's proposal: subsuming the-euro-world-system into the Asian-centered-world-historical-system thats interesting/important too. I would only add that I am presently organizing a special session for the Toronto meetings that deals with one aspect of Gunder's approach: does the new ideas of an Asian centered system pull the rug out from under conventional social thought from Marx to Weber to Braudel/Wallerstein? So some of this is already covered for the 1997 meetings. al Albert Bergesen Department of Sociology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Phone: 520-621-3303 Fax: 520-621-9875 email: albert@u.arizona.edu From g.connell@hum.gu.edu.au Mon Aug 5 21:19:40 1996 Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 13:30:07 +1000 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: g.connell@hum.gu.edu.au (Glen Connell) Subject: re:global company WSN, I am new to this list and am currently 'finding my ground'. I'm wondering if anyone can help me with (or wants to initiate discussion about) some work I am doing on the 'global company'. My general argument is that transnational corporate culture (the company's self description/publicity/philosophy) is related to, but not congruent with behaviour and that culture is a misdirected method to simplify the complex and at times nasty methods of actual operation. Accordingly the concept of the global company is problematised in that cultural explanations for globality are unreal...Exploitation is becoming global and can be viewed on a global scale but, in essence, the globality of a company ( as they would define it) is questionable. I would much appreciate any thoughts on the matter as well as any correspondence with others regarding the transnational Asea Brown Boveri. Thank you very much. Glen Connell, Griffith University Australia. From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Tue Aug 6 01:07:37 1996 6 Aug 96 14:03:17 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 14:02:56 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: the world party It's my answer to Chris Chase-Dunn: >From: chris chase-dunn : >Nikolai Rosov (sorry Chris, my name is RoZov) >suggests: > > Why not to discuss multi-polar partnership with monopoly for legitime >military operations based on accepting global legal standards? I would >not even argue against the leading role of US in this partnership, but >such political, military, economic forces of EU, Japan, Russia, China, >India, Brasilia, South Africa, maybe Turkey, Egypt, and Iran (as leaders >of correspondent geopolitical regions) should be necessarely presented >in this partnership. > >ok. lets call it a multipolar partnership, not a world state. fine. how >can we make this happen? There are two main sides here: a) a principal strategy that must be historically and/or theoretically based, and b) organizational tactics based on given conjuncture of political-social forces, probable finance resources, already existing organizations, current ideological patterns and even personal relations I will discuss here only the primary sketch of the point (a) The results of comparative analysis of success-nonsuccess of national political-economic reforms in France and Russia (XVIII-XX) made by one Russian historian showed the following necessary options: 1) to split ruling elite that benefits from existing situation, and to get support from 'new' part of ruling elit which hopes to ameliorate its position by reform and winning over 'old' elit 2) to block up for active reactionary policy of 'old' elit in initial period 3) to have new popular ideology and political leader(s) that manage to show people the advantages of reform for their life and starvings, to manage to interpret all misfortunes as effects of 'old evil' that should be eliminated by the reform, 4) to organize adequate channels of information and political action 5) to begin to solve crucial problems (distribution of resourses, power, etc) only after gaining so large political and public support that main state institutions and military forces take the side of reform in order not to occur in the camp of losers Extrapolation of this strategy from national to global level seems to me possible if we make the following replacements: 'old elit' - those TNC, with supporting them governmental, finance institutions of the core and international organizations that mostly win from inequality, exploitation, pollutive industries, arms races and production, wars, etc 'new elit' - those TNC (with their supporting political and financial forces!) that can win from legal narrowing of frames of action for 'old elit'; new elit is more interested in appearing of wide middle class (as mass consumers) in poor countries, in spread of ecological, medicine, educaive, etc. industry, in conversion of arms production 'new popular ideology' - here I believe only in national (not world-wide!) versions. Each new national ideology should show how this given nation (US or Russia, or UK, or Japan) win from new legal international order. At the same time all these national ideologies must be mutually compatible on the base of some hidden but theoretically based global standards and values (see the msg of Chris Robinson and my answer to him) 'new popular leader' - here, friends, I cannot imagine anything better then to work on new candidates of national leaders (Presidents, congressmen, deputates, etc.) that will make new global legal order and correspondent nat.ideology a center of their political programs, It is not also impossible to work with current national leaders, remember how Aurelio Peccei with his Club of Roma managed to work so successfully with leaders of Austria, Sweden and other European countries on ecological issues; 'channels of information and political action': Internet seems to efficient mainly for initial work of intellectuals sitting in universities: program making, planning and coordination. Internet and academic work can and should be used also for 'public academic monitoring of national policies and international institutions'. This issue I plan to discuss in my answer to Bruce McFarling concerning 'how to change IMF'. At the same time, the work with electorate requires TV and newspapers that means necessity of strategic alliance with correspondent 'new' financial and political forces standing behind these mass-media means 'main state institutions'(on national level) - governments, parlaments, international institutions (such as EU, NAFTA, WTO, int. courts - on global level) 'military forces' - mainly NATO and US forces, but interests, proportions and trends of growth of national forces of nuclear countries (f.e. China) must be also taken into account So in most fortunate scenario I expect not less than 5-10 years of mere propaganda, coalition-making, network-making and work in elections. Only after having 'new' leaders in majority of core states (f.e. in B-7) (as presidents or rather srong and representative opposition) it will be possible to realize new legal standards. One hidden but most significant part of these new agreements will be a new division of the world and here I follow the brilliant idea of Bruce concerning non-overlapping of fields of interst between main core powers. Once again, dear Chris and Warren and other left-oriented wsn-ers, any 'antisystemic' ideology or movement only rallies (fastens) the existing 'system' (and ALL elit as its head). To split the system, to split the global elit, i.e. to get in our side a vast coalition including 'systemic' political and financial forces - this is the only way to more humanistic future! best regards, Nikolai Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Tue Aug 6 02:29:50 1996 Date: Mon, 05 Aug 96 23:31:48 CDT From: U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Subject: states/trade/accumulation:precapitalist variable constant To: World Systems Network "By 1100, China had many of the features associated with industrial society."- Rand McNally Historical Atlas. "Commercial taxes bring in millions. Why tax the people?"-Gaozong, 1127-62 "Perhaps [fifteenth-century] China did not really want to expand."-Immanuel Wallerstein, 1976. In the year 200 the pits of military dictatorship were reached in China and the Roman Empire. The power behind the crumbling throne of the Han Dynasty was Cao Cao, possibly the greatest military genius in Chinese history, whose martial exploits were all at the expense of other Chinese, including the mass of the people. Cao Cao's rise to power commenced with the suppression of the revolutionary peasant war of the Yellow Turbans (184-194). Roman Emperor at the same time was Septimius Severus, whose philosophy of government was basically similar to that of the Chinese warlord: "Reward the army; despise all others." Severus waged considerable war against other Roman armies, those of Pescennius Niger (193-4) and Clodius Albinus (195-6). Though he did make a spectacular raid into the Parthian Empire, then on its last legs, in which he captured the capital, Ctesiphon-on-Tigris, enslaving 100,000. It is probable that he knew little and cared less about the contribution of the Silk Route from China to the wealth of Mesopotamia and Syria. As far as is recorded, he was exclusively preoccupied with glory, loot, plunder, conquest for its own sake, and perhaps a touch of emulation of Alexander The Great (like Trajan before him). Contemporaries cared even less. It was held against Severus that he had beseiged the city of Hatra twice, and expensively failed on both occasions. Hatra was not to fall into Roman hands until the reign of Severus Alexander (222-35), last ruler of the Severan house. Septimius Severus should have been as aware as anyone could have been where the wealth of Syria, exemplified by the mercantile classes of city-states like Palmyra, was coming from. Born in Leptis Magna in Roman Africa, Severus had seved in Syria, where one third of the Roman army was stationed, and was married to a Syrian princess. What's more, he'd had firsthand experience of the political muscle of the mercantile and industrial communities of Syria when the various cities chose up sides in the civil war between him and Pescennius Niger. Antioch, for example, supported his enemy, for which reason he made an example of it. On the other hand, favoured Syrian mercantile elements proudly perpetuated his memory in adopting the *praenomen* Septimius, as in Septimius Oedenathus, the Palmyrene senator whose imperial claim was "inherited" by his widow, Zanab (Zenobia), in the name of his son, Vabalathus (270-2). It was under Severus that Eastern, specifically Syrian, religions, including Christianity, whose first and foremost bastion in the Near East was Antioch, first became fashionable in the Latin West, notably Africa. Roman Africa was precisely the beneficiary of Severus' loot and his family fortune by marriage, especially his hometown of Leptis Magna. But Carthage also prospered, and Carthage, a city the size of Antioch but a place whose wealth was that of rentiers and landlords, was the Los Angeles of the Roman Empire. By 200, it was producing the leading literary figures, playwrights, poets, novelists, and even jurisconsults of the Latin world. One of the greatest of these literary figures was the Christian writer, Tertullian. He was the probable author of one of the greatest pieces of propaganda ever written, The Passion of Sts Perpetua and Felicitas, about the trials and executions of seven Christians in 202. (The pamphlet pulls out every stop of class, race, and erotic symbolism a Christian writer could get away with.) More respectably, at this time, the women of the Severan house, Julia Domna and Julia Maesa, subsidized the cult of the sun god of Emesa, Syria, whose priest was the teenage emperor "Elagabalus." As we know the subsequent histories, we are here on overconfidently familiar ground, ie, what *really* motivated historical agents in the fourth century. That is, mass-salvation religions. By the mid-third century, Africa rivalled only Egypt in mass conversion to Christianity, reflecting both the sophisti- cation of the intellectuals and the depth of misery of the enserfed peasantry. At the other end of the Eurasian landmass, Cao Cao found it advisable, before the year 200, to make provision for his Buddhist soldiers to attend services and perform ablutions. Cao Cao controlled the North China plain, which gave him, in turn, control of the Silk Route into Inner Asia as far as the Stone Pillar, the oasis of Kucha. From Northwest China he drew the horse-nomad cavalry, especially the mailed archers, who made him invincible on the plains; the Chinese had just invented the stirrup, in the second century. Mahayana Buddhism had come to China from Inner Asia. Almost the last accomplishment of the expiring Han Dynasty had been the decisive defeat of the Northern Xiongnu, in alliance with the Southern Xiongnu. Losers, in the North China plain, were sent West, in the direction of Europe. Whether the Northern Xiongnu became the Huns of Europe is still controversial. (The Ruan-ruan, or Juan-juan, were expelled from North China in 551, then appeared in the Balkans as the Avars a few decades later.) Cao Cao and Septimius Severus alike imposed harsh, brutal social discipline. Legal codes were revised in both empires. Jurisprudential studies flourished. We know that the Silk Route had great importance, even riveting importance, to the empires at either end, but we do not know how this importance was subjectively apprehended by those who made policy, even when the identity of those who made policy was utterly clear. Commerce, also, was one thing, production another. The Chinese empire had asserted claims to state interven- tion in the economy as early as the Discourses on Salt and Iron, a debate on state monopolies said to have taken place around 110 BC. Nothing comparable existed in the West until the Late Empire, when Diocletian had tried and failed to regulate prices (303), then Constantine imposed the *chrysargyron*, a tax on the commercial and service personnel of the cities of the East (where those of the West were collapsing into depopulation from epidemic disease). In certain cases of strategic need and dire labour shortage, such as the guilds of *naviculari* charged with the provisioning of the capitals, Rome and Constantinople, hereditary service obligations were imposed. And in 374, Valentinian I reduced to *coloni* the former free peasants of the Western Empire; but this was under conditions of a taxpayer strike, already far advanced. We shall find examples of such strikes, where states guarantee exploitation, but fail to collect taxes toward their very survival as states from the very classes constituting the intended beneficiaries of these guarantees, on numerous occasions. Let's consider the possible roles of the precapitalist state as guarantor of exploitation and as accumulator or facilitator of accumulation. 1. The state guarantees exploitation concomitant with its definitional monopoly of the means of violence in a given territory. (All definitions of the State, left, right, Weberian, agree on this criterion of stateness.) It in principle refrains from regulation, control, and regimentation of accumulative activities, which are the sole and exclusive province of owners of the means of production as private property. This is the ideological norm under *capitalism*, and is perhaps the definining social characteristic of the capitalist class qua class; ie, its bifurcation into entrepreneurial and or even versus politico-military specialists. Be it noted that it remains the same class, with labour divided and career-lines bifurcated; nothing prevents, much encourages, marriages and even sibling relations across the public-sector/private-sector line. Recall the brothers Rockefeller. In precapitalist societies (social formations, or whatever the sociogibber- ish or Marxogibberish term of your choice, this is rare. The reason is, as stated in previous posts to this list, and by others of you who would not like to think of yourselves as agreeing with me, that the "social relations of production" take the predominant form of market-unmediated forced labour. The exploiter is also a wielder of the means of violence, having served in the military in a position of command, elsewise as a magistrate of state. Typically, life and property are wagered in political struggles ranging rival cliques of soldiers and magistrates against each other for supreme power (with or without some nominally sacrosanct figurehead's figleaf- provision function). Cases are nevertheless known of classes or class fractions which made sincere efforts to live in peace and quiet, eschewing politics, and enjoying, if possible increasing, their fortunes. a. In the late stages of the Roman Republic, Cicero castigated slaveowning landlords of this type as "fishponders," ie, whiling away their cultivated and leisurely existence in beholding the beauty of captive fish. (Chinese landlords also loved their fishponds.) Cicero's point was, however, that the winner in the struggle for power would thus acquire a de facto licence to kill them all, with confiscation of property. In a proscription by Antony, in 43 BC, every provision was made to allow Cicero to escape, but as a man of theory, he dithered, procrastinated, and got confused, leaving the triumvirs no choice but to behead him. Under the principate, the senate was a literal millionaire's club, with a fortune worth one million sesterces required for entry; the usual was much greater. Combined impotent gossipmongering of the senators, with or without Stoical philosophical tinge, with paranoia not unmixed with greed on the part of the emperors ensured executions and confiscations at irregular intervals. Some emperors, notably Domitian (not the Antichrist for nothing) were worse than others, of course; these were not merely not deified but hit with *damnatio memoriae*, tantamount to getting expunged from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia without hope of Rehabilitation. Septimius Severus was charged with actually culling the Senate regularly for no political reason at all; and this may have some truth to it, apart from those actually "guilty" of supporting rival generals. b. In Early Medieval China of the Six (Southern) Dynasties, as mentioned in a post I sent last week, the Great Families held titles to great offices of state, but refused to perform any duties attendant thereto. Their leisured and highly cultivated existence emphasized, apart from metaphysical specula- tion, "pure conversation," (one is reminded of Sidonius Apollinaris and his friends in Burgundian-occupied Gaul indulging in versification and polite repartee whilst contemplating bemusedly the butterfat-smeared tribal warriors wandering around upholding Law and Order) as well as "self-so," the admiration for the high degree of intrapschic well-grooming one's own Self has attained. The flaw in the ointment, pardon the expression, was the social resentments of the officer class. Great Families regarded "a mere military man" unfit to marry their daughters. When military coups occurred, under slogans issued by warlords to reform the state, there would transpire a wave of executions of refined aristocrats on trumped-up charges; but nothing so drastic as to amount to changing the system would occur. In between times, the officer class guaranteed exploitation (by for example suppressing the Daoist pirate rebel Sun En and his psychedelically drugged "demon soldiers" in 399). The warrior-aristocrats of Northwest China, who survived as the ruling class under the Tang, were the more typical case. These were lance-knights who wore plate armour (not adopted in Europe till centuries later). It must be carefully stressed, due to vestigial Eurocentrism, that these were soldiers in a regular army, not feudal warriors. *** Feudalism is a hierarchical polity wherein each member of the hierarchy accumulates the means of violence on the spot and in person. Power wielded at any given level of the hierarchy is a function of complex mixtures of loyalties and coercive abilities partly expressions of these loyalties. It is entirely possible that the units of a feudal polity are themselves *states*. Eg, in ancient Mesopotamia, circa 1750 BC, "Twenty kings follow the Man of Babylon; fifteen kings follow the Man of Isin; fifteen kings follow the Man of Yamhad...." To stretch the definition a bit, the entire Earth comprises a single feudal polity, the units whereof are "sovereign states," each one of these swearing vassalage to the single Superpower, and some vassals notably more Turbulent than others. 2. The state simultaneously guarantees exploitation *and* promotes accumulation based on resources it owns outright or grants on conditions to direct producers. The Tang state in China (618-907) made an effort, at least partly successful for a century, to grant peasants allotments for life, in return for which they owed military service. This system collapsed, due to contradiction between the state's obligation to protect the peasants' holdings from absorbtion in Great Estates and its obligation to guarantee the owners of Great Estates the sanctity of their private property. As the capacity of the state to make its economic-regulatory prerogatives stick disintegrated under growing complexity of the economy (beyond knowledge or capacity of officials to regulate it) and curtailment of land revenues from the period of military coups and civil wars, 755-763, onward, the state was compelled to shift its revenue collection base to commercial taxes and the proceeds of expropriating the Buddhist Church. The foregoing represents the closest one finds in empirically observable social reality to so-called Oriental Despotism. The latter is a Utopia which cannot exist. 3. The state guarantees exploitation, but cannot extract a share of the surplus from the private exploiters. This is the situation of taxation strike, already mentioned. It results or eventuates from the possession in the hands of the state of means of violence sufficient to stifle the direct producers but inadequate to intimidate the private owners, usually landlords, commanding private retainers, thugs, bullyboys, and whatever else slapdash ad hoc means of violence which would make sufficient trouble for the magistrate on duty, in terms of personnel reports, that the taxes owed are not paid. Or, the state is hard-up for really nasty means of repression. The fiscal crisis may derive from demographic factors (depopulation) or curtailment of the professional military for social-political reasons. The crisis may be circumvented by ingenuity in finding alternative sources of revenue, or it may not be surmounted at all. a. The Western Roman Empire: Pre-Roman Gaul was the abode of Fierce and Warlike Tribes. According to A. Momigliano, Ancient Wisdom, 1971, this was due to slave-raiding conducted since the late eighth century BC from the Greek colony of Massilia. Analogies with the effects of European slave-trading upon the societies of Africa were exact, by implication. The Greeks of Massilia shunned contact with the Celts of the interior, and only ventured inland when their services were retained by Rome as intelligence agents, according to Momigliano. The expansion of urban life and landed estates producing for the urban market then failed to survive the epidemics of smallpox and measles of the late second and third centuries. Gaul became a "demographic sink," a region of decimated population separated by a political frontier from peoples less exposed to epidemic diseases due to hot-dry or cold climates; or else, by the very thinness of human habitation inhibiting contagion. With the decline of population and the consequent paucity of legally free and personally mobile tough tribals ready and willing to volunteer for the legions or auxiliaries, excepting the Albanian-speakers in Illyria, there remained only the Germans, across the frontier, ready and willing to fill the vacancies. With the huge tracts of *agres vacantes*, it became economic for landowners to buy up huge tracts of land for derisory sums, or to receive holdings in commendation in return for protection from taxation and conscription. Those protected were lost to the state finances. So were the landlords themselves. The latter could readily discern the utter incapacity of the state to protect property against *bagaudae* in Gaul and Spain, *circumcelliones* in Roman Africa (complicated by religious schism with a strong class component). The labour-short holdings, in any case unprofitable unless of truly immense extent and fully protected against the direct producers, were actually rendered more profitable by going shares with Goths, Vandals, Burgundi, or Suevi. Back to Fierce and Warlike Tribes, the Wild West, and Where We Came In. b. The Tang dynasty (618-907) was reduced to hapless puppet status by the great peasant war associated with the name of Huang Zhao, not the last salt- smuggler to lead the Broad Masses to victory over the empire. From 865 to 880, his armies pillaged the great cities, from Chang'an [=Eternally Secure] and Loyang in the north to Guangzhou [Canton] in the south; foreign merchant communities in the latter city were exterminated. According to one atrocity story, when loyalist troops drove Huang Zhao's forces out of Chang'an, the rebel swore a "bloodbath," then re-liberated the officially liberated city, or vestiges of it, from its current liberators, leaving not much re-liberated thereafter. The capture and execution of Huang Zhao helped not at all, as warlord troops were undistinguishable in manners from rebels. Units of official troops had been recruited from surrendered rebels, analogous to the *chieu hoi* ["open arms"] program in the Vietnam War, US phase. One of these units was commanded by a peasant-born general, Zhu Wen. In 907, the latter snuffed the Tang, proclaiming the Later Liang. Only four peasant-born men turned this trick of whom the last was Mao Zedong; Zhu Wen was the second. (Ommitting, for this count, Li Zicheng, who eliminated the Ming in 1644 only to lose to an alliance between the imperial commander on the Manchu front and the Manchu.) The revolution which exterminated the knightly class in China has no European parallel. As with the entire issue of the relative paucity of victory in peasant war by the peasants outside China and Vietnam, this is one of the great unasked questions of history. In the Jacqueries, the English Peasant War, the German Peasant War, the peasants were slaughtered by their armoured Betters like rabbits. Even the Hussites, who fought the flower of German chivalry with the Chalice in one hand and the Blade in the other found, after fighting from 1419 to 1433, that there were just too damned many Germans. In China, the knightly class was broken. Its mores were stigmatized as of foreign origin (the Sui, 581-618, were half-Mongol; the Tang, 618-907, were half-Turkish); sexually depraved (Empress Wu actually ruled as Son of Heaven in her own name, 690-705. Deposed by reason of alleged senile dementia, she died of officially characterized natural causes a few months later. Her daughter-in-law, Empress Wei, inherited most of her power but none of her brains; was killed in a coup in 710 in which the grandiose Xuanzong seized power. He was accused of being led to his doom by the beautiful Lady Yang, who was strangled, July 16, 756); otherwise-indecent (women rode horses as enthusiastically as men, playing polo, which had been imported from Persia); and prey to superstition, both foreign (Buddhism) and domestic (Daoism, where the Tang claimed descent from Laozi, who was either imaginary or a pseudonym). The tenth century, which saw the final crushing of the aristocracy, was by no accident the precise time of the origins of Chinese footbinding. The new ruling class was to be resolutely civilian; its males typically landlords, merchants, and deskbound officials; its women confined, in the most literal sense thanks to crippling, to monotonous women's work, above all, textile- making by labour-intensive methods. The crippling was also mental. In Ancient and Early Medieval China, female writers had been, if not numerous, at least not unknown. This now changed; and the occasional woman would rebel against fatherly attempts to teach her poetry composition by insisting that suchlike literary activities were unwomanly. (See Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 1993.) Marriage customs changed, with dowry replacing bridewealth. The reconsolidated political regime, the Song (960-1279), having come to power after a long succession of army revolts (similar to those of the Byzantine Empire, except the boots were yellow, not purple), disdained militarism and abhorred the cavalry, especially. This was poitical and ideological animus: The cavalry was the hallmark of the former ruling class. As it happened, the Song state was faced with rival Great Powers which, furthermore, cut it off from access to horse-grazing areas and horse-exporting tribes. The radical prime minister Wang Anshi remedied this, to some extent, with the creation of a Tea and Horse Administration, trading one for the other at remote borders. But mainly, the Song relied upon conscript infantry against the horsy Liao Empire (Khitans) and Western Xia or Xixia (Tanguts), likewise mounted. The Song lost nearly every war fought, paying both enemy Great Powers a half million rolls of silk annually plus tons of silver bullion in tribute. The army declined in efficacy as it quadrupled in size. Conscripts were replaced by mercenaries, recruited from, and deserting to, bandits. The Song became more preoccupied with internal security the less capable it became of defending the country, turning as a last resort to gunpowder and firearms. The interventionist program of Wang Anshi, the New Policies, were discred- ited by the defeat and captivity of emperor Huizong in 1126 at the hands of new invaders, the Jin dynasty of Ruzhen (Jurchen) Tatars from present-day Manchuria. The new border was in exactly the same place as the one separating the Eastern Jin of South China from the Former Qin of North China before the Battle of the Fei River, 383: The wet-rice areas of the Huai and Yangzi valleys are in effect seas of mud, which impedes cavalry. In other ways, too, history repeated itself. From 1127 onward, without the resources of North China, the regime was helpless to collect land taxes from the vast serf-cultivated estates of the Yangzi valley; concealment of unregistered serfs and tenants was standard practice. The Song henceforth financed the state from commercial taxes, as did the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) which succeeded them. To protect the trade routes, the Song created a navy which dominated the Indian Ocean. The Mongol Yuan went beyond this, attempting huge seaborne invasions of Java, Japan, and elsewhere: without exception, expensive disasters. In the last gasp of the Southern Song, the Yangzi Valley landlords went on tax strike. Khubilai Khan was already ruler of North China, conquered by the Mongols in 1234; and he had already proclaimed the new regime, the Yuan (Origin). In 1259, the Mongols conquered the southwestern kingdom of Da Li, in present-day Yunnan, outflanking the Southern Song; then they constructed a navy, using Chinese and Korean engineers, to crack the Yangzi defenses. (The decisive battle was fought at the Siege of Xiangyang, 1269-1271, which the Mongols won by means of two immense cannon, cast by Arab engineers; the gun- powder, of course, had been a Chinese invention.) Now, in 1263, land reform for defense of the country was proposed by Jia Sidao [Chia Ssu-tao], 1213- 1275. The reforms "met bitter opposition in the central government and in the Council of State, in which representatives of the big landowners sat. Chia Ssu-tao's plan was to limit properties to 500 *mu* (about 27 hectares) and to buy with state funds a third of the surplus, in order to establish 'public lands' (*guantian*, *kuan-t'ien*), the income from which would be allocated to military expenditure. The reforms were partially applied from 1263 until the death of Chia Ssu-tao. By the end of the dynasty [1279] 20 percent of the lower Yangtze area was to have been converted into 'public lands'. The Mongols took possession of these estates and either handed them over to princes of the khan's family or kept the income from them to pay for the maintenance of their garrisons." (Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civ- ilization, Second Ed, 1996, pp 315-6) Surely the ferocious Mongols could squeeze money out of this class. They could not. Khubilai Khan almost tried. By 1390 he was broke. Scandals involving foreign and Tibetan ministers were undermining political stability. Military disaster abroad had ruined the Mongol myth of invincibility, not to mention costing several fortunes over. A census had reported possibly thirty million Chinese too few. In 1293, accordingly, the Agricultural Office of the central government, in what is now Beijing, cloned itself into a special field office, to investigate fraudulent nonregistration of tenant-serfs and nonpayment of arrears in taxes. (The cloning of a field office was a typical Mongol Yuan device for emergency trouble-shooting.) In 1294, Khubilai Khan died; this has ever since been attributed to the combined effects of alcoholism and obesity. (Rossabi, Khubilai Khan, 1988) In 1295, his successor, emperor Temur (1294-1308), ordered the Agricultural Office field unit disbanded as a waste of the taxpayers' money, since 'viola- tions of the law are few.' Nobody has hitherto questioned the official story that Khubilai died of natural causes. Until tonight. [Note: In the version of the story I sent out as an article, I suppressed that Paranoid supposition.] In the anti-foreign and anti-rich peasant war which broke out in 1351, with Bubonic Plague raging, the Yellow River changing its course yet again and flooding large parts of Shandong province, and the Mongol state falling apart along with the purchasing power of its paper