. Text by Monica Stillo. Website by David Gauntlett. Comments welcome.

Antonio Gramsci INDEX The life of Antonio Gramsci Some ideas from Marx Concept of hegemony Role of intellectuals in society Gramscianism on communications matters Merits of Gramsci’s theory Flaws of Gramsci’s theory Gramsci in his own words Bibliography See also: Can Gramsci’s theory of hegemony help us to understand the representation of racial minorities in western television and cinema? by Reena Mistry 1 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO GRAMSCI “Telling the truth is always revolutionary” 1891 – (January 22nd.) Born at Ales in Cagliary, Italy. Antonio was the fourth son of Francesco Gramsci, a clerk in the local registrar’s office. 1897-1898 – His father is sentenced to serve five years in prison on charges of maladministration. On his release he has no job, so his seven children grow up in difficult circumstances and deep financial insecurity. Antonio G. suffered ill health throughout his life, and from a deformity which left him a hunchback. 1903 – After completing his elementary education, Gramsci has to work in the registry office of Ghilarza, Italy, where the family moved after his father’s imprisonment. 1911 – Gramsci wins a scholarship to study at Turin University. 1913 – Participates in the first universal suffrage elections and makes his first contacts with the socialist movement in Turin. 1916 – Starts working as a journalist for the Socialist Party paper. 1917 – Gramsci is elected to the Provisional Committee of the Socialist Party. 1921 – (January) The Italian Communist Party is founded and Antonio Gramsci is elected as a member of the central committee. 1922 – (from May to November 1923) Gramsci goes to Moscow as a member of the Communist International and spends more than a year in this country. In a local clinic he meets his future wife, Giulia Schucht, and later he returns to his country as a leader of the Communist Party. It is said that the concept of hegemony (gegemoniya) was first used as part of a slogan of the Russian Social-Democratic movement from 1890 to 1917. 1926 – (November) Because of his opposition to Mussolini, Gramsci is arrested in Rome, and sent to a camp for political prisoners. He was 35 years old. During the trial, Mussolini said about Gramsci: “We have to prevent that this mind continue thinking.“ 1927 – He was transferred to a prison in Milan, and then to Rome. He was condemned to twenty years imprisonment. In a letter to his family he says that he is plagued by the idea of accomplishing something forever, and he sets out a systematic plan of study. 1929 – Gramsci receives permission to write, and February the 8th is the first date stated in his “Prison Notebooks” (Quaderni di carcere). During these years he studied Italian and European history, linguistics and historiography. Gramsci had a prodigious memory; in his years in prison obviously he was not allowed to read communist books, so every quotation he made, especially about Marx, are the words (almost always exact) that he could remember. 1930 – He begins a series of discussions with other communists in prison, but his thoughts about the compulsion of a democratic approach were not shared with the rest of the political prisoners 1937 – (April 27th.) Gramsci died after several years of suffering and Tatiana (his sister in law) manages to smuggle the 33 books out of prison and send them via diplomatic bag to Moscow to be published. He was 46 years old. “Historical-academic gossip”: As far as I know, every important letter that Gramsci wrote (especially those telling about his feelings and political ideas) was addressed to Tatiana, the sister of his wife Giulia. Finally, she was the person who recovered his papers to posterity. You have to draw your own conclusions. What have we learnt about his life?   Gramsci had a difficult childhood, not only because he was a victim of capitalism, in other words of the economical and social unfairness of the beginning of the 20th century, but also because his family (and Gramsci himself) were in some way injured by bureaucracy;   He was punished for his thoughts by the fascist power, and condemned to pass almost his entire life in jail. We can say that he dedicated his short existence to his beliefs;   Not only was he an important intellectual of Marxist theories, but he was also a leader, a politician, and he fought in the battlefield of ideas and action. We can compare Gramsci to Lenin, and conclude that he took his experience at the head of the Communist Party and included it into his theoretical conceptions and his proposals for Marxist theory. This idea of Gramsci as a leader as well as a theoretician is very relevant to understand his notes, especially when we study the place he reserves for the intellectuals in society. 2 SOME IDEAS FROM MARX Understanding Gramsci’s theory requires a review of some basic Marxist arguments and assumptions. [These are explained here in the simplest terms… “If Marx were to see this, he would die again,” as Monica put it]. ECONOMIC DETERMINATION Everything in life is determined by capital. The flow of money affects our relations with other persons, with nature and with the world. Our thoughts and goals are the products of property structures. Every cultural activity (culture in its widest sense) is reduced to a direct or indirect expression of some preceding and controlling economic content. Men find themselves born in a process independent of their will, they cannot control it, they can seek only to understand it and guide their actions accordingly. CLASS STRUGGLE The dynamic of a society can only be understood in terms of a system where the dominant ideas are formulated by the ruling class to secure its control over the working class. The latter, exploited by the former, will eventually try to change this situation (through revolution), producing its own ideas as well as its own industrial and political organisation. BASE / SUPERSTRUCTURE Marx’s deterministic economic conception divides the society in two layers or levels: base and superstructure. The first, upon which everything grows, is composed by the material production, money, objects, the relations of production and the stage of development of productive forces. The palpable and tangible world, plus the economic relations that capital generates. The second, determined by the first, is where we can find the political and ideological institutions, our social relations, set of ideas; our cultures, hopes, dreams and spirit. The world of souls, souls shaped by capital. According to Marx, we can understand the superstructure in three senses:   Legal and political expressions which expose existing relation of production;   Forms of consciousness that express a particular class view of the world;   The processes in which men become conscious of a fundamental economic conflict and fight it out. Generally, it is believed that Marx proposed this “one way” relation between economics (down) and ideas (up) as a rigid and severe system. However, the fact is that this is not very clear in Marx and Engel’s books. Nevertheless, we can understand almost every Marxist author (and particularly these concerned with cultural issues) as people making an effort to conceive this dependence more dynamically, in order to assume that the analysis of history supposes a social and cultural approach, as well as an economic consideration. 3 CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY “It was Gramsci who, in the late twenties and thirties, with the rise of fascism and the failure of the Western European working-class movements, began to consider why the working class was not necessarily revolutionary, why it could, in fact, yield to fascism.” (Gitlin, 1994: 516) Gramsci was concerned to eradicate economic determinism from Marxism and to develop its explanatory power with respect to superstructural institutions. So, he held that:   Class struggle must always involve ideas and ideologies, ideas that would make the revolution and also that would prevent it;   He stressed the role performed by human agency in historical change: economic crises by themselves would not subvert capitalism;   Gramsci was more “dialectic” than “deterministic”: he tried to build a theory which recognised the autonomy, independence and importance of culture and ideology. “It can be argued that Gramsci’s theory suggests that subordinated groups accept the ideas, values and leadership of the dominant group not because they are physically or mentally induced to do so, nor because they are ideologically indoctrinated, but because they have reason of their own.” (Strinati, 1995: 166) From Gramsci’s view, the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based on two, equally important, facts:   Economic domination   Intellectual and moral leadership What exactly is the meaning of “hegemony”? “…Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance by securing the ‘spontaneous consent’ of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups.” (Strinati, 1995: 165)   A class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values;   The concept assumes a plain consent given by the majority of a population to a certain direction suggested by those in power;   However, this consent is not always peaceful, and may combine physical force or coercion with intellectual, moral and cultural inducement;   Can be understood as “common sense”, a cultural universe where the dominant ideology is practiced and spread;   Something which emerges out of social and class struggles, and serve to shape and influence peoples minds;   It is a set of ideas by means of which dominant groups strive to secure the consent of subordinate groups to their leadership; “…the practices of a capitalist class or its representatives to gain state power and maintain it later.” (Simon, 1982: 23) Can we conclude that “hegemony” is a strategy exclusively of the bourgeoisie? No. In fact the working class can develop its own hegemony as a strategy to control the State. Nevertheless, Gramsci stated that the only way to perform this labour class control is by taking into account the interests of other groups and social forces and finding ways of combining them with its own interests. If the working class is to achieve hegemony, it needs patiently to build up a network of alliances with social minorities. These new coalitions must respect the autonomy of the movement, so that each group can make its own special contribution toward a new socialist society. The working class must unite popular democratic struggles with its own conflict against the capital class, so as to strengthen a national popular collective will. How does the hegemonic class manage to maintain its ideology over time? Hegemony is readjusted and re-negotiated constantly. Gramsci said that it can never be taken for granted, in fact during the post-revolutionary phase (when the labour class has gained control) the function of hegemonic leadership does not disappear but changes its character. However, he describes two different modes of social control:   Coercive control: manifested through direct force or its threat (needed by a state when its degree of hegemonic leadership is low or fractured);   Consensual control: which arises when individuals voluntarily assimilate the worldview of the dominant group (=hegemonic leadership). How does the process of mutation from a dominant “hegemony” to a new one occur? Periodically there may develop an organic crisis in which the governing group begins to disintegrate, creating the opportunity for a subordinate class to transcend its limitations and build up a broad movement capable of challenging the existing order and achieving hegemony. But, if the opportunity is not taken, the balance of forces will shift back to the dominant class, which reestablishes its hegemony on the basis of a new pattern of alliances. “The key to ‘revolutionary’ social change in modern societies does not therefore depend, as Marx had predicted, on the spontaneous awakening of critical class consciousness but upon the prior formation of a new alliances of interests, an alternative hegemony or ‘historical bloc’, which has already developed a cohesive world view of its own. (Williams, 1992: 27) Is violence the only way to subvert dominant “hegemony”? No. The way of challenging the dominant hegemony is political activity. But we must understand a distinction that Gramsci proposed between two different kind of political strategies to achieve the capitulation of the predominant hegemony and the construction of the socialist society: War of manoeuvre:   Frontal attack;   The main goal is winning quickly;   Especially recommended for societies with a centralised and dominant state power that have failed in developing a strong hegemony within the civil society (i.e. Bolshevik revolution, 1917). War of position:  Long struggle;   Primarily, across institutions of civil society;   Secondly, the socialist forces gain control through cultural and ideological struggle, instead of only political and economic contest;   Especially suggested for the liberal-democratic societies of Western capitalism with weaker states but stronger hegemonies (i.e.: Italy);   These countries have more extensive and intricate civil societies that deserve a longer and more complex strategy. “The revolutionary forces have to take civil society before they take the state, and therefore have to build a coalition of oppositional groups united under a hegemonic banner which usurps the dominant or prevailing hegemony.” (Strinati, 1995:169) In this context, how do we understand the notions of culture and ideology?   Culture: a whole social process, in which men and women define and shape their lives.   Ideology: a system of meanings and values, it is the expression or projection of a particular class interest. The form in which consciousness is at once expressed and controlled, as Raymond Williams has defined it: “…a mistaken interpretation of how the world actually is.” (Williams, 1992: 27) ” ‘Hegemony’ goes beyond ‘culture’, as previously defined in its insistence on relating the ‘whole’ social process to specific distributions of power and influence. To say that ‘men’ define and shape their whole lives is true only in abstraction. In any actual society there are specific inequalities in means and therefore in capacity to realise this process. In a class society these are primarily inequalities between classes. Gramsci therefore introduced the necessary recognition of dominance and subordination in what has still, however, to be recognised as a whole process.” (Williams, 1977: 108). Hence, having everything we just said in mind, one could take it that, first, you have a class “building” a specific and concrete ideology — based in its specific and concrete interests — that will dominate the rest of the society because of the unavoidable influence of capitalist relations. This set of ideas will constitute the hegemony that will be expressed as the nucleus of culture. If these assumptions are correct, we can conclude that the media are the instruments to express the dominant ideology as an integral part of the cultural environment. 4 THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUALS IN SOCIETY Historically, different intellectuals have created the ideologies that have moulded societies; each class creates one or more groups of intellectuals. Thus, if the working class wants to succeed in becoming hegemonic, it must also create its own intellectuals to develop a new ideology. “Because of the way society develops, different groups of individuals will be required to take on particular tasks. Gramsci suggests that although all tasks require a degree of intellectual and creative ability, some individuals will be required to perform tasks or functions which are overtly intellectual. In the first instance, these occupations are associated with the particular technical requirements of the economic system. Subsequently, they may be associated with the more general administrative and organisational institutions which synchronise the activities of the economy with those of society as a whole. In the political sphere, each social group or class (which is itself brought into being by the particular way in which economic practices are organised) generates a need for intellectuals who both represent the interests of that class and develop its ideational understanding of the world.” (Ransome, 1992: 198) For Gramsci, the revolutionary intellectuals should originate from within the working class rather than being imposed from outside or above it. “They are not only thinkers, writers and artist but also organisers such as civil servants and political leaders, and they not only function in civil society and the state, but also in the productive apparatus…” (Simon, 1991: 90) 5 GRAMSCIANISM ON COMMUNICATIONS MATTERS From a “Gramscian” perspective, the mass media have to be interpreted as an instrument to spread and reinforce the dominant hegemony… although they could be used by those who want to spread counter-hegemonic ideas too. “…Pop culture and the mass media are subject to the production, reproduction and transformation of hegemony through the institution of civil society which cover the areas of cultural production and consumption. Hegemony operates culturally and ideologically through the institutions of civil society which characterises mature liberal-democratic, capitalist societies. These institutions include education, the family, the church, the mass media, popular culture, etc.” (Strinati, 1995: 168-169) Different authors (Foucault, Althauser, Feminist theories, etc.) have taken Gramsci’s idea of a prominent discourse, reinterpreting and proposing it as a suitable explanation about our culture, the construction of our beliefs, identities, opinions and relations, everything under the influence of a dominant “common sense”. Eventually, we can suggest that the media could operate also as a tool of insurrection. 6 MERITS OF GRAMSCI’S THEORY Every author who has studied or developed the writings of Gramsci has something different to stress from his theory; by way of illustration I have chosen some of these opinions:   David Harris: He is responsible for the emergence of a critical sociology of culture and for the politicisation of culture.   Raymond Williams: The forms of domination and subordination correspond much more closely to the normal process of social organisation and control in developed societies than the idea of a ruling class, which are usually based on much earlier and simpler historical phases.   Paul Ransome: Gramsci resolved two central weakness of Marx’s original approach: – That Marx was mistaken in assuming that social development always originates form the economic structure; – That Marx placed too much faith in the possibility of a spontaneous outburst of revolutionary consciousness among the working class.   Todd Gitlin: Gramsci’s distinction of culture was a great advance for radical theories, it called attention to the routine structures of everyday ‘common sense’, which work to sustain class domination and tyranny.   Dominic Strinati: Gramsci suggested that there is a dialectic between the process of production and the activities of consumption. He also displayed a lack of dogmatism, unlike some other Marxist authors. 7 FLAWS OF GRAMSCI’S THEORY As in the previous section, there are a number of critical views about Gramsci’s ideas that we could review. Here I have taken some of the more common ones; especially those connected with a communications angle. Nevertheless, there are entire libraries dedicate exclusively to Gramsci and his theories from heterogeneous perspectives; they seem to be an unlimited source of inspiration. Only the most fertile ideas can provoke this amount of analysis. Dominic Strinati: From Strinati’s point of view the main problem with Gramsci’s ideas is the same as with the Frankfurt School’s theories and Althusser’s work: their Marxist background. A class-based analysis is always reductionist and tends to simplify the relation between the people and their own culture, that is the problem of confining a social theory within the Marxist limits. The deterministic framework does not allow history to contradict the theory, and the interpretation of reality becomes rather elementary. “People can accept the prevailing order because they are compelled to do so by devoting their time to ‘making a living’, or because they cannot conceive another way of organising society, and therefore fatalistically accept the world as it is. This, moreover, assumes that the question why people should accept a particular social order is the only legitimate question to ask. It can be claimed that an equally legitimate question is why should people not accept a particular social order?” (Strinati, 1995: 174) Raymond Williams: Williams understands that culture is not only a vehicle of domination, he finds preferable a definition of culture as a language of co-operative shaping, of common contribution. He also thinks that Gramsci proposed the concept of hegemony as a uniform, static and abstract structure. “A lived hegemony is always a process. It is not, except analytically, a system or a structure. It is a realised complex of experiences, relationships and activities, with specific and changing pressures and limits. In practice, that is, hegemony can never be singular. Its internal structures are highly complex, as can readily be seen in any concrete analysis. Moreover (and this is crucial, reminding us of the necessary thrust of the concept), it does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not at all its own.” (Williams, 1977: 112) Williams finds a third theoretical problem: how the modern citizen can distinguish between alternative and opposed initiatives, between the independent and the reactionary ideas. Because everything in society could be tied to the hegemonic thoughts, one can say that the dominant culture produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture. The notions of revolution and social change have no sense in these circumstances. David Harris: He has mentioned that Gramsci’s ideas about the role of intellectuals in society are rather elitist, and all the theory is too political and partisan to be credible. He adds later that another problem of Gramsci’s thought is the lack of empiricism, there is no room for studies of audiences, surveys or something related directly with the people and their behaviour. “…A suitable theory must be capable of avoiding determinism and prioritising struggle; it must contain, or be capable of containing, a suitable linguistics; it must be flexible enough to license, as proper politics, the women’s movement, black activism, and any other new social movements as may be announced by the management; it should be able to function in the absence of a strong Communist Party; it must be capable of being applied to an infinite range of specific circumstance; it must be fun to work with, with witty and well written arguments, and intriguing neologism.” (Harris, 1992: 198) Todd Gitlin: Gitlin’s opinion is that Gramsci’s ideas, and the later works based upon them, propose a debate that is rather abstract with a concept of cultural hegemony as a “substance with a life of its own” settled over the whole public of capitalist societies to confuse the reality. A kind of evil power seeking to colonise our consciousness. But, Gitlin wonders if the fact that the same film (or the same advertisement, or the same article, or the same t.v. programme) is subject to a variety of interpretations, may suggest a crisis of hegemonic ideology, a failure in the cultural programmed minds. Moreover, the success of media in modern societies implies a certain sensitivity to audience tastes, desires and tolerances, in order to perpetuate the system. From Gitlin’s perspective the relationship between audiences, media products and culture structures is less inflexible, and more collaborative. “The cultural hegemony system that results is not a closed system. It leaks. Its very structure leaks, at the least because it remains to some extend competitive.” (Gitlin in Newcomb, 1994: 531). 8 GRAMSCI IN HIS OWN WORDS (Selection from the Prison Notebooks) “What we can do, for the moment, is to fix two major superstructural ‘levels’: the one that can be called ‘civil society’, that is, the ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private’, and that of ‘political society’ or ‘the state’. These two levels correspond on the one hand to the functions of ‘hegemony’ which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of ‘direct domination’ or command exercised through the state and ‘juridical’ government.” (12) “A social group can, indeed must, already exercise ‘leadership’ before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to ‘lead’ as well.” (57) “A crisis occurs, sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves (reached maturity) and that, despite this, the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them, within certain limits, and to overcome them. These incessant and persistent efforts … form the terrain of the ‘conjunctural’ and it is upon this terrain that the forces of opposition organise.” (178) “This criticism makes possible a process of differentiation and change in the relative weight that the elements of the old ideologies used to possess. What was previously secondary and subordinate, or even incidental, is now taken to be primary – becomes the nucleus of a new ideological and theoretical complex. The old collective will dissolves into its contradictory elements, since the subordinate ones develop socially, etc.” (195) “Critical self-consciousness means, historically and politically, the creation of an élite of intellectuals. A human mass does not ‘distinguish’ itself, does not become independent in its own right without, in the widest sense, organising itself: and there is no organisation without intellectuals, that is without organisers and leaders… But the process of creating intellectuals is long and difficult, full of contradictions, advances and retreats, dispersal and regrouping, in which the loyalty of the masses is often sorely tried.” (334) “So one could say that each one of us changes himself, modifies himself to the extent that he changes the complex relations of which he is the hub. In this sense the real philosopher is, and cannot be other than, the politician, the active man who modifies the environment, understanding by environment the ensemble of relations which each of us enters to take part in. If one’s own individuality means to acquire consciousness of them and to modify one’s own personality means to modify the ensemble of these relations.” (352) 9 BIBLIOGRAPHY Gitlin, Todd (1979), ‘Prime time ideology: the hegemonic process in television entertainment’, in Newcomb, Horace, ed. (1994), Television: the critical view – Fifth Edition, Oxford University Press, New York. Gramsci, Antonio (1971), Selections form the Prision Notebook, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare & Goffrey Nowell Smith, Lawrence and Wishart, London. Ransome, Paul (1992), Antonio Gramsci: A new introduction, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Simon, Roger (1991), Gramsci’s Political Thought: An introduction, Lawrence and Wishart, London. Strinati, Dominic (1995), An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, Routledge, London. Williams, Raymond (1977), Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Written by Monica Stillo. Rendered for web by David Gauntlett. (Presented in seminar for Communications Research Methodologies, MA in Communication Studies, University of Leeds).