currency (backed by anticipated sales of state-monopoly salt to consumers either starving or dead), the Yangzi landlords quite naturally refused to pay and even threatened to fight before they did so. (John W. Dardess, Conquerors and Confucians, 1973) The rebels' depredations aroused further hatred of the Mongols for failure to protect private property; the regime was accused of "lax" and "permissive" government. The emperor-pope of the rebels, one Hu Lin'er, had prior to the outbreak of revolt in 1351 sought to propagate a variant of the White Lotus syncretism, which mingled Central Asian Manichaeanism, the cult of the Buddhist Saviour Maitreya, and that of the Daoist Great Mother of the West (*xiwangmu*). Hu Lin'er's self-style was *xiaomingwang*, Lesser Prince of Radiance. His Song dynasty ruled part of North China from 1355 to 1359, while his peasant-born nominal subordinate Zhu Yuanzhang, set adrift in 1344 when his family all died of the Plague and since 1351 a deputy guerrilla commander, subsequently an autonomous warlord, was building his power base in the Yangzi valley. With Hu Lin'er beaten by Mongol mercenaries, and Zhu Yuanzhang's capture of Nanjing, in 1360, the man who wielded real power could not dispense with Hu Lin'er (by drowning, in 1367) due to the holy man's popularity with the troops. Even then, the ideological father of the Revolution's memory was perpetuated in the name chosen for the dynastic regime, *Ming*, Radiance. A foe of Moral Wickedness, Zhu Yuanzhang found it in commerce, trade, and the great cities, all now considerably diminished; whilst Moral Virtue was agricultural. As emperor Hongwu (Glorious Victory), 1368-98, he launched a reign of political terror possibly unsurpassed in relation to population in Chinese history; and the Yangzi valley was made to yield land tax. While private foreign trade, as opposed to trade disguised as political tribute, was illegal from 1370 to 1568 (as crooked governments deal with illegality). In state-conducted industry, such as manufacture of the coinage and salt-manufacture for the state monopoly, the Ming from the outset practiced principled Luddism. In each case, the most labour-intensive, lowest-productivity technique was used. (See Ray Huang, Taxation and Finance in Sixteenth Century China, 1973, for all the details you can handle.) Even so, the Ming navy, the world's only ocean-going force at the time, might have dominated the Indian Ocean had not Yongle, 1402-1424, not lost a War In Vietnam for reasons familiar to US readers (1407-1427). It took 74 years, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, for the leaders of the then-USSR to become convinced (1) that they could not produce up to international standards; and (2) that failure to produce up to international standards was a terrible failing. It was in 1511 that the Portuguese commander Albuquerque arrived in Malacca to say, in effect, "we're the international standards," which might have meant something to Serious People in the Northern Song dynasty (960-1126). But not to the Ming, only now starting to re-wallow in commercial-urban delights, if of a decidedly labour-intensive sort. Nor to the reactionary moralists, who opposed what would develop into the Ming Decadence from the first signs of moneymaking frenzy. International standards would be by definition Chinese, and anyway, as of 1500, the country had as high a per capita income as anywhere. Nobody ever wanted capitalism. A Medieval European religious fanatic, raving on a streetcorner, say, St Paul's Cross, London, that mere moneygrubbers would become the highest form of life, would have been canonized, or burnt for heresy, but never ignored as propounding something impossible if intolerable. Horror of money was the other side of Medieval European urban commerce and industry. The bourgeoisie might be thought of as the cathedrals' way of getting themselves built. There was nothing in Chinese culture fusing the Original Sin of Concupiscience with the Mortal Sin of Avarice in the figure of the Whore of Babylon. Capitalism, or precapitalist/protocapitalist development leading toward capitalism, was simply never part of the buisness of pre-capitalist states. In 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang had led a victorious social revolution dedicated to the establishment of a coercive dictatorship for the purpose of the extirpation of Moral Evil. (See John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy, 1983.) After many years of intensive study of the Mind of the Evildoer, as recorded in hundreds of pages of what are considered Paranoid ravings, which however were required texts in the schools at the time, he despaired of any fundamental solution: "No sooner do I have the bodies of one bunch of evildoers cleared away, than they bring in another bunch for execution! That's one thing about evildoers, they never learn!" Daniel A. Foss From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Aug 6 05:11:11 1996 Tue, 6 Aug 1996 12:10:23 +0100 (BST) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 12:10:23 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: U.S. Hegemony (?) 8/03/96, SS wrote: >quoting me: >> What's this about "renewed" US hegemony? The U.S has global >> hegemony, has had it since 1945, and has it more totally now than ever >> before. >If you have any evidence that the US has hegemony over China, please send >it to me.. Could it be the way China so thoroughly complied with US >demands that it live by our copyright rules? Or the way Chinese rulers >pay so much attention to US complaints about who they sell weapons to? >Yup, US nuclear power really has the Chinese quaking in their boots. China is indeed a singular case. I take it as obvious that the U.S. has the military _capability_ to destroy China: in a matter of hours the U.S. _could_ reduce China to rubble, destroying its military capacity, economic infrastructure, and who knows how many cities. But I take your point that my use of the word "hegemony" may have been questionable. I _thought_ hegemony meant "having predominant military power", whereas my dictionary says: "hegemony: The predominant influence of one nation over others" What you seem to be saying, then, is that since the Chinese don't cower under the potential U.S. threat, that actual hegemony isn't operative. As long as they believe U.S. power is a "paper tiger", then hegemony is only potential, not real. In this regard, I think the case of Iraq and the Desert Storm are relevant. Saddham thumbed his nose at U.S. power (military, diplomatic, and economic), much as you're saying the Chinese do, right up until Iraq got clobbered. The reality of U.S. hegemony over Iraq was proven to the world by force, even if Saddham continues to live in a fantasy world. In light of these considerations, I'd refine my claim as follows: The U.S. has the military power to assert hegemony wherever it chooses, but this potential hegemony is exercised/implemented to different degrees in different parts of the world, depending partly on diplomatic/public-opinion considerations. When a country's behavior crosses some unspecified line, in terms of acceptability to the U.S., then the reality of the hegemony comes under test. The U.S. has diplomatic, propagandistic, and economic leverage which it can bring to bear in this regard. An new test of U.S. hegemony is now coming to the fore in the cases of Iran and Libya. We have the new U.S. law attempting to influence affairs there by penalizing European corporate investments. We also have the announcement that the U.S. in considering a unilateral nuclear strike against an alleged Libyan chemical weapons facility. Given the earlier precedent of a unilateral U.S. air strike against Libya, carried out with impunity, it seems evident that the U.S. is now flexing its muscles in preparation for additional "hegemony implementation" in the region. In particular, there is an apparent desire to create an historic precedent: to break the "no nukes" taboo, thereby bringing the U.S. nuclear arsenal into the "kit bag" of credible enforcement tools. In the case of China, I believe the test of hegemony would come if and when China tries to take some international action that the U.S. finds unacceptable (not just objectionable), or if and when China's own nuclear capability threatens to become a credible deterrent to U.S. military action. In the recent confrontation between Taiwan and China, the U.S. demonstrated its willingness to "show the flag" in the region. I assume a large number of U.S. missles, especially on submarines, were programmed for Chinese targets during that crisis, and that the Chinese leaders had to act with such an assumption in mind. --- >I'd >also love to know why the US is organizing South Central Asia the way it >is. I didn't know that endless civil wars and religious fundamentalism >were ideals of US elites, but I may be mistaken.... "Destabilization" has been frequently a recognized goal of covert U.S. foreign policy. It is a way to break down the existing political/economic structures of a country or region, so that they can then be reconstructed in a way more favorable to elite interests. The whole destabilization of the former U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe is a case in point. In the case of the Mideast, we have a "perpetual destablization" scenario. With an over-armed Israel funded by the U.S., the covert funding of splinter terrorist groups, the encouragement and support of dinosaur regimes in the region, and other measures, the U.S. keeps the region in turmoil, and permits the oil-producing nations to be played off against one another. This is one way of exercising hegemony. >again, quoting me: >> To use a metaphor from American mythology, you might say capitalism >> graduated from a Wild West stage of existence, and that the time had come >> to urbanize the Western Frontier -- banks and marshalls instead of >> shoot-em-up anarchy... >Mostly true, but the economic world we are headed for is one where the US >is only one of many players, and it soon will not be the biggest player, >either. In the globalist economic world that's being created, it's not nations that are the real players -- instead it's multinational corporations. The U.S. economy can go up or down -- as can that of Japan, Germany, the UK, etc. -- and multinationals continue to rake in profits, regardless of where they're based. U.S. power and influence is no longer focused on promoting U.S. national interests and welfare, but instead is focused on supporting a global climate conducive to _general_ multinational interests. In effect, U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic power has been "captured" by the global capitalist elite, and harnessed (at U.S. taxpayer expense) to its ends. Yours, Richard ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - Wexford, Ireland Cyberlib: www | ftp --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Tue Aug 6 07:52:06 1996 6 Aug 96 20:48:16 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 20:48:02 -0600 (NSK) Subject: academic monitoring Dear Bruce, your question is quit legal > Some would argue that the system of multi-national economic >institutions including the IMF, World Bank, Trans-National Corporations, >and others *are* one of the principle problems. You are supposing that >they can be reformed to provide part of the solution. I can't address >your argument that they can be reformed in this way until I see it. >Virtually, >Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW >ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au I shared our dialogue with a friend who proved your position telling about deplorable results of IMF activity in Africa (f.e. Mosambique): deepening social gap, bloody conflicts, etc He also noted that IMF is just an instrument of the system and the agenda is how to change the system, not instrument. I agree. This point makes our discussion very close to the thread of Wagar/Chase-Dunn w-party. See my sketch of principal strategy 'how to change the system' in my recent answer to Chris. At the same time 'reforming an instrument'(say, IMF) can and should be , from my viewpoint, one of partial activities in this strategy. What I mean here, can be named "an academic monitoring of international institutions' policies". The main task is to organize a regular comparing of real results of these activities in various countries with proclaimed goals and philosophy of given institution. The left tradition is to make this work a crushing critique of 'an obstacle for progress'. According to the approach of 'splitting elites' and 'new-coalition-making,' that I keep trying to promote in wsn, I suggest to "pack up" this monitoring as a cooperation, an academic responsible aid (non-excluding definitely addressed criticisms). As far as I know experts of very high range (mainly from Harvard, London School of Economics, etc) do their best in IMF. It seems they know nothing of WST, at best they take it as one of many left post-Marxist approaches that can be neglected. This attitude should be changed after meeting with well-based theoretically and empirically analyses of their activities. Their work in IMF is temporal (not more than 3? years). They are all very anxious of their future career, their names, etc. That's why I think these folks cannot neglect such academic initiative, because without communication and cooperation the public effect of such monitoring can occur very troublesome for them personally. First it can be a project based on Internet (Web) resources, then direct contacts with IMF should be arranged, then publications in academic and later mass journals, TV, newspapers, etc should be planned. Evidently sooner or later the effect of 'instrumentality' will enter into play, i.e. TNC, intern. banks, main core powers (see the last msgs of R.Moore with whom I mostly agree) and other elites will try to stop or block up this academic control of their instrument of world dominance. But one may expect also that some of these forces find this activity profitable for their internal competition, for publicity and academic support of their policies, etc. Here I remind my old thesis that world capitalism is not a monolith and we must seek and use all possibilities for splitting the elite of world political-economic power. Surely, nor I, neither anybody can guarantee the efficiency of cooperation between officials of intern.institutions (say,IMF) and WS experts. But the general principles of conflict resolution (formulated by K.Boulding if I remember well) tell that direct communication between conflicting sides is almost always more preferable than their isolate activities (usually connected with mutual irritation, misunderstanding, hatred and longing to crash 'the obstacle'). I realize that I have not answer 'how to change IMF' as a thing, because it is not a mere thing, it consist of people with their own subjectivity and image of situation and of their work. I suggested the form of communication and maybe cooperation (no wonder of appearance of research grants for this work) with them. my best regards Nikolai PS Thank you Bruce for support and sophisticated development of the idea of using already existing regional unions in the way to more peaceful and humanistic world order. Your idea of non-overlapping of fields of interests between core powers is very strong. Great. not all but 'new' part of members of this institution (the princile of elite-splitting). Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html From timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Tue Aug 6 09:39:19 1996 Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 10:42:20 -0500 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu (J. Timmons Roberts) Subject: Fwd: Grimes on WST Agenda >Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 02:14:40 -0400 >From: Peter Grimes >[CONTEXT: Terry wanted input on good areas for future W-S research for >PEWS. Below is my contribution--P] > > I would like to endorse the suggestions made by Terry, >Gunder, and Al about interesting topics for world[-]system(s) >research. > I propose as well that WST, because of its unique global >level of analysis, is better situated than almost any other >orientation to contemplate the accelerating inter-relations >between environmental pressures, multiplying state fiscal crises, >and consequent state de-legitimation and fragmentation. These as >well spin off into the issues of patterns of energy use, >automation, unemployment, and crime. One simple example: the >same automation & industrial re-location that is throwing people >out of work globally (thereby engendering a proto-fascist and >xenophobic class consciousness among the working classes) also >costs enormous amounts of energy, which in turn is powering >global warming, in its turn creating rising sea levels and more >violent storms along with desertification. These "natural" (sic) >phenomena combine with unemployment & crime to impose >accelerating costs on beleaguered state budgets, strangling their >capacity to continue (already marginal) subsidies to the >burgeoning underclasses. The consequent de-legitimation of the >affected states feeds all manner of "revolutionary" movements and >regional separatisms. Case in Point: The failure of this year's >winter wheat crop in the US southwest has already compelled >Jordan to cut its food subsidies, leading to protest marches in >Amman last week and growing support for the Islamic opposition. > Bottom line--we're living in a time of multipli-nested >crises that are *GLOBAL* in scale, hence can only be properly >analyzed at *GLOBAL* level. What better place to start than with >the tools of long-term global analysis provided by WST? >--Peter Grimes > > > > From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Tue Aug 6 20:42:48 1996 07 Aug 1996 12:41:36 +1000 Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 12:41:36 +1000 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: academic monitoring In-reply-to: <5143241570@cnit.nsu.ru> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: > Dear Bruce, > your question is quit legal > > > Some would argue that the system of multi-national economic > >institutions including the IMF, World Bank, Trans-National Corporations, > >and others *are* one of the principle problems. You are supposing that > >they can be reformed to provide part of the solution. I can't address > >your argument that they can be reformed in this way until I see it. > I shared our dialogue with a friend who proved your position telling about > deplorable results of IMF activity in Africa (f.e. Mosambique): deepening > social gap, bloody conflicts, etc > He also noted that IMF is just an instrument of the system and > the agenda is how to change the system, not instrument. I agree. > This point makes our discussion very close to the thread of Wagar/Chase-Dunn > w-party. See my sketch of principal strategy 'how to change the system' > in my recent answer to Chris. I read the sketch of the principle strategy. The question I am posing is at a more detailed level. Given a strategy to divide the vested interests in support of the status quo system, what is the reason for suspecting that the IMF / World Bank / Transnational Corporate elements of those elites are the ones that can be targetted? > At the same time 'reforming an instrument'(say, IMF) can and should > be, from my viewpoint, one of partial activities in this strategy. > What I mean here, can be named "an academic monitoring of > international institutions' policies". > The main task is to organize a regular comparing of > real results of these activities in various countries with proclaimed > goals and philosophy of given institution. > The left tradition is to make this work a crushing critique of > 'an obstacle for progress'. According to the approach of 'splitting > elites' and 'new-coalition-making,' that I keep trying to promote in > wsn, I suggest to "pack up" this monitoring as a cooperation, an academic > responsible aid (non-excluding definitely addressed criticisms). > As far as I know experts of very high range (mainly from Harvard, > London School of Economics, etc) do their best in IMF. It seems they > know nothing of WST, at best they take it as one of many left > post-Marxist approaches that can be neglected. This attitude should > be changed after meeting with well-based theoretically and > empirically analyses of their activities. This is where we start to stumble into the mine-fields of paradigm self-defense. For the experts that are economists, the question is whether they will view WST as well-based theoretically. And the empirical analyses, when evaluated from a different theoretical perspective, might be evaluated as not supporting the conclusions WS theorists have drawn from it. It is not unknown for researchers trained in the currently dominent tradition in a discipline to torture inconvenient information until it confesses its heresy and recants. > Their work in IMF is temporal (not more than 3? years). They > are all very anxious of their future career, their names, etc. > That's why I think these folks cannot neglect such academic > initiative, because without communication and cooperation the public effect > of such monitoring can occur very troublesome for them personally. For the economists in particular, I doubt that the influence of WS theorists on their future career prospects is going to weigh heavily on their mind. I don't see that it could do any harm to try, but I wouldn't be very hopeful of success in those terms. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Tue Aug 6 21:35:29 1996 Date: Tue, 06 Aug 96 21:13:59 CDT From: U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Subject: counting your state systems before they are hatched To: World Systems Network May I please address the question of our necessary ignorance of fundamental data as to the qualitative condition of the current nation-state system. That is, specifically, the occurrence of warfare whose occurrence is unknown at this time merely because the occasion for its occurrence has not yet arisen. In this we distinguish between wars whose occurrence is premature even were they possible, which may not be true, and wars whose occurrence was precluded by diplomatic and military alignments (whatever their cause) which led to alignments of states (qua politico-military actors) dictating collaboration or neutrality rather than confrontation. If you do not understand that, well, neither do I, which is why I'm saying it here. Even given historical state systems, and mind you, there is no such thing as a historical situation wherefor new evidence *never* turns up, we can never know all the diplomatic alignments which simply did not occur because the most probable, as well as some of the less probable, alignments are the only ones allowed to occur. That is, hypothetically: Minister: We should abandon Prussia, and this time ally with the Empire. Louis XV: You are mad! Minister: Precisely, this is the most cogent idea on its behalf. But, given a bit of exploration of underlying realities beneath superficial appearances, we see that it makes the following sense.... To assess what objectively might have existed as possibility, that is, immanent within a historical situation, we need to pose every imaginable counterfactual and adequately respond to it. The classic case is, what would have, should have, might have, just possibly imaginably have occured had the German government not cancelled the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1887 and locked in hostile relations between the two states in 1890. (If I've got the dates wrong, sorry.) We allow for certain modicums of error or stupidity. We even allow for irrationality. *Why did the Third Punic War occur*? This is not a very interesting question to hardly any of you, but it strikes at the heart of any rational notion of "hegemony." I seem to have read some discussion on this list as to whether the US is or is not "hegemonic," specifically with regard to the capacity under whatever circumstances of the US to determine the foreign policy of China. If a hegemonic relation between two states prevails, such that the Great Power will be appeased by the lesser power in any hostile act short of total annihilation of the lesser power, there is no reason why the Third Punic War should have been fought. But fought it was, with a racist fanaticism if anything exacerbated by the certainty that serious resistance by Carthage was out of the question. The Romans went genocidally ape. They had by this time developed toward the Carthaginians what amounted to a genuine colour prejudice, where North Africans then, as now, were possibly on average a somewhat darker shade of brown than Southern Italians, but not by very much. (Can't say I've stared intently at a fair sample of either.) The political purpose of the war had been to intimidate the burgeoning tribal kingdom of Numidia, turning itself rapidly at this time into a proper state. It was Carthage's self-defense against Numidian aggression which provided the *casus belli* by violating the previous Roman Carthaginian Peace (which required Roman permission even for self-defense, going beyond its modern imitation, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, as currently interpreted). The war in fact lasted three years, 149-146 BC, with the Carthaginians exhibiting amazing and unforeseeable ingenuity and capacity to resist. This had been, actually, the Carthaginians' main defect, as a state, then as an Inferior Race, all along: Originally a place of refuge (*Kart Hadasht* = "New Capital," for use in case of emergency should Assyrians or Babylonians capture Tyre) and naval base, the original Punic [="Phoenician"] settlers were few, and the indigenous population, which provided forced labour and mercenaries, scanty (by contrast with Italy and Sicily). The place never was lavishly subsidized from Tyre, and whatever the settlers did by way of developing their irrigated agriculture for the support of a dense population, they did themselves against astounding obstacles. Which included Greek threats to their toehold in Western Sicily; Agathocles' attack on Carthage itself; two total wars with Rome in which the latter's deeper resources made the difference; and finally the peace of 202 BC. When old Cato made his *Carthago delenda est* speech, he faked dropping a bunch of purported outsized Cartha- ginian figs, as if to imply that the demonic foe had magical powers permitting flourishing in any sort of adversity. Typically, it was Carthaginian women who got stuck with the stereotype of ferocious fertility in spite of alien superior-race phallocracy. Exactly three Carthaginian women regularly make the history books. The most famous of these, therefore most important, is a probable entirely-fictitious character, Dido. She's a sexpot who kills herself in despair because the noble Aeneas, who's tripping out to found the ancestors of Rome, or something, doesn't respect her in the morning. More historic was Sophonisba, daughter of a general, Hasdrubal, who arranged a political marriage for her with Syphax, a pro-Carthaginian tribal chief. Syphax was engaged in a blood feud with a younger man and apparent desert fox, Massinissa, who logically supported Rome. When Syphax's forces were destroyed by a Roman surprise attack, Massinissa rushed to seize the enemy's palace, finding Sophonisba [sp?] on her knees in supplication. Guess what happens. "She was in full flower of her youth and beauty," said Livy. When the Roman commander Scipio reminded Massinissa that the lady was the property of the Roman state [sic], he decided on being a Fool For Love only so far; but he'd made the lady a promise not to surrender her to the vile Romans, so he sent her poison instead, handing over the body. The third woman we know about because Polybius "covered" the Roman genocide of the Carthaginians following the final assault on the walls. The wife of the defending commander begged her husband to surrender for the children's sake, which he did; but then she regretted this decision, throwing herself with her children in her arms into the flames of a burning building. The site of Carthage was in time repopulated, with the former Berbero-Punic- speaking population now sefs and tenants on the Vast Estates of rich Romans. This becomes the setting for the Apology and the Golden Ass of Apuleius, the devotee of Isis; on the other side, Tertullian's Passion of Sts Perpetua and Felicitas. Which has taken us to 202 AD from BC, and the reign of Septimus Severus, who never fully understood his urge for Drive to the East, nor would, says Benjamin Isaac in The Limits of Empire, 1990, have made any sense of the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire attributed to him and his successors. That's why I live in the Past; the relevant wars have pretty much occurred already. Daniel A. Foss [Note: Important announcement! Do you ever feel like writing, "This post has been brought to you by the Chinese people, specifically the one whose feet I found the first worth looking...." STOP! You need The World Party Operative's Guide To The World, And Other Places, Too! Your problem is completely adequate- ly Dealt With in Appendix C: The Semiperipheral Woman, And How, If Treated As A Mere Mass Organizing Object, She Will Conduce To Retrograde Reactionary Consciousness; But If Left Untreated, Will Do Much Worse. "Framly, I found it sexist." - Career Magazine.][Coming Next Week: Appendix A: How to survive years as a clandestine operative in New Zealand without developing incurable alcoholism. Or, your Maori buddies at the factory, who've got those ferociously tribal tatoos, invite you for a few beers, which turn out to be a few more beers than you thought, and you're just a nice Jewish boy form SUNY Binghamton. "Frankly, I found it racist." - Career Magazine.] From macdonak@Meena.CC.URegina.CA Wed Aug 7 02:36:25 1996 07 Aug 1996 02:36:21 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 02:36:21 -0600 (CST) From: Kerry Subject: Re: Wagar's World In-reply-to: To: ba05105@binghamton.edu On Sat, 3 Aug 1996 ba05105@binghamton.edu wrote: > Putting aside the question of whether or not some form of world government > is showing signs of emerging, hasn't the world capitalist system, the most > 'complex social arrangement' of human history existed for four hundred odd > years without a state? Leaving aside what one means by "complex" (and I do note that you placed the phrase in quotes), to say that capitalism arose without the need of the nation state is erroneous. I presume that you accept that and that your critique is with the idea of some sort of world government size of a state. To this I would partly agree. To begin with, capitalism needed the state to protect it's development as a national style of economic activity. To this one can see the many institutions and regulations that developed with the rise of capitalism (a central bank, creation of the limited company, etc.); however, the need for a world government (in the sense of having a means or institution to standardize the workings of capitalism) has existed for as long as there was empire. The various empires provided their capitalists with that cohesive economic unit. There has also been various pushes to standardize and facilitate activites between capitalists of various empires. Granted, this is a very brief and incomplete presentation though it does illustrate that capitalists, generally speaking, have pushed for a world system, though one which of course was of their own making and thus advantageous for themselves at the expense of their rivals. > I'm also very suspicious of the consensus among > the participants of the debate on this list that power is more centralized > than ever now, that we are 'moving' toward world government, etc. Some > groups, esp. religious fundamentalists, are exercising considerable power > on a very local level that they were not capable of exerting twenty years > ago. I would not say that there is a creation of a single world government, however, I would argue that there is the creation of a defacto world government in the sense that there is the creation of extra-nation-state institutions which standardize the workings of the capitalist system on a world scale. In this sense capitalsim has moved from being the "economies of the world" to a "single intergrated world economy". The WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc. attest to this line of reasoning. As to whether one can argue the rise of fundalmentalism illustrates a local reaction and thus argues for a decentralization of centralized authority is, IMO, not the case. I would submit that if anything it illustrates a trend which favours centralization. For what is the essential desire of fundamenatlists, irrespective of religion, but to increase the central authority by the creation of coercive laws. And those laws are targeted against the actions or choices that people are allowed to make and do not impinge upon the economic activity of the system at large. The irony is that the destabalization of a way of life that people have known for years which legitimately frightens them and which has fostered the rise of various right-wing movements as a reaction to abate those changes is in essence working hand-in-hand with those forces by their very actions. > Many local efforts of the left (or progressive efforts in general) > continue to yield substantial results, and it would be a disaster if most > activists decided that the local is no longer relevant (or for that matter > their primary focus). Granted, we (people) are neither automontrons nor sheep and that resistance which is of a more effective (appropriate?) nature occurs, however, to argue that they have been substantive is to overstate the case a wee bit. > The belief that local power and autonomy is inevitably giving way to > centralized power is one of the most problematic tenets of > modernization theory. For a critique of this belief, with a historical > example (U.S. history) see Thomas Bender "Community and Social Change." Inevitable? Yes, people have free choice and thus nothing is inevitable. Probable on the other hand is another story. Especially since those who want it this way have most of the power or at least are getting their way more often than not. I have not read the book you have cited and though it probably provides an accounting of numerous cases of local resistance, there is little evidence that they have in any way averted globalization. Hinder, possibly. Maybe even delayed. But stopping globalization is not noticable. A laudable goal, but one that is not apparent. kerry From p34d3611@jhu.edu Wed Aug 7 02:52:39 1996 07 Aug 1996 04:52:12 -0400 (EDT) 07 Aug 1996 04:52:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 04:51:54 -0400 From: Peter Grimes Subject: test2 To: WSN test2 From p34d3611@jhu.edu Wed Aug 7 07:38:01 1996 07 Aug 1996 09:36:11 -0400 (EDT) 07 Aug 1996 09:36:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 09:35:53 -0400 From: Peter Grimes Subject: World-System Meeting (2nd try) To: WSN I would like to endorse the suggestions made by Terry, Gunder, and Al about interesting topics for world[-]system(s) research. I propose as well that WST, because of its unique global level of analysis, is better situated than almost any other orientation to contemplate the accelerating inter-relations between environmental pressures, multiplying state fiscal crises, and consequent state de-legitimation and fragmentation. These as well spin off into the issues of patterns of energy use, automation, unemployment, and crime. One simple example: the same automation & industrial re-location that is throwing people out of work globally (thereby engendering a proto-fascist and xenophobic class consciousness among the working classes) also costs enormous amounts of energy, which in turn is powering global warming, in its turn creating rising sea levels and more violent storms along with desertification. These "natural" (sic) phenomena combine with unemployment & crime to impose accelerating costs on beleaguered state budgets, strangling their capacity to continue (already marginal) subsidies to the burgeoning underclasses. The consequent de-legitimation of the affected states feeds all manner of "revolutionary" movements and regional separatisms. Case in Point: The failure of this year's winter wheat crop in the US southwest has already compelled Jordan to cut its food subsidies, leading to protest marches in Amman last week and growing support for the Islamic opposition. Bottom line--we're living in a time of multipli-nested crises that are *GLOBAL* in scale, hence can only be properly analyzed at *GLOBAL* level. What better place to start than with the tools of long-term global analysis provided by WST? --Peter Grimes From dasmith@orion.oac.uci.edu Wed Aug 7 13:10:24 1996 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 12:10:20 -0700 (PDT) From: David Smith To: world-system network Subject: Topics PEWS should consider I don't pretend to have a great deal of expertise in these areas (and realize that there might be "networking" problems to overcome to get the information on panels out to the scholars that do), but I think that issues of gender, race, and ethnicity and the way they influence/are influenced by global political economy are areas that PEWS is extremely weak in now. For instance, there's a startling LACK of dialogue between PEWS folks and people who identify with the issue of "women in development." Another enormously important issue where these dynamics converge is that of international migration (which is also THE leading real world political issue in the part of the country where I live). I can't remember recent PEWS sponsored panels that addressed either of these issues -- or, for that matter, others related to race, ethnicity or gender. Maybe it's time to consider doing that. dave smith sociology, uc-irvine From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Wed Aug 7 14:34:59 1996 Date: Wed, 07 Aug 96 13:58:17 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: unintended consequences or: sacred marriage, capital&stat To: World Systems Network To say that any precapitalist empire acted systematically to promote capitalist development is to make as grave an error in the retrospective illusion of teleology as to hold that Roman emperors from Septimius Severus to Diocletian systematically acted to promote the growth of Christianity, since in retrospect everything they did in fact facilitated and accelerated conversions to Christianity, howbeit the conscious objectives of the emperors was to suppress it. The unnaturalness of capitalism was most readily taken for granted in every European state wherein a privileged hereditary aristocracy governed the state, increasingly in collaboration with the representatives of entrepreneurial specialists as junior partners. That a point was reached, sometime in the nineteenth century at the very latest, where the hereditary aristocracy had become the polito-military wing of the capitalist class, howbeit wearing funny costumes rather than business suits; and drinking, gambling, holding officers' commissions, sitting in the Lords, having amorous affairs, *and in their spare time* managing the state, whilst the lawyers of the lords of the loom wore business suits, acting businesslike in a Dickensian way, obfuscated the situation sufficiently to render it palatable. This state of affairs confused Karl Marx above all; witness the famous Chapter LIII, Vol III, of Capital, "Classes," in the course of writing which Marx went mad, "Here the manuscript ends." Since that time, we have seen the entrepreneurial specialists get along, more or less reluctantly, with politico-military specialists wearing even funnier costumes, such as South American *gorila* costumes (shades of that Brit movie, Morgan); Nazi SA and SS uniforms, and even more recently, Communist Party *nomenklura* veterans wearing Mao jackets or Shoddy Consumer Goods redolent of the Old Days. The point being, where the privileges of the privileged class were of recent memory (and if the privileged class doth not have privileges, what's the sense of having a privileged class) it was correspondingly patently commonsensical to hold that this, too, capitalism, that is, shall pass away, and we should, this Revolution, tie a lttle red ribbon to the *tricoleur* to symbolize this Republic's being a *Social* Repulic, as opposed to just plain Republic, as in 1793-4, partisans of that system being known henceforth as Radicals to distinguish them from Our Kind, who are Socialists. In North America, this privileged class was less than completely existent, except in places like Quebec under the Monarchy and the Province of New York, wherein the Proprietor, the Duke of York, promoted Manorial Lordships of Vast extent, parcels rented out to tenants, in part for the cultivation of marijuana for HM Navy, to be worked up into ships' rope in NM roperies in Liverpool by Irish girls under the Navigation Acts of 1653 and 1661. As the free white cultivators preferred ownership in fee simple, the marijuana in question was grown on slavegang plantations, eg, Hempstead, by Afro-Jamaican forced labour imported for this purpose; the capitalistic element recently introduced into this system having been the fact that it was more profitable to grow sugar in Jamaica than marijuana, which cost nothing and, as far as was known in the seventeenth century, could be sold for nothing, that is, except for rope for HM Navy, when processed in Liverpool. The white population of the Province languished in the competition despite the most flagrantly immoral, to con- temporary eyes, propaganda by Treasurer Cadwallader Colden, "This province has the best soil on earth for the cultivation of *hemp*!" [Italics his.] Having by default or obliviousness been deprived of intentionally contrived social development in the Monarcho-Lordly mode till Mr Pitt's stunning, and seemingly decisive, triumph over the ancient foe at the Treaty of Paris, 1763, the sudden burst of activism of a Parliament behaving in unseemly fashion as so many Columbuses induced question-raising of the sort only characterizable as Awkward, ie, What do you mean, Fair? Fair share of what? After all you did for us? Forsooth, ye be so many Jewish Mothers, not yet invented, even. To this day, the indigenous armenian citizen, in reviling somthing as the depths of irrelevance or tangentialism, snorts, "What's this got to do with the price of tea in China?" Which obliviates the curious fact that in 1773 this was the most important price on earth, for which reason a price in excess of this price was set for sale of tea in the Commonwealth of Massachu- setts, for which reason Patriotism was committed, not to be confused with rioting, vandalism, destruction of property, and various and sundry offenses of seditious nature against the Crown. And with great unanimity, there was a switch to Brazilian coffee, whereto the US has been faithful ever since. It is this virginal inexperience of aught but the Purest forms of the market mechanism, in the official mythology, which explains the US social and ideological staility. To this there is a grain of truth, and this grain is presented for consumption by Prof Lipset, in his Commie-evocative title, American Exceptionalism. (In the 1920s and 1930s, a heretical doctrine was propounded among the local Marxist-Leninists of the CPUSA by this name.) Capitalism may best be understood as "something which just leaked out." Had there been any tipover point, established by precapitalist economic theorists, whereby, when it was reached, the babbage, a computational vegetable invented by a US slave geneticist, I believe, which may however, be mistaken, would ring the alarm, and the assembled policy makers would have Taken Steps to preclude the tipping-over from being consummated. The reasons are many and various in addition to subjective apperances of unnaturalness. Firstly, the entrepreneurial specialists cannot be entrusted with making decisions which might prove Bad For Business, whether in genral or in particular. Notable among these decisions are those related to warfare. What from the standpoint of scrap dealers in 1941 exporting vestiges of previously-owned cars to Japan was getting a good price for exports, was potential Trading with the potential Enemy to the state officials in Washington concerned with control of strategic materials, and to the Japanese government was the raw materials for naval construction subsequently used in a daring naval surprise attack that December. More generally, the outbreak of war is at best a gross inconvenience in many sectors of the market economy, calling away employees to the military, imposing rationing, increasing taxation and curtailing consumer spending, and sending a horde of frockcoated snoops throughout the land to collect, say, the Excise, as in eighteenth-century England. (See the remarkable book, Sinews of Empire, by Brewer, 1991.) It does not go without saying that the entrepreneurial specialists will be most hostile to the same states that the politico-military specialists will be most prone to war upon. If this were true, friction with Germans should now be at apogee, and China snuggled up to. Who, I daresay, looking about a computer lab, would not choose to snuggle up to the Chinese woman, whose typing fingers may hold delights other than to the keyboards of this nation, unlike the domestic product. [Note: At this point the World Party operative invokes Appendix C, "Women of the semiperiphery," etc.] Besides which, the footwear I have on, one third off the usual lowlowprice at Payless, Made In China from All Man Made Materials, ie, purest Chinese plastic, though they caused me yet another nasty spill on the wet floor of the cafeteria next door, which in turn requires overdressing in this heatwave, such that I escape the Elsewise-certain Fourth Amendment violations due to looking insane, "You look stressed," the staff says, at which point I plead emphysema, convincing nobody. But it cannot be gainsaid, the shoes themselves were originally not just Affordable, but outright Cheap, Elsewise dicontinued by native armenian manufacturers on grounds of profit margins, profit pictures, and the like. In Ancient Times, I recall, Sir Alec Douglas-Home forecast a Chinese aggression to seize Siberia, to Chinese, legitimately, at least a million square miles of it, stolen from them by imperialist unequal treaties in the nineteenth century. Though I am certain the Russian Federation contingent of WSN would vehemently disagree, it would be childsplay to mount a Walk For Peace at some occasion when the Yeltsin regime has done itself in by reason of, whilst it's a lesser evil than its opposition, it's evil enough. The peaceful occupation of the disputed million square miles, possily much more, is assured. Yet China, the PRC, one cannot be too specific, prefers to bully Taiwan, which cannot get much impressed by this, and seize the odd Spratly. Possibly this is mere calisthenics, but diplomacy is so much show business at all times. I have omitted the tendency of entrepreneurial specialists to destroy capitalism if left untended for long; with consequent hawklike vigilance from a single state of coalitions of states requisite to averting the worst horrors, but that's for the professional economists out there to agree with. [Note: I'd intended to write this post about eleventh century China, which goes to show, WSN, you can't lose 'em all.] Daniel A. Foss [Note: Watch for Appendix B, out soon, "Militantly combat the lie that there is capitalism in outer space."] From timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Wed Aug 7 15:01:46 1996 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 16:04:24 -0500 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu (J. Timmons Roberts) Subject: pews session ideas for 1997 ASA PEWSers: I am concerned that in its sessions at ASA that PEWS continue to appeal to people interested in issues of international "development" but who do not think of themselves as "worldsystemites." How might we do that? Right now one of our most useful contributions may be to clarify and try to reach a consensus particularly on how world[-]system(s) theory can inform international and local activism in confronting the "globalization" of production and communications. I am speaking of the importance and strategies of labor, environmental, consumer, and other movements [and even states] in attempting to control the flight of capital from regulation. This issue directly ties to the world party issue which is being discussed here. However I would like to see session(s) on 1. how local and global struggles are linked, and 2. on [actually] emerging global governance structures. An example of the latter are the new international environmental standards and treaties, on which I am working on some research, and wrote some in the PEWS'95 conference volume _Latin America in the World Economy_ coming out soon edited by Korzeniewicz and Smith. I am pleased that the PEWS'97 conference will be about the environment and hope we can keep "greening PEWS" in the next years. World systems theory has long ignored the issue, taking what Morrison and Dunlap called the "human exemptionalist" approach common among sociologists. Shouldn't ASA sessions (or at least papers) carry that "green" momentum forward in 1997 and 1998? Timmons Roberts Assistant Professor Tulane University timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu From TBOS@socsci.ss.emory.edu Wed Aug 7 15:25:26 1996 7 Aug 96 17:26:43 EST5edt From: "Terry Boswell" Organization: Emory University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 17:26:26 EST5EDT Subject: Re: WSN post for party The annual PEWS Section party will be held in a suite at the Hilton Hotel on the evening of Saturday, August 17th, beginning around 8.30 pm. The Hotel Suite number will be announced at the PEWS Business Meeting on Saturday afternoon. Please come and enjoy the refreshments and the company. *************************************************** Philip McMichael Director of Graduate Field of Development Sociology Department of Rural Sociology 436 Warren Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853-7801. Phone (voice-mail): 607-255-5495 Fax: 607-255-9984 Email: pdm1@cornell.edu *************************************************** From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Wed Aug 7 17:13:20 1996 Date: Wed, 07 Aug 96 17:57:39 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: a monolithic all-male discourse To: World Systems Network Adrianne Wortzel Dear Dave Smith, I would amend what you said to read: 1. This list has thus far, at least in recent times, been a monolithic all-male discourse. 2. I believe I can explain this situation, "the point, however, is to change it." 3. It is the business of women to make their own trouble. I therefore invite Adrianne Wortzel, who appears to have sent me a "this-insults-women" type unsubscribe notice for the deliberately tasteless way I tried to turn over this rock, to start. 4. I am delighted to observe that South Asian women are also present in the computer lab at this time. At this time, I pledge to take remedial transgressive discourse lessons. Daniel A. Foss From agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca Wed Aug 7 19:01:13 1996 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 21:00:55 -0400 (EDT) From: "A. Gunder Frank" To: "J. Timmons Roberts" Subject: Re: pews session ideas for 1997 ASA I second Tim Roberts' motion. gunder frank On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, J. Timmons Roberts wrote: > PEWSers: > > I am concerned that in its sessions at ASA that PEWS continue to > appeal to people interested in issues of international "development" but who > do not think of themselves as "worldsystemites." How might we do that? > > Right now one of our most useful contributions may be to clarify and > try to reach a consensus particularly on how world[-]system(s) theory can > inform international and local activism in confronting the "globalization" > of production and communications. I am speaking of the importance and > strategies of labor, environmental, consumer, and other movements [and even > states] in attempting to control the flight of capital from regulation. > This issue directly ties to the world party issue which is being discussed here. > However I would like to see session(s) on 1. how local and global > struggles are linked, and 2. on [actually] emerging global governance > structures. An example of the latter are the new international environmental > standards and treaties, on which I am working on some research, and wrote > some in the PEWS'95 conference volume _Latin America in the World Economy_ > coming out soon edited by Korzeniewicz and Smith. > > I am pleased that the PEWS'97 conference will be about the > environment and hope we can keep "greening PEWS" in the next years. World > systems theory has long ignored the issue, taking what Morrison and Dunlap > called the "human exemptionalist" approach common among sociologists. > Shouldn't ASA sessions (or at least papers) carry that "green" momentum > forward in 1997 and 1998? > > Timmons Roberts > Assistant Professor > Tulane University > timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu > From elena@jhu.edu Wed Aug 7 21:46:55 1996 07 Aug 1996 23:46:21 -0400 (EDT) 07 Aug 1996 23:46:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 23:46:07 -0400 From: Elena M Ermolaeva Subject: Re: all males, all females, DAII, and UN To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, Daniel A. Foss wrote: > 1. This list has thus far, at least in recent times, been a monolithic > all-male discourse. I don't know if PEW people would be interested in discussing substanttive and organizational problems of creation data archive of interregional interactions. It seems that the recent budget uncertainties and shutdowns within sponsoring foundations affect the funding of pioneering projects and this rases the question about availabily of data. The establishment of large national data archives as well as of local institutionally affiliated ones might help. At least the one--DAII--which I (FEMALE)) has initiated in mid. April 96 is devoted to this end (see the initial ad on WSN/IPE nets of April 15). I was going to share the information about the recent activities of DAII already for a while, and the obsession about monolithic all-made discourse and the excitement about women in the computer labs worked for me as a signal for a rabbit. DAII and UNITED NATIONS, STATISTICS DIVISION Data Archive of Interregional Interactions (DAII) has established close and friendly relations with United Nations, Statistics Division (UNSTAT). The machine-readable products listed below are not property of DAII and should be purchased from UNSTAT, however, I can provide information about prices and assist in contacts. GENERAL REFERENCE - Statistical Yearbook, 40th, 39th, 38th, 38th issues; 38th issue in CD-ROM - World Statistics in Brief World Statistics Pocketbook 1995 - StatBase Locator on Disk: UNSTAT's Guide to International Computerized Statistical Databases DEMOGRAPHIC AND HOUSING STATISTICS - Demographic Yearbook 1993, 1992 - Demographic Yearbook Special Issue: Population Ageing and the Situation of Elderly Persons - Compendium of Human Settlements Statistics 1995 - Recommendations on Tourism Statistics - Housing in the World - Graphic Presentation of Statistical Data INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND TRANSPORT - 1993 International Trade Statistics Yearbook Vol. I. Trade by Country Vol. II. Trade by Commodity - 1992 International Trade Statistics Yearbook Vol. I. Trade by Country Vol. II. Trade by Commodity - Commodity Indexes for the SITC, Revision 3 INDUSTRY AND CONSTRUCTION - Industrial Commodity Statistics Yearbook, 1993, 1992, 1991 - Strategies for Measuring Industrial Structure and Growth NATIONAL ACCOUNTS AND INTERNATIONAL PRICE COMPARISONS - Systems of National Accounts 1993 - Trends in International Distribution of Gross World Product - National Accounts Statistics: Main Aggregates and Detailed Tables, 1992, 1991 - World Comparisons of Real Gross Domestic Product and Purchasing Power, 1985 - Phase V of the International Comparison Programme ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT - Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting - Energy Statistics Yearbook, 1993, 1992, 1991 - Energy Balances and Electricity Profiles 1992 S I T U A T I O N O F W O M E N - The World's Women 1995: Trends and Statistics - Wistat: Women's Indicators and Statistics Spreadsheet Database for Microcomputers - United Nations Women's Indicators and Statistics Database (Wistat), version 3 - Methods of Measuring Women's Economic Activity: Technical Report SPECIAL POPULATION GROUPS Statistical Chart on World Families ************* Elena Ermolaeva elena@jhu.edu From cjreid@netcom.com Wed Aug 7 22:38:44 1996 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 21:38:34 -0700 (PDT) From: "Charles J. Reid" Subject: Re: Beyond Sovereign Territory (fwd) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Forwarding book review. FYI. -- Charlie Reid cjreid@netcom.com "Salus populi suprema est lex" (Cicero) The welfare of the people is the highest law. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the Citizens' Rights Amendment: "Congress shall pass laws consistent with the rights of citizens to a job, education, housing, and health care." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cyborgs and Eco-Ethics: Challenging The Sovereignty Doctrine By Charles J. Reid [Beyond Sovereign Territory - The Space of Ecopolitics By Thomas Kuehls Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, 168 pages, notes, index, biblio., paper] When the European Princes met at the small German town of Westphalia in 1648, they did more than end the Thirty Years War that had plagued the good people of the Holy Roman Empire beginning in 1618. The Treaty of Westphalia laid the foundation of an international system of sovereign states that would last worldwide up to our day. The treaty signers codified a rule that would henceforth govern relations between states: a recognized ruler of one part of the earth would have no authority over another part of the earth ruled by someone else. Actually, the principle adopted at Westphalia took time to evolve. In the thirteenth century the formula "rex imperator in regno suo" (the King is emperor in his own kingdom) became a legal device to challenge the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor that prevailed in Europe at the time. In 1493 a rather pretentious papal decree, specifying spheres of authority, divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, a decision neither France nor England nor others accepted. After 1517 the Protestant Reformation raised the issue of secular authority itself, an issue that took years of warfare to settle. The doctrine of sovereignty and the international system emerged from these disputes. Over time actors and rules in the international system changed. By this century global governmental and non-governmental organizations began having an impact on states, effectively limiting their sovereign authority. This culminated after ratification of the GATT Agreement in 1993 with the establishment of the World Trade Organization, an entity intended to independently adjudicate trade disputes at the international level. In 1989 the United States invaded Panama, taking the internationally recognized Chief of State of that "sovereign state" back to its own jurisdiction to face felony charges as a criminal defendant. This was the first time since Westphalia that the principle of sovereignty was independently set aside by one state for some national domestic legal objective. Previously, Napoleon had been exiled to the Island of St. Helena, but only after a major war and concluding international negotiations. While over time de facto changes in actors and rules in the international system have extenuated the doctrine of sovereignty, events have also drawn attention to its limitations. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown spread debilitating radiation well beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. The globalization of economic activity and information exchange has underscored the weaknesses of sovereign states in exercising political control over the international economy. And environmental issues such as the destruction of the Brazilian rain forests have accented global concern for side effects of economic activity within the bounds of any sovereign state. This is the point at which Thomas Kuehls' book, "Beyond Sovereign Territory," begins. The book opens with a statement of the president of Brazil: "The Amazon is ours. After all, it is situated in our territory." This is a traditional expression of state sovereignty. But as Kuehls notes, "Brazil's sovereignty over the Amazon rain forest has been challenged by politicians and environmentalists on the ecological grounds that the importance of this rain forest extends far beyond the territory of Brazil." Kuehls' book starts with the question, "How is it that a particular area of the earth becomes sovereign territory?" The book ends with the conclusion: "What is needed is a new governmentality -- one that recognizes that any society must interact with its environment in order to provide for its members and that society must be thought beyond sovereign territorial boundaries...Thinking society beyond both sovereign territorial boundaries and species boundaries means taking into serious consideration the ambiguity, contingency, and diversity of life." Between the question and the conclusion lies the presentation of Kuehls' analysis and arguments. The issues Kuehls raises are not new. Students of international relations have long understood that state policies can have intended effects or side effects that concern other states. We know economic policies related to comparative advantage in production, currency devaluation, or subsidies effect other states. War Departments have always monitored armament expenditures, R & D investments, or training exercises of other states. Domestic policies related to immigration, education, or public health obviously can have consequences beyond the boundaries of a given state. So what is Kuehls book about? What the author wants to do is lay an intellectual foundation for beginning to think about the world in global terms that essentially abandons the doctrine of sovereignty, which defined the international system in 1648. While the musings of most international relations theorists occur within the framework of accepting the doctrine of sovereignty, Kuehls' book is an argument for discarding it. "A major portion of my argument in this work is that this conception of sovereign state politics is problematic," he writes. And for Kuehls, the issue extends even beyond the politics within and between sovereign territorial spaces. "The problem also involves how these territorial spaces are constructed...[aa well as] governmentality, a governmentality that sees the earth first and foremost as a resource for human consumption." Hence the need for a "new governmentality," one that might even include nonhumans in human political communities that extend beyond human spaces. How successfully does Kuehls argue? "Beyond Sovereign Territory" is not a "scientific" work in a conventional sense. There is little discussion of data, no hypotheses rigorously tested, few references to the traditional literature related to the subject. Kuehls is concerned with illuminating the theoretical concept of sovereignty, but he probably missed an opportunity. A scholar can spend a lot of time discussing what "sovereignty" is. For example, F.H Hinsley has devoted an entire, well-documented book to an attempt to define sovereignty.