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm

Frank Rosengarten

An Introduction to Gramsci’s Life and Thought

Transcribed to http://www.marxists.org with the kind permission of Frank Rosengarten.

Antonio Gramsci was born on January 22, 1891 in Ales in the province of Cagliari in Sardinia. He was the fourth of seven children born to Francesco Gramsci and Giuseppina Marcias. His relationship with his father was never very close, but he had a strong affection and love for his mother, whose resilience, gift for story-telling and pungent humor made a lasting impression on him. Of his six siblings, Antonio enjoyed a mutual interest in literature with his younger sister Teresina, and seems to have always felt a spiritual kinship with his two brothers, Gennaro, the oldest of the Gramsci children, and Carlo, the youngest. Gennaro’s early embrace of socialism contributed significantly to Antonio’s political development.

In 1897, Antonio’s father was suspended and subsequently arrested and imprisoned for five years for alleged administrative abuses. Shortly thereafter, Giuseppina and her children moved to Ghilarza, where Antonio attended elementary school. Sometime during these years of trial and near poverty, he fell from the arms of a servant, to which his family attributed his hunched back and stunted growth: he was an inch or two short of five feet in height.

At the age of eleven, after completing elementary school, Antonio worked for two years in the tax office in Ghilarza, in order to help his financially strapped family. Because of the five-year absence of Francesco, these were years of bitter struggle. Nevertheless, he continued to study privately and eventually returned to school, where he was judged to be of superior intelligence, as indicated by excellent grades in all subjects.

Antonio continued his education, first in Santu Lussurgiu, about ten miles from Ghilarza, then, after graduating from secondary school, at the Dettori Lyceum in Cagliari, where he shared a room with his brother Gennaro, and where he came into contact for the first time with organized sectors of the working class and with radical and socialist politics. But these were also years of privation, during which Antonio was partially dependent on his father for financial support, which came only rarely. In his letters to his family, he accused his father repeatedly of unpardonable procrastination and neglect. His health deteriorated, and some of the nervous symptoms that were to plague him at a later time were already in evidence.

1911 was an important year in young Gramsci’s life. After graduating from the Cagliari lyceum, he applied for and won a scholarship to the University of Turin, an award reserved for needy students from the provinces of the former Kingdom of Sardinia. Among the other young people to compete for this scholarship was Palmiro Togliatti, future general secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and, with Gramsci and several others, among the most capable leaders of that embattled Party. Antonio enrolled in the Faculty of Letters. At the University he met Angelo Tasca and several of the other men with whom he was to share struggles first in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and then, after the split that took place in January 1921, in the PCI.

At the University, despite years of terrible suffering due to inadequate diet, unheated flats, and constant nervous exhaustion, Antonio took a variety of courses, mainly in the humanities but also in the social sciences and in linguistics, to which he was sufficiently attracted to contemplate academic specialization in that subject. Several of his professors, notably Matteo Bartoli, a linguist, and Umberto Cosmo, a Dante scholar, became personal friends.

In 1915, despite great promise as an academic scholar, Gramsci became an active member of the PSI, and began a journalistic career that made him among the most feared critical voices in Italy at that time. His column in the Turin edition of Avanti!, and his theatre reviews were widely read and influential. He regularly spoke at workers’ study-circles on various topics, such as the novels of Romain Rolland, for whom he felt a certain affinity, the Paris Commune, the French and Italian revolutions and the writings of Karl Marx. It was at this time, as the war dragged on and as Italian intervention became a bloody reality, Gramsci assumed a somewhat ambivalent stance, although his basic position was that the Italian socialists should use intervention as an occasion to turn Italian national sentiment in a revolutionary rather than a chauvinist direction. It was also at this time, in 1917 and 1918, that he began to see the need for integration of political and economic action with cultural work, which took form as a proletarian cultural association in Turin.

The outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 further stirred his revolutionary ardor, and for the remainder of the war and in the years thereafter Gramsci identified himself closely, although not entirely uncritically, with the methods and aims of the Russian revolutionary leadership and with the cause of socialist transformation throughout the advanced capitalist world.

In the spring of 1919, Gramsci, together with Angelo Tasca, Umberto Terracini and Togliatti, founded L’Ordine Nuovo: Rassegna Settimanale di Cultura Socialista (The New Order: A Weekly Review of Socialist Culture), which became an influential periodical (on a weekly and later on a bi-monthly publishing schedule) for the following five years among the radical and revolutionary Left in Italy. The review gave much attention to political and literary currents in Europe, the USSR, and the United States.

For the next few years, Gramsci devoted most of his time to the development of the factory council movement, and to militant journalism, which led in January 1921 to his siding with the Communist minority within the PSI at the Party’s Livorno Congress. He became a member of the PCI’s central committee, but did not play a leading role until several years later. He was among the most prescient representatives of the Italian Left at the inception of the fascist movement, and on several occasions predicted that unless unified action were taken against the rise of Mussolini’s movement, Italian democracy and Italian socialism would both suffer a disastrous defeat.

The years 1921 to 1926, years “of iron and fire” as he called them, were eventful and productive. They were marked in particular by the year and a half he lived in Moscow as an Italian delegate to the Communist International (May 1922- November 1923), his election to the Chamber of Deputies in April 1924, and his assumption of the position of general secretary of the PCI. His personal life was also filled with significant experiences, the chief one being his meeting with and subsequent marriage to Julka Schucht (1896-1980), a violinist and member of the Russian Communist Party whom he met during his stay in Russia. Antonio and Julka had two sons, Delio (1924-1981), and Giuliano, born in 1926, who lives today in Moscow with his wife.

On the evening of November 8, 1926, Gramsci was arrested in Rome and, in accordance with a series of “Exceptional Laws” enacted by the fascist-dominated Italian legislature, committed to solitary confinement at the Regina Coeli prison. This began a ten-year odyssey, marked by almost constant physical and psychic pain as a result of a prison experience that culminated, on April 27, 1937, in his death from a cerebral hemorrhage. No doubt the stroke that killed him was but the final outcome of years and years of illnesses that were never properly treated in prison.