(F.H. Hinsley, "Sovereignty," 2nd Ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) But how can sovereignty be challenged given how the principle actually works? Kuehls comes close to generating usable hypotheses from actual practice in today's world when he describes how Greenpeace engages states outside the context of state and interstate politics. The goal of this discussion of Greenpeace is unclear. We can only conclude with the author, "States are still present. They still must be reckoned with..." In short, the book will not satisfy the analytical scientifically oriented mind. Nor is the book a literary essay. Kuehls does borrow some metaphorical concepts as explanatory tools. From Deleuze and Guattari he takes the notions of "rhizomes" and "trees" in his discussion of spatial interrelations. "A territory is treelike...It has a single trunk that branches out, sending aspects of itself away from the center while always remaining connected to a unifying trunk, that in turn is firmly rooted in one place...A rhizome is a system of roots...reaching into many different spaces." Turning the concept back on itself, rhizomatic events, such as pollutants spreading across state boundaries, deterritorialize like roots that are not limited by boundaries. Later on, Kuehls turns to the idea of cyborg, a border creature, a creation of virtually organic machines and mechanical organisms, found both in science fiction and scientific reality. He cites the cyborg theorist, Donna J. Haraway, who writes, "[the cyborg] gives us our politics." Interpreting this, Kuehls argues that "contemporary politics exists on border lines. Not just the border lines between machines and organisms, or humans and nature, but the border lines that divide sovereign territorial states, or set apart public spheres from private spheres." What does this have to do with the doctrine of sovereignty and interstate politics? "The cyborg," Kuehls writes, "exists on the borderline between the United States and Mexico, where cross-border corporations, pollutants, illegal immigrants, and an increasing `feminization of work' disrupt the certainty of what counts as American and what counts as Mexican, what counts as the public (male) sphere and what counts as the private (female) sphere." Cyborg politics problematizes state spaces. At another level "Beyond Sovereign Territory" is a philosophical speculation. Sifting through ideas from Nietzsche, Locke, Rousseau, and Foucault, among others, Kuehls outlines an eco-ontology, "a worldview wherein humanity's actions pose potential problems for the earth," and an ecoethics, where `man' through self-assertion takes responsibility for future condition of the earth. Nietzsche's reasoning lies at the roots of both. The eco-ontology challenges the relevance of God; the eco-ethics requires the emergence of the Nietzschean overman, who "may best be said to exist where the state ends." Ontologically, Kuehls wants to remove concept of God from the debate. "In order for the ecologist to be born, God had to die," Kuehls writes, echoing Nietzsche's aphorism, "God is dead," etc. Why? Because if human beings persist in their belief that God cares for the earth, they will abandon their own responsibility for caring for its condition. Yet, Kuehls may not understand that, assuming we could succeed in transforming humanity into a Nietzschean superfolk, it is likely such a transformation would have its own unintended consequences. Kuehls also wants to banish the Lockean notion that land left wholly to nature is waste, because it "hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting." This concept of land use is linked close with legal notions of property rights, an extension of which historically accounts for the emergence of the doctrine of sovereignty. These legal concepts have specific economic and ecological consequences that are untenable today. Land used is often land destroyed. From Rousseau Kuehls engages in the debate about the nature of government. Is government a manifestation of authority? Or is its main raison d'etre to guarantee General Welfare, providing for the needs of the community? Rousseau's conceptual world does not eliminate the concept of sovereignty, but his concept of government forces us to recognize that all governments "must be concerned with the manner in which the state utilizes its territory." If the interstate system is powerless to protect environments, what kind of government is required? Finally, because governmentality is essentially the exercise of power, Kuehls turns to Foucault, whose meditations on power relations contain a rule of action Kuehls is looking for: we must critically examine the power at work on individuals and populations. Foucault sees power as a productive force that operates to shape subjects. To this extent, "the sane, law-abiding, heterosexual, religious, normal individual must be made." The sovereign state is a component of the power vector that forms people natures. But the "individual is not made solely by the operations of the state." A globalizing power is emerging. Governmentality must deal with the process of meeting the needs and aspirations of the population in the future. This depends on their being an environment capable of providing for those needs. Human beings have the power to re-make themselves to meet this challenge. If there is any kind criticism to be made, it is that "Beyond Sovereign Territory" seems to be an unfinished work. It could certainly become a catalyst for new reasoning about global political reality and the environment. International relations theorists and diplomats may find it difficult to entertain a challenge to the doctrine of sovereignty based on an ethic derived from the romantic musings of Nietzsche. The poetic images of roots and cyborg may leave lasting and elucidating impressions along with a faint dissatisfaction with their ephemeral verisimilitude. In the end, though, "Beyond Sovereign Territory" is a hermeneutic that, beyond a well-read academic audience, probably has a limited contemporary appeal, but one providing an understanding that ought well guide the next generation in understanding the limitations of state sovereignty. From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Thu Aug 8 00:30:32 1996 8 Aug 96 13:27:01 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 13:26:39 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: academic monitoring > From: "Bruce R. McFarling" > > I read the sketch of the principle strategy. The question I am > posing is at a more detailed level. Given a strategy to divide the > vested interests in support of the status quo system, what is the reason > for suspecting that the IMF / World Bank / Transnational Corporate > elements of those elites are the ones that can be targetted? my point is that the should not be omitted. J.Arrighi wrote that each hegemony country (of F.Braudel's line since Venece-Florence up to US) created an international institutional-financial framework that embarassed new challenger, in any case the last had to destroy or assimilate this framework. As R.Moore fairly noted the mentioned institutions are deeply connected with current US hegemony. (Who is a master and who is an instrument - it is an open question, I suspise that it is a case of mutual instrumentality, just as described relations between the state and capitalism in Braudels 3rd volume of Mater. Civ...). If we wish to substitute the current order by some new one with priority of some 'strawberry jamm'(world state, or legal-based multipolar partnership) this transition CANNOT be thrown off the general historical logic of shifting hegemonies. So you were right that all these (inspired by US and World Cap. elites) institutions as a framework of the current world order can occur most serious obstacles for new transition. My position is not to try to destroy them, not to make them overt enemies, especially in initial stage, but to split them and to try to assimilate them (with their outstanding financial, oraganizational and personnel resourses) into a new legal multipolar framework. > > This is where we start to stumble into the mine-fields of paradigm > self-defense. For the experts that are economists, the question is > whether they will view WST as well-based theoretically. And the > empirical analyses, when evaluated from a different theoretical > perspective, might be evaluated as not supporting the conclusions WS > theorists have drawn from it. It is not unknown for researchers trained > in the currently dominent tradition in a discipline to torture > inconvenient information until it confesses its heresy and recants. right, and I'told that there are no guarantees of success, but in any case the dialogue is more preferable than isolate mutually irritative activities and mutual misunderstanding. > For the economists in particular, I doubt that the influence of WS > theorists on their future career prospects is going to weigh heavily on > their mind. I don't see that it could do any harm to try, but I wouldn't > be very hopeful of success in those terms. I regret this reaction as well as silence of other members. If the idea of such practical work as academic monitoring of political-economic effects of internat.institutions' activities, where WS theorists can be really strong, is negelcted, what talks can be about political, organizational work on 'world party', 'world state', 'wide social movements'? Here university scholars are evidently much weaker. I don't wish to offend anybody but it seems that all these talks of 'global praxis' will not lead to anything more than bla-bla-bla in Internet. best, Nikolai Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html From macdonak@Meena.CC.URegina.CA Thu Aug 8 13:52:32 1996 08 Aug 1996 13:52:07 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 1996 13:52:07 -0600 (CST) From: Kerry Subject: Re: Wagar's World In-reply-to: To: "Andrew W. Austin" On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Andrew W. Austin wrote: > My argument is in line with theories of the state. State-level societies > are a very recent development in world history, arising as they did in > complex agricultural society as a weapon of the ruling elite against the > toiling masses. Gradually the state became part of empire. Then the > development of the nation-state out of feudal anarchy. The state is always > a weapon of a particular class or group to put down another class or > group; if there were no social classes or groups there would be no need > for a state, for the inequality of wealth and power that necessitates the > state is absent. 90% of human existence has been in stateless societies > (acephalous or anarchist-communist societies). These latter forms of > social organization are clearly governments. They are just as obviously > not states. Sort of like when we were in grammar school we learned that Granted, states have been institutions which have supported inequatiable social arrangements, however, that does not mean that it, the state, has to be an institution of inequality. The state, as you noted, arose out of need to coordinate the activities of a large agricultural society. It also allowed for the development of specialization to become stratified viz-a-viz different occupations within the society. My argument, is that there is a need for some sort of coordinating institution which fulfills the roles that the state currently occupies and at the same time does not support inequality amongst it's citizenry. As I believe that humans are capable of creating institutions of our own choosing this is a possibility (and given what you have said in previous posts, I believe you would concur with this sentiment). Partly, why I am so insistent upon the need for a "state-like" institution is for the fact that the state, in all it's varieties, has conquered (eradicated) those small, isolated band level societies (the anarchro's). It is my contention that in our present situation, one cannot nostalgically view those previous anarcho-societies and argue for our return. They were predicated upon a particular social and material relationship to their enviroment. Today our enviroment includes more the mark of humanity (e.g., medicine, dams, cars, etc.) and that has to be taken into account of how we wish our society needs to develop (at this point, discussion about whether or not certain or all of those "marks" should continue isn't something that is germaine to this issue, the state - good, bad or simply ugly; important though that debate may be). There is a need to create some sort of state-like institution which maintains the quality of life currently attained (though probably not in it's commodified orientation) and that also is eqalitarian, but more importantly is a defense, by it's very existence, the emergence (re-emergence) of a heirarchial coercive state. > Moreover, using "state" as a term including all possible governmental > structures creates a self-sealing argument (ironic that when you accused > me of setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy it was your argument that did Point taken. I will try to use "social organization" or reasonable facsimile for the more overarching term and the "state" in a more narrow definitive manner. kerry From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Thu Aug 8 20:10:54 1996 Date: Thu, 08 Aug 96 20:36:39 CDT From: U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Subject: pity the poor state To: World Systems Network I like to tell a fable which begins, "And it came to pass, the People grew Nobles; and the Nobles domesticated the People." The prevalence of what anthropology-archaeology folks (Renfrew, notably) these days call "peer- polity interaction" prior to the actual emergence of states is what ensures there is no such hypothetical event as The Empergence of THE State, but always and everywhere the emergence of State Systems. Think about it. If you were going to foster The Emergence/Rise of THE State, you'd be required to build a wall around yourself for a good long while, then whilst mercifully undisturbed by your intended victims, think up a scheme to *get somebody else to do the work*. This is the meaning-purpose- essence of Civilization, no? Peer-polity-interaction, the People Grow Nobles, the Nobles Domesticate the People, ensures that the longrange strategic planning process is super- fluous. States emerge as State Systems, each polity whereof or wherein helps sustain the legitimation of all, as they war one with the others, possibly for centuries, till (a) unification of the state system occurs, giving out on membership of the resulting Empire in a vaster State System of more diverse origins; (b) continuity as mutually hostile polities with shifting enmities and alliances some more stable than others; or (c) simultaneous decline with possible overthrow of all members of the State System, or "system collapse" in arch/anthro-speak. Probably it requires several cycles of System Collapses before the principle gets nailed permanently into the heads of the Broad Masses: It is in the Nature of Things that some do the work and altogether others, no kin of theirs (except maybe fictively), do the Civilization, the latter Thingie being defined as whatever the second, and by far the smaller, category of humans construes as Worth Expending Time and Energy Upon. "What is not worth the time and energy of the complete human being is consigned to women and slaves." The effect is that H. sap sap is the only species the vast majority of whose specimens are kept as domesticated animals by members of the same species. The instrumentalities of this have historically been (a) forced labour systems (b) guaranteed by the means of violence, where the two are wielded by the same people until a division of labour occurs between entrepreneurial and politico-military specialists within the single exploiting- ruling class, called the bourgeoisie, at least in the old days, by what are now Reactionary Traditionalists. The state, being stuck in ruts of demography and geography, or Blood and Soil (*Blut und Boden*), to put a "positive" fascist face on it, where by positive is meant coerced optimism as part of the nationalism-militarism- imperialism associated with such irrationalist creeds (but not with them alone), is handicapped in relation to the competition for control of new resources, all of them potential sources of power and influence; the state is relegated to leavings and pickings. Such as its forte, monopoly of the means of violence in a given territory. This is good for guaranteeing the social relations (I'm leaving off the "of production" part, as it's not clear that the economy isn't qualitatively changed beyond anything those Marxist coinages can handle), but not for initiatives in managing the flow of the new Thingies bought and sold in new markets. Which are increasingly embodiments of mental life, each one Maningfully Different from another one coming in a similar box of different colour and cover design. The State is the vanishing preserve of stupid, backward people whose remnant tasks are the breaking of heads among the losers and the making of heads among the winners. Both ends of this, or two tails of the distribution, if you wish to Ring The Bell Curve, BONG, BONG, BONG, are contained within the Education Industry, the largest mental-life-products manufacturer in society out there and in here; and it can be shown to employ most of you on this list. Who quite understandably wish to Discuss Discursively among your own kind, with minimal obstruction or obfuscation from ignramuses and disruptionists who Simply Don't Understand and Waste Our Valuable Time. The foregoing message has been slipped into the text by Dialectical Process, and is not necessarily the Opinion of the writer, who is a left-hemispherical linear thinker, not as a rule one to get tangled up in contradictions. On this occasion, however, a little Perspective has been deemed Healthy and Progressive by some Homunculus upstairs. Sorry for the disturbance. Now, it is to be expected that the graduate schools, the crown jewels of the Education Industry, are ever more visibly differentiable from the holding pens in which those masses socially constructed as Stupid, Uneducable, Mindless, or falling short of criteria of cost-benefit-analysis origin for receipt of consciousness-development services are given rudimentary motions to go through prior to condemnation to sporadic-to-permanent unemployability. The State, in its national form, guarantees Inequality, ie, Inferiority for the majority and even vast majority. Recall the foregoing definition of Civilization as operationalized by the Civilized since inceptions of agreed- upon Civilizations: some do the work, us folks who write the book you are reading and appreciate art, etc, do the Civilization. Which should be self- evident, or there is Something Wrong With You. Diagnoses of Reality Impariment are made by experts trained and retained for this purpose, and Reality, for our purposes, shall be defined as ideology taken as Real-like pending desertion of the army, as it's guaranteed by the means of violence like all social relations. Did I really need to have said all of this again? Under what conditions does the dissolution of nation-state frontiers to constitute larger territorial units wherein capital sloshes around happily in its larger pool or tank (with less constraint, that is to say, from barriers onceuponatime set up by nation states on their frontiers but now serving no "useful" purpose, ie, to business)? We're not completely sure yet, but it's a growing pattern in North America and Europe that inequalities are standardized, and isolated cases of egalitarianism in this or that country are found Uneconomic. Canada. Sweden. Ex-Yugoslavia (in its own curious way, but I'm editorializing, since whatever was wrong with Ex-Yugoslavia before, is except for Slovenia, maybe, infinitely worse). Name your once-favourite Model, and Serious Economists disdain it. Even New Zealand, world's most tiresomely rational country, whose prime minister, Jim Bolger, makes John Major look interesting, has got itself a fascist (by New Zealand standards, that is, terribly civilized) party, New Zealand First, which is leading in the polls at this time, and is pledged to a species of, up to a point, Pat Buchananization of the ruling National Party's marketized utopia (up to, that is, a New Zealandistic sensible point). I am told, and find it difficult but, given New Zealand's being what it is, ie, unexciting, New Zealand First will be the first antiracist fascist party, hence not truly fascist, except by New Zealand standards, since its appeals include generous support of Maori cultural nationalism. (This may all turn out to be wrong, based as it is on fragmentary stories in the press including The Economist; nothing, it is taken for granted, ever happens all that much in New Zealand.) Vote for the McGillicuddy Serious Party, play it safe, New Zealand. Daniel A. Foss From joseph@indigo.ie Fri Aug 9 04:34:15 1996 From: "Karl Carlile" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 11:31:10 +0000 Subject: THE POLITICAL STATE! Reply-to: joseph@indigo.ie Kerry: Granted, states have been institutions which have supported inequatiable social arrangements, however, that does not mean that it, the state, has to be an institution of inequality. The state, as you noted, arose out of need to coordinate the activities of a large agricultural society. It also allowed for the development of specialization to become stratified viz-a-viz different occupations within the society. My argument, is that there is a need for some sort of coordinating institution which fulfills the roles that the state currently occupies and at the same time does not support inequality amongst it's citizenry. As I believe that humans are capable of creating institutions of our own choosing this is a possibility (and given what you have said in previous posts, I believe you would concur with this sentiment). Karl: The political state, by its very nature, "is a product and manifestation of the irreconcilability of class contradictions." It is an expression and form of alienation. It is an expression of th e fact that the social relations between the producers of wealth have assumed a fetishised form. Social relations of production are thereby mediated through "things". Consequently people cannot regul ate their own affairs in a directly collective fashion . Administration and regulation of social relations is thereby mediated through a thing-like institution, the state. You say that you believe that "humans are capable of creating institutions of our own choosing". But the point is that under capitalist civilisation people cannot make such choices since they are not in control of their the social relations. You suggest that the state is a "coordinating institution". But you miss what is specific to the character of the state: Its existence as a manifestation o f the reification of human relations. Clearly the state has a co-ordinating character and shares this in common with certain other social phenomena. But this is not the point. The point is its specif icity: how it specifically differs from certain other socio-historical phenomena. Capitalism is a system through which human wealth is reproduced. It shares this feature in common with other forms of production of wealth. However this would be to miss the point. It is how the capitalist mode of production specifically differs from a particular form of production that is of historic significance. Marx and Hitler were human beings. However what is significant is their specificity, not their commonality. Yours etc., Karl Carlile From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Fri Aug 9 15:14:25 1996 Date: Fri, 09 Aug 96 15:44:02 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: what other kinds of state To: World Systems Network Please clarify your post, entitled, "The Political State," as to what *other* kinds of state may have existed, or might ever exist. Claims to this effect are legion in recorded history, but they never wash. For instance, the sociologist Michael Mann accepts the claims to "Ideological" power which emerged from a snowball fight at canossa, Italy, in 1077, where Gregory VII outbeaned his opponent, Henry IV, with more and harder snowballs than the other way around; it being entirely beside the point that the civil adminis- tration in Germany at this time consisted entirely of bishops appointed hitherto by the secular power. The aforementioned event was taught to me in all seriousness by eminent sociologists, citing still more eminent (and dead) sociologists as having been one of those incidents unique to so-called Western Civilization, and as having contributed to making the latter whatever it is today, anent which no comment. The facts, however, say otherwise. Specifically, that in 404, the Buddhist monk Hui-yuan wrote a *Treatise explaining the reasons why monks are not obliged to pay homage to sovereigns*, *Shamen bujing wangzhe lun*. This went far beyond the Gregorian Reforms, asserting that the Church was entirely free to ignore the secular power altogether. (The year 404 saw the state taken over by a thuggish military dictator, Liu Yu, subsequently first ruler of the Liu Song dynasty, 420-79.) Which, moreover, represented at the time a far more profoundly popular sentiment, in the capital of the Southern Empire, than was was true of Gregory's appeal in the miserable little ruined village that was eleventh century Rome. Similar claims, by Muslims and "Authorities on Muslims," have been made anent the Islamic state. Likewise, there was the Kirkpatrick doctrine which distinguished between the Totalitarian (sensu Communist) and the Authoritarian ("our sonofabitch") states, whereby the former, once installed, endureth forever (empirically falsified 1989-91); where the latter was susceptible to amelioration (which you may inquire of Zaireans and Indonesians about). Briefly, is Mann's IEMP just another sociological Tetragrammaton, like Parsons' AGIL? Daniel A. Foss From U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU Fri Aug 9 15:50:49 1996 Date: Fri, 09 Aug 96 16:24:53 CDT From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: usage 'development' offends women contextually To: World Systems Network I have just received an intemperate, in fact deliberately insensately enraged, message from Mara Jane King (surname English for Wang) of Career Online Magazine, to the effect that the use of the word "development" is insulting to women unless "economic" is specifically mentioned. The reason given is the meaning in sexist discourse, "hypertrophied mammae," if women or a woman be mentioned in the same sentence. I explained that the text in question was sent to her to illustrate polite sociological discourse, and that her objection was entirely irrational. She replied that she had a perfect right to be entirely irrational, as a survivor of the People's Republic of China, wherein women have for a thousand years been traded as slaves, this practice commencing at the same time as footbinding and contiunuing to this day under only nominal illegality. What was more, many women do not survive in that society, assuming they were so lucky as to be permitted to get born in the first place. And, it was after working hours, she was not in academia, and was entitled, as men are, to throw a rage fit. Specifically, in this context, she mentioned a war movie, where rage fits in the context of genocidal massacres of "ragheads" were entirely laudable, and heroic when committed by a woman in male-emulation mode. Only slightly less admirable, she said, is the type of rage-fit called "management." She denied that this occurred at her place of employ, however. Condensing as much as possible, she insisted that either "equality" and "human rights" were indivisible or, uh, fake. And wasn't going to get out of one sinkhole to get obliterated at a slightly higher material level in another one. Terror against women is routine, she said. So terror against men is inevitable, and this was it; the Asian shrew will horrify the world. Daniel A. Foss From cscpo@polsci.umass.edu Fri Aug 9 16:54:27 1996 Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 18:53:17 -0400 From: "colin s. cavell" Subject: Re: Beyond Sovereign Territory (fwd) To: cjreid@netcom.com > In 1989 the United States invaded Panama, taking the internationally >recognized Chief of State of that "sovereign state" back to its own >jurisdiction to face felony charges as a criminal defendant. This was the >first time since Westphalia that the principle of sovereignty was >independently set aside by one state for some national domestic legal >objective. Previously, Napoleon had been exiled to the Island of St. >Helena, but only after a major war and concluding international >negotiations. Actually, the arrest of Chief Minister Norman B. Sanders of the Turks and Caicos Islands by the U.S. in 1985 precedes the Noriega arrest and indeed perhaps acted as the trial run to the latter's arrest. From ba05105@binghamton.edu Mon Aug 12 13:08:15 1996 From: ba05105@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 15:07:57 -0400 (EDT) To: wwagar@binghamton.edu Subject: Re: the world party In-Reply-To: On Mon, 5 Aug 1996 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote: > > Dear Christian, > > Yes, that is exactly the question. How? And yes, there is no > hint in 1996 of anything like a World Party forming anywhere. But you > can't leap from this observation to the conclusion that "it ain't gonna > happen." The more people who believe that the best way to confront the > challenge of a proliferating globalizing capitalism aided and abetted by > the nation-state system is to build a global political formation to oppose > that system, the more likely it is that a nucleus of activists here or > there will begin to build one--or several. We have to start with some > kind of rough consensus about what must be done. Never mind the odds. > They're pretty low. So what? We don't have the option of moving to Mars. > You play with the hand you've been dealt. What comes first is a climate > of expectation for authentically antisystemic global political action. > The more people who share that expectation, the more likelihood it can > provoke serious attempts to move from theory to praxis. In short, you > gotta believe! > > Warren > > Yes--but what do you 'gotta believe' in? that the same old 'strategy' (use parties (or party) to take over states will produce different result than last time (i.e. the third international). Sorry, that's too much of a leap of faith for my taste. S Sherman Binghamton > From wwagar@binghamton.edu Mon Aug 12 14:51:02 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 16:51:15 -0400 (EDT) To: ba05105@binghamton.edu Subject: Re: the world party In-Reply-To: On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 ba05105@binghamton.edu wrote: > > > On Mon, 5 Aug 1996 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote: > > > > > Dear Christian, > > > > Yes, that is exactly the question. How? And yes, there is no > > hint in 1996 of anything like a World Party forming anywhere. But you > > can't leap from this observation to the conclusion that "it ain't gonna > > happen." The more people who believe that the best way to confront the > > challenge of a proliferating globalizing capitalism aided and abetted by > > the nation-state system is to build a global political formation to oppose > > that system, the more likely it is that a nucleus of activists here or > > there will begin to build one--or several. We have to start with some > > kind of rough consensus about what must be done. Never mind the odds. > > They're pretty low. So what? We don't have the option of moving to Mars. > > You play with the hand you've been dealt. What comes first is a climate > > of expectation for authentically antisystemic global political action. > > The more people who share that expectation, the more likelihood it can > > provoke serious attempts to move from theory to praxis. In short, you > > gotta believe! > > > > Warren > > > > > > > Yes--but what do you 'gotta believe' in? that the same old 'strategy' > (use parties (or party) to take over states will produce different result > than last time (i.e. the third international). Sorry, that's too much of > a leap of faith for my taste. > > S Sherman > Binghamton > > > Dear Mr. Sherman, I often feel like a fish out of water when discussing issues and prospects with sociologists. Immanuel Wallerstein's brave efforts to integrate the social sciences (including history) notwithstanding, there are still vast differences in world-view and methodology between the average sociologist and the average historian. I happen to be, in this sense, an average historian. Although I certainly concur with world-systems theorists that there are trends and cycles in human affairs, I do not believe they are unevadable, and I do not believe that the same things ever literally happen more than once. Circumstances are always somewhat different, leading to somewhat different outcomes. Simple-minded example: the Roman Empire (in the West) "fell," the Roman Empire (in the East) "fell" but only a millennium later, and the Chinese Empire survived many "falls" to live again, until early in the 20th century, and maybe not even then if you want to equate Chiang, Mao, and Deng with the emperors of yore. So I am not in the least deterred by the apparent similarities between the fate of the Third International (or the Second) and the prospects for a world socialist party. The World Party I have in mind would be quite different in many respects from the Third International, it would do battle in a rather different world, and it would surely have a different impact on world history--better or worse, who can say? In any event, the notion that the World Party is doomed to repeat the history of the Third International, or the CPSU, that the "next" time will be little different from the first, just flies in the face of everything that historians think they know about the cussedness of history. To me, history is full of surprises, nasty, pleasant, or whatever. The earth is not an anthill, and human beings have choices. So, yes, "you gotta believe." What's the alternative? Best, Warren From rkmoore@iol.ie Mon Aug 12 16:01:55 1996 Mon, 12 Aug 1996 22:35:36 +0100 (BST) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 22:35:36 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK , PHILOFHI@YORKU.CA From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: SAVING DEMOCRACY (was "Re: world party") On Mon, 5 Aug 1996 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote to WSN: > > Dear Christian, > > Yes, that is exactly the question. How? And yes, there is no > hint in 1996 of anything like a World Party forming anywhere. But you > can't leap from this observation to the conclusion that "it ain't gonna > happen." The more people who believe that the best way to confront the > challenge of a proliferating globalizing capitalism aided and abetted by > the nation-state system is to build a global political formation to oppose > that system, the more likely it is that a nucleus of activists here or > there will begin to build one--or several. We have to start with some > kind of rough consensus about what must be done. Never mind the odds. > They're pretty low. So what? We don't have the option of moving to Mars. > You play with the hand you've been dealt. What comes first is a climate > of expectation for authentically antisystemic global political action. > The more people who share that expectation, the more likelihood it can > provoke serious attempts to move from theory to praxis. In short, you > gotta believe! > > Warren > > --------------- Along these lines, allow me to offer my humble ideas, below. Your feedback would be appreciated on this draft, to improve it before publication... -rkm ________________________________________________________________ ON SAVING DEMOCRACY The companion piece to this article, "cj#547> The Rise & Fall of Democracy," (posted June 20) presented an interpretation of modern history (since the Enlightenment) which seems to offer little hope for a happy future for mankind. Our "democracies" have been deeply corrupted by corporate power, and the very existence of democratic institutions is being mortally threatened by the current neoliberal campaign for a globalist corporate state. Not only is the current situation contrary to the interests of humanity, but all the trends are in the direction of even worse times. But it's always darkest before dawn, and hope arises from the very corporate dominance that is so threatening. The point is that nearly everyone is being harmed by the corporatist schemes, whether it be the First-World worker squeezed between frozen salaries and reduced social benefits, or the Third-World farmer being shoved aside by agribusiness interests. Through its all-pervasive power and arrogance, the elite has sown the seeds of a potentially powerful counter revolution. It is the citizens of the First World who may be in the best position to initiate progressive global changes. First-World countries provide the primary infrastructure for corporate operations, and First-World political systems, while they last, offer the greatest opportunity for effective political action. If broad-based citizen coalitions in First World countries could bring truly progressive governments into power, it would be possible to reverse the global dominance of the corporate elite, re-vitalize democratic institutions, and re-align First World agendas along progressive lines. This could in turn create a climate in which the rest of the world would be better able to pursue progressive agendas as well. Obstacles to Progressive Political Action If you look at the fundamentals, the conditions are right for a democratic resurgence: the elite corporate danger is acute and ominous, and the opportunity for an effective popular uprising exists -- in our tattered democratic institutions. But the likelihood of this opportunity being pursued seems unfortunately remote. There are three primary reasons for this: ignorance, organizational malaise, and the absence of a comprehensive progressive agenda. By ignorance, I refer to a general unawareness of the true nature of the corporatist danger, and of the imminent threat to democratic institutions. This ignorance can be over-stated -- the number of people who have managed to grasp the situation may be much larger than the media-projected image of "public opinion" would seem to indicate. But it is fair to say that people generally are kept in ignorance, mesmerized by the corporate-dominated media and distracted by manufactured crises and phony issues. Nonetheless, there is considerable popular support for progressive changes, and a great many progressive organizations fighting for this or the other "cause." But overall, progressive organizing is in a chaotic state. Energy is split up among so-called "special-interest" groups, whose cumulative effect is mostly neutralized by one another, and by the corrupt political process. There is insufficient effort directed toward building broad-based coalition movements that could promote a progressive agenda and exert effective political influence. Perhaps most crippling is the absence of an adequate progressive agenda. It may be true that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but with no clear destination in mind, even the first step cannot be taken. A sensible, comprehensive political agenda is necessary. Around such an agenda could be organized a broad-based coalition movement, and such an agenda could provide the basis for a positive program of societal regeneration and true democratic reform. Toward a Progressive Reform Agenda Conditions vary from country to country, and no single reform agenda can apply everywhere. But everywhere the central issues are corporate power and the corruption of the democratic process -- and progressive agendas need to focus on solving those central problems. These systemic reforms need to be accomplished first: if the democratic process itself can be made functional, and the controlling corporate fingers pried loose from politics, then the means would exist for a broader progressive program to be democratically defined and pursued. For want of a better focus, reform will be examined from the perspective of the U.S. situation. This focus is not all that unreasonable, given that it is the U.S. model that is being increasingly foisted on the rest of the world. Media Reform -- An informed citizenry is absolutely essential to the sound functioning of a representative democracy. For the flow of public information and discussion to be monopolized by the corporate elite, as it is in the U.S., is utterly corrupting of the democratic process -- the result is that "public discussion" serves to distract and manipulate rather than to inform and empower. Citizen perceptions are filtered through the lense of corporate interests, and democracy is corrupted at its very roots. There need to be alternate sources of news, information, and entertainment which are not warped by corporate interests, and which provide a broad spectrum of viewpoints. The BBC might be an appropriate model for such an independent media venue in the U.S. BBC is dependent neither on government nor corporate funding -- it is funded through a modest television license fee paid by all media consumers. BBC is thus able -- in theory, and often in practice -- to manage its operations and its programming independent of government and corporate control and free of advertisements. Electoral Reform -- Elections are the primary transaction in the representative-governmental process. The selection of candidates, the carrying out of campaigns, and the voting rules -- these processes determine the people's role in selecting leaders, and hence determine how representative (or not) the government will be. In the current U.S. system, the voting rules are slanted to favor the two-party system, the two parties are dominated by corporate interests, and the campaigns are corporate-managed PR shows. The electoral system is thus deeply corrupted by corporate interests, and voters choose among corporate-sponsored propagandist-politicians rather than expressing their democratic intent. Fundamental societal issues are never allowed to surface during campaigns; instead, colorful peripheral topics are selected for mock debate in a charade of a campaign. In order for elections to serve their democratic purpose -- the expression of popular will -- it is essential to break the major- party monopoly over politics. In order for new parties to arise, they must be allowed to compete effectively when they are still small -- otherwise they can never achieve public recognition and begin to build up their constituencies. Under the current plurality-wins system, people are afraid to vote for small parties -- they feel compelled instead to choose the so- called "lesser of two evils" among the major parties. There are various mechanisms which could help encourage effective new parties. One such mechanism is the requirement of a majority for election, which can be accomplished either by run-off elections or (more efficiently) by a ranked-voting scheme. Another mechanism is proportional representation, which gives each party a number of seats, in proportion to their share of the votes. Reform of campaigns would be partially achieved by the measures mentioned above: an independent media venue and the accommodation of small parties. Both of these would broaden the scope of debate and encourage the development of leaders who are more representative of popular will. But in addition, it is necessary to remove the PR hype from the campaign process and to end the role of corporate money in determining what issues are debated and which candidates receive favorable media exposure. Some measures which could, in some combination, help in this regard are (1) much smaller limits to campaign spending, (2) public financing of campaigns, (3) strictly equal access to media by all candidates (and their surrogate organizations), (4) restriction of election coverage to the public media venue. Political Reform -- Elected politicians, in a democratic society, are supposed to represent the will of their constituencies. In our corrupted system, it is fairer to say that politicians are the representatives of their corporate backers, and that part of their assignment is to hoodwink citizens into voting for them. With media and electoral reform, along the lines mentioned above, much progress would be made toward restoring the democratic role of politicians. But in addition salaries of officials should be raised to be in line with private executives with similar levels of responsibility, and all potentially conflicting outside interests and income sources (consultancies, board memberships, remunerated speaking engagements, etc.) should be prohibited. Further, the corrupting influence of corporate lobbying on the legislative process must be ended. This is a complex topic, and I'll offer only a single example of a possible reform measure. When a Congressional committee holds public hearings on a bill, the democratic intent of those hearings is to solicit a representative sampling of public opinion and expert advice regarding the bill. What happens all too often in practice is that some interested industry association hires a PR firm, and dramatic testimony is staged so as to slant the views seen by the committee. Scores of carefully selected "witnesses" and/or "experts" are flown at corporate expense to Washington, in order to create the desired bias in testimony. Thus the legislative process is corrupted by corporate special-interests. What might help here would be to have a special public fund which is used to bring witnesses to hearings, and which is sufficient to insure that a wide range of viewpoints can be heard -- especially from those who would be most affected by the legislation. Corporate-Role Reform -- At the heart of any agenda must be a sensible policy regarding corporations and their proper role in society. It would be folly to think in terms of eliminating corporations, replacing them with, say, some kind of utopian socialism. Not only would this create the insurmountable problem of designing (and agreeing on) an entirely new society, but it would back the corporate elite into a corner -- forcing them to fight to the death for their survival. The corporation is an efficient machine for exploiting opportunities and optimizing the operation of the economy. As such, corporations can be of value to society, and preferable to a centrally-managed economy. The problem is that the role of master and servant has gotten reversed: instead of the corporation being chartered to serve society, we've reached a situation where society is managed to serve the goal of corporate enrichment. What is needed is a radical reversal in the relationship between corporations and the larger society. A corporate charter should be a privilege, not a right, and the interests of society at large should be represented on corporate boards, not just the financial interests of stockholders. A corporation is defined legally to be an artificial person: what is needed is to turn these corporate "persons" into good citizens rather than greedy exploiters. One important aspect of this "relationship reversal" has to do with cash-flow. Currently, we have an absurd situation in which corporate profits are at an all time high, corporate taxation is obscenely low, and government is essentially bankrupt. Not only should corporate tax rates be raised to a higher, fairer level, but the whole tangle of loopholes, depletion allowances, and corporate subsidies should be pared back to the bone. In particular, a business-like review of the value of public assets such as radio spectra, oil leases, timber holdings, mining licenses, publicly-funded inventions, etc. is long overdue. All too frequently, such public assets are given away at a fraction of their commercial value to private operators. Such sweetheart deals amount to corruption on a grand scale -- the corporate theft of immense amounts of public property -- but such deals are typically not perceived as corruption... The law doth punish man or woman That steals the goose from off the common, But lets the greater felon loose, That steals the common from the goose. - Anon, 18th cent., on the enclosures. If private operation is deemed to be the most efficient means of exploiting a public asset, then government should bargain from its position of strength, and attain maximum public return on the deals it makes. It can seek higher direct fees, a stronger oversight role in operations (to represent the public interest), and a public share in revenues derived from operations. Toward Effective Political Action Regardless of the agenda details, progressive change can only come about through effective grass-roots political organizing. As mentioned earlier, there is not so much a lack of popular political fervor or activity, as there is a lack of focus and coalition. The People, one might say, are scattered in all directions. Again, for want of a better alternative, the focus will be on the American situation. Given the U.S. dominance of international arrangements, and the increasing role of the U.S. military as a globalist "police" force, the fate of progressive politics in America is of direct importance to citizens around the globe. The phenomenon of "single-issue movements" deserves special consideration. It is undeniable that such movements have achieved desirable reforms for causes like environmentalism and civil rights. But the political arena has evolved to a point where single-issue organizing in the U.S. has become impotent, and serves mostly to "divide and conquer" the people. Environmentalists are pitted against labor groups; the women's movement is fractured by the abortion debate; civil libertarians are portrayed as abetting crime; campaigners against corporate power are painted as being luddite xenophobes. The corporate elite has learned to play movements off against one another, to limit their effectiveness by slanted media coverage, and to manufacture its own counter-movements -- thus making grass-roots politics largely impotent. Only a broad-based coalition movement, with a comprehensive and persuasive political agenda, has any chance to revive democracy and reverse the trend toward corporate domination. Such a coalition must seek to include labor, environmentalists, civil libertarians, feminists, minorities, students, unemployed, elderly, etc. -- literally everyone whose interests would be served by a responsive representative democracy. The first hurdle such a coalition will need to overcome will be divisiveness itself. The single-cause approach has so pervaded society that it has become almost synonymous with political action. People, especially activists, need to become aware their movements have been backed into cul-de-sacs, and that broad popular solidarity is necessary to face the the well-organized corporatist onslaught. Emphasis on coalition among existing organizations, labor groups, etc., might be the best approach to building a more comprehensive movement. By that means, existing organizational structures can be leveraged toward broader objectives. A strong agenda and credible, competent leadership are critical to attracting organizations into coalition. As organizations join the coalition, the agenda will need to be discussed and refined to accommodate additional concerns. But the central focus on democratic reform and the global corporatist threat must be maintained, lest the movement become strategically irrelevant. The second hurdle facing any budding coalition will be the inevitable demonization/trivialization campaign carried out against it by the mainstream media. Foibles of leaders will be dug up and sensationalized. Unity will be challenged by reports that some "causes" are taken more seriously than others within the coalition. Scare stories will portray economic catastrophe as the inevitable result of any agenda that doesn't cater to corporate interests. The more successful the coalition, the more intense will be the media campaign against it. The movement will need to develop its own internal communications infrastructure, and find a way to get movement news out to its constituencies without depending on help from the mainstream media. Rallies, newsletters, local chapters, door-to-door canvassing -- even the Internet -- all can be used to create a "counter media." If despite all these obstacles, a progressive movement succeeds in building a formidable constituency -- one that threatens to elect a significant number of progressive candidates at all levels -- then two final hurdles must be surmounted: co-option by the major parties, and over-attachment to the electoral process. Time and again in American history, strong popular movements have dissipated when a major party (usually the Democrats) adopted the rhetoric of the progressives, or when the popular movement was tied too closely to the goal of winning some "key" election. These seductions to rapid "victory" may be the most dangerous hurdle of all. The Christian Coalition, unfortunately, is an example of an organization with both a comprehensive agenda and a sound attitude toward the electoral process. It does not stand on its laurels when favorable candidates are elected -- instead it leverages its position toward greater victories in the future. And it most certainly doesn't allow its organizational structure to weaken in the face of successes. It is essential that a progressive movement be organized as a long- term political force -- it must be aware that its strength comes from its ongoing existence, as a continuing channel of democratic expression. Success in electing supported candidates is a sign to pursue implementation of its agenda, not a sign that the movement has achieved its goals. Global Solidarity and National Focus Successes in one nation can provide invaluable encouragement, and even material assistance, to movements in other nations. The corporate elite operates on a global scale, and progressives must have global consciousness as well. Cross-border communication and solidarity is of strategic importance. The recent massive demonstrations and work stoppages in France, and the similar protests in Germany, represent strong popular sentiment against the effects of globalization. But of course they weren't reported that way in the mass media, and no sense of international solidarity was generated. Strong progressive organizations could have picked up this connection and used it to build greater confidence and self-awareness within the global movement. At the international level, there is a natural focus of shared concerns: the economic and political destabilization caused by globalist institutions (GATT, IMF, World Bank, etc.) Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize the nation-state as the primary unit of political organizing. Progressives must avoid the twin traps of premature internationalism and premature devolution. Until corporations are brought under democratic control, elite power is most dominant over very small nations, and at the international level. Strong national sovereignty, including economic self-determination, must be at the heart of progressive politics everywhere. Democracy is difficult enough to achieve in a large, modern nation -- larger scale units (such as the EU) simply make it easier for the elite to gain control. And smaller, balkanized, states are too weak to stand up to multinational pressures. A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY Greider, William, "Who will tell the People - The Betrayal of American Democracy" (New York: Touchstone, 1993). Parenti, Michael, "Make-Believe Media - The Politics of Entertainment" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). Parenti, Michael, "The Sword and the Dollar - Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989). Zinn, Howard, "A Peoples History of the United States" (New York: Harper & Row, 1980). ________________________________________________________________ ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - Wexford, Ireland Cyberlib: www | ftp --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Mon Aug 12 21:49:02 1996 13 Aug 96 10:45:58 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 10:45:36 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY (was "Re: world party") I support in general the further development by Richard Moore the ideas of wide coalition with progressive ideology, participation in elections, special attention to mass-media, national focus and global solidarity, etc. At the same time within the framework of WST this political program needs a critical comprehension. I mean that all this designed movement and projected changes on national and global levels should fit to general theoretical structures and trajectories of WST (if we admit them to be valid), or they should change some basic options of these structures and scenario. In the most classical basis of WST developed by F.Braudel and I.Wallerstein the history of Western and then Global World System was treated as a shift of economic (+ political-military-technological) hegemony from Venezia, Genova, Antwerpen, Amsterdam to London-England and US. The question is, if the suggested program (as well as World Party, etc) will lead to a new stage of these shifting of hegemony, or it will be 'the end of this history'? The last version had been already suggested by Karl Marx (Communism as an absolute end of all vicious history of private property, class division and exploitation). Have we really now more solid arguments than Marx to persist that NOW the general historical logic will be stopped? Please present such arguments if you see them. I don't. In situation without these arguments we have nothing more than to insert our political programs in the historical logic and to and to think of the forms of new shift of hegemony. My position is that core-periphery axis is eternal in human history but the qualities of the very core can and should be changed. R.Moore's program seems to be "antisystemic" and "anticore", that's why I think it is hopelesss. best regards, Nikolai Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Aug 13 02:39:31 1996 Tue, 13 Aug 1996 09:38:20 +0100 (BST) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 09:38:20 +0100 (BST) To: ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY (was "Re: world party") 8/13/96, Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: >I support in general the further development by Richard Moore the ideas of >wide coalition with progressive ideology, participation in elections, >special attention to mass-media, national focus and global solidarity, etc. Good... certainly the relationship of people to world systems, and the possibility of enlightened human intervention, deserves to be a thread on WSN. > At the same time within the framework of WST this political program needs a >critical comprehension. I mean that all this designed movement and projected >changes on national and global levels should fit to general theoretical >structures and trajectories of WST (if we admit them to be valid), or they >should change some basic options of these structures and scenario. > In the most classical basis of WST developed by F.Braudel and >I.Wallerstein the history of Western and then Global World System was treated >as a shift of economic (+ political-military-technological) hegemony from >Venezia, Genova, Antwerpen, Amsterdam to London-England and US. > The question is, if the suggested program (as well as World Party, etc) >will lead to a new stage of these shifting of hegemony, or it will be 'the >end of this history'? I must say I've been extremely un-impressed by the shallow analysis and lack of deep comprehension evidenced under the name of "WST". Seems like would-be system theorists patching together an arcane explanation for what's obvious to everyone already, so they can feel smug with their "insider knowledge" that no one else can follow. As such, it's trending toward becoming a feedback-rich, self-deluding cult, rather than a scientific endeavor. The "SAVING DEMOCRACY" piece takes the core/periphery (aka First-World/Third-World) as a given, and suggests shifting the focus of political power within the core states first, to enable the possibility of global political shifts. There was no suggestion that the basic core-periphery organization of the globe needs to be, or is likely to be, altered. If this political shift were implemented globally, it would not constitute a new stage in the shifting hegemonies -- it would only broaden the constituencies involved in setting societal goals -- a minor shift from a systems point of view. It might also lead to a more collaborative, synergistic relationship between core states, and with and among the periphery. End of history? Certainly not. New power groupings are always struggling for existence, and dominant ones often get soft and complacent. The economy and technology are still in a stage of rapid development -- it's still early days for human history, regardless of the status of democracy. > The last version had been already suggested by Karl Marx (Communism as >an absolute end of all vicious history of private property, class division >and exploitation). Have we really now more solid arguments than Marx to >persist that NOW the general historical logic will be stopped? > Please present such arguments if you see them. I don't. Again, I haven't suggested stopping "general historical logic". Marx & Lenin were better at analyzing capitalism than they were at predicting its future or the future of "communist" states. Even the Russian Revolution was contrary to Marxian analysis. And Lenin's predictions of capitalism's demise completely ignore the ability of systems and people to adapt to changing circumstances. Why, pray tell, do you hold up Marx as a paragon of "solid arguments"? > My position is that core-periphery axis is eternal in human history but >the qualities of the very core can and should be changed. Then we're in agreement. BTW> "core-periphery" is much more general than just world systems. ALL systems seem to be structured on a core-periphery basis, from the human nervous system, to computers, to animal-grazing patterns, to highway-systems, to shopping centers -- you name it. What's the big deal? > R.Moore's program seems to be "antisystemic" and "anticore", that's >why I think it is hopelesss. Please substantiate this characterization, if you still believe it to be true. Yours, Richard From OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu Tue Aug 13 11:39:29 1996 From: "J B Owens" Organization: Idaho State University To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 11:41:24 -0600, MDT Subject: new South African journal ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 16:10:24 -0400 Reply-to: World-L - Forum on non-Eurocentric world history From: Haines Brown Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 15:11:22 +0800 (WST) From: Peter Limb To: "NUAFRICA: Program of African Studies Mailing List" Announcing a new journal from South Africa... >>> DEBATE >>> VOICES FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT >>> >>> >>>*********First issue now available - subscription info below******** >>>*******Lead editorial reprinted at the bottom of this message******* >>> >>> >>> -- FIRST ISSUE INCLUDES-- >>> >>>Franco BARCHIESI, "Promises for Sale - Debunking the >>> Developmentalist State Form" >>> >>>Dale McKINLEY, "Critique of Government's Macroeconomic >>>Vishwas SATGAR, Strategy: Growth, Employment and >>>Langa ZITA Redistribution" >>> >>>Oupa LEHULERE "Debating Social Democracy" >>>Eddie WEBSTER >>>Franco BARCHIESI >>>Rehad DESAI >>> >>>Franco BARCHIESI Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein >>>Matthew GINSBURG >>> >>>Greg RUITERS "On Civil Society - Review of Mzwanele >>> Mayekiso's 'Township Politics'" >>> >>>Mzwanele MAYEKISO Excerpts from 'Township Politics' >>> >>>Frank S. WILDERSON "The Makgoba Affair: Semiotics of a >>> Prelates War" >>> >>>Sandile DIKANI Two Poems >>> >>> >>> --Subscription Information-- >>> >>> >>> South Africa Overseas >>> >>>Workers R50 N/A >>> >>>Full-Time R40 N/A >>>Students >>> >>>Salaried R75 $30/L20 >>>Individuals >>> >>>Institutions R120 $60/L40 >>> >>>Overseas rates include the cost of airmail postage in all cases. >>> >>>Workers and students should provide proof of where they work or study >>>(eg photocopy of student card, union card, etc) >>> >>>Send checks or international money order to: >>> >>>DEBATE: VOICES FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT >>>P O Box 483 >>>Wits 2050 >>>South Africa >>> >>> or contact us by: >>> >>>Phone: (011) 482-4327 >>>Fax: (011) 716-3781 >>>E-mail: 029frb@cosmos.wits.ac.za >>> >>>Please include the following information >>>with your subscription: >>> >>>NAME:____________________________________ >>>_________________________________________ >>>ADDRESS:_________________________________ >>>_________________________________________ >>>____________________POSTAL CODE:_________ >>>TELEPHONE:_______________________________ >>>OCCUPATION:______________________________ >>>PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT/STUDY:_______________ >>>_________________________________________ >>> >>>The DEBATE Editorial Collective is made by: >>> >>>Franco Barchiesi, Heinrich Bohmke, Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai, >>>Rehad Desai, Leonard Gentle, Matthew Ginsburg, David Hemson, >>>Darrell Moellendorf, Greg Ruiters, Frank Wilderson. >>> >>> --Lead Editorial-- >>> >>> WHAT DEBATE? >>> >>> One delegate [of the Washington-based Institute of International >>> Finance] said he will advise his clients that South Africa is safe >>> as an investment destination for a time horizon of eight months... >>> The three-year perspective is terrible and the five-year perspective >>> is impossible. >>> Ben van Rensburg, chief economist >>> South African Chamber of Business >>> (speaking to a parliamentary committee, 3 June 1996) >>>Since around the time of the first democratic election, the South African >>>left (however we define ourselves) have been starved of good written >>>debates about left theory, strategies and tactics. That was the moment >>>not only when many of our leading thinkers migrated into government, >>>and an apparently indefinite future of self-censureship. >>> >>>It was also the point at which Work in Progress, a non-sectarian >>>monthly, suddenly died. Other useful periodicals continue, of course, and >>>on a quarterly or semi-annual basis progressive readers can satisfy their >>>hunger for arguments that flow from particular political parties (African >>>Communist), policy wonks (Transformation), social scientists (Social >>>Dynamics), political philosophers (Theoria), feminists (Agenda), >>>urbanists (Urban Forum) and so on. But dissatisfaction is also in the air, >>>and for many of us the existing material sometimes means a hard trek >>>through orthodox or simply flat and uninvigorating material. >>> >>>The strategists and intellectuals of social movements, labour, left parties >>>and the academy have traditionally thrived on debate, particularly during >>>lulls in the broader struggle. And South Africa's transition to democracy >>>has, regrettably, paralysed much of what is considered to be the formal >>>left. >>> >>>But it has also thrown up myriad contradictions and has begun to >>>restructure class, race and even gender relations in significant ways. It >>>is time, many of us now conclude, to get a better handle on all of >>>this. It is time to revisit classical controversies in political >>>economy, politics and culture, and apply new arguments that are more >>>sensitive to environment, race, identity, gender and generational >>>concerns than the left has generally managed. >>> >>>Such debate is not merely of intellectual importance. Although the >>>democratic breakthrough has surpassed most of our expectations -- had >>>we been asked what would happen a decade ago -- it has been >>>profoundly flawed, by all accounts. Masses of black South Africans >>>continue to confront the residues of apartheid at so many levels. South >>>Africa's social inequalities are amongst the most extreme in the world. >>>And the government has faltered enormously in delivering even the >>>simplest goods and services. >>> >>>The debate that finally seems to be emerging over such realities also >>>reflects the fact that traditions of social struggle are very much alive. >>>Striking nurses, autoworkers, civil servants and Cosatu's ability to >>>coordinate a national strike show the durability of worker confidence. >>>Land invasions and student demonstrations exhibit the hunger and will >>>for radical change. >>> >>>Are these just ongoing exhibitions of atomistic civil society, or instead the >>> >>>seeds of the next large movement-wide push for a true transformation >>>toward democracy, egalitarianism and sustainability (especially since >>>such words themselves have been poisoned by their use in so many >>>World Bank documents)? Are all the challenges to capital and state >>>power worth supporting? What is an appropriate evaluation of local >>>militancy today? What strategies and tactics would we want to see >>>becoming more generalised within the organisations of poor and working >>>people? >>> >>>Answering such practical questions depends upon us correctly >>>assessing the possibilities of change at this conjuncture. We are >>>presented in the bourgeois press with only the logic of neo-liberalism, >>>perhaps augmented by a few social democratic components here and >>>there. >>>If experiences elsewhere are any guide, this means that most of South >>>Africa will probably taste the fruit of liberation not mainly via political >>>democratisation but instead in the form of dramatically declining living >>>standards. And that, we are informed, is our lot, because of the need to >>>invite foreign investors and soothe international financial markets. >>>Are there alternatives for South African political economy? How should >>>the left handle ourselves in economic debate with neo-liberal technocrats >>>within the state, and indeed how should we respond to the policy >>>discourses and economic logic of global capital more generally? What >>>new political configurations -- breaking some alliances, making others -- >>>are needed? How, in the process, do we anticipate stronger black >>>intellectual leadership, a more decisive role for women comrades, a >>>growing environmental consciousness, the expansion of the cultural >>>resources of the left? >>>We hope, in this new journal, to give the broad, pluralistic left of South >>>Africa a voice through debates over these and many other questions. >>>We seek not ideological homogeneity but instead to enhance the best >>>existing traditions of debate, and the introduction of new ideas that open >>>our eyes to things we all have in common. >>>Along these lines, and acknowledging our glaring failure to achieve >>>gender diversity or content, this issue of Debate gets us off to a hopeful beginning. Our theme this time -- "developmentalism" -- is very much in question at the moment given the crash of the RDP. We lead with a >>>challenging article by Franco Barchiesi, who dissects the >>>"developmentalist" state and the rise of market ideology. Barchiesi and >>>Matthew Ginsburg then interview Immanuel Wallerstein so as to continue >>>to draw up a global accounting of the conjuncture. Next, in an important >>>paper that has been circulated widely within the SACP, three Party >>>militants (Langa Zita, Vishwas Satgar and Dale Mckinley) make the links >>>between global forces and government's 14 June macroeconomic >>>strategy document. >>> >>>What soon becomes clear is that behind every developmental project lies >>>a struggle over ideology. We hope that the classical debate on social >>>democracy and revolution taken forward here between Oupa Lehlulere, >>>Eddie Webster, Rehad Desai and Barchiesi inspires further >>>intervention.We follow this with an excerpt from the preface to >>>Mzwanele Mayekiso's new book on development struggles in Alexandra. >>>Greg Ruiters then rebukes Mayekiso's notion of "working-class civil >>>society." >>> >>>As a grand finale, Frank Wilderson deconstructs the Makgoba Affair at >>>Wits University, with all that it implies for intellectual challenges to the emerging order. We are also proud to intersperse our debates with >>>poetry by Sandile Dikani. >>>Debate aims to spread across South Africa, perhaps into the region as >>>well. We request that you send your own work to us as soon as you >>>feel it is ready to publish, and that you subscribe, read and promote >>>dialogue on the South African left. >>>For if the three year perspective is terrible and the five-year perspective >>>is impossible from the standpoint of the Institute of International Finance >>>and SACOB, it is critical for us to gear up both our debating and our >>>movement-building to take advantage of the situation. The momentum of >>>liberation appears to have reversed, but that does not mean we cannot >>>help reverse it yet again. >>>Franco Barchiesi >>>Sociology of Work Unit >>>Dept of Sociology >>>Private Bag 3 >>>University of the Witwatersrand >>>PO Wits 2050 >>>Johannesburg >>>South Africa >>>Tel. (++27 11) 716.2908 >>>Fax (++27 11) 716.3781 >>>E-Mail 029frb@cosmos.wits.ac.za >>>http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html >>>http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mshalev/direct.htm From wwagar@binghamton.edu Tue Aug 13 11:41:50 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 13:42:17 -0400 (EDT) To: "Richard K. Moore" Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY In-Reply-To: Dear Richard, Bravo. Your analysis of the predicament of democracy and the plight of the progressives is astute and well put. I agree entirely with your critique of single-issue movements. Of course I don't agree with your insistence on the nation-state as the framework for organizing a broad coalition of progressive forces. The megacorporate interests and the states that front for them pay less and less attention to that framework, and antisystemic movements must follow suit if they wish to be effective. There is no reason why a global party could not have national chapters active in national politics, but if the focus of each national segment of the world party is largely national, and each segment gets embroiled and swallowed up in national issues, and there is no supranational party structure coordinating all efforts at the regional, national, and local level, megacorporate globalization will just proceed on its merry way. The sine qua non, for me, is a world political movement that is firmly set on a course toward a global democratic state. Such internationalism, in 1996, is not "premature." The real problem is that It may already be too late. Nonetheless, I like your article very much, and I note that it really IS concerned with praxis! Good luck, Warren From chriscd@jhu.edu Tue Aug 13 13:51:08 1996 13 Aug 1996 15:50:06 -0400 (EDT) 13 Aug 1996 15:49:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 15:52:37 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: Fernand Braudel Center Home Page To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology The Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University has a new home page on the World Wide Web. There is information about the FBC, the graduate program in Sociology and REVIEW, the world-systems journal published by the FBC (including a complete index of back issues). The url is http://sociology.adm.binghamton.edu.fbc.fbchmpg.html have a look see. chris From chriscd@jhu.edu Tue Aug 13 14:04:15 1996 13 Aug 1996 16:03:06 -0400 (EDT) 13 Aug 1996 16:02:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 16:05:47 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Paul Robeson Week for Racial and Ethnic Harmony] To: psn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology Sat, 10 Aug 1996 03:50:19 -0400 (EDT) Sat, 10 Aug 1996 03:50:12 -0400 (EDT) 09 Aug 1996 23:29:54 -0700 (PDT) 09 Aug 1996 23:18:18 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 22:16:34 -0400 From: dcscar@igc.apc.org Subject: Paul Robeson Week for Racial and Ethnic Harmony Sender: dcscar@igc.org To: srivera@ccsapt.org, rtemp@peacenet.org, sdr1@electriciti.com, canit@pencil.math.missouri.edu, Renee_Trevino@moriarty.com, rbray@ngtlf.org, panetta@ucla.edu, lollafund@aol.com, mmokuena@office4.fei.com, cbm7@columbia.edu, 75714.2712@CompuServe.COM, rsolomon@hcfa.gov, 100410.2105@CompuServe.COM, 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WEEK FOR RACIAL AND ETHNIC HARMONY OCTOBER 19-26, 1996 Attention Youth Activists, Educators, Musicians, Artists, NGO's and Community Organizations Paul Robeson, an athlete, scholar, singer and activist, was an African-American hero who used his tremendous talents for the betterment of all people. He is an inspiring role-model for today. Young and old activists high schools, colleges, synagogues, churches, unions, and community centers are now planning events to join in this international week for peace and justice. We will honor Paul Robeson and raise our voices against racism and bigotry in our communities and around the world. Please join this campaign by responding today, and spread the word. In Solidarity, The DC Student Coalition Against Racism (DC SCAR) dcscar@igc.apc.org (202)310-2930 PO Box 18291, Washington, DC,20036 Byline: The DC Student Coalition Against Racism (DC SCAR) is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of students and young people seeking to understand and struggle against racism and other forms of opression in their communities and around the world. DC SCAR conducts "unlearning racism" trainings, inner-city conflict resolution and leadership programs,activist exchanges, anti-racist resources, and alternative media projects. From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Tue Aug 13 15:29:31 1996 Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 17:29:25 -0400 To: World-System Network From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Info on Events at ASA Meeting, Friday and Saturday Below is a list of the PEWS (and some PEWS-related) events taking place at the American Sociological Association meeting in New York at the end of this week. See you there! ****************************************************************** Saturday, August 17, 3:30-4:15 p.m. Section on Political Economy of the World System Business Meeting (discussion of next years paper sessions; party location announced; etc.) Party at about 8:30 pm ****************************************************************** FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 4:30 PM 89. Regular Session. World Systems: Present Status and Prospects of World-System Studies Organizer: Terence K. Hopkins, Binghamton University Presider: Cedric Robinson, University of California, Santa Barbara Capitalism, the West and the Modern World-System: Re-Thinking the Non-Debate of the 1970's. Giovanni Arrighi, State University of New York, Binghamton The Rise and Future Demise of World-System Analysis. Immanuel Wallerstein, State University of New York, Binghamton Discussion: Cedric Robinson, University of California, Santa Barbara ******************************************************************************* SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 8:30 AM 117. Section on Political Economy of the World-System. Globalization: Myths and Realities Organizer: Philip McMichael, Cornell University Presider: Alvin So, University of Hawaii, Manoa Globalization and Deindustrialization: Direct Investment and the Decline of Manufacturing Employment in 17 OECD Nations. Art Alderson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Modeling Zones of the World-Economy: A Polynomial Regression Analysis (1938-1996). Giovanni Arrighi, State University of New York, Binghamton; David Consiglio, Timothy Moran, and Roberto P. Korzeniewicz, University of Maryland, College Park Globalization, Glocalization, and World (or Global) History. Roland Robertson and Victor Ruodometof, University of Pittsburgh Globalizing the Antipodes: Australia in the World System, Then and Now. Peter Beilharz, La Trobe University Discussion: Ravi Palat, University of Auckland ******************************************************************************* SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 10:30 AM 140. Section on Political Economy of the World System. The Environment and the World Economy Organizer and Presider: Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona Simultaneities of World-System Development: Cities, Empires, and Climate Change. Chris Chase-Dunn, Johns Hopkins University Concentrating Capital with a Spatially Diffuse Commodity: The Political Ecology and Economy of the Indonesian Timber Industry. Paul K. Gellert, University of Wisconsin, Madison The "Greening" of the World Bank. Michael Goldman, University of California, Berkeley Shifting Correlates of National Carbon Efficiency in the World System. J. Timmons Roberts and Tulane University; Peter E. Grimes, Johns Hopkins University ******************************************************************************* 165. Section on Political Economy of the World System. The Social Regulation of Global Capitalism Organizer and Presider: Fred Deyo, State University of New York, Brockport States and the New Geography of Power. Saskia Sassen, Columbia University Capitalism as a Class Society and as an Economic System: A Critical Comparison of the Regulation and Social Structures of Accumulation Theories. Costas Panayotakis, City University of New York Global Regulation, or Global Governance. Philip McMichael, Cornell University Discussion: Farshad Araghi, Florida Atlantic University SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2:30-3:30 PM 189. Section on Political Economy of the World System. Informal Discussion Roundtables and Business Meeting Informal Discussion Rountables Organizers: Miguel Korzeniewicz, University of New Mexico; and Farshad Araghi, Florida Atlantic University Tables (21 different presentations): 1. Asymmetry and Interdependence in Core-Periphery Relations 2. Culture in the World System 3. New Approaches to World System Theory 4. East Asia in the World System 5. Commodities 6. National and Regional Case Studies 7. Inequality and Zones in the World System 8. Global Dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility 9. Gender Differentiation in World Systems Analysis Dale Wimberley PEWS Sec.-Treasurer Dept. of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University From rkmoore@iol.ie Wed Aug 14 05:51:24 1996 Wed, 14 Aug 1996 12:51:04 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 12:51:04 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY 8/13/96, Warren Wagar wrote: >Of course I don't agree with >your insistence on the nation-state as the framework for organizing a >broad coalition of progressive forces. The megacorporate interests and >the states that front for them pay less and less attention to that >framework, and antisystemic movements must follow suit if they wish to be >effective. Dear Warren, The "states that front for them" need to stop fronting for them -- and that requires people to take control of their on-paper national democracies. Global solidarity and cooperation among national-based movements is indeed important, as I said in the posting, but it is national democratic institutions that provide the potential infrastructure for popular empowerment. You might say national governments are fortresses which have been occupied by the enemy (corporate power). If we "storm the fortresses" (take control of our institutions), then we have a power base, an infrastructure (a fortress), designed and evolved for the (potential) purpose of governing society according to democratic principles. You use "antisystemic", evidently, to describe any program for significant change. I say it is folly to ignore systems -- one must use them and work within them, if even to change them. The systems which offer us the most hope are the democratic-national-government systems. They exist and operate, and their controls are within our grasp if we have the necessary political will and competence. > There is no reason why a global party could not have national >chapters active in national politics, but if the focus of each national >segment of the world party is largely national, and each segment gets >embroiled and swallowed up in national issues, and there is no >supranational party structure coordinating all efforts at the regional, >national, and local level, megacorporate globalization will just proceed >on its merry way. The necessity of "coordinating all efforts" is not obvious, and I disupte it. Mutual solidarity and support is not the same as being "coordinated" from above. Your "supranational party structure" -- especially if it is to make detailed plans for every nation and locality -- sounds like a rehash of a Soviet Communist Party system. Too big, too bureaucratic, too centralized, too arrogant, too distant from the needs of the people. Decentralization, I believe, is essential to democracy, and the nation state is not too-small a unit to deserve decentralized autonomy. > The sine qua non, for me, is a world political movement >that is firmly set on a course toward a global democratic state. Such >internationalism, in 1996, is not "premature." The real problem is that >It may already be too late. To seek a "global democratic state" at this time in history is folly in the extreme, folly for a whole host of reasons. First, in the face of the corporate-sponsored campaign for a techocratic world state -- corporate "free-trade" feudalism -- any public sentiment for world government will be inevitably co-opted into the corporate designs. It would be all to easy for the corporate globalists to start spouting progressive rhetoric PR. They'd show "revelation" footage of dictatorship abuses, and explain how only their corporate-sponsored "minimalist" world government can be "the final solution". Indeed, that's exactly what the whole Germany-USA-managed Bosnian crisis is all about. Second, the problems of designing a world government -- and achieving consensus on its structure, and making it democratic instead of autocratic -- are formidable in the extreme. What kind of consitutional convention would be necessary? What models would be entertained for consideration? There are endless questions. You may think you have answers to all of them, but I don't see this as a feasible path. Far more practical to take control of national systems than to embark on a moon-shot global government design, especially given today's balance of power in favor of corporatism, and their control over the media. Finally, and to my mind most important, The World is simply too large a unit for us reasonably to expect democracy to function effectively there. The Greeks thought the city-state was the ideal size for autonomous democracy. In their day they might have been right; and if the global political balance-of-power shifts dramatically (in favor of "the people"), then the day of the city-state might return. Democracy inherently works better at a smaller scale, rather than larger. After all, democracy is in some sense "a group of people trying to collaboratively manage their society". The larger the society, the more problematic it is to set up systems that enable such collaboration, the more difficult to keep them from becoming bureaucratic, remote, authoritarian, and corrupted by determined special interests. So the choice of scale, for democratic activism, is crucial. One can debate the virtues of various scales, but in today's world, given multinational corporations and all other factors, I firmly believe the national level is the most promising focus. It is operational, it is accessible (potentially), and it is of sufficient size to stand up to the corporate elite, if it has popular will behind it. If a majority of First-World governments were to become genuinely progressive, then imagine how productive international conferences could become! Delegates would really be chartered to seek effective remedies to world hunger, poverty, human rights, pollution, etc. It's not a world government that's needed, it's governments which actively pursue the betterment of human welfare instead of corporate enrichment. If you feel it's impossible to reform national governments in this way, then I say it's ten times as impossible to force these reforms from some nebulous global forum. IMHO, rkm From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Wed Aug 14 07:52:04 1996 14 Aug 96 20:44:29 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore), WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 20:44:11 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY (was "Re: world party") Dear Richard, I am certainly on your side in your debate with Warren Wagar when you reject feasibility and preferance of W state, insist on using already existing democratic instruments on national level, and fairly appeal to work with the 'system', not to make it an enemy. but in this 'our side' yours and my position have also some differences: > I must say I've been extremely un-impressed by the shallow analysis > and lack of deep comprehension evidenced under the name of "WST". Seems > like would-be system theorists patching together an arcane explanation for > what's obvious to everyone already, so they can feel smug with their > "insider knowledge" that no one else can follow. As such, it's trending > toward becoming a feedback-rich, self-deluding cult, rather than a > scientific endeavor. nobody thinks here that WST is an absolute key, it is a live changing approach with various competitive subapproaches, as for me it must be combined and correctly sinthesized with geopolitics and cultural- civilizational studies. If you ever read books of Braudel, Wallerstein, Frank, Arrighi, Chase-Dunn you would not dare to say of 'shallow analysis' and 'lack of deep comprehension'. It seems you take your major information of WST from this list, but it is an analog of couloirs (kofee-break) of conference: sometimes the talk is brilliant and sharpminded, sometimes not, but the main work is going in the main hall - in serious monographical research - in books and papers. Moreover, frequently experts here exchange by concepts (with rather rich interior content) but a non-expert can see not more than mere trivial words. > There was no suggestion that the basic > core-periphery organization of the globe needs to be, or is likely to be, > altered. good, here we agree > > If this political shift were implemented globally, it would not > constitute a new stage in the shifting hegemonies -- it would only broaden > the constituencies involved in setting societal goals -- a minor shift from > a systems point of view. It might also lead to a more collaborative, > synergistic relationship between core states, and with and among the > periphery. OK, but the trick is how to make this shift desirable for the core, for the 'systemic' global and national elites? > Why, pray tell, do you hold up Marx as a paragon of "solid arguments"? surely Marx is not a paragon, he has made crucial mistakes concerning the world future, but he was armed with 'The Capital' - the best political-economic analysis in that period (and many people think - even up to now) Modern naive talks of the end of global capitalism and transforamtion it into global socialism are also a mistake but alas - without such solid theoretical support that Marx had. I am glad that you are not in this camp and I take this criticism back. > BTW> "core-periphery" is much more > general than just world systems. ALL systems seem to be structured on a > core-periphery basis, from the human nervous system, to computers, to > animal-grazing patterns, to highway-systems, to shopping centers -- you > name it. What's the big deal? I am not an expert in WST, but here it is just a nice example when I use WST CONCEPTS and you take into account only general WORDS. Core-periphery in WST is really a big deal, dozens of books, thousands of pages are devoted to it. > > R.Moore's program seems to be "antisystemic" and "anticore", that's > >why I think it is hopelesss. > > Please substantiate this characterization, if you still believe it > to be true. Really, I changed my mind after your clarification, also after your recent answer to Warren. Now your program is not overtly anisystemic and anticore, but I suspise it is such immanently. I mean your courageous and persistent struggle AGAINST TNC and their supporting global institutions (in favor of national democracies). Is I told earlier these elites and structures form the very framework of modern cap. world system. To fight with them IS to be antisystemic. Why don't you consider the idea of SPLITTING UP these elites and to involve the part of them in the wide humanistic coalition? best wishes, yours Nikolai *********************************************************** Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html ************************************************************ From wwagar@binghamton.edu Wed Aug 14 09:41:57 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 11:42:11 -0400 (EDT) To: "Richard K. Moore" Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY In-Reply-To: Dear Richard, On Wed, 14 Aug 1996, Richard K. Moore wrote: > Dear Warren, > > The "states that front for them" need to stop fronting for them -- > and that requires people to take control of their on-paper national > democracies. Global solidarity and cooperation among national-based > movements is indeed important, as I said in the posting, but it is national > democratic institutions that provide the potential infrastructure for > popular empowerment. > Okay, and how do you propose to create such "global solidarity and cooperation?" If it's really important, how can the solidarity be forged? A grass-roots popular movement that is nationally based and focused may well turn out to pursue trade and military and environmental policies inimical to world peace, world justice, and the health of the biosphere. A true national democracy might rein in the corporations in that country without any serious thought to the needs of countries thousands of miles away. In short, democracy in and of itself does not guarantee that a country will act in the best interests of humankind--only a global democracy is likely to do that. > You use "antisystemic", evidently, to describe any program for > significant change. I say it is folly to ignore systems -- one must use > them and work within them, if even to change them. The systems which offer > us the most hope are the democratic-national-government systems. They > exist and operate, and their controls are within our grasp if we have the > necessary political will and competence. No, I use "antisystemic" in a very specific sense: against the continuation of the present capitalist world-economy with its support system of armed national states. > The necessity of "coordinating all efforts" is not obvious, and I > disupte it. Mutual solidarity and support is not the same as being > "coordinated" from above. Your "supranational party structure" -- > especially if it is to make detailed plans for every nation and locality -- > sounds like a rehash of a Soviet Communist Party system. Too big, too > bureaucratic, too centralized, too arrogant, too distant from the needs of > the people. > > Decentralization, I believe, is essential to democracy, and the > nation state is not too-small a unit to deserve decentralized autonomy. You have a very strange notion of "decentralization." To be sure, a world party would run the grave risk of not being democratic, of not being responsive, and all the rest. It would have to be on its guard against such tendencies every minute. But what is decentralized about a nation-state the size of Russia or Germany or Japan or the USA? These are already immense polities with central governments far removed in many ways from their electorates. The kind of direct town-meeting participatory democracy you seem to have in the back of your mind is impossible once a polity gets any bigger than Andorra. The nation-state is not too small, agreed. But it is much, much too big for direct democracy. I just cannot see any vast difference between a polity of six billion people and a polity of 300 million people. If democracy of some sort can work in the latter, it can work in the former. > To seek a "global democratic state" at this time in history is > folly in the extreme, folly for a whole host of reasons. I see absolutely no chance of a global democratic state at this time, but beginning to think about it and beginning to seek it, these are hardly follies. And when you speak of "storming the fortresses," I am pretty sure that some day we will have to do just that--literally in many instances. The world party will have to become, at some stage, a revolutionary party, prepared to seize power whenever and wherever there is no other way to break the stranglehold of corporate fascism. > If you feel it's impossible to reform national governments in this > way, then I say it's ten times as impossible to force these reforms from > some nebulous global forum. > No, I don't think it's impossible to reform national governments. But without concerted global political action, it will be impossible to replace the capitalist world-system with a democratic world-government. Best, Warren From sbabones@jhu.edu Wed Aug 14 09:52:10 1996 14 Aug 1996 11:49:45 -0400 (EDT) 14 Aug 1996 11:49:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 11:16:12 -0400 From: Salvatore Babones Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY (was "Re: world party") In-reply-to: To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Just a note on corporatism: Our "democracy" may be warped by corporatism, but it was our democracies that created corporatism. Under a *liberal* state (whether democratic or not) the market is the arena of individuals, individuals who may manipulate government, but who never attain the degree of power that is weilded by modern corporations. The corporate form (perpetual life, limited liability, impersonal control, in the end, immunity from political borders and control) was granted by government. If the corporate form has gone awry, one alternative to socialist world-government is liberal, capitalist, particularist government. No government is bound to empower the corporate form; we've just grown so used to it that when we think of business, we think of corporations. Salvatore Salvatore J. Babones Sociology Department Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. expected Spring '98 From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Aug 14 10:51:04 1996 14 Aug 1996 12:48:55 -0400 (EDT) 14 Aug 1996 12:48:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 12:51:24 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: Re: Info on Events at ASA Meeting, Friday and Saturday To: dale.wimberley@vt.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology References: thanks for sending the announcement to wsn. the book reviews are about to go up on jwsr. see you soon. chris From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Aug 14 11:05:56 1996 14 Aug 1996 13:04:55 -0400 (EDT) 14 Aug 1996 13:04:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 13:07:24 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: correction: the real url for the Fernand Braudel Center home page To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology Correction. The announcement about the new Fernand Braudel Center Home Page on the World Wide Web contained an incorrect url. The real url is http://sociology.adm.binghamton.edu/fbc/fbchmpg.htm try this one. it will work. chris From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Aug 14 11:20:40 1996 14 Aug 1996 13:17:28 -0400 (EDT) 14 Aug 1996 13:17:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 13:19:44 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Index on Africa] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology Fellesraadet for Afrika/Norwegian Council for Africa wrote: > > Index on Africa: The ultimate guide to Africa on the Net > > The Norwegian Council for Africa is proud to present the most comprehensive > guide to Africa on the Internet yet. > Index on Africa is a catalogue of Africa-resources on the Net. It contains > more than 2000 Africa-related links. The links are sorted in categories by > theme or country. This makes the index on Africa simple, perspicuous, and > user-friendly, and the layout is pretty elegant as well! You can reach Index > on Africa on the URL: > > http://www.africaindex.africainfo.no/ > > The Norwegian Council for Africa’s homepage: > > The Norwegian Council for Africa is also launching homepages for the > organisation. The pages contain a presentation of the Council and our work. > You also find links to news from Africa, campaigns, Africa HOTlist, > Africa-literature and much more there. You reach us from the Index on > Africa, or directly at: > > http://www.fellesraadet.africainfo.no/engindex.html > > Fellesrĺdet for Afrika | Tel. +47 22-362200 > The Norwegian Council for Africa | Fax. +47 22-362280 > Conselho Noruegues para a Africa | email. africa.council@africainfo.no > Fredensborgvn. 