Yet as everyone familiar with the trajectory of Gramsci’s life knows, these prison years were also rich with intellectual achievement, as recorded in the Notebooks he kept in his various cells that eventually saw the light after World War II, and as recorded also in the extraordinary letters he wrote from prison to friends and especially to family members, the most important of whom was not his wife Julka but rather a sister-in-law, Tania Schucht. She was the person most intimately and unceasingly involved in his prison life, since she had resided in Rome for many years and was in a position to provide him not only with a regular exchange of thoughts and feelings in letter form but with articles of clothing and with numerous foods and medicines he sorely needed to survive the grinding daily routine of prison life.

After being sentenced on June 4, 1928, with other Italian Communist leaders, to 20 years, 4 months and 5 days in prison, Gramsci was consigned to a prison in Turi, in the province of Bari, which turned out to be his longest place of detention (June 1928 — November 1933). Thereafter he was under police guard at a clinic in Formia, from which he was transferred in August 1935, always under guard, to the Quisisana Hospital in Rome. It was there that he spent the last two years of his life. Among the people, in addition to Tania, who helped him either by writing to him or by visiting him when possible, were his mother Giuseppina, who died in 1933, his brother Carlo, his sisters Teresina and Grazietta, and his good friend, the economist Piero Sraffa, who throughout Gramsci’s prison ordeal provided a crucial and indispenable service to Gramsci. Sraffa used his personal funds and numerous professional contacts that were necessary in order to obtain the books and periodicals Gramsci needed in prison. Gramsci had a prodigious memory, but it is safe to say that without Sraffa’s assistance, and without the intermediary role often played by Tania, the Prison Notebooks as we have them would not have come to fruition.

Gramsci’s intellectual work in prison did not emerge in the light of day until several years after World War II, when the PC began publishing scattered sections of the Notebooks and some of the approximately 500 letters he wrote from prison. By the 1950s, and then with increasing frequency and intensity, his prison writings attracted interest and critical commentary in a host of countries, not only in the West but in the so-called third world as well. Some of his terminology became household words on the left, the most important of which, and the most complex, is the term “hegemony” as he used it in his writings and applied to the twin task of understanding the reasons underlying both the successes and the failures of socialism on a global scale, and of elaborating a feasible program for the realization of a socialist vision within the really existing conditions that prevailed in the world. Among these conditions were the rise and triumph of fascism and the disarray on the left that had ensued as a result of that triumph. Also extremely pertinent, both theoretically and practically, were such terms and phrases as “organic intellectual,” “national’popular,” and “historical bloc” which, even if not coined by Gramsci, acquired such radically new and original implications in his writing as to constitute effectively new formulations in the realm of political philosophy.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/intro.htm

http://www.victoryiscertain.com/gramsci/

In World-Systems Analysis, Immanuel Wallerstein provides a concise and accessible introduction to the comprehensive approach that he pioneered thirty years ago to understanding the history and development of the modern world. Since Wallerstein first developed world-systems analysis, it has become a widely utilized methodology within the historical social sciences and a common point of reference in discussions of globalization. Now, for the first time in one volume, Wallerstein offers a succinct summary of world-systems analysis and a clear outline of the modern world-system, describing the structures of knowledge upon which it is based, its mechanisms, and its future.

Wallerstein explains the defining characteristics of world-systems analysis: its emphasis on world-systems rather than nation-states, on the need to consider historical processes as they unfold over long periods of time, and on combining within a single analytical framework bodies of knowledge usually viewed as distinct from one another—such as history, political science, economics, and sociology. He describes the world-system as a social reality comprised of interconnected nations, firms, households, classes, and identity groups of all kinds. He identifies and highlights the significance of the key moments in the evolution of the modern world-system: the development of a capitalist world-economy in the sixteenth-century, the beginning of two centuries of liberal centrism in the French Revolution of 1789, and the undermining of that centrism in the global revolts of 1968. Intended for general readers, students, and experienced practitioners alike, this book presents a complete overview of world-systems analysis by its original architect.

Map showing British Empire in 1921

World-systems theory

World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective)^[1] is a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change that stresses that the world-system (and not nation states) should be the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis.^[1][2]

World-system refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries and the periphery countries.^[2] Core countries focus on higher skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials.^[3] This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries.^[3] Nonetheless, the system is dynamic, in part as a result of revolutions in transport technology, and individual states can gain or lose the core (semi-periphery, periphery) status over time.^[3] For a time, some countries become the world hegemon; throughout last few centuries during which time the world system has extended geographically and intensified economically, this status has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and most recently, to the United States.^[3]

Immanuel Wallerstein has developed the best-known version of world-systems analysis, beginning in the 1970s.^[4][5] Wallerstein traces the rise of the world system from the 15th century, when European feudal economy suffered a crisis and was transformed into a capitalist one.^[5] Europe (the West) utilized its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy, presiding over the development and spread of industrialization and capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.^[2][3][5]

Wallerstein’s project is frequently misunderstood as world-systems “theory,” a term that he consistently rejects.^[6] For Wallerstein, world-systems analysis is above all a mode of analysis that aims to transcend the structures of knowledge inherited from the 19th century. This includes, especially, the divisions within the social sciences, and between the social sciences and history. For Wallerstein, then, world-systems analysis is a “knowledge movement”^[7] that seeks to discern the “totality of what has been paraded under the labels of the… human sciences and indeed well beyond.”^[8] “We must invent a new language,” Wallerstein insists, to transcend the illusions of the “three supposedly distinctive arenas” of society/economy/politics.^[9] This trinitarian structure of knowledge is grounded in another, even grander, modernist architecture – the alienation of biophysical worlds (including those within bodies) from social ones. “One question, therefore, is whether we will be able to justify something called social science in the twenty-first century as a separate sphere of knowledge.”^[10][11]

Significant work by many other scholars has been done since then.^[2]

Origins

Influences and major thinkers

World-systems theory traces emerged in the 1970s.^[1] Its roots can be found in sociology, but it has developed into a highly interdisciplinary field.^[2]

World-systems theory was aiming to replace modernization theory. Wallerstein criticized modernization theory due to:

1. its focus on the state as the only unit of analysis,
2. its assumption there is only a single path of evolutionary development for all countries,
3. its disregard of transnational structures that constrain local and national development.

Three major predecessors of world-systems theory are: the Annales school, Marxist, and dependence theory.^[2] The Annales School tradition (represented most notably by Fernand Braudel) influenced Wallerstein in focusing on long-term processes and geo-ecological regions as unit of analysis. Marxist theories added:

• a stress on social conflict,
• a focus on the capital accumulation process and
• competitive class struggles,
• a focus on a relevant totality,
• the transitory nature of social forms, and
• a dialectical sense of motion through conflict and contradiction.

World-systems theory was also significantly influenced by dependency theory – a neo-Marxist explanation of development processes.

Other influences on the world-systems theory come from scholars such as Karl Polanyi, Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter (particular, from their research on business cycles and the concepts of three basic modes of economic organization: reciprocal, redistributive, and market modes, which Wallerstein reframed into a discussion of mini-systems, world-empires, and world-economies).

Wallerstein sees the development of the capitalist world-economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world’s population.^[12] Wallerstein views the period since the 1970s as an “age of transition,” one that will give way to a future world-system (or world-systems) whose configuration cannot be determined in advance.^[13]

World-systems thinkers include Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein with major contributions by Christopher Chase-Dunn, Beverly Silver, Volker Bornschier, Janet Abu Lughod, Thomas D. Hall, Kunibert Raffer, Theotonio dos Santos, Dale Tomich, Jason W. Moore, and others.^[2] In sociology, a primary alternative perspective is world polity theory as formulated by John W. Meyer.

Dependency theory

World-systems analysis builds upon, but also differs fundamentally from, the proposition of dependency theory. While accepting world inequality, the world market, and imperialism as fundamental features of historical capitalism, Wallerstein broke with dependency theory’s central proposition. For Wallerstein, core countries do not exploit poor countries for two basic reasons. First, core capitalists exploit workers in all zones of the capitalist world-economy (not just the periphery), and therefore the crucial redistribution between core and periphery is surplus value, not “wealth” or “resources” abstractly conceived. Second, core states do not exploit poor states—as dependency theory proposes—because capitalism is organized around an inter-regional and transnational division of labor rather than an international division of labor. During the Industrial Revolution, for example, English capitalists exploited slaves (unfree workers) in the cotton zones of the American South, a peripheral region within a semi-peripheral state (the United States).^[14]

Fernando Henrique Cardoso described the main tenets of dependency theory as follows:

• there is a financial and technological penetration of the periphery and semi-periphery countries by the developed capitalist core countries
• this produces an unbalanced economic structure within the peripheral societies and among them and the centers
• this leads to limitations upon self-sustained growth in the periphery
• this favors the appearance of specific patterns of class relations
• these require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance^[15]

Dependency and world system theory propose that the poverty and backwardness of poor countries are caused by their peripheral position in the international division of labor. Since the capitalist world system evolved, the distinction between the central and the peripheral nations has grown and diverged.

In recognizing a tripartite pattern in division of labor, world-systems analysis criticized dependency theory with its bimodal system of only cores and peripheries.

Wallerstein

The best known version of the world-systems approach has been developed by Immanuel Wallerstein, who is seen as one of the founders of the intellectual school of world-systems theory.^[5]

Wallerstein notes that world-systems analysis calls for an unidisciplinary historical social science, and contends that the modern disciplines, products of the 19th century, are deeply flawed because they are not separate logics, as is manifest for example in the de facto overlap of analysis among scholars of the disciplines.^[1]

Wallerstein offers several definitions of a world-system. He defined it, in 1974, briefly, as:

a system is defined as a unit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems.

—^[16]

He also offered a longer definition:

…a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to remold it to its advantage. It has the characteristics of an organism, in that it has a life-span over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others. One can define its structures as being at different times strong or weak in terms of the internal logic of its functioning.

—^[17]

In 1987, Wallerstein’s, defines world-system as:

…not the system of the world, but a system that is a world and which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire globe. World-systems analysis argues that the units of social reality within which we operate, whose rules constrain us, are for the most part such world-systems (other than the now extinct, small minisystems that once existed on the earth). World-systems analysis argues that there have been thus far only two varieties of world-systems: world-economies and world empires. A world-empire (examples, the Roman Empire, Han China) are large bureaucratic structures with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures. A world-economy is a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures. In English, the hyphen is essential to indicate these concepts. “World system” without a hyphen suggests that there has been only one world-system in the history of the world.

—^[1]

Wallerstein characterizes the world system as a set of mechanisms which redistributes surplus value from the periphery to the core. In his terminology, the core is the developed, industrialized part of the world, and the periphery is the “underdeveloped“, typically raw materials-exporting, poor part of the world; the market being the means by which the core exploits the periphery.

Apart from these, Wallerstein defines four temporal features of the world system. Cyclical rhythms represent the short-term fluctuation of economy, while secular trends mean deeper long run tendencies, such as general economic growth or decline.^[1][2] The term contradiction means a general controversy in the system, usually concerning some short term vs. long term trade-offs. For example the problem of underconsumption, wherein the drive-down of wages increases the profit for the capitalists on the short-run, but considering the long run, the decreasing of wages may have a crucially harmful effect by reducing the demand for the product. The last temporal feature is the crisis: a crisis occurs, if a constellation of circumstances brings about the end of the system.

In Wallerstein’s view, there have been three kinds of societies across human history: mini-systems or what anthropologists call bands, tribes, and small chiefdoms, and two types of world-systems – one that is politically unified and the other, not (single state world-empires and multi-polity world-economies).^[1][2] World-systems are larger, and ethnically diverse. Modern society, called the “modern world-system” is of the latter type, but unique in being the first and only fully capitalist world-economy to have emerged, around 1450 – 1550 and to have geographically expanded across the entire planet, by about 1900. Capitalism is a system based on competition between free producers using free labor with free commodities, ‘free’ meaning its available for sale and purchase on a market.

Research questions

World-systems theory asks several key questions:

• How is the world-system affected by changes in its components (nations, ethnic groups, social classes, etc.)?^[2]
• How does the world-system affect its components?^[2]
• To what degree, if any, does the core need the periphery to be underdeveloped?^[2]
• What causes world-systems to change?^[2]
• What system may replace capitalism?^[2]

Some questions are more specific to certain subfields; for example, Marxists would concern themselves whether world-systems theory is a useful or unhelpful development of Marxist theories.^[2]

Characteristics

A world map of countries by trading status, late 20th century, using the world system differentiation into core countries (blue), semi-periphery countries (purple) and periphery countries (red). Based on the list in Dunn, Kawana, Brewer (2000).

World-systems analysis argues that capitalism, as a historical social system, has always integrated a variety of labor forms within a functioning division of labor (world-economy). Countries do not have economies, but are part of the world-economy. Far from being separate societies or worlds, the world-economy manifests a tripartite division of labor with core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral zones. In core zones businesses, with the support of states they operate within, monopolize the most profitable activities of the division of labor.

There are many ways to attribute a specific country to the core, semi-periphery, or periphery. Using an empirically based sharp formal definition of “domination” in a two-country relationship, Piana in 2004 defined the “core” as made up of “free countries” dominating others without being dominated, the “semi-periphery” as the countries which are dominated (usually, but not necessarily, by core countries) while at the same time dominating others (usually in the periphery), and “periphery” as the countries which are dominated. Based on 1998 data, the full list of countries in the three regions—together with a discussion of methodology—can be found.