39 | fellesraadet@africainfo.no > N-0177 OSLO, Norway From rkmoore@iol.ie Thu Aug 15 02:53:52 1996 Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:53:29 +0100 (BST) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:53:29 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / world government 8/14/96, Warren Wagar wrote: > No, I don't think it's impossible to reform national governments. >But without concerted global political action, it will be impossible to >replace the capitalist world-system with a democratic world-government. Perhaps it would be productive to pursue both a "world focus" and "national focus" track -- do at each level what is most appropriate there, and to encourage communication between the two efforts. Regards, rkm From rkmoore@iol.ie Thu Aug 15 02:54:04 1996 Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:53:41 +0100 (BST) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:53:41 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / corps. & govt. 8/14/96, Salvatore Babones wrote: >Just a note on corporatism: > >Our "democracy" may be warped by corporatism, but it was our democracies >that created corporatism. Under a *liberal* state (whether democratic or >not) the market is the arena of individuals, individuals who may >manipulate government, but who never attain the degree of power that is >weilded by modern corporations. The corporate form (perpetual life, >limited liability, impersonal control, in the end, immunity from political >borders and control) was granted by government. If the corporate form has >gone awry, one alternative to socialist world-government is liberal, >capitalist, particularist government. No government is bound to empower >the corporate form; we've just grown so used to it that when we think of >business, we think of corporations. Dear Salvatore, Could you say more of what you mean by "liberal, capitalist, particularist government" ? -rkm Here are a few snippits from "MuseLetter Number 52 / April 1996" -- "The New Populism". ________________________________________________________________ At last I am able to report hopeful signs on the political horizon. Over the past year or so a new movement has begun to emerge, one aimed at the main power structures of modern industrial society-the vast multinational corporations that, for all practical purposes, now rule the world. This movement is hardly a large one, but it is well informed and intelligently directed, and it is well worth knowing about. .... How Corporations Came to Rule the World The corporation was invented early in the colonial era as a grant of privilege extended by the crown to a group of investors-ususally, as a way to finance a trade expedition. The corporation limited the liability of investors to the amount of their investment, a right not held by ordinary citizens. Corporate charters set out the specific rights and obligations of the individual corporation, including the amount to be paid to the crown in return for the privilege granted. Thus were born the East India Company, which led the British colonization of India, and Hudson's Bay Company, which accomplished the same purpose in Canada. Almost from the beginning, Britain deployed state military power to further corporate interests-a practice that has continued to the present. Also from the outset, corporations began pressuring government to expand corporate rights and to limit corporate responsibilities. .... The American revolutionaries resolved that the authority to charter corporations should lie not with governors, judges, or generals, but only with elected legislatures. At first, such charters as were granted were for a fixed time, and legislatures spelled out the rules each business should follow. .... In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations were henceforth to be considered "persons" under the law, with all of the consititutional rights that designation implies. The 14th amendment to the Constitution, passed to give former slaves equal rights, was actually invoked in their behalf only a few times; corporations invoked it repeatedly. .... ________________________________________________________________ From rkmoore@iol.ie Thu Aug 15 03:18:45 1996 Thu, 15 Aug 1996 10:18:29 +0100 (BST) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 10:18:29 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / systemic perspective 8/15/96, Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: > If you ever read books of Braudel, Wallerstein, Frank, Arrighi, Chase-Dunn >you would not dare to say of 'shallow analysis' and 'lack of deep >comprehension'. Could be. I can only deal with the comments that have come to my attention. I would like to see more of the WST theories explained in terms of the current world situation, with a greater respect for concise, sound, logic. >OK, but the trick is how to make this shift desirable for the core, for the >'systemic' global and national elites? How could the Tsar have found the Russian Revolution desirable? Or Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution? I believe there's an essential conflict of interests that must be faced. > I mean your courageous and persistent struggle AGAINST TNC and their >supporting global institutions (in favor of national democracies). >Is I told earlier these elites and structures form the very framework of >modern cap. world system. To fight with them IS to be antisystemic. There are systems within systems. We have the national systems, the global corporate economic system, and the newer globalist-downsizing, New-World-Order system (IMF et al). My proposal is that we embrace and take possession of the national systems, permit the global economic system to keep functioning (but under democratic power-sharing/oversight and with increased national self-determination), and reverse the newer NWO systemic inroads. >Why don't you consider the idea of SPLITTING UP these elites and to involve >the part of them in the wide humanistic coalition? As above, I suggest we "split up" the interlocking operation of the various systems. Also, in regard to your question, I think it is important to emphasize that "we" aren't out to destroy corporations or to punish war-criminal executives. We're not talking about revenge nor about starting from revolutionary rubble -- we're talking about realigning the systems we have to serve humanity, under democratic guidance. Today's greedy executives are invited to become the respected wheels-of-change in a reformed society. IMHO, rkm From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Aug 15 09:21:02 1996 15 Aug 1996 11:16:28 -0400 (EDT) 15 Aug 1996 11:12:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 11:15:15 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: (Fwd) DEBATE: VOICES FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology 14 Aug 1996 17:14:44 -0400 (EDT) 14 Aug 1996 17:11:00 -0400 (EDT) 14 Aug 1996 22:36:20 +0200 (GMT+0200) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 18:33:55 -0400 From: Patrick Bond Subject: (Fwd) DEBATE: VOICES FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT Sender: pbond@wn.apc.org To: SA.gossip.fiends@wn.apc.org Reply-to: PBOND@wn.apc.org 14 Aug 1996 Announcing a new journal from South Africa... DEBATE: VOICES FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT *********First issue now available - subscription info below******** *******Lead editorial reprinted at the bottom of this message******* -- FIRST ISSUE INCLUDES-- Franco BARCHIESI, "Promises for Sale - Developmentalism as a State Form and Vehicle for Market Ideology" Dale McKINLEY, "Critique of Government's Macroeconomic Vishwas SATGAR, Strategy: Growth, Employment and Langa ZITA Redistribution" Oupa LEHULERE "Debating Social Democracy" Eddie WEBSTER Franco BARCHIESI Rehad DESAI Franco BARCHIESI "Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein" Matthew GINSBURG Mzwanele MAYEKISO "Excerpt from 'Township Politics'" Greg RUITERS "Review of Mzwanele Mayekiso's 'Township Politics'" Frank S. WILDERSON "The Makgoba Affair: Semiotics of a Prelates War" Sandile DIKANI Two Poems --Subscription Information-- For a three-issue annual subscription: South Africa Overseas Workers R50 N/A Full-Time R40 N/A Students Salaried R75 $30/L20 Individuals Institutions R120 $60/L40 Overseas rates include the cost of airmail postage in all cases. Workers and students should provide proof of where they work or study (eg photocopy of student card, union card, etc) Send checks or international money order to: DEBATE: VOICES FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN LEFT P O Box 483 Wits 2050 South Africa or contact us by: Phone: (2711) 482-4327 Fax: (2711) 716-3781 E-mail: 029frb@cosmos.wits.ac.za Please include the following information with your subscription: NAME:____________________________________ _________________________________________ ADDRESS:_________________________________ _________________________________________ ____________________POSTAL CODE:_________ TELEPHONE:_______________________________ OCCUPATION:______________________________ PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT/STUDY:_______________ _________________________________________ --Lead Editorial-- WHAT DEBATE? One delegate [of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance] said he will advise his clients that South Africa is safe as an investment destination for a time horizon of eight months... The three-year perspective is terrible and the five-year perspective is impossible. Ben van Rensburg, chief economist South African Chamber of Business (speaking to a parliamentary committee, 3 June 1996) Since around the time of the first democratic election, the South African left (however we define ourselves) have been starved of good written debates about left theory, strategies and tactics. That was the moment not only when many of our leading thinkers migrated into government, and an apparently indefinite future of self-censureship. It was also the point at which Work in Progress, a non-sectarian monthly, suddenly died. Other useful periodicals continue, of course, and on a quarterly or semi-annual basis progressive readers can satisfy their hunger for arguments that flow from particular political parties (African Communist), policy wonks (Transformation), social scientists (Social Dynamics), political philosophers (Theoria), feminists (Agenda), urbanists (Urban Forum) and so on. But dissatisfaction is also in the air, and for many of us the existing material sometimes means a hard trek through orthodox or simply flat and uninvigorating material. The strategists and intellectuals of social movements, labour, left parties and the academy have traditionally thrived on debate, particularly during lulls in the broader struggle. And South Africa's transition to democracy has, regrettably, paralysed much of what is considered to be the formal left. But it has also thrown up myriad contradictions and has begun to restructure class, race and even gender relations in significant ways. It is time, many of us now conclude, to get a better handle on all of this. It is time to revisit classical controversies in political economy, politics and culture, and apply new arguments that are more sensitive to environment, race, identity, gender and generational concerns than the left has generally managed. Such debate is not merely of intellectual importance. Although the democratic breakthrough has surpassed most of our expectations -- had we been asked what would happen a decade ago -- it has been profoundly flawed, by all accounts. Masses of black South Africans continue to confront the residues of apartheid at so many levels. South Africa's social inequalities are amongst the most extreme in the world. And the government has faltered enormously in delivering even the simplest goods and services. The debate that finally seems to be emerging over such realities also reflects the fact that traditions of social struggle are very much alive. Striking nurses, autoworkers, civil servants and Cosatu's ability to coordinate a national strike show the durability of worker confidence. Land invasions and student demonstrations exhibit the hunger and will for radical change. Are these just ongoing exhibitions of atomistic civil society, or instead the seeds of the next large movement-wide push for a true transformation toward democracy, egalitarianism and sustainability (especially since such words themselves have been poisoned by their use in so many World Bank documents)? Are all the challenges to capital and state power worth supporting? What is an appropriate evaluation of local militancy today? What strategies and tactics would we want to see becoming more generalised within the organisations of poor and working people? Answering such practical questions depends upon us correctly assessing the possibilities of change at this conjuncture. We are presented in the bourgeois press with only the logic of neo-liberalism, perhaps augmented by a few social democratic components here and there. If experiences elsewhere are any guide, this means that most of South Africa will probably taste the fruit of liberation not mainly via political democratisation but instead in the form of dramatically declining living standards. And that, we are informed, is our lot, because of the need to invite foreign investors and soothe international financial markets. Are there alternatives for South African political economy? How should the left handle ourselves in economic debate with neo-liberal technocrats within the state, and indeed how should we respond to the policy discourses and economic logic of global capital more generally? What new political configurations -- breaking some alliances, making others -- are needed? How, in the process, do we anticipate stronger black intellectual leadership, a more decisive role for women comrades, a growing environmental consciousness, the expansion of the cultural resources of the left? We hope, in this new journal, to give the broad, pluralistic left of South Africa a voice through debates over these and many other questions. We seek not ideological homogeneity but instead to enhance the best existing traditions of debate, and the introduction of new ideas that open our eyes to things we all have in common. Along these lines, and acknowledging our glaring failure to achieve gender diversity or content, this issue of Debate gets us off to a hopeful beginning. Our theme this time -- "developmentalism" -- is very much in question at the moment given the crash of the RDP. We lead with a challenging article by Franco Barchiesi, who dissects the "developmentalist" state and the rise of market ideology. Barchiesi and Matthew Ginsburg then interview Immanuel Wallerstein so as to continue to draw up a global accounting of the conjuncture. Next, in an important paper that has been circulated widely within the SACP, three Party militants (Langa Zita, Vishwas Satgar and Dale Mckinley) make the links between global forces and government's 14 June macroeconomic strategy document. What soon becomes clear is that behind every developmental project lies a struggle over ideology. We hope that the classical debate on social democracy and revolution taken forward here between Oupa Lehlulere, Eddie Webster, Rehad Desai and Barchiesi inspires further intervention.We follow this with an excerpt from the preface to Mzwanele Mayekiso's new book on development struggles in Alexandra. Greg Ruiters then rebukes Mayekiso's notion of "working-class civil society." As a grand finale, Frank Wilderson deconstructs the Makgoba Affair at Wits University, with all that it implies for intellectual challenges to the emerging order. We are also proud to intersperse our debates with poetry by Sandile Dikani. Debate aims to spread across South Africa, perhaps into the region as well. We request that you send your own work to us as soon as you feel it is ready to publish, and that you subscribe, read and promote dialogue on the South African left. For if the three year perspective is terrible and the five-year perspective is impossible from the standpoint of the Institute of International Finance and SACOB, it is critical for us to gear up both our debating and our movement-building to take advantage of the situation. The momentum of liberation appears to have reversed, but that does not mean we cannot help reverse it yet again. From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Aug 15 09:33:42 1996 15 Aug 1996 11:30:30 -0400 (EDT) 15 Aug 1996 11:27:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 11:29:45 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: new article by Arrighi and Book Reviews in the Journal of World-Systems Research To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology This is to announce some additions to Volume 2 of the Journal of World-Systems Research. The first is an excellent essay by Giovanni Arrighi, the new President-elect of the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological Association. Giovanni's essay discusses the rise of East Asia and its meaning for the contemporary global system. Number 15 Giovanni Arrighi The Rise of East Asia and the Withering Away of the Interstate System Volume 2 of JWSR also now contains for new book reviews and a response by authors to an earlier review: Book Reviews Review 1 World Resources Institute World Resources 1994-95: A Guide to the Global Environment Reviewed by Brad Bullock Review 2 Miguel E. Korzeniewicz, Gary Gereffi, and Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz Response to Dunaway and Clelland Review 3 York W. Bradshaw and Michael Wallace Global Inequalities Reviewed by Robert J.S. Ross Review 4 Sing C. Chew and Robert A. Denemark, eds. The Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank Reviewed by Stephen K. Sanderson Review 5 Wilma Dunaway The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 Reviewed by Michael Timberlake Thanks to the reviewers and to Book Review Editor Dale Wimberley for their helpful work. Chris Chase-Dunn From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Aug 15 09:38:51 1996 15 Aug 1996 11:34:15 -0400 (EDT) 15 Aug 1996 11:32:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 11:35:29 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Info on world-system Events at ASA Meeting, Friday and Saturday]] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:18:18 -0400 (EDT) Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:18:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:17:57 -0400 From: Arthur Wilke Subject: Re: [Fwd: Info on world-system Events at ASA Meeting, Friday and Saturday] To: chriscd@jhu.edu Dear Chris Dunn: I will not be at the ASA annual meeting. While many of the world systems writers are likely to have selected outlets for publication in mind, this is to indicate that the Internatonal Journal of Contemporary Sociology welcomes submissions, particularly those with some comparative analysis. ICJS is in its 33rd year of publication. It is currently published by the University of Joensuu in Finland. There are no submission fees. Over the years the journal has been receptive to third world writers and young scholars although over the years a number of "mainstream" writers have contributed. The editorial address is: Dr. Raj Mohan, Editor International Journal of Contemporary Sociology Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work 7030 Haley Center Auburn University, AL 36830 (334) 844-5049; fax: (334)844-2851; e-mail: mohanrp@mail.auburn.edu Arthur Wilke Associate Editor. Arthur Wilke Sociology - Auburn University wilkeas@mail.auburn.edu From sbabones@jhu.edu Thu Aug 15 10:04:03 1996 15 Aug 1996 11:50:57 -0400 (EDT) 15 Aug 1996 11:49:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 11:49:31 -0400 From: Salvatore Babones Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / corps. & govt. In-reply-to: To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu In regards to Richard K. Moore's question: > Dear Salvatore, > > Could you say more of what you mean by "liberal, capitalist, > particularist government" ? > > > -rkm > I could take the cheap way out and refer you to my comment on Warren Wagar's "Praxis of World-Integration" (see http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol2.html), but I will attempt a brief answer here. By a liberal government I mean a government that GOVERNS (creates a legal environment for the market, provides a court system and enforcement, "governs" human action to the extent of prohibiting and punishing theft, murder, pollution, etc.) but does not ADMINISTER any more than is necessary for carrying out the duties of government (does not direct production, either directly or indirectly). This is liberalism in Mises' sense, and also Polanyi's (Polanyi called Mises "the consistent liberal") By capitalist I strictly mean to refer to the market, not the government; that is, I mean a market in which individuals or patnerships of individuals use their own capital (equity) in their businesses, bearing full responsibility (unlimited liability) for their obligations. If you take your money and open up a chemicals company, pollute a river, make enormous profits, take those profits out of the company and buy a mansion, when people are hurt by your polution, they can sue you and take your mansion away. Hopefully, if your chemical company operates under a well-governing government, the government will have anti-pollution laws and take you to court itself. By particularist I simply meant non-global. There's no reason why there couldn't be a wonderful global government, but I think the chances are much better of there being one or two "good" governments in a world of over a hundred governments than in a world of one government. I emphasize: while I am FOR capitalism, I am also FOR active government (I don't propose a return to the 1840s), and I am certainly AGAINST a corporate-controlled economy overseen by a corporate-controlled government. Salvatore Salvatore Babones Sociology Department Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. expected Spring '98 From rkmoore@iol.ie Thu Aug 15 15:11:13 1996 Thu, 15 Aug 1996 22:10:49 +0100 (BST) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 22:10:49 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: liberal, capitalist, particularist government 8/15/96, Salvatore Babones wrote: >I emphasize: while I am FOR capitalism, I am also FOR active government >(I don't propose a return to the 1840s), and I am certainly AGAINST >a corporate-controlled economy overseen by a corporate-controlled >government. Thanks for the clarification. I'd like to see capitalists made responsible for their actions too. >By a liberal government I mean a government that GOVERNS ...but does not >ADMINISTER any more than is necessary... This is liberalism in Mises' >sense, and also Polanyi's (Polanyi called Mises "the consistent liberal") I can see the appeal of this to capitalists -- but I'd prefer a mixed economy myself -- i.e. most of the recent UK privatizations are counter-progressive. imho. Regards, rkm From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Thu Aug 15 22:30:04 1996 16 Aug 96 11:30:18 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: Salvatore Babones , wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 11:29:49 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / corps. & govt. Dear Salvatore congratulations for your clear conceptualizing and presenting a clear political position, to which I susbscribe also. Are we here only two protectors of capitalism, liberalism and legal emphasis of proper governments ? Cheers and best regards, yours nikolai rozov > From: Salvatore Babones > > In regards to Richard K. Moore's question: > > > Dear Salvatore, > > > > Could you say more of what you mean by "liberal, capitalist, > > particularist government" ? > > > > > > -rkm > > > > I could take the cheap way out and refer you to my comment on Warren > Wagar's "Praxis of World-Integration" (see > http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol2.html), but I will attempt a > brief answer here. > > By a liberal government I mean a government that GOVERNS (creates a legal > environment for the market, provides a court system and enforcement, > "governs" human action to the extent of prohibiting and punishing theft, > murder, pollution, etc.) but does not ADMINISTER any more than is > necessary for carrying out the duties of government (does not direct > production, either directly or indirectly). This is liberalism in Mises' > sense, and also Polanyi's (Polanyi called Mises "the consistent liberal") > > By capitalist I strictly mean to refer to the market, not the government; > that is, I mean a market in which individuals or patnerships of > individuals use their own capital (equity) in their businesses, bearing > full responsibility (unlimited liability) for their obligations. If you > take your money and open up a chemicals company, pollute a river, make > enormous profits, take those profits out of the company and buy a mansion, > when people are hurt by your polution, they can sue you and take your > mansion away. Hopefully, if your chemical company operates under a > well-governing government, the government will have anti-pollution laws > and take you to court itself. > > By particularist I simply meant non-global. There's no reason why there > couldn't be a wonderful global government, but I think the chances are > much better of there being one or two "good" governments in a world of > over a hundred governments than in a world of one government. > > I emphasize: while I am FOR capitalism, I am also FOR active government > (I don't propose a return to the 1840s), and I am certainly AGAINST > a corporate-controlled economy overseen by a corporate-controlled > government. > > Salvatore > > Salvatore Babones > Sociology Department > Johns Hopkins University > Ph.D. expected Spring '98 > > > From ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru Thu Aug 15 23:49:41 1996 16 Aug 96 12:50:26 NSK-6 From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" Organization: Center of New Informational Tech. To: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore), wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 12:50:00 -0600 (NSK) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / systemic perspective Dear Richard, frankly I am confused by ambiguousness of your last answer. when you mean Global Reform - I agree with you, but when you mean Global Revolution - I strongly disagree. I think you should first cease to confuse yourself and make a decision - what namely you appeal for: for the Reform or for the Revolution? After comments I'll try to give some distinguishing criteria and will formulate a question and suggestion to you, to Warren Wagar, Chris Chase- Dunn and other proponents of global radical changes. > From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) > Nikolai: > >OK, but the trick is how to make this shift desirable for the core, for the > >'systemic' global and national elites? > Richard: > How could the Tsar have found the Russian Revolution desirable? Or > Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution? I believe there's an essential > conflict of interests that must be faced. So you mean that for modern world core elites a Global Revolution is not desirable. I agree. But for whom is it desirable, taking into account modern arms level, global ecological, demographical-provisional situation? I don't remember now how much people exactly France had lost (hundreds of thousands) and Russia had lost (some millions) during their Revolutions and civil wars. How much people are you ready to victimize for your Global Revolution? You can tell me - nobody, but I must tell you - the price will be dozens or hundreds of millions of lives! > As above, I suggest we "split up" the interlocking operation of the > various systems. Also, in regard to your question, I think it is important > to emphasize that "we" aren't out to destroy corporations or to punish > war-criminal executives. We're not talking about revenge nor about > starting from revolutionary rubble -- we're talking about realigning the > systems we have to serve humanity, under democratic guidance. Today's > greedy executives are invited to become the respected wheels-of-change in a > reformed society. good, here you say already about Reform and I agree, but how you combine this project with your above statements on revolution and essential conflict of interests? I suggest to consider three crucial differences between Reform and Revolution: 1.(most surface) A Reform is not, while a Revolution is accompanied by mass social violence, class fights and civil wars. 2.(middle) A Reform is realized within a framework of existing political-legal order (but includes its gradual changing or even substitution). A Revolution violently destroys existing political-legal order and leads to a period of social chaos until establishment of the new order (usually more severe than the initial one). 3.(most deep) A Reform CONSERVES OLD RULING CLASS (ELITES) by adapting its interests to new social (political-economic-legal) options. A Revolution OVERTHROWS (expels, eliminates) OLD RULING CLASS (ELITES), but after a period of chaos substitutes it by a new one (usually not less greedy). My question is not only to Richard but also to Warren Wagar, Chris Chase-Dunn and other proponents of future global radical political-economic changes: What namely do you appeal for - a Reform or Revolution? I expect - you answer: a Reform. But it means CONSERVATION and ADAPTING of EXISTING WORLD CORE ELITES (including naughty TNC, New W.Order institutions, US-West Europe-Japan hegemonies, etc). If you agree with it, let's discuss how to fit their interests in new desirable humanistic world order and how to involve them into wide humanistic coalition. If you disagree, you can mean only to take away from existing elites their main financial, political, military instruments. You must explain in this case how you manage to make it peacefully, and what guarantees (at least historical or theoretical) you have that this grasping of instruments will not lead to a World-Wide Slaughter with millions or billions of victims. best regards, yours Nikolai *********************************************************** Nikolai S. Rozov # Address:Dept. of Philosophy Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI (PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history) http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe /philofhi.html ************************************************************ From rkmoore@iol.ie Sat Aug 17 09:34:36 1996 Sat, 17 Aug 1996 16:33:47 +0100 (BST) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 16:33:47 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / Reform vs. Revolution 8/16/96, Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: >Dear Richard, >frankly I am confused by ambiguousness of your last answer. >when you mean Global Reform - I agree with you, but when you mean >Global Revolution - I strongly disagree. > I think you should first cease to confuse yourself and make a decision - >what namely you appeal for: for the Reform or for the Revolution? Dear Nikolai, I believe I was very explicit about what I'm proposing (in SAVING DEMOCRACY), and it fits neither of the definitions you proclaim as a "binary choice" between Reform and Revolution. Methinks I detect a false dichotomy. What I propose (which may be an impossible dream) is for citizens to become more collectively aware and assertive, form new political parties, and lawfully replace their leaders by election in the First-World "democracies". And I propose this happen with a public conciousness of the issues I outlined -- in particular the importance of national sovereignty and the necessity of curbing corporate power both domestically and internationally. In terms of your "peaceful vs. violent" choice, my proposals would seem to come under the "Reform" category -- all actions come within the rules of "the system", and the political system (Consititution et al) is not to be disbanded. I see no reason to assume there would be "mass social violence, class fights and civil wars". But as it affects the "global core elite", such a progressive resurgance would (hopefully) have revolutionary (but not Revolutionary) implications. It could restructure the relationship between First and Third World, shift the focus of global investments, and reverse the trend toward global corporate feudalism. This would not put corporations out of business -- it would not threaten their survival. They'd all have new rules to play under, and could continue to maximize their profits accordingly -- and investors would adjust their expectations more or less uniformly. So I don't see Revolutionary violence as being necessarily forced on either side. Regards, Richard Article found at: //ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib/Articles-by-RKM/On-Saving-Democracy: Description: "ON SAVING DEMOCRACY" A bold (:>) attempt to outline a progressive agenda and propose a course of effective political action in the face of multinational globalism. Section headings are: o Obstacles to Progressive Political Action o Toward a Progressive Reform Agenda o Toward Effective Political Action o Global Solidarity and National Focus From macdonak@Meena.CC.URegina.CA Sun Aug 18 15:22:22 1996 18 Aug 1996 15:20:34 -0600 (CST) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 15:20:34 -0600 (CST) From: Kerry Subject: Re: THE POLITICAL STATE! To: Karl Carlile On Fri, 9 Aug 1996, Karl Carlile wrote: > Karl: The political state, by its very nature, "is a product and > manifestation of the irreconcilability of class contradictions." It > is an expression and form of alienation. It is an expression of th e > fact that the social relations between the producers of wealth have > assumed a fetishised form. Social relations of production are > thereby mediated through "things". Consequently people cannot regul > ate their own affairs in a directly collective fashion . > Administration and regulation of social relations is thereby > mediated through a thing-like institution, the state. The point is to de-mystify the state not to validate it, if one is using a Marxian framework. Marx's works are to illustrate that though we may see or believe that institutions are things independent of human action the truth is that they are not independent of social practices. Reification refers to the process whereby people PERCEIVE that a said institution is a separate entity or a thing. This arises out of the fact that people are alienated or separated from the social practice whether directly or indirectly. In addition, for those who are participating within that institution or system their freedom of choice is limited by traditions or rules which govern how those people make choices. In other words, their "thinkable thought" about a given institution/system limits what they perceive has not only acceptable choices but choices are actually possible. This limitation on people choices, given that they are or have the potential to make any choice, is a product of reificataion. Marx's GERMAN IDEOLOGY is my favourite work on this subject matter, though I also like Lukacs's HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS. > You say that you believe that "humans are capable of creating > institutions of our own choosing". But the point is that under > capitalist civilisation people cannot make such choices since they > are not in control of their the social relations. We are not incapable of creating new institutions, rather the loss of control arises because we believe that we don't' have control because we are alienated, separated from those practices, and have reified our understanding of those practices. To argue that we lack any control, in this case potential as opposed to actual, means that: 1) no change is possible and thus critique is futile, and; 2) that if we are so immeresed in this system then how is it even possible that critique exists. Marx's point was that the system is stable, for the most part, because people did not appreciate that are not things, reified, but are products of human effort. His work was to illustrate that society is a product of people's practices and thus if they were aware of that fact they could create a society that was more humane. His work is an effort to demystify our social practices and to show how those social practices are currently not constructed in the best interests of people. > You suggest that > the state is a "coordinating institution". But you miss what is > specific to the character of the state: Its existence as a > manifestation o f the reification of human relations. Clearly the > state has a co-ordinating character and shares this in common with > certain other social phenomena. But this is not the point. The point > is its specif icity: how it specifically differs from certain other > socio-historical phenomena. Capitalism is a system through which > human wealth is reproduced. It shares this feature in common with > other forms of production of wealth. However this would be to miss > the point. It is how the capitalist mode of production specifically > differs from a particular form of production that is of historic > significance. Marx and Hitler were human beings. However what is > significant is their specificity, not their commonality. I am not sure exactly what you point is in this section. My point, however, was that given that the state, as an institution, has generally fulfilled the role of coordinating the activites of a society and that its "character", the way that it does that, is a product of human practices, then it is possible to create a new institution (a better term may be process, as "institution" is a term which seems to have a conatation (sp?) which means that the practices are reified). It is important to illustrate how the current way that the state is organized and takes power away from people (a product of reification) and that as an institution it is only a product of social practices. kerry From wwagar@binghamton.edu Mon Aug 19 09:21:34 1996 From: wwagar@binghamton.edu Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 11:21:51 -0400 (EDT) To: "Richard K. Moore" Subject: Re: SAVING DEMOCRACY / world government In-Reply-To: On Thu, 15 Aug 1996, Richard K. Moore wrote: > > 8/14/96, Warren Wagar wrote: > > > No, I don't think it's impossible to reform national governments. > >But without concerted global political action, it will be impossible to > >replace the capitalist world-system with a democratic world-government. > > Perhaps it would be productive to pursue both a "world focus" and > "national focus" track -- do at each level what is most appropriate there, > and to encourage communication between the two efforts. > > > Regards, > rkm > Okay, I have no problem with that. No one can know what will work best until the attempt(s) is (are) made. But I would certainly hope that ANY nationally focused party or movement would adopt as a cardinal tenet the assumption that ultimately democracy cannot be saved unless all the world's people enjoy its benefits and no one segment of humankind has the right to prey on another. The world cannot survive half-free and half-slave. Best, Warren From GregoryS9@aol.com Wed Aug 21 01:48:15 1996 From: GregoryS9@aol.com Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 03:48:13 -0400 To: WSN@csf.colorado.edu Subject: The World Today - announcement Now available is a special double issue: "The World Today" (Social Justice, Volume 23, Nos. 1-2, 1996, 375 pp.) In their "Preface," Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and John Saxe-Fernandez state: In December 1993, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Sciences and Humanities of the National University of Mexico organized a seminar entitled "The World Today: Situation and Alternatives." Its task was to examine the central concerns and problems facing humanity in the final stage of the 20th century, beginning with the certainty that as the world order that arose out of World War II disintegrates and we enter a new phase, which is barely taking shape, the irrational paradoxes and tendencies of the modern era require analysis and discovery of a new Reason. With the goal of inviting diagnosis, and as far as possible, explanations and prognoses as a basis for proposing alternatives to the current global, regional, and national junctures in a period of crisis and transition like the present, the participants contributing to this volume were encouraged to provide the most powerful explanations available to the social sciences. Our goal was not only to describe the world situation, but also to identify and evaluate options and obstacles to the establishment of a humanist agenda for the 21st century. The obstacles are greater than we imagined and must be recognized if they are to be overcome. The undeniable fact is that the three great blueprints for a less unjust world have failed for one reason or another: the social democracy of the more advanced capitalist countries, because it joined with the new colonialism of the late 19th century; the real socialism of the East, because it could not overcome totalitarian dictatorship and fell into corruption; the nationalism of the poor countries, because it drifted into corrupt authoritarian populism and the chauvinism of the caciques (political bosses) that preceded and accompanied the chauvinism of the peddlers of associated dependency. Table of Contents: Editors' Preface Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and John Saxe-Fernandez 1. The World The Future of Global Polarization Samir Amin The New World Order and the Left Ralph Miliband Democracy and the World Order: Dilemmas and Conflicts Bogdan Denitch Globalism, Neoliberalism, and Democracy Pablo Gonzalez Casanova 2. North America Globalization and Stagnation Arthur MacEwan NAFTA: The Intersection of the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital John Saxe-Fernandez Globalization, States, and Left Strategies Leo Panitch 3. Europe Europes Crises Daniel Singer East-Central Europe: Transition to Market Economy and Democracy Milos Nikolic The Problem of Alternativeness in Russias Past, Present, and Eventual Future Kiva Maidanik 4. Africa Indirect Rule, Civil Society, and Ethnicity: The African Dilemma Mahmood Mamdani The State Subregion in the Future of Africa Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua 5. The Arab World The Arab World Today Fawsy Mansour Wither the Arabic World? Faysal Yachir 6. Asia India in the South Asian Context Nirmal Kumar Chandra Asia in the World-System George Aseniero The East and the World Today William K. Tabb Situating China Lin Chun Japan: Beyond the Lessons of Growth Tessa Morris-Suzuki 7. Latin America Latin America and the New World Order Carlos M. Vilas Governability and Democracy in Latin America Atilio A. Boron 8. Australia Australian Laborism, Social Democracy, and Social Justice into the 1990s Peter Beilharz 9. World Conference on Women After the Beijing Womens Conference: What Will Be Done? Rita Maran Reflections on the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing and Huairou, 1995 Gail Hershatter, Emily Honig, and Lisa Rofel Copies are $19.95 plus $3.00 for postage and handling. MasterCard and Visa orders may be sent to GregoryS9@aol.com (include account number and expiration); checks made out to Social Justice can be mailed to Social Justice, P.O. Box 40601, San Francisco, CA 94140. Thank you, Gregory Shank (Managing Editor) From hellmann@polihist.pg.th-darmstadt.de Wed Aug 21 02:01:36 1996 21 Aug 96 10:02:52 GMT+1 From: "Gunther Hellmann" Organization: Technische Hochschule Darmstadt To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 10:02:28 GMT+1 Subject: Survey of Classics in Foreign Policy Reply-to: hellmann@pg.th-darmstadt.de -- Please excuse multiple posting -- SURVEY OF "CLASSICS" IN THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY ------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a request to students of international relations and foreign policy to help me in compiling a list of key works (or "classics") in the study of foreign policy. The list is intended to serve as a guide in the context of a larger research project on foreign policy analysis (to which I will say more below). The question is this: What do you -- as a student of international relations and foreign policy -- consider to be THE FIVE (5) MOST IMPORTANT WORKS (OR "CLASSICS") THAT HAVE CRUCIALLY SHAPED THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY since the beginnings of "International Relations" as an academic discipline after World War I? Before I elaborate in more detail what I would like potential respondents to focus on, let me emphasize the following: WHAT I LIKE YOU TO DO: I do realize that I am asking you to spare some of your precious time in helping me to conduct this peer survey. I also realize that what interests me may be of little interest to others. In order to minimize the boredom of non-interested addressees I would invite respondents to SEND their REPLY directly to my e-mail address: HELLMANN@PG.TH-DARMSTADT.DE WHAT I OFFER IN RETURN: In return for your efforts in responding to my request I offer to send the results of this survey to any individual respondent in addition to making them available via internet. DETAILS OF THE SURVEY In order to be as clear as possible about my objectives I would like to emphasize the following points about the question of this survey: 1. _ADDRESSEES_: This request is NOT ONLY addressed to those "experts" in International Relations (IR) or Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) / Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP) who would regard the study of foreign policy to be their primary research or teaching interest. It is ADDRESSED TO ANY STUDENT OF IR/FPA/CFP who has, in one way or another, been confronted with the study of foreign policy during his/her carreer; in other words, the "range" of potential respondents to this request includes the "typical" graduate student of political science who has done but a few courses in the subdiscipline of IR as well as the senior scholar who has published widely on foreign policy. 2. _WHAT KIND OF "IMPORTANT WORKS"?_: I am interested in EITHER MONOGRAPHS OR ARTICLES; 3. _WHAT CRITERIA?_: The central criterion for including titles in your "hit list" should be whether -- from your point of view -- the monographs or articles considered have had a MAJOR IMPACT ON HOW THE DISCIPLINE HAS APPROACHED THE SUBJECT MATTER of foreign policy; in other words, I am NOT asking you, which works in particular you "liked" or which you thought would have deserved to have been influential in shaping the discipline (even though they weren't); rather, I would like you to name those titles which, in your perception, have IN FACT SHAPED THE DISCIPLINE; 4. _WHAT "FOREIGN POLICY"?_: My principal focus is on "foreign policy". Having said that, I am aware that some colleagues regard the distinction between "international relations" (or "international politics" or "world politics" etc.) on the one hand and "foreign policy" on the other as arbitrary. If you would -- for a moment -- accept the notion of "foreign policy" in terms of the traditionally widespread (and obviously very rough) conception of the EXTERNAL POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF STATES, what scholarly publications do you consider most influential in _EITHER_ "International Relations" [ie. the political science sub-discipline] _OR_ "Foreign Policy Analysis" / "Comparative Foreign Policy" [ie. so- to-say the IR sub-discipline]? The rationale here is to allow for the inclusion of titles which some may not consider part of "Foreign Policy Analysis" / "Comparative Foreign Policy" even though they might have had some (indirect) influence on how "foreign policy" is studied. 5. _WHERE TO START_: Some might want to locate the beginnings of "serious" scholarly work on foreign policy after Word War II; others may want to point out works that predate World War I; I thought that the widely accepted convention of locating the beginnings of IR as an "academic discipline" in the immediate aftermaths of WW I would be a good way to start. However, feel free to choose the works you consider most influential -- irrespective of what you think is an "appropriate" way of locating a "beginning" for the discipline; 6. _NUMBER OF TITLES_: The exact number of titles listed by any individual respondent is less important than collecting as many responses as possible. So if you feel you can only list 2 or 3 titles, do not let yourself be deterred by the proposed number of 5 titles. Conversely, if you would like to list more than five titles, please do so (my original idea was to ask for lists of 10 titles; however, I thought that this might not be manageable); 7. _ESTABLISHING A HIERARCHY?_: If you wish, feel free to establish a hierarchy of what you consider the MOST and LEAST IMPORTANT monographs among the "classics" you list; (however, establishing a hierarchy is less important than naming titles, ie. responding at all;) 8. _WHAT BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATA?_: In order to use your time effectively and efficiently, do not bother with the full bibliographical details. It would be perfectly fine for respondents to simply list the LAST NAME(S) OF THE AUTHOR(S) AND THE APPROXIMATE TITLE. It shouldn't be that difficult for me to figure out what is being refered to. I hope that this elaboration clarifies whatever question may arise. However, if you think it doesn't, please do not hesitate to contact me. (It may take a little while, though, until you hear from me, since I am not plugging in on e-mail that often these days.) BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE OF THE SURVEY This survey is part of a larger project on (German) foreign policy. In this project I am planning to include, among others, a longer review of the literature in IR and FPA/CFP on the study of foreign policy, trying to show HOW the discipline evolved -- with respect to how it approached its subject matter -- and trying to explain WHY it developed as it did. (BY THE WAY: if respondents have suggestions as to particularly good and/or "unconventional" "state-of-the-art"- reviews of the study of foreign policy, I would very much appreciate a note.) When I did some preliminary research, it occurred to me that it would be helpful to ask fellow IR/FPA students and colleagues to name the most influential works in the study of foreign policy (the assumption being that the titles they would point out would indeed have to be counted among the most important ones; the idea to conduct this survey was also pushed forward when I recently read an article by the American sociologist Jeffrey Alexander on "The Centrality of the Classics" in sociology [in: Anthony Giddens and Jonathan H. Turner, Eds, Social Theory Today, Polity Press 1987, pp. 11- 57] ). In the review of the literature I am planning to conduct I would then concentrate in particular on those monographs/articles pointed out by colleagues and fellow IR/FPA students. CONCLUDING REMARKS I hope that recipients of this message now have at least some idea what this survey is supposed to be good for. In addition, I hope that recipients will come to share my judgement that such a survey could be of some value to the "scientific community" more broadly. As a result I hope that many will participate. A final note: If you agree with me that this is a worthwhile project, I would very much appreciate if you could forward this message to relevant colleagues: the more responses we can collect from the GLOBAL "scientific community", the better!!! Thank you for your time and assistance. Gunther Hellmann _______________________________________ Gunther Hellmann Technische Hochschule Darmstadt FB 2 / Institut fuer Politikwissenschaft Residenzschloss D-64283 Darmstadt Germany Tel. +49-6151-16-2542 Fax. +49-6151-16-3992 email. hellmann@pg.th-darmstadt.de ________________________________________ From rkmoore@iol.ie Wed Aug 21 12:56:51 1996 Wed, 21 Aug 1996 19:56:31 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 19:56:31 +0100 (BST) To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: half-free and half-slave 8/19/96, wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote: >I would certainly hope that >ANY nationally focused party or movement would adopt as a cardinal tenet >the assumption that ultimately democracy cannot be saved unless all the >world's people enjoy its benefits and no one segment of humankind has the >right to prey on another. D'accord. rkm From chriscd@jhu.edu Thu Aug 22 12:22:36 1996 22 Aug 1996 14:20:23 -0400 (EDT) 22 Aug 1996 14:18:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 14:20:59 -0700 From: chris chase-dunn Subject: global praxis on wsn To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Organization: Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA A fascinating set of exchanges took place on WSN between June 12 and August 19, 1996. I have edited some of the comments to exclude what I consider to have been extraneous material. And I have excluded contributions that did not, in my estimation, contribute much to the main topics. These topics, as I see it, were: the future of the world-system and what to do about it. The idea of a world state and a world party were discussed. I have edited these postings into a single 55 page document (151478 bytes) for the convenience of those who might want to return to the subject in the future. This document is available in the World-Systems Archive as a text file. The ftp or gopher address is csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/praxis and the file name is globprax.txt The Web address is http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/wsarch.html and look in the Praxis subdirectory for the globprax.txt file. The complete archive of all postings to WSN during this period is available under the anchor “Mail Archive” on the WSN page at http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/index.html chris From joseph@indigo.ie Mon Aug 26 05:36:08 1996 From: "Karl Carlile" To: macdonak@Meena.CC.URegina.CA Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 12:32:34 +0000 Subject: Re: THE POLITICAL STATE! Reply-to: joseph@indigo.ie KARL: I thank you for replying Kerry. Below is a response to your reply. KERRY:The point is to de-mystify the state not to validate it, if one is using a Marxian framework. KARL:The capitalist state, as state, cannot be demystfied. The state is, in itself, a form of mystification. Demystification entails the aboliton of the state. KERRY: Marx's works are to illustrate that though we may see or believe that institutions are things independent of human action the truth is that they are not independent of social practices. KARL: In general the thought of Marx does not suggest "that institutions are things independent of human action". The reification of human relations in the form of capitalist relations does not mean that human relations are independent of institutions. As I have already indicated in my last posting you discuss bourgeois institutions within an abstract perpsective. You omit specificity, the clas s character of institutions. A workers' soviet is an institution but bears a different class character to an employers federation of big business. KERRY: Reification refers to the process whereby people PERCEIVE that a said institution is a separate entity or a thing. KARL: Reification cannot be reduced to a crude psychologism. Reification is not illusion: It is concrete fact. The state is a reification of the relations between "people". This is an objective socia l fact. It is not an illusion, a subjective matter existing independently of objective reality. If this were the case then all that is required is the Bauerian transformation of consciousness by crit ique. KERRY: This limitation on people choices, given that they are or have the potential to make any choice, is a product of reificataion. KARL: People don't "have the potential to make any choice". The choices people make are constrained by the specific historico-social relations under which they conduct their lives. Capitalism is not an abstract Sartrian society of infinite choice. KERRY: Marx's GERMAN IDEOLOGY is my favourite work on this subject matter, though I also like Lukacs's HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS. KARL: There is irony to the above observation of yours since The German Ideology effectively exposed the idealist subjectivist perspective, your perspective, that claims reification has its source in consciousness. Marx and Engles in The German Ideology exposed the incorrectness of Bruno Bauer's transformation of critique into a transcendental power. Indeed there is a very apt story to be found in The German Ideology concerning your kind of idealism: "Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were posssessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to get this notion out of their heads, say by a vowing it to be a superstitious, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful cons equences all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophes in Germany." KERRY: We are not incapable of creating new institutions, rather the loss of control arises because we believe that we don't' have control because we are alienated, separated from those practices, and have reified our understanding of those practices. KARL: Yours is a classic case of well intentioned subjectivism. It is not a mere matter of whether we "believe" we have or have not control: not a matter of consciousness as Sartre and Bruno Bauer be lieved. It is a matter of the specific character of the institutions and the consciousness that springs from them. KERRY:To argue that we lack any control, in this case potential as opposed to actual, means that: 1) no change is possible and thus critique is futile, and; 2) that if we are so immeresed in this system then how is it even possible that critique exists. KARL: The above Aristotelian potential/actual formulation is a mistaken metaphysical notion that lacks historicity. Its use here, reduces history to the level of linearity. History cannot be reduced to a naive dialectical interplay between potential and actual. Such a transcendental perspective abstracts from specific objective factors. I never argued that the working "we lack any control". KERRY: Granted, states have been institutions which have supported inequatiable social arrangements, however, that does not mean that it, the state, has to be an institution of inequality. The state, as you noted, arose out of need to coordinate the activities of a large agricultural society. It also allowed for the development of specialization to become stratified viz-a-viz different occupations within the society. My argument, is that there is a need for some sort of coordinating institution which fulfills the roles that the state currently occupies and at the same time does not support inequality amongst it's citizenry. As I believe that humans are capable of creating institutions of our own choosing this is a possibility (and given what you have said in previous posts, I believe you would concur with this sentiment). My point, however, was that given that the state, as an institution, has generally fulfilled the role of coordinating the activites of a society and that its "character", the way that it does that, is a product of human practices, then it is possible to create a new institution KARL: But in your previous posting you argued that "however, that does not mean that it, the state, has to be an institution of inequality." The state, as state, is always an institution of inequality and, more significantly, an institution of class oppression. Furthermore in the above brief description of yours concerning the character of the state you again engage in abstractions and miss the specificity of the state as a political institution. The distinguishing characteristic of the state is its existence as a reification of human relations. This is why I made the following comment in my last posting to you: "You suggest that the state is a "coordinating institution". But you miss what is specific to the character of the state: Its existence as a manifestation o f the reification of human relations. Clearly the state has a co-ordinating character and shares this in common with certain other social phenomena. But this is not the point. The point is its specificity: how it specifically differs from certain other socio-historical phenomena. Capitalism is a system through which human wealth is reproduced. It shares this feature in common with other forms of production of wealth. However this would be to miss the point. It is how the capitalist mode of production specifically differs from a particular form of production that is of historic significance. Marx and Hitler were human beings. However what is significant is their specificity, not their commonality." You write that "given that the state, as an institution, has generally fulfilled the role of co-ordinating the activities of a society and that its "character", the way that it does that, is a product of human practices, then it is possible to create a new institution". Here again is a manifestation of subjectivism. This mistaken understanding suggests that the question of creating a new institution is merely a matter of subje ctive choice. Consequently it is a choice that can be made at this or that time: contingency. This indicates a failure to recognize the significance of objective conditions. The possibility of social revoution exists as a result of the specific objective conditions that obtain under capitalism. In the absence of the relevant objective conditions there can be no possibility of revolutionary chang e. However in order that the possibility is transformed into actuality correct subjective conditions are required. This is where the dialectical play between between subject and object is so central . KERRY: My point, however, was that given that the state, as an institution, has generally fulfilled the role of coordinating the activites of a society and that its "character", the way that it does that, is a product of human practices, then it is possible to create a new institution KARL: The possibility of creating a new institution is not a result of the state existing as a product of human practices. The possibility rests on the contradictory nature of the state and the capit alist mode of production with which the latter is integrated. It is the objective limits of capitalism and its statal institutions that make emancipation from alienation a possibility. Karl Carlile 4 > On Fri, 9 Aug 1996, Karl Carlile wrote: > > > Karl: The political state, by its very nature, "is a product and > > manifestation of the irreconcilability of class contradictions." It > > is an expression and form of alienation. It is an expression of th e > > fact that the social relations between the producers of wealth have > > assumed a fetishised form. Social relations of production are > > thereby mediated through "things". Consequently people cannot regul > > ate their own affairs in a directly collective fashion . > > Administration and regulation of social relations is thereby > > mediated through a thing-like institution, the state. > > The point is to de-mystify the state not to validate it, if one is using > a Marxian framework. Marx's works are to illustrate that though we may > see or believe that institutions are things independent of human action > the truth is that they are not independent of social practices. > > Reification refers to the process whereby people PERCEIVE that a said > institution is a separate entity or a thing. This arises out of the fact > that people are alienated or separated from the social practice whether > directly or indirectly. In addition, for those who are participating > within that institution or system their freedom of choice is limited by > traditions or rules which govern how those people make choices. In other > words, their "thinkable thought" about a given institution/system limits > what they perceive has not only acceptable choices but choices are > actually possible. This limitation on people choices, given that they > are or have the potential to make any choice, is a product of > reificataion. Marx's GERMAN IDEOLOGY is my favourite work on this > subject matter, though I also like Lukacs's HISTORY AND CLASS > CONSCIOUSNESS. > > > You say that you believe that "humans are capable of creating > > institutions of our own choosing". But the point is that under > > capitalist civilisation people cannot make such choices since they > > are not in control of their the social relations. > > We are not incapable of creating new institutions, rather the loss of > control arises because we believe that we don't' have control because we > are alienated, separated from those practices, and have reified our > understanding of those practices. > > To argue that we lack any control, in this case potential as opposed to > actual, means that: 1) no change is possible and thus critique is futile, > and; 2) that if we are so immeresed in this system then how is it even > possible that critique exists. > > Marx's point was that the system is stable, for the most part, because > people did not appreciate that are not things, reified, but are products > of human effort. His work was to illustrate that society is a product of > people's practices and thus if they were aware of that fact they could > create a society that was more humane. His work is an effort to > demystify our social practices and to show how those social practices are > currently not constructed in the best interests of people. > > > You suggest that > > the state is a "coordinating institution". But you miss what is > > specific to the character of the state: Its existence as a > > manifestation o f the reification of human relations. Clearly the > > state has a co-ordinating character and shares this in common with > > certain other social phenomena. But this is not the point. The point > > is its specif icity: how it specifically differs from certain other > > socio-historical phenomena. Capitalism is a system through which > > human wealth is reproduced. It shares this feature in common with > > other forms of production of wealth. However this would be to miss > > the point. It is how the capitalist mode of production specifically > > differs from a particular form of production that is of historic > > significance. Marx and Hitler were human beings. However what is > > significant is their specificity, not their commonality. > > I am not sure exactly what you point is in this section. > > My point, however, was that given that the state, as an institution, has > generally fulfilled the role of coordinating the activites of a society > and that its "character", the way that it does that, is a product of > human practices, then it is possible to create a new institution (a > better term may be process, as "institution" is a term which seems to > have a conatation (sp?) which means that the practices are reified). > > It is important to illustrate how the current way that the state is > organized and takes power away from people (a product of reification) and > that as an institution it is only a product of social practices. > > kerry > > From rross@vax.clarku.edu Thu Aug 29 19:37:56 1996 Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 21:38:09 -0500 (EST) From: "ROBERT J.S. (BOB) ROSS, CHAIR OF SOCIOLOGY" To: Progressive Sociology Network , WORLD SYSTEMS Network Brothers and Sisters, A Cultural Reflection from a Materialist watching the nomination of William J: Any Party which includes brother Mohamed Ali in the stands can't be all bad. But any Party which plays The Boss's "Born in the USA" as a patriotic song has hired illiterates and fools as its consultants. [Marilyn Katz, and Heather B., to the contrary notwithstanding] In aid of our ability to read historically and listen without idiocy, I give you the lyrics of Born in the USA (courtesy of http://diwww.epfl.ch/~vbossica/Bruce/1984.born.in.the.usa) : Born in the U.S.A. ****************** Born down in a dead man's town The first kick I took was when I hit the ground You end up like a dog that's been beat too much Till you spend half your life just covering up Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A. I was born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A. Got in a little hometown jam So they put a rifle in my hand Sent me off to a foreign land To go and kill the yellow man Born in the U.S.A.... Come back home to the refinery Hiring man said "Son if it was up to me" Went down to see my V.A. man He said "Son, don't you understand" I had a brother at Khe Sahn Fighting off the Viet Cong They're still there, he's all gone He had a woman he loved in Saigon I got a picture of him in her arms now Down in the shadow of the penitentiary Out by the gas fires of the refinery I'm ten years burning down the road Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A. Born in the U.S.A., I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A. Born in the U.S.A., Born in the U.S.A. Born in the U.S.A., I'm a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A. ***************************************************************************** Robert J.S. Ross 508 793 7243 Department of Sociology fax: 508 793 8816 Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610 ******************************************************************************* From dale.wimberley@vt.edu Fri Aug 30 15:31:50 1996 Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 17:31:42 -0400 To: World-System Network From: dale.wimberley@vt.edu (Dale W Wimberley) Subject: Call for 1997 PEWS Book and Article Award Nominations >From: "Terry Boswell" >Organization: Social Sciences, Emory Univ. >To: dale.wimberley, arrighi@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu, wsn@csf.colorado.edu, > sections@asanet.org >Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 16:44:42 EST5EDT >Subject: 1997 PEWS Award Nominations >Priority: normal > >Political Economy of the World-System Distinguished Scholarship >Book Award, 1997. > >Nominations are called for the 1997 Political Economy of the World >System Section Book Award for distinguished scholarship. Any work >of global, international, or comparative sociology concerned with >the relationship between domestic and global social, economic and >political processes is eligible. The book must be in English or >made available to the nominating committee in an authorized English >translation. Anyone may nominate a book, regardless of the >disciplinary, section, or ASA affiliation of either the author or >nominator. Self-nominations are welcome. Letters should include >complete publication information. Eligible for the 1997 award are >books published in the three calendar years 1994, 1995, 1996. >Nominations should reach the Award Committee chair no later than >March 31, 1997. The 1997 chair is Giovanni Arrighi, Department of >Sociology, State University of New York - Binghamton, Binghamton, >NY 13902-6000; (607) 777-6840; arrighi@binghamton.edu. > >+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > >Political Economy of the World-System Distinguished Scholarship >Article Award, 1997. > >Nominations are called for the 1997 Political Economy of the World >System Section Award for the most distinguished article. Any >scholarly article of global, international or comparative sociology >concerned with the relationship between domestic and global social, >economic and political processes is eligible. The article must be >in English or made available to the nominating committee in an >authorized English translation. Anyone may nominate an article, >regardless of the disciplinary, section, or ASA affiliation of >either the author or nominator. Self-nominations are welcome. >Letters should include complete publication information. Eligible >for the 1997 award are articles published in a scholarly journal >during the three calendar years of 1994, 1995, 1996. Nominations, >with three copies of the article should reach the Award Committee >chair no later than March 31, 1997. The 1997 chair is Terry >Boswell, Department of Sociology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA >30322; tbos@soc.emory.edu. > Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University