The late 18th and early 19th centuries marked a great turning point in the development of capitalism in that capitalists achieved state-societal power in the key states which furthered the industrial revolution marking the rise of capitalism. World-systems analysis contends that capitalism as a historical system formed earlier, that countries do not “develop” in stages, but rather the system does, and these events have a different meaning as a phase in the development of historical capitalism; namely the emergence of the three ideologies of the national developmental mythology (the idea that countries can develop through stages if they pursue the right set of policies): conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism.

Proponents of world-systems analysis see the world stratification system the same way Karl Marx viewed class (ownership versus non-ownership of the means of production) and Max Weber viewed class (which, in addition to ownership, stressed occupational skill level in the production process). The core nations primarily own and control the major means of production in the world and perform the higher-level production tasks. The periphery nations own very little of the world’s means of production (even when they are located in periphery nations) and provide less-skilled labor. Like a class system with a nation, class positions in the world economy result in an unequal distribution of rewards or resources. The core nations receive the greatest share of surplus production, and periphery nations receive the least. Furthermore, core nations are usually able to purchase raw materials and other goods from noncore nations at low prices, while demanding higher prices for their exports to noncore nations. Chirot (1986) lists the five most important benefits coming to core nations from their domination of periphery nations:

1. Access to a large quantity of raw material
2. Cheap labor
3. Enormous profits from direct capital investments
4. A market for exports
5. Skilled professional labor through migration of these people from the noncore to the core.^[18]

According to Wallerstein, the unique qualities of the modern world-system include its capitalistic nature, its truly global nature, and that it is a world-economy that has not become politically unified into a world-empire.^[2]

Core nations

• The most economically diversified, wealthy, and powerful (economically and militarily)^[2][5]
• Have strong central governments, controlling extensive bureaucracies and powerful militaries^[2][5]
• Have more complex and stronger state institutions that help manage economic affairs internally and externally
• Have a sufficient tax base so these state institutions can provide infrastructure for a strong economy
• Highly industrialized; produce manufactured goods rather than raw materials for export^[2]
• Increasingly tend to specialize in information, finance and service industries
• More often in the forefront of new technologies and new industries. Examples today include high-technology electronic and biotechnology industries. Another example would be assembly-line auto production in the early 20th century.
• Has strong bourgeois and working classes^[2]
• Have significant means of influence over noncore nations^[2]
• Relatively independent of outside control

Throughout the history of the modern world-system there has been a group of core nations competing with one another for access to the world’s resources, economic dominance, and hegemony over periphery nations. Occasionally, there has been one core nation with clear dominance over others.^[3] According to Immanuel Wallerstein, a core nation is dominant over all the others when it has a lead in three forms of economic dominance over a period of time:

1. Productivity dominance allows a country to produce products of greater quality at a cheaper price compared to other countries.
2. Productivity dominance may lead to trade dominance. Now, there is a favorable balance of trade for the dominant nation since more countries are buying the products of the dominant country than it is buying from them.
3. Trade dominance may lead to financial dominance. Now, more money is coming into the country than going out. Bankers of the dominant nation tend to receive more control of the world’s financial resources.^[19]

Military dominance is also likely after a nation reaches these three rankings. However, it has been posited that throughout the modern world-system, no nation^{[citation needed]} has been able to use its military to gain economic dominance. Each of the past dominant nations became dominant with fairly small levels of military spending, and began to lose economic dominance with military expansion later on.^[20]

Historically, cores were found in the north-west Europe (England, France, Holland), although later in other parts of the world (ex. the United States).^[3][5]

Periphery nations

• Least economically diversified
• Have relatively weak governments^[2][5]
• Have relatively weak institutions with little tax base to support infrastructure development
• Tend to depend on one type of economic activity, often on extracting and exporting raw materials to core nations^[2][5]
• Tend to be least industrialized^[5]
• Are often targets for investments from multinational (or transnational) corporations from core nations that come into the country to exploit cheap unskilled labor for export back to core nations
• Has small bourgeois and large peasant classes^[2]
• Tend to have a high percentage of their people that are poor and uneducated.
• Inequality tends to be very high because of a small upper class that owns most of the land and has profitable ties to multinational corporations
• Tend to be extensively influenced by core nations and their multinational corporations. Many times they are forced to follow economic policies that favor core nations and harm the long-term economic prospects of periphery nations.^[2]

Historically, peripheries were found outside Europe, for example in Latin America and today in Sub-Saharan Africa.^[5]

Semiperiphery nations

Semiperiphery nations are those that are midway between the core and periphery.^[5] They tend to be countries moving towards industrialization and a more diversified economy. Those regions often have relatively developed and diversified economy, but are not dominant in international trade.^[5] According to some scholars, such as Chirot, they are not as subject to outside manipulation as peripheral societies; but according to others (Barfield) they have “periperial-like” relations to the core.^[2][21] While in the sphere of influence of some cores semiperipheries also tend to exert their own control over some peripheries.^[5] Further, semi-peripheries act as buffers between cores and peripheries,^[5] thus “partially deflect the political pressures which groups primarily located in peripheral areas might otherwise direct against core-states” and stabilize the world-system.^[2][3]

Semi-peripheries can come into existence both from developing peripheries, and from declining cores.^[5]

Historically, an example of a semi-periphery would be Spain and Portugal, who fell from their early core position, but still manage to retain influence in Latin America.^[5] Those countries imported silver and gold from its American colonies, but then had to use it to pay for manufactured goods from core countries such as England and France.^[5] In the 20th, nations like the “settler colonies” of Australia, Canada and New Zealand had a semi-peripheral status. In the 21st century, nations like China, India, Brazil and South Africa are usually considered semi-periphery.

External areas

External areas are those that maintain socially-necessary divisions of labor independent of the capitalist world-economy.^[5]

Interpretation of the world history

The 13th century world-system

Before the 16th century, Europe was dominated by feudal economies.^[5] European economies grew from mid-12th to 14th century, but from 14th to mid 15th century, they suffered from a major crisis.^[3][5] Wallerstein explains this crisis as caused by:

1. stagnation or even decline of agricultural production, increasing the burden of peasants,
2. decreased agricultural productivity caused by changing climatological conditions (Little Ice Age),
3. an increase in epidemics (Black Death),
4. optimum level of the feudal economy has been reached in its economic cycle; the economy moved beyond it and entered a depression period.^[5]

As a response to the failure of the feudal system, Europe embraced the capitalist system.^[5] Europeans were motivated to develop technology to explore and trade around the world, using their superior military to take control of the trade routes.^[3] Europeans exploited their initial small advantages, which led to an accelerating process of accumulation of wealth and power in Europe.^[3]

Wallerstein notes that never before had an economic system encompassed that much of the world, with trade links crossing so many political boundaries.^[5] In the past, geographically large economic systems existed, but were mostly limited to spheres of domination of large empires (such as the Roman Empire); development of the capitalism enabled the world economy to extend beyond individual states.^[5] International division of labor was crucial in deciding what relationships exists between different regions, their labor conditions and political systems.^[5] For classification and comparison purposes, Wallerstein introduced the categories of core, semi-periphery, periphery, and external countries.^[5] Cores monopolized the capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world could only provide labor and raw resources.^[3] The resulting inequality reinforced existing unequal development.^[3]

According to Wallerstein, there have only been three periods in which a core nation has dominated in the modern world-system, with each lasting less than one hundred years. In the initial centuries of the rise of Europe, Northwest Europe constituted the core, Mediterranean Europe the semiperiphery, and Eastern Europe and the Western hemisphere (and parts of Asia) the periphery.^[3][5] Around 1450, Spain and Portugal took the early lead when conditions became right for a capitalist world-economy. They lead the way in establishing overseas colonies. However, Portugal and Spain lost their lead primarily due to becoming overextended with empire building. It became too expensive to dominate and protect many colonial territories around the world.^[20][21][22]

Dutch fluyts of the seventeenth Century

The first nation to gain clear dominance was the Netherlands in the 17th century, after their revolution led to a new financial system many historians consider revolutionary.^[20] An impressive shipbuilding industry also contributed to their economic dominance through more exports to other countries.^[18] Eventually, other countries began to copy the financial methods and efficient production created by the Dutch. After the Dutch gained its dominant status, the standard of living rose, pushing up production costs.^[19]

Dutch bankers began to go outside of the country seeking profitable investments, and the flow of capital moved, especially to England.^[20] By the end of the 17th century, conflict among core nations increased as a result of the economic decline of the Dutch. Dutch financial investment helped England gain productivity and trade dominance, and Dutch military support helped England to defeat the French, the other country competing for dominance at the time.

Map showing British Empire in 1921

In the 19th century, Britain replaced the Netherlands as the hegemon.^[3] As a result of the new British dominance, the world-system became relatively stable again during the 19th century. The British began to expand all over, with many colonies in the New World, Africa, and Asia. The colonial system began to place a strain on the British military, and along with other factors, led to an economic decline. Again, there was a great deal of core conflict after the British lost their clear dominance. This time it was Germany, and later Italy and Japan providing the new threat.

Industrialization was another ongoing process at that time, resulting in the diminishing importance of the agricultural sector.^[5] In the 18th century, England was Europe’s leading industrial and agricultural producer; by 1900, only 10% of England’s population was working in the agricultural sector.^[5]

By 1900, the modern world-system was much different than it was 100 years earlier. Most of the periphery societies had already been colonized by one of the older core nations.^[18] In 1800, the old European core claimed 35% of the world’s territory, but by 1914 it claimed 85% of the world’s territory.^[20] Now, if a core nation wanted periphery areas to exploit as had done the Dutch and British, these periphery areas would have to be taken from another core nation. This is what Germany, and then Japan and Italy, began to do early in the 20th century. The modern world-system became geographically global at that time, and even the most remote regions of the world have all been integrated into the global economy.^[2][3]

While these countries were moving into core status, so was the United States. The American civil war led to more power for Northern industrial elites, who were now better able to pressure the government for policies favorable to industrial expansion. Like the Dutch bankers, British bankers were putting more investment toward the United States. Like the Dutch and British, the U.S. had a small military budget compared with other industrial nations at the time.^[20]

The U.S. began to take the place of the British as the new dominant nation after World War I.^[3] With Japan and Europe in ruins after World War II, the U.S. was able to dominate the modern world-system more than any other country in the history of the world-system.^[3] After World War II, the U.S. accounted for over half of the world’s industrial production, owned two-thirds of the gold reserves in the world, and supplied one-third of the world’s exports.^[20] However, since the end of the Cold War, the future of the US hegemony has been questioned and according to some scholars its hegemonic position has been in decline for a few decades.^[3] By the end of the 20th century, the core of the wealthy industrialized countries was composed of Europe, but also some other countries, such as United States or Japan.^[3] The semiperiphery comprised many states that have been long independent, but did not achieve Western levels of influence, and poor, former colonies of the West formed the periphery.^[3]

Criticisms

World-systems theory has attracted criticisms from its rivals; notably for being too focused on economy and not enough on culture, and for being too core-centric and state-centric.^[2]

According to Wallerstein himself, critique of the world-systems approach comes from four directions: from the positivists, the orthodox Marxists, the state autonomists, and the culturalists.^[1] The positivists criticize the approach as too prone to generalization, lacking quantitative data and failing to put forth a falsifiable proposition.^[1] Orthodox Marxists find the world-systems approach deviating too far from orthodox Marxist principles, such as not giving enough weight to the concept of social class.^[1] The state autonomists criticize the theory for blurring the boundaries between state and businesses.^[1] Further, the positivists, the orthodox Marxists and the state autonomists argue that state should be the central unit of analysis.^[1] Finally, the culturalists argue that world-systems theory puts too much importance on the economy and not enough on the culture.^[1] In Wallerstein’s own words:

One of the fundamental conceptual problems of the world system theory is that the assumptions which define its actual conceptual units are social systems. The assumptions which define these need to be examined as well as how they are related to each other and how one changes into another. The essential argument of the world system theory is that in the sixteenth century a capitalist world economy developed which could be described as a world system.^[23]

The following is a theoretical critique concerned with the basic claims of world system theory: “There are today no socialist systems in the world-economy any more than there are feudal systems because there is only one world system. It is a world-economy and it is by definition capitalist in form.” (Wallerstein 1979)^[23]

Robert Brenner has pointed out that the prioritization of the world market means the neglect of local class structures and class struggles: “They fail to take into account either the way in which these class structures themselves emerge as the outcome of class struggles whose results are incomprehensible in terms merely of market forces.” (Brenner 1982)^[23] Robert Brenner: Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA

Another criticism is that of reductionism made by Theda Skocpol. She believes the interstate system is far from being a simple superstructure of the capitalist world economy: “The international states system as a transnational structure of military competition was not originally created by capitalism. Throughout modern world history, it represents an analytically autonomous level of transnational reality-interdependent in its structure and dynamics with world capitalism, but not reducible to it.” (Scokpol 1979)^[23] Theda Scokpol: American Sociologist and Political Scientist at Harvard University

New developments

New developments in world-systems research include studies on the cyclical processes,^[24] the consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the roles of gender and the culture, studies of slavery and incorporation of new regions into the world-system, and the precapitalist world-systems.^[2] Arguably the greatest source of renewal in world-systems analysis since 2000 has been the synthesis of world-system and environmental approaches. Key figures in the “greening” of world-systems analysis include Andrew K. Jorgenson, Stephen Bunker, Richard York, and Jason W. Moore.

Time period

Wallerstein traces the origin of today’s world-system to the “long 16th century” (a period that began with the discovery of the Americas by West European sailors and ended with the English Revolution of 1640).^[2][3][5]

Janet Abu Lughod argues that a pre-modern world system extensive across Eurasia existed in the 13th Century prior to the formation of the modern world-system identified by Wallerstein. Janet Abu Lughod contends that the Mongol Empire played an important role in stitching together the Chinese, Indian, Muslim and European regions in the 13th century, before the rise of the modern world system.^[25] In debates, Wallerstein contends that her system was not a “world-system” because it did not entail integrated production networks, but was instead a vast trading network.

The 11th century world system

Andre Gunder Frank goes further and claims that a global-scale world system that includes Asia, Europe and Africa has existed since the 4th millennium BCE. The center of this system was in Asia, specifically China.^[26] Andrey Korotayev goes even further than Frank and dates the beginning of the World System formation to the 10th millennium BCE, connecting it with the start of the Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East. According to him, the center of this system was originally in West Asia.^[27]

Current research

Wallerstein’s theories are widely recognized throughout the world. In the United States, one of the hubs of world-systems research is at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations, at Binghamton University.^[2] Among the most important related periodicals are the Journal of World-Systems Research, published by the American Sociological Association‘s Section on the Political Economy of the World System (PEWS); and the Review, published the Braudel Center.^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-systems_theory

Modern History Sourcebook:
Summary of Wallerstein on World System Theory

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM

A Summary of Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974)

In his book, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Immanual Wallerstein develops a theoretical framework to understand the historical changes involved in the rise of the modern world. The modern world system, essentially capitalist in nature, followed the crisis of the feudal system and helps explain the rise of Western Europe to world supremacy between 1450 and 1670. According to Wallerstein, his theory makes possible a comprehensive understanding of the external and internal manifestations of the modernization process during this period and makes possible analytically sound comparisons between different parts of the world.

MEDIEVAL PRELUDE

Before the sixteenth century, when Western Europe embarked on a path of capitalist development, “feudalism” dominated West European society. Between 1150-1300, both population as well as commerce expanded within the confines of the feudal system. However, from 1300-1450, this expansion ceased, creating a severe economic crisis. According to Wallerstein, the feudal crisis was probably precipitated by the interaction of the following factors:

1. Agricultural production fell or remained stagnant. This meant that the burden of peasant producers increased as the ruling class expanded.
2. The economic cycle of the feudal economy had reached its optimum level; afterwards the economy began to shrink.
3. A shift of climatological conditions decreased agricultural productivity and contributed to an increase in epidemics within the population.

THE NEW EUROPEAN DIVISION OF LABOR

Wallerstein argues that Europe moved towards the establishment of a capitalist world economy in order to ensure continued economic growth. However, this entailed the expansion of the geographical size of the world in question, the development of different modes of labor control and the creation of relatively strong state machineries in the states of Western Europe. In response to the feudal crisis, by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the world economic system emerged. This was the first time that an economic system encompassed much of the world with links that superseded national or other political boundaries. The new world economy differed from earlier empire systems because it was not a single political unit. Empires depended upon a system of government which, through commercial monopolies combined with the use of force, directed the flow of economic goods from the periphery to the center. Empires maintained specific political boundaries, within which they maintained control through an extensive bureaucracy and a standing army. Only the techniques of modern capitalism enabled the modern world economy, unlike earlier attempts, to extend beyond the political boundaries of any one empire.

The new capitalist world system was based on an international division of labor that determined relationships between different regions as well as the types of labor conditions within each region. In this model, the type of political system was also directly related to each region’s placement within the world economy. As a basis for comparison, Wallerstein proposes four different categories, core, semi-periphery, periphery, and external, into which all regions of the world can be placed. The categories describe each region’s relative position within the world economy as well as certain internal political and economic characteristics.

—The Core

The core regions benefited the most from the capitalist world economy. For the period under discussion, much of northwestern Europe (England, France, Holland) developed as the first core region. Politically, the states within this part of Europe developed strong central governments, extensive bureaucracies, and large mercenary armies. This permitted the local bourgeoisie to obtain control over international commerce and extract capital surpluses from this trade for their own benefit. As the rural population expanded, the small but increasing number of landless wage earners provided labor for farms and manufacturing activities. The switch from feudal obligations to money rents in the aftermath of the feudal crisis encouraged the rise of independent or yeoman farmers but squeezed out many other peasants off the land. These impoverished peasants often moved to the cities, providing cheap labor essential for the growth in urban manufacturing. Agricultural productivity increased with the growing predominance of the commercially-oriented independent farmer, the rise of pastoralism, and improved farm technology.

—The Periphery

On the other end of the scale lay the peripheral zones. These areas lacked strong central governments or were controlled by other states, exported raw materials to the core, and relied on coercive labor practices. The core expropriated much of the capital surplus generated by the periphery through unequal trade relations. Two areas, Eastern Europe (especially Poland) and Latin America, exhibited characteristics of peripheral regions. In Poland, kings lost power to the nobility as the region became a prime exporter of wheat to the rest of Europe. To gain sufficient cheap and easily controlled labor, landlords forced rural workers into a “second serfdom” on their commercial estates. In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese conquests destroyed indigenous authority structures and replaced them with weak bureaucracies under the control of these European states. Powerful local landlords of Hispanic origin became aristocratic capitalist farmers. Enslavement of the native populations, the importation of African slaves, and the coercive labor practices such as the encomienda and forced mine labor made possible the export of cheap raw materials to Europe. Labor systems in both peripheral areas differed from earlier forms in medieval Europe in that they were established to produce goods for a capitalist world economy and not merely for internal consumption. Furthermore, the aristocracy both in Eastern Europe and Latin America grew wealthy from their relationship with the world economy and could draw on the strength of a central core region to maintain control.

—The Semi-Periphery

Between the two extremes lie the semi-peripheries. These areas represented either core regions in decline or peripheries attempting to improve their relative position in the world economic system. They often also served as buffers between the core and the peripheries. As such, semi-peripheries exhibited tensions between the central government and a strong local landed class. Good examples of declining cores that became semi-peripheries during the period under study are Portugal and Spain. Other semi-peripheries at this time were Italy, southern Germany, and southern France. Economically, these regions retained limited but declining access to international banking and the production of high-cost high-quality manufactured goods. Unlike the core, however, they failed to predominate in international trade and thus did not benefit to the same extent as the core. With a weak capitalist rural economy, landlords in semi-peripheries resorted to sharecropping. This lessened the risk of crop failure for landowners, and made it possible at the same time to enjoy profits from the land as well as the prestige that went with landownership.

According to Wallerstein, the semi-peripheries were exploited by the core but, as in the case of the American empires of Spain and Portugal, often were exploiters of peripheries themselves. Spain, for example, imported silver and gold from its American colonies, obtained largely through coercive labor practices, but most of this specie went to paying for manufactured goods from core countries such as England and France rather than encouraging the formation of a domestic manufacturing sector.

—External Areas

These areas maintained their own economic systems and, for the most part, managed to remain outside the modern world economy. Russia fits this case well. Unlike Poland, Russia’s wheat served primarily to supply its internal market. It traded with Asia as well as Europe; internal commerce remained more important than trade with outside regions. Also, the considerable power of the Russian state helped regulate the economy and limited foreign commercial influence.

STAGES OF GROWTH

The development of the modern world economy lasted centuries, during which time different regions changed their relative position within this system. Wallerstein divides the history of the capitalist world system into four stages, which for our purposes can be simplified and divided into two basic phases:

Stages 1 and 2:
This period follows the rise of the modern world system between 1450-1670. When the Hapsburg Empire failed to convert the emerging world economy to a world empire, all the existing western European states attempted to strengthen their respective positions within the new world system. In order to accomplish this move, most of the states consolidated their internal political economic and social resources by:

a) Bureaucratization. This process aided the limited but growing power of the king. By increasing the state power to collect taxes, the kings eventually increased state power to borrow money and thereby further expand the state bureaucracy. At the end of this stage, the monarch had become the supreme power and instituted what has been called “absolute monarchy.”

b) Homogenization of the local population. To underline state involvement in the new capitalist system and encourage the rise of indigenous capitalist groups, many core states expelled minorities. These independent capitalist groups, without deep rooted local ties, were perceived as threats to the development of strong core states. The Jews in England, Spain, and France were all expelled with the rise of absolute monarchy. Similarly, Protestants, who were often the merchants in Catholic countries, found they were targets of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, a trans-national institution, found the development of capitalism and the strengthening of the state threatening.

c) Expansion of the militia to support the centralized monarchy and to protect the new state from invasions.

d) The concept of absolutism introduced at this time related to the relative independence of the monarch from previously established laws. This distinction freed the king from prior feudal laws.

e) Diversification of economic activities to maximize profits and strengthen the position of the local bourgeoisie.

By 1640, northwestern European states secured their position as core states in the emerging economy. Spain and northern Italy declined to semi-peripheral status, while northeastern Europe and Iberian America became peripheral zones. England gained ground steadily toward core status.

During this period, workers in Europe experienced a dramatic fall in wages. This wage fall characterized most European centers of capitalism with the exception of cities in north and central Italy and Flanders. The reason for this exception was that these cities were relatively older centers of trade, and the workers formed strong politico-economic groups. The resistance of workers broke down the ability of employers to accumulate the large surplus necessary for the advancement of capitalism. Meanwhile, employers in other parts of Europe profited from the wage lag by accumulating large surpluses for investment.

Long-distance trade with the Americas and the East provided enormous profits, in excess of 200%-300%, for a small merchant elite. Smaller merchants could not hope to enter this profiteering without substantial capital and some state help. Eventually, the profits of the trans-Atlantic trade filtered down and strengthened the merchants’ hold over European agriculture and industries. Merchants with sufficient power accumulated profits through the purchase of goods prior to their production. By controlling the costs of finished products, merchants could extend their profit margin and control the internal markets. This powerful merchant class provided the capital necessary for the industrialization of European core states.

Stages 3 and 4 (18th century and beyond):
Industrial rather than agricultural capitalism represented this era. With the shifting emphasis on industrial production, the following reactions characterized this period.

a) European states participated in active exploration for the exploitation of new markets.

b) Competitive world systems such as the Indian Ocean system were absorbed into the expanding European world system. With the independence of the Latin American countries, these areas as well as previously isolated zones in the interior of the American continent entered as peripheral zones in the world economy. Asia and Africa entered the system in the nineteenth century as peripheral zones.

c) The inclusion of Africa and the Asian continents as peripheral zones increased the available surplus, allowing other areas such as the U.S. and Germany to enhance their core status.

d) During this phase, the core regions shifted from a combination of agricultural and industrial interests to purely industrial concerns. Between 1700, England was Europe’s leading industrial producer as well as the leader in agricultural production. By 1900, only 10% of England’s population was engaged in agriculture.

e) By the 1900s, with the shift toward manufacturing, core areas encouraged the rise of industries in peripheral and semi-peripheral zones so that they could sell machines to these regions.

THEORETICAL REPRISE

The capitalist world economy, as envisioned by Wallerstein, is a dynamic system which changes over time. However, certain basic features remain in place. Perhaps most important is that when one examines the dynamics of this system, the core regions of northwestern Europe clearly benefited the most from this arrangement. Through extremely high profits gained from international trade and from an exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials from the periphery (and, to a lesser extent, from the semi-peripheries), the core enriched itself at the expense of the peripheral economies. This, of course, did not mean either that everybody in the periphery became poorer or that all citizens of the core regions became wealthier as a result. In the periphery, landlords for example often gained great wealth at the expense of their underpaid coerced laborers, since landowners were able to expropriate most of the surplus of their workers for themselves. In turn in the core regions, many of the rural inhabitants, increasingly landless and forced to work as wage laborers, at least initially saw a relative decline in their standard of living and in the security of their income. Overall, certainly, Wallerstein sees the development of the capitalist world economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world’s population.

Through this theory, Wallerstein attempts to explain why modernization had such wide-ranging and different effects on the world. He shows how political and economic conditions after the breakdown of feudalism transformed northwestern Europe into the predominant commercial and political power. The geographic expansion of the capitalist world economy altered political systems and labor conditions wherever it was able to penetrate. Although the functioning of the world economy appears to create increasingly larger disparities between the various types of economies, the relationship between the core and its periphery and semi-periphery remains relative, not constant. Technological advantages, for example, could result in an expansion of the world economy overall, and precipitate changes in some peripheral or semi-peripheral areas. However, Wallerstein asserts that an analysis of the history of the capitalist world system shows that it has brought about a skewed development in which economic and social disparities between sections of the world economy have increased rather than provided prosperity for all.

Source: Uncertain of the source of this summary of Wallerstein. If you have any info, please send.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Wallerstein.asp

From Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins
of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1976,
pp. 229-233.
——————————————————————————–
The Modern World-System
Immanuel Wallerstein
——————————————————————————–
In order to describe the origins and initial workings of a world system, I have had to argue a
certain conception of a world-system. A world-system is a social system, one that has boundaries,
structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the
conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally
to remold it to its advantage. It has the characteristics of an organism, in that it has a life-span
over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others. One can
define its structures as being at different times strong or weak in terms of the internal logic of its
functioning.
What characterizes a social system in my view is the fact that life within it is largely
self-contained, and that the dynamics of its development are largely internal. The reader may feel
that the use of the term “largely” is a case of academic weaseling. I admit I cannot quantify it.
Probably no one ever will be able to do so, as the definition is based on a counterfactual
hypothesis: If the system, for any reason, were to he cut off from all external forces (which
virtually never happens), the definition implies that the system would continue to function
substantially in the same manner. Again, of course, substantially is difficult to convert into hard
operational criteria. Nonetheless the point is an important one and key to many parts of the
empirical analyses of this book. Perhaps we should think of self-containment as a theoretical
absolute, a sort of social vacuum, rarely visible and even more implausible to create artificially,
but still and all a socially-real asymptote, the distance from which is somehow measurable.
Using such a criterion, it is contended here that most entities usually described as social systems
–“tribes,” communities, nation-states–are not in fact total systems. Indeed, on the contrary, we
are arguing that the only real social systems are, on the one hand, those relatively small, highly
autonomous subsistence economies not part of some regular tribute-demanding system and, on
the other hand, world-systems. These latter are to be sure distinguished from the former because
they are relatively large; that is, they are in common parlance “worlds.” More precisely, however,
they are defined by the fact that their self-containment as an economic-material entity is based on
extensive division of labor and that they contain within them a multiplicity of cultures.
It is further argued that thus far there have only existed two varieties of such world-systems:
world-empires, in which there is a single political system over most of the area, however
attenuated the degree of its effective control; and those systems in which such a single political
system does not exist over all, or virtually all, of the space. For convenience and for want of a
better term, we are using the term “world-economy” to describe the latter.
Finally, we have argued that prior to the modern era, world-economies were highly unstable
structures which tended either to be converted into empires or to disintegrate. It is the peculiarity
of the modern world-system that a world-economy has survived for 500 years and yet has not
come to be transformed into a world-empire–a peculiarity that is the secret of its strength.
This peculiarity is the political side of the form of economic organization called capitalism.
Capitalism has been able to flourish precisely because the world-economy has had within its
bounds not one but a multiplicity of political systems.
I am not here arguing the classic case of capitalist ideology that capitalism is a system based on
the noninterference of the state in economic affairs. Quite the contrary! Capitalism is based on
the constant absorption of economic loss by political entities, while economic gain is distributed
to “private” hands. What I am arguing rather is that capitalism as an economic mode is based on
the fact that the economic factors operate within an arena larger than that which any political
entity can totally control. This gives capitalists a freedom of maneuver that is structurally based.
It has made possible the constant economic expansion of the world-system, albeit a very skewed
distribution of its rewards. The only alternative world-system that could maintain a high level of
productivity and change the system of distribution would involve the reintegration of the levels
of political and economic decision-making. This would constitute a third possible form of
world-system, a socialist world government. This is not a form that presently exists, and it was
not even remotely conceivable in the sixteenth century.
The historical reasons why the European world-economy came into existence in the sixteenth
century and resisted attempts to transform it into an empire have been expounded at length. We
shall not review them here. It should however be noted that the size of a world-economy is a
function of the state of technology, and in particular of the possibilities of transport and
communication within its bounds. Since this is a constantly changing phenomenon, not always
for the better, the boundaries of a world-economy are ever fluid.
We have defined a world-system as one in which there is extensive division of labor. This
division is not merely functional–that is, occupational–but geographical. That is to say, the range
of economic tasks is not evenly distributed throughout the world-system. In part this is the
consequence of ecological considerations, to be sure. But for the most part, it is a function of the
social organization of work, one which magnifies and legitimizes the ability of some groups
within the system to exploit the labor of others, that is, to receive a larger share of the surplus.
While, in an empire, the political structure tends to link culture with occupation, in a
world-economy the political structure tends to link culture with spatial location. The reason is
that in a world-economy the first point of political pressure available to groups is the local
(national) state structure. Cultural homogenization tends to serve the interests of key groups and
the pressures build up to create cultural-national identities.
This is particularly the case in the advantaged areas of the world-economy–what we have called
the core-states. In such states, the creation of a strong state machinery coupled with a national
culture, a phenomenon often referred to as integration, serves both as a mechanism to protect
disparities that have arisen within the world-system, and as an ideological mask and justification
for the maintenance of these disparities.
World-economies then are divided into core-states and peripheral areas. I do not say peripheral
states because one characteristic of a peripheral area is that the indigenous state is weak, ranging
from its nonexistence (that is, a colonial situation) to one with a low degree of autonomy (that is,
a neo-colonial situation).
There are also semiperipheral areas which are in between the core and the periphery on a series
of dimensions, such as the complexity of economic activities, strength of the state machinery,
cultural integrity, etc. Some of these areas had been core-areas of earlier versions of a given
world-economy. Some had been peripheral areas that were later promoted, so to speak, as a result
of the changing geopolitics of an expanding world-economy.
The semiperiphery, however, is not an artifice of statistical cutting points, nor is it a residual
category. The semiperiphery is a necessary structural element in a world-economy. These areas
play a role parallel to that played, mutatis mutandis, by middle trading groups in an empire. They
are collection points of vital skills that are often poetically unpopular. These middle areas (like
middle groups in an empire) partially deflect the political pressures which groups primarily
located in peripheral areas might otherwise direct against core-states and the groups which
operate within and through their state machineries. On the other hand, the interests primarily
located in the semiperiphery are located outside the political arena of the core-states, and find it
difficult to pursue the ends in political coalitions that might be open to them were they in the
same political arena.
The division of a world-economy involves a hierarchy of occupational tasks, in which tasks
requiring higher levels of skill and greater capitalization are reserved for higher-ranking areas.
Since a capitalist world-economy essentially rewards accumulated capital, including human
capital, at a higher rate than “raw” labor power, the geographical maldistribution of these
occupational skills involves a strong trend toward self-maintenance. The forces of the
marketplace reinforce them rather than undermine them. And the absence of a central political
mechanism for the world-economy makes it very difficult to intrude counteracting forces to the
maldistribution of rewards.
Hence, the ongoing process of a world-economy tends to expand the economic and social gaps
among its varying areas in the very process of its development. One factor that tends to mask this
fact is that the process of development of a world-economy brings about technological advances
which make it possible to expand the boundaries of a world-economy. In this case, particular
regions of the world may change their structural role in the world-economy, to their advantage,
even though the disparity of reward between different sectors of the world-economy as a whole
may be simultaneously widening. It is in order to observe this crucial phenomenon clearly that
we have insisted on the distinction between a peripheral area of a given world-economy and the
external arena of the world-economy. The external arena of one century often becomes the
periphery of the next–or its semiperiphery. But then too core-states can become semiperipheral
and semiperipheral ones peripheral.
While the advantages of the core-states have not ceased to expand throughout the history of the
modern world-system, the ability of a particular state to remain in the core sector is not beyond
challenge. The hounds are ever to the hares for the position of top dog. Indeed, it may well be
that in this kind of system it is not structurally possible to avoid, over a long period of historical
time, a circulation of the elites in the sense that the particular country that is dominant at a given
time tends to be replaced in this role sooner or later by another country.
We have insisted that the modern world-economy is, and only can be, a capitalist
world-economy. It is for this reason that we have rejected the appellation of “feudalism” for the
various forms of capitalist agriculture based on coerced labor which grow up in a
world-economy. Furthermore, although this has not been discussed in this volume, it is for this
same reason that we will, in future volumes, regard with great circumspection and prudence the
claim that there exist in the twentieth century socialist national economies within the framework
of the world-economy (as opposed to socialist movements controlling certain state-machineries
within the world-economy).
If world-systems are the only real social systems (other than truly isolated subsistence
economies), then it must follow that the emergence, consolidation, and political roles of classes
and status groups must be appreciated as elements of this world system. And in turn it follows
that one of the key elements in analyzing a class or a status-group is not only the state of its
self-consciousness but the geographical scope of its self-definition.
Classes always exist potentially (an sich). The issue is under what conditions they become
class-conscious (fur sich), that is, operate as a group in the politico-economic arenas and even to
some extent as a cultural entity. Such self-consciousness is a function of conflict situations. But
for upper strata open conflict, and hence overt consciousness, is always faute de mieux. To the
extent that class boundaries are not made explicit, to that extent it is more likely that privileges
be maintained.
Since in conflict situations, multiple factions tend to reduce to two by virtue of the forging of
alliances, it is by definition not possible to have three or more (conscious) classes. There
obviously can be a multitude of occupational interest groups which may organize themselves to
operate within the social structure. But such groups are really one variety of status-groups, and
indeed often overlap heavily with other kinds of status-groups such as those defined by ethnic,
linguistic, or religious criteria.
To say that there cannot be three or more classes is not however to say that there are always two.
There may be none, though this is rare and transitional. There may be one, and this is most
common. There may be two, and this is most explosive.
We say there may be only one class, although we have also said that classes only actually exist in
conflict situations, and conflicts presume two sides. There is no contradiction here. For a conflict
may be defined as being between one class, which conceives of itself as the universal class, and
all the other strata. This has in fact been the usual situation in the modern world-system. The
capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) has claimed to be the universal class and sought to organize
political life to pursue its objectives against two opponents. On the one hand, there were those
who spoke for the maintenance of traditional rank distinctions despite the fact that these ranks
might have lost their original correlation with economic function. Such elements preferred to
define the social structure as a non-class structure. It was to counter this ideology that the
bourgeoisie came to operate as a class conscious of itself. . . .
The European world-economy of the sixteenth century tended overall to be a one-class system. It
was the dynamic forces profiting from economic expansion and the capitalist system, especially
those in the core-areas, who tended to be class-conscious, that is to operate within the political
arena as a group defined primarily by their common role in the economy. This common role was
in fact defined somewhat broadly from a twentieth-century perspective. It included persons who
were farmers, merchants, and industrialists. Individual entrepreneurs often moved back and forth
between these activities in any case, or combined them. The crucial distinction was between
these men, whatever their occupation, principally oriented to obtaining profit in the world
market, and the others not so oriented.
The “others” fought back in terms o their status privileges–those of the traditional aristocracy,
those which small farmers had derived from the feudal system, those resulting from guild
monopolies that were outmoded. Under the cover of cultural similarities, one can often weld
strange alliances. Those strange alliances can take a very activist form and force the political
centers to take account of them. We pointed to such instances in our discussion of France. Or
they can take a politically passive form that serves well the needs of the dominant forces in the
world-system. The triumph of Polish Catholicism as a cultural force was a case in point.
The details of the canvas are filled in with the panoply of multiple forms of status-groups, their
particular strengths and accents. But the grand sweep is in terms of the process of class
formation. And in this regard, the sixteenth century was indecisive. The capitalist strata formed a
class that survived and gained droit de cite, but did not yet triumph in the political arena.
The evolution of the state machineries reflected precisely this uncertainty. Strong states serve the
interests of some groups and hurt those of others. From however the standpoint of the
world-system as a whole, if there is to be a multitude of political entities (that is, if the system is
not a world-empire), then it cannot be the case that all these entities be equally strong. For if they
were, they would be in the position of blocking the effective operation of transnational economic
entities whose locus were in another state. And obviously certain combinations of these groups
control the state. It would then follow that the world division of labor would be impeded, the
world-economy decline, and eventually the world-system fall apart.
It also cannot be that no state machinery is strong. For in such a case, the capitalist strata would
have no mechanisms to protect their interests, guaranteeing their property rights, assuring various
monopolies, spreading losses among the larger population, etc.
It follows then that the world-economy develops a pattern where state structures are relatively
strong in the core areas and relatively weak in the periphery. Which areas play which roles is in
many ways accidental. What is necessary is that in some areas the state machinery be far stronger
than in others.
What do we mean by a strong state-machinery? We mean strength vis-a-vis other states within
the world-economy including other core-states, and strong vis-a-vis local political units within
the boundries of the state. In effect, we mean a sovereignty that is defacto as well as de jure. We
also mean a state that is strong vis-a-vis any particular social group within the state. Obviously,
such groups vary in the amount of pressure they can bring to bear upon the state. And obviously
certain combinations of these groups control the state. It is not that the state is a neutral arbiter.
But the state is more than a simple vector of given forces, if only because many of these forces
are situated in more than one state or are defined in terms that have little correlation with state
boundaries.
A strong state then is a partially autonomous entity in the sense that it has a margin of action
available to it wherein it reflects the compromises of multiple interests, even if the bounds of
these margins are set by the existence of some groups of primordial strength. To be a partially
autonomous entity, there must be a group of people whose direct interests are served by such an
entity: state managers and a state bureaucracy.
Such groups emerge within the framework of a capitalist world-economy because a strong state
is the best choice between difficult alternatives for the two groups that are strongest in political,
economic, and military terms: the emergent capitalist strata, and the old aristocratic hierarchies.
For the former, the strong state in the form of the “absolute monarchies” was a prime customer, a
guardian against local and international brigandage, a mode of social legitimation, a preemptive
protection against the creation of strong state barriers elsewhere. For the latter, the strong state
represented a brake on these same capitalist strata, an upholder of status conventions, a
maintainer of order, a promoter of luxury.
No doubt both nobles and bourgeois found the state machineries to be a burdensome drain of
funds, and a meddlesome unproductive bureaucracy. But what options did they have?
Nonetheless they were always restive and the immediate politics of the world-system was made
up of the pushes and pulls resulting from the efforts of both groups to insulate themselves from
what seemed to them the negative effects of the state machinery.
A state machinery involves a tipping mechanism. There is a point where strength creates more
strength. The tax revenue enables the state to have a larger and more efficient civil bureaucracy
and army which in turn leads to greater tax revenue–a process that continues in spiral form. The
tipping mechanism works in other direction too–weakness leading to greater weakness. In
between these two tipping points lies the politics of state-creation. It is in this arena that the skills
of particular managerial groups make a difference. And it is because of the two tipping
mechanisms that at certain points a small gap in the world-system can very rapidly become a
larger one.
In those states in which the state machinery is weak, the state managers do not play the role of
coordinating a complex industrial-commercial-agricultural mechanism. Rather they simply
become one set of landlords amidst others, with little claim to legitimate authority over the
whole.
These tend to be called traditional rulers. The political struggle is often phrased in terms of
tradition versus change. This is of course a grossly misleading and ideological terminology. It
may in fact be taken as a general sociological principle that, at any given point of time, what is
thought to be traditional is of more recent origin than people generally imagine it to be, and
represents primarily the conservative instincts of some group threatened with declining social
status. Indeed, there seems to be nothing which emerges and evolves as quickly as a “tradition”
when the need presents itself.
In a one-class system, the “traditional” is that in the name of which the “others” fight the
class-conscious group. If they can encrust their values by legitimating them widely, even better
by enacting them into legislative barriers, they thereby change the system in a way favorable to
them.
The traditionalists may win in some states, but if a world-economy is to survive, they must lose
more or less in the others. Furthermore, the gain in one region is the counterpart of the loss in
another.
This is not quite a zero-sum game, but it is also inconceivable that all elements in a capitalist
world-economy shift their values in a given direction simultaneously. The social system is built
on having a multiplicity of value systems within it, reflecting the specific functions groups and
areas play in the world division of labor.
We have not exhausted here the theoretical problems relevant to the functioning of a
world-economy. We hake tried only to speak to those illustrated by the early period of the
world-economy in creation, to wit, sixteenth-century Europe. Many other problems emerged at
later stages and will be treated, both empirically and theoretically, in later volumes.
In the sixteenth century, Europe was like a bucking bronco. The attempt of some groups to
establish a world-economy based on a particular division of labor, to create national states in the
core areas as politico-economic guarantors of this system, and to get the workers to pay not only
the profits but the costs of maintaining the system was not easy. It was to Europe’s credit that it
was done, since without the thrust of the sixteenth century the modern world would not have
been born and, for all its cruelties, it is better that it was born than that it had not been.
It is also to Europe’s credit that it was not easy, and particularly that it was not easy because the
people who paid the short-run costs screamed lustily at the unfairness of it all. The peasants and
workers in Poland and England and Brazil and Mexico were all rambunctious in their various
ways. As R. H. Tawney says of the agrarian disturbances of sixteenth-century England: “Such
movements are a proof of blood and sinew and of a high and gallant spirit. . . . Happy the nation
whose people has not forgotten how to rebel.”
The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness
of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just
constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which was far
from reached its climax in the twentieth century.
Carlos A. Martínez Vela – ESD.83 – Fall 2001 1
World Systems Theory
by Carlos A. Martínez-Vela1
1. The Approach
World-system theory is a macrosociological perspective that seeks to explain the
dynamics of the “capitalist world economy” as a “total social system”. Its first major
articulation, and classic example of this approach, is associated with Immanuel
Wallerstein, who in 1974 published what is regarded as a seminal paper, The Rise and
Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis. In
1976 Wallerstein published The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. This is Wallerstein’s
landmark contribution to sociological and historical thought and it triggered numerous
reactions, and inspired many others to build on his ideas. Because of the main concepts
and intellectual building blocks of world-system theory –which will be outlined later–, it
has had a major impact and perhaps its more warm reception in the developing world.
Where is world-system theory positioned in the intellectual world? It falls at the same
time, into the fields of historical sociology and economic history. In addition, because of
its emphasis on development and unequal opportunities across nations, it has been
embraced by development theorists and practitioners. This combination makes the
world-system project both a political and an intellectual endeavor. Wallerstein’s approach
is one of praxis, in which theory and practice are closely interrelated, and the objective of
intellectual activity is to create knowledge that uncovers hidden structures and allows
oneself to act upon the world and change it. “Man’s ability to participate intelligently in
the evolution of his own system is dependent on his ability to perceive the whole” (p. 10).
World-system research is largely qualitative, although early on Wallerstein rejected the
distinction between nomothetic and idiographic methodologies to understand the world.
For Wallerstein, there is an objective world which can be quantitatively understood, but it
is, no matter for how long it has existed, a product of history. But to the most part, his
methods are associated with history and with interpretive sociology. His work is
methodologically somewhere in between Marx and Weber, both of whom were important
inspirations for his own work.
1. Background
1.1 Immanuel Wallerstein
World-system theory has been closely associated with Immanuel Wallerstein, and
understanding the intellectual context in which this body of knowledge is positioned,
means also understanding Wallerstein, so let us begin by talking about him.
1 I greatly benefited from Goldfrank (2000) in structuring Section 1 of this essay.
Carlos A. Martínez Vela – ESD.83 – Fall 2001 2
Immanuel Wallerstein was born in 1930 in New York, where he grew up and did all his
studies. He entered Columbia University, where he obtained his BS, MA and PhD
degrees. He remained a faculty member in Columbia’s Department of Sociology from
1958 to 1971. His passage through Columbia occurred at a time when “[Columbia’s]
cosmopolitanism and rebelliousness stood in sharp contrast to the genteel established
liberalism of Harvard and Yale. His primary mentor was C. Wright Mills, from whom,
according to Goldfrank, Wallerstein learned his historical sensitivity, his ambition to
understand macro-structures, and his rejection of both liberalism and, to a lesser degree,
Marxism. While being a faculty Member at Columbia, Wallerstein got interested in
Africa and along the way, he spent time in Paris. In Paris he was exposed to two major
intellectual influences, the Annales group of historians, and also to what by the time were
radical political ideas. Paris was the center for political and intellectual radicalism among
Africans, Asians and Latin Americans, and the locus of the major challenges to Anglo-
American liberalism and empiricism. In Africa he did field work that exposed him to the
Third World, and he wrote his dissertation on the processes of national formation in West
Africa. Here, Goldfrank tells us, he started to build his world view of “creative selfdestruction”,
of rise and demise. His exposure to the third world had a great impact on
his work. In his introduction to The Modern World System, Wallerstein, in a revealing
statement, says that “In general, in a deep conflict, the eyes of the downtrodden are more
acute about the reality of the present. For it is in their interest to perceive correctly in
order to expose the hypocrisies of the rulers. They have less interest in ideological
deflection.” (p. 4).
1.2 Aims
Wallerstein’s work developed at a time when the dominant approach to understanding
development, modernization theory, was under attack from many fronts, and he followed
suit. He himself acknowledges that his aim was to create an alternative explanation
(Wallerstein, 2000). He aimed at achieving “a clear conceptual break with theories of
‘modernization’ and thus provide a new theoretical paradigm to guide our investigations
of the emergence and development of capitalism, industrialism, and national states”
(Skocpol, 1977, p. 1075). Criticisms to modenization include (1) the reification of the
nation-state as the sole unit of analysis, (2) assumption that all countries can follow only
a single path of evolutionary development, (3) disregard of the world-historical
development of transnational structures that constrain local and national development, (4)
explaining in terms of ahistorical ideal types of “tradition” versus “modernity”, which are
elaborated and applied to national cases. In reacting to modernization theory, Wallerstein
outlined a research agenda with five major subjects: the functioning of the capitalist
world-economy as a system, the how and why of its origins, its relations with noncapitalist
structures in previous centuries, comparative study of alternative modes of
production, and the ongoing transition to socialism (Goldfrank, 2000; Wallerstein, 1979).
1.3 Building Blocks
There are three major intellectual building blocks of world-system theory, as conceived
by Wallerstein: the Annales school, Marx, and dependence theory. These building blocks
Carlos A. Martínez Vela – ESD.83 – Fall 2001 3
are associated with Wallerstein’s life experience and exposure to various issues, theories,
and situations.
World-system theory owes to the Annales school, whose major representative is Fernand
Braudel, its historical approach. Wallerstein got from Braudel’s his insistence on the
long term (la longue dureé). He also learned to focus on geo-ecological regions as units
of analysis (think of Braudel’s The Mediterranean), attention to rural history, and
reliance on empirical materials from Braudel. The impact of the Annales is at the general
methodological level.
From Marx, Wallerstein learned that (1) the fundamental reality if social conflict among
materially based human groups, (2) the concern with a relevant totality, (3) the transitory
nature of social forms and theories about them, (4) the centrality of the accumulation
process and competitive class struggles that result from it, (5) a dialectical sense of
motion through conflict and contradiction. Wallerstein’s ambition has been to revise
Marxism itself.
World-system theory is in many ways an adaptation of dependency theory (Chirot and
Hall, 1982). Wallerstein draws heavily from dependency theory, a neo-Marxist
explanation of development processes, popular in the developing world, and among
whose figures are Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a Barzilian. Dependency theory focuses
on understanding the “periphery” by looking at core-periphery relations, and it has
flourished in peripheral regions like Latin America. It is from a dependency theory
perspective that many contemporary critiques to global capitalism come from.
Other important influences in Wallerstein’s work, still present in contemporary worldsystem
research, are Karl Polanyi and Joseph Schumpeter. From the latter comes worldsystem
interest in business cycles, nd from the former, the notion of three basic modes of
economic organization: reciprocal, redistributive, and market modes. These are analogous
to Wallerstein’s concepts of mini-systems, world-empires, and world-economies.
3. What is a world-system?
For Wallerstein, “a world-system is a social system, one that has boundaries, structures,
member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the conflicting
forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to
remold it to its advantate. It has the characteristics of an organism, in that is has a lifespan
over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others…
Life within it is largely self-contained, and the dynamics of its development are largely
internal” (Wallerstein, p. 347). A world-system is what Wallerstein terms a “worldeconomy”,
integrated through the market rather than a political center, in which two or
more regions are interdependent with respect to necessities like food, fuel, and protection,
and two or more polities compete for domination without the emergence of one single
center forever (Goldfrank, 2000).
Carlos A. Martínez Vela – ESD.83 – Fall 2001 4
In his own first definition, Wallerstein (1974) said that a world-system is a “multicultural
terirtorial division of labor in which the production and exchange o basic goods and raw
materials is necessary for the everyday life of its inhabitants.” This division of labor
refers to the forces and relations of production of the world economy as a whole and it
leads to the existence of two interdependent regions: core and periphery. These are
geographically and culturally different, one focusing on labor-intensive, and the other on
capital-intensive production. (Goldfrank, 2000). The core-periphery relationship is
structural. Semi-peripheral states acts as a buffer zone between core and periphery, and
has a mix of the kinds of activities and institutions that exist on them (Skocpol, 1977).
Among the most important structures of the current world-system is a power hierarchy
between core and periphery, in which powerful and wealthy “core” societies dominate
and exploit weak and poor peripheral societies. Technology is a central factor in the
positioning of a region in the core or the periphery. Advanced or developed countries are
the core, and the less developed are in the periphery. Peripheral countries are structurally
constrained to experience a kind of development that reproduces their subordinate status
(Chase-Dunn and Grimes, (1995). The differential strength of the multiple states within
the system is crucial to maintain the system as a whole, because strong states reinforce
and increase the differential flow of surplus to the core zone (Skocpol, 1977). This is
what Wallerstein called unequal exchange, the systematic transfer of surplus from semiproletarian
sectors in the periphery to the high-technology, industrialized core
(Goldfrank, 2000). This leads to a process of capital accumulation at a global scale, and
necessarily involves the appropriation and transformation of peripheral surplus.
On the poltical side of the world-system a few concepts deem highlighting. For
Wallerstein, nation-states are variables, elements within the system. States are used by
class forces to pursue their interest, in the case of core countries. Imperialism refers to the
domination of weak peripheral regions by strong core states. Hegemony refers to the
existence of one core state teomporarily outstripping the rest. Hegemonic powers
maintain a stable balance of power and enforce free trade as long as it is to their
advantage. However, hegemony is temporary due to class struggles and the diffusion of
technical advantages. Finally, there is a global class struggle.
The current world-economy is characterized by regular cyclical rhythms, which provide
the basis of Wallerstein’s periodization of modern history (Goldfrank, 2000). After our
current stage, Wallerstein envisions the emergence of a socialist world-government,
which is the only-alternative world-system that could maintain a high level of
productivity andchange the distribution, by integrating the levels of political and
economic decision-making.
4. Research, Applications, and Prospects
The current hub of research on world-systems is SUNY Binghamton, at the Fernand
Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations.
Although some researchers pursue this approach around the country, it has had its
greatest impact among intellectuals in the third-world, where Wallerstein is regarded a
Carlos A. Martínez Vela – ESD.83 – Fall 2001 5
first-rate intellectual and contributor to the understanding of world-dynamics. Most
publications take place in the Journal of World Systems Research, and in the Review
published by the Fernand Braudel Center. Within the American Sociological
Association, there is a chapter on the Political Economy of the World System. In
addition, Wallerstein was president of the International Sociological Association between
1994 and 1998. Although is attention has moved more towards the philosophy of the
social sciences, Wallerstein continues to be the major figure in world-system research.
After legitimizing historical sociology for its own sake, world-system research has
inspired numerous research programs, with perhaps the most notorious one to date being
the study of long-term business cycles. In addition, it is an approach widely used to talk
about development dynamics and to understand the relationships between the first world
and the third world. As an interdisciplinary theory, it has also drawn the attention of
scholars from several disciplines in the social sciences: history, anthropology, cultural
studies, economic history, development studies.
5. Sources
Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Peter Grimes. 1995. “World-Systems Analysis.” Annual
Review of Sociology. Vol. 21 p. 387-417.
Chirot, Daniel and Thomas D. Hall. 1982. “World-System Theory.” Annual Review of
Sociology. Vol. 8 pp. 81-106.
Journal of World Systems Research. http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/
Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and
Civilizations. http://fbc.binghamton.edu/
Goldfrank, Walter L. 2000. “Paradigm Regained? The Rules of Wallerstein’s World-
System Method. Journal of World-Systems Research. Vol. 6. N. 2 pp. 150-195
Skocpol, Theda. 1977. “Wallerstein’s World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and
Historical Critique.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 82. N. 5. 1075-1090.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic
Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2000. The Essential Wallerstein. The New York Press. New
York.
Modern History Sourcebook:
Summary of Wallerstein on World System Theory
——————————————————————————–
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM
A Summary of Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press,
1974)
In his book, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Immanual Wallerstein develops a theoretical
framework to understand the historical changes involved in the rise of the modern world. The
modern world system, essentially capitalist in nature, followed the crisis of the feudal system and
helps explain the rise of Western Europe to world supremacy between 1450 and 1670. According
to Wallerstein, his theory makes possible a comprehensive understanding of the external and
internal manifestations of the modernization process during this period and makes possible
analytically sound comparisons between different parts of the world.
MEDIEVAL PRELUDE
Before the sixteenth century, when Western Europe embarked on a path of capitalist
development, “feudalism” dominated West European society. Between 1150-1300, both
population as well as commerce expanded within the confines of the feudal system. However,
from 1300-1450, this expansion ceased, creating a severe economic crisis. According to
Wallerstein, the feudal crisis was probably precipitated by the interaction of the following
factors:
Agricultural production fell or remained stagnant. This meant that the burden of peasant
producers increased as the ruling class expanded.
The economic cycle of the feudal economy had reached its optimum level; afterwards the
economy began to shrink.
A shift of climatological conditions decreased agricultural productivity and contributed to an
increase in epidemics within the population.
THE NEW EUROPEAN DIVISION OF LABOR
Wallerstein argues that Europe moved towards the establishment of a capitalist world economy
in order to ensure continued economic growth. However, this entailed the expansion of the
geographical size of the world in question, the development of different modes of labor control
and the creation of relatively strong state machineries in the states of Western Europe. In
response to the feudal crisis, by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the world
economic system emerged. This was the first time that an economic system encompassed much
of the world with links that superseded national or other political boundaries. The new world
economy differed from earlier empire systems because it was not a single political unit. Empires
depended upon a system of government which, through commercial monopolies combined with
the use of force, directed the flow of economic goods from the periphery to the center. Empires
maintained specific political boundaries, within which they maintained control through an
extensive bureaucracy and a standing army. Only the techniques of modern capitalism enabled
the modern world economy, unlike earlier attempts, to extend beyond the political boundaries of
any one empire.
The new capitalist world system was based on an international division of labor that determined
relationships between different regions as well as the types of labor conditions within each
region. In this model, the type of political system was also directly related to each region’s
placement within the world economy. As a basis for comparison, Wallerstein proposes four
different categories, core, semi-periphery, periphery, and external, into which all regions of the
world can be placed. The categories describe each region’s relative position within the world
economy as well as certain internal political and economic characteristics.
—The Core
The core regions benefited the most from the capitalist world economy. For the period under
discussion, much of northwestern Europe (England, France, Holland) developed as the first core
region. Politically, the states within this part of Europe developed strong central governments,
extensive bureaucracies, and large mercenary armies. This permitted the local bourgeoisie to
obtain control over international commerce and extract capital surpluses from this trade for their
own benefit. As the rural population expanded, the small but increasing number of landless wage
earners provided labor for farms and manufacturing activities. The switch from feudal
obligations to money rents in the aftermath of the feudal crisis encouraged the rise of
independent or yeoman farmers but squeezed out many other peasants off the land. These
impoverished peasants often moved to the cities, providing cheap labor essential for the growth
in urban manufacturing. Agricultural productivity increased with the growing predominance of
the commercially-oriented independent farmer, the rise of pastoralism, and improved farm
technology.
—The Periphery
On the other end of the scale lay the peripheral zones. These areas lacked strong central
governments or were controlled by other states, exported raw materials to the core, and relied on
coercive labor practices. The core expropriated much of the capital surplus generated by the
periphery through unequal trade relations. Two areas, Eastern Europe (especially Poland) and
Latin America, exhibited characteristics of peripheral regions. In Poland, kings lost power to the
nobility as the region became a prime exporter of wheat to the rest of Europe. To gain sufficient
cheap and easily controlled labor, landlords forced rural workers into a “second serfdom” on their
commercial estates. In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese conquests destroyed
indigenous authority structures and replaced them with weak bureaucracies under the control of
these European states. Powerful local landlords of Hispanic origin became aristocratic capitalist
farmers. Enslavement of the native populations, the importation of African slaves, and the
coercive labor practices such as the encomienda and forced mine labor made possible the export
of cheap raw materials to Europe. Labor systems in both peripheral areas differed from earlier
forms in medieval Europe in that they were established to produce goods for a capitalist world
economy and not merely for internal consumption. Furthermore, the aristocracy both in Eastern
Europe and Latin America grew wealthy from their relationship with the world economy and
could draw on the strength of a central core region to maintain control.
—The Semi-Periphery
Between the two extremes lie the semi-peripheries. These areas represented either core regions in
decline or peripheries attempting to improve their relative position in the world economic
system. They often also served as buffers between the core and the peripheries. As such,
semi-peripheries exhibited tensions between the central government and a strong local landed
class. Good examples of declining cores that became semi-peripheries during the period under
study are Portugal and Spain. Other semi-peripheries at this time were Italy, southern Germany,
and southern France. Economically, these regions retained limited but declining access to
international banking and the production of high-cost high-quality manufactured goods. Unlike
the core, however, they failed to predominate in international trade and thus did not benefit to the
same extent as the core. With a weak capitalist rural economy, landlords in semi-peripheries
resorted to sharecropping. This lessened the risk of crop failure for landowners, and made it
possible at the same time to enjoy profits from the land as well as the prestige that went with
landownership.
According to Wallerstein, the semi-peripheries were exploited by the core but, as in the case of
the American empires of Spain and Portugal, often were exploiters of peripheries themselves.
Spain, for example, imported silver and gold from its American colonies, obtained largely
through coercive labor practices, but most of this specie went to paying for manufactured goods
from core countries such as England and France rather than encouraging the formation of a
domestic manufacturing sector.
—External Areas
These areas maintained their own economic systems and, for the most part, managed to remain
outside the modern world economy. Russia fits this case well. Unlike Poland, Russia’s wheat
served primarily to supply its internal market. It traded with Asia as well as Europe; internal
commerce remained more important than trade with outside regions. Also, the considerable
power of the Russian state helped regulate the economy and limited foreign commercial
influence.
STAGES OF GROWTH
The development of the modern world economy lasted centuries, during which time different
regions changed their relative position within this system. Wallerstein divides the history of the
capitalist world system into four stages, which for our purposes can be simplified and divided
into two basic phases:
Stages 1 and 2:
This period follows the rise of the modern world system between 1450-1670. When the
Hapsburg Empire failed to convert the emerging world economy to a world empire, all the
existing western European states attempted to strengthen their respective positions within the
new world system. In order to accomplish this move, most of the states consolidated their
internal political economic and social resources by:
a) Bureaucratization. This process aided the limited but growing power of the king. By increasing
the state power to collect taxes, the kings eventually increased state power to borrow money and
thereby further expand the state bureaucracy. At the end of this stage, the monarch had become
the supreme power and instituted what has been called “absolute monarchy.”
b) Homogenization of the local population. To underline state involvement in the new capitalist
system and encourage the rise of indigenous capitalist groups, many core states expelled
minorities. These independent capitalist groups, without deep rooted local ties, were perceived as
threats to the development of strong core states. The Jews in England, Spain, and France were all
expelled with the rise of absolute monarchy. Similarly, Protestants, who were often the
merchants in Catholic countries, found they were targets of the Catholic Church. The Catholic
Church, a trans-national institution, found the development of capitalism and the strengthening of
the state threatening.
c) Expansion of the militia to support the centralized monarchy and to protect the new state from
invasions.
d) The concept of absolutism introduced at this time related to the relative independence of the
monarch from previously established laws. This distinction freed the king from prior feudal laws.
e) Diversification of economic activities to maximize profits and strengthen the position of the
local bourgeoisie.
By 1640, northwestern European states secured their position as core states in the emerging
economy. Spain and northern Italy declined to semi-peripheral status, while northeastern Europe
and Iberian America became peripheral zones. England gained ground steadily toward core
status.
During this period, workers in Europe experienced a dramatic fall in wages. This wage fall
characterized most European centers of capitalism with the exception of cities in north and
central Italy and Flanders. The reason for this exception was that these cities were relatively older
centers of trade, and the workers formed strong politico-economic groups. The resistance of
workers broke down the ability of employers to accumulate the large surplus necessary for the
advancement of capitalism. Meanwhile, employers in other parts of Europe profited from the
wage lag by accumulating large surpluses for investment.
Long-distance trade with the Americas and the East provided enormous profits, in excess of
200%-300%, for a small merchant elite. Smaller merchants could not hope to enter this
profiteering without substantial capital and some state help. Eventually, the profits of the
trans-Atlantic trade filtered down and strengthened the merchants’ hold over European
agriculture and industries. Merchants with sufficient power accumulated profits through the
purchase of goods prior to their production. By controlling the costs of finished products,
merchants could extend their profit margin and control the internal markets. This powerful
merchant class provided the capital necessary for the industrialization of European core states.
Stages 3 and 4 (18th century and beyond):
Industrial rather than agricultural capitalism represented this era. With the shifting emphasis on
industrial production, the following reactions characterized this period.
a) European states participated in active exploration for the exploitation of new markets.
b) Competitive world systems such as the Indian Ocean system were absorbed into the expanding
European world system. With the independence of the Latin American countries, these areas as
well as previously isolated zones in the interior of the American continent entered as peripheral
zones in the world economy. Asia and Africa entered the system in the nineteenth century as
peripheral zones.
c) The inclusion of Africa and the Asian continents as peripheral zones increased the available
surplus, allowing other areas such as the U.S. and Germany to enhance their core status.
d) During this phase, the core regions shifted from a combination of agricultural and industrial
interests to purely industrial concerns. Between 1700, England was Europe’s leading industrial
producer as well as the leader in agricultural production. By 1900, only 10% of England’s
population was engaged in agriculture.
e) By the 1900s, with the shift toward manufacturing, core areas encouraged the rise of industries
in peripheral and semi-peripheral zones so that they could sell machines to these regions.
THEORETICAL REPRISE
The capitalist world economy, as envisioned by Wallerstein, is a dynamic system which changes
over time. However, certain basic features remain in place. Perhaps most important is that when
one examines the dynamics of this system, the core regions of northwestern Europe clearly
benefited the most from this arrangement. Through extremely high profits gained from
international trade and from an exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials from the
periphery (and, to a lesser extent, from the semi-peripheries), the core enriched itself at the
expense of the peripheral economies. This, of course, did not mean either that everybody in the
periphery became poorer or that all citizens of the core regions became wealthier as a result. In
the periphery, landlords for example often gained great wealth at the expense of their underpaid
coerced laborers, since landowners were able to expropriate most of the surplus of their workers
for themselves. In turn in the core regions, many of the rural inhabitants, increasingly landless
and forced to work as wage laborers, at least initially saw a relative decline in their standard of
living and in the security of their income. Overall, certainly, Wallerstein sees the development of
the capitalist world economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world’s population.
Through this theory, Wallerstein attempts to explain why modernization had such wide-ranging
and different effects on the world. He shows how political and economic conditions after the
breakdown of feudalism transformed northwestern Europe into the predominant commercial and
political power. The geographic expansion of the capitalist world economy altered political
systems and labor conditions wherever it was able to penetrate. Although the functioning of the
world economy appears to create increasingly larger disparities between the various types of
economies, the relationship between the core and its periphery and semi-periphery remains
relative, not constant. Technological advantages, for example, could result in an expansion of the
world economy overall, and precipitate changes in some peripheral or semi-peripheral areas.
However, Wallerstein asserts that an analysis of the history of the capitalist world system shows
that it has brought about a skewed development in which economic and social disparities
between sections of the world economy have increased rather than provided prosperity for all.
Source: Uncertain of the source of this summary of Wallerstein. If you have any info, please
send.
——————————————————————————–
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of
public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and
World history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission
is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal
use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for
commercial use of the Sourcebook.
(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
halsall@murray.fordham.edu

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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

Manifesto of the Communist Party

Written: Late 1847;
First Published: February 1848;
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137;
Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac and Brian Baggins;
Proofed: and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy Blunden 2004;
Copyleft: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

See Note in: Marx Engels Collected Works.

Contents

Preamble
I:   Bourgeois and Proletarians
II: Proletarians and Communists
III: Socialist and Communist Literature
IV: Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

Appendix: Prefaces to Various Language Editions

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The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons