Abstract
The crucial difference between Robinson’s view of the world today and mine has to do with what has been happening in the last 30–50 years. Robinson sees ‘globalization’ as a new stage in capitalism, in which financial institutions are the main mechanisms of capitalist accumulation. I see the same period as one in which capitalist structures have moved so far from equilibrium that they cannot survive. The world-system has entered into a structural crisis and a bifurcation that, in the next 20–40 years, will result in a new world-system (or systems), which may be worse than the current system or much better. In analysing my views, he asserts they are state-centric unlike his. This is incredible, given that the very name of the perspective, world-systems analysis, is used because the basic premise is that social reality occurs within a world-system and not within the states. Robinson’s view is based on a misreading of our concepts of core and periphery. They do not refer to states, but to a relation, in which the crucial difference is the degree of monopolization of the productive process. These processes are located in all states. It is true that the concentration of core-like and peripheral processes is different in different states, which results in a different national politics. But this is a political, not an economic, difference.
William Robinson has made a critical appraisal of my views, especially about globalization. 1 It consists of a long and largely sympathetic restatement of my views, one that is not however 100% accurate because not always based on my more recent formulations of a vast and complex subject. But I do not intend to quibble. I wish to cut to the essence of the debate between us.
Actually, I believe that Robinson has formulated it clearly. He says there are ‘three broad approaches to the temporal question of globalization.’ The first traces it back to the dawn of history as a sort of continuous process. He and I both think this is not a fruitful way to proceed, for one thing because it omits a real discussion of the specificities of capitalism.
The second, to which he correctly says I subscribe, is that it is a process that is coterminous with the development of the capitalist world-economy over the past 500 years. The third, to which he subscribes, is that we are talking of a ‘qualitatively new epoch in the ongoing evolution of capitalism,’ one that has been occurring only since the late 20th century.
Actually, I think we both feel that something qualitatively new has been occurring. We disagree about what this is. For Robinson, it is a change, a very important change, in how capitalism functions. For me, it marks a structural crisis in the historical system we call capitalism and results in a longish transition to some kind of post-capitalist future. Thus, Robinson sees a new (and seemingly more efficacious) organization of capitalism. I see the death knell of capitalism which is ongoing and engendering a political struggle over what kind of system will replace it. This is indeed an important debate because it is not only an analytic exercise. It also determines what kind of political activity we might want to undertake in the light of our moral judgments about the good society.
Robinson spends so much time discussing what he considers to be my views that he puts forth his own alternatives only briefly. I think the key statement of his own views is to be found on page 739:
Alongside the emergence since the 1970s of globally mobile transnational capital increasingly divorced from specific countries, an integrated global financial system has replaced the national bank-dominated financial systems of earlier periods. . . . National economies have been dismantled and then reconstituted as component elements of this new global production and financial systems.
2
He then says, quite incorrectly, that world-systems analysts see
. . . the world-economy as broken down into distinct and competing national economies bringing together national capitalists and firms with their respective states that the theory posits as immanent and immutable to the capitalist world-system.
Robinson summarizes this by saying that the world-systems perspective is based on ‘nation-state centrism’ and ‘state structuralism.’ Let me therefore suggest what I think is wrong in Robinson’s summary of the present situation. And then let me say what is wrong with his summary of the view of world-systems analysts.
First of all, during what period in the last 500 years was the flow of capital not transnational? And which capitalists (of those who were successful) were not ready and eager to invest their capital wherever it was most fruitfully placed in the capitalist world-economy? Has he not read about the investments of Dutch capitalists in the 17th century in both England and France, supposedly competing (even enemy) countries? and British investment in the competing United States during the 19th century? and reciprocal (and technically treasonous) arrangements of American and German capitalists during the Second World War?
As for ‘national bank-dominated financial systems’ versus an ‘integrated global financial system,’ tell it to those running the national bank structures of the United States, China, and Germany. Their activities, you say, are ambiguous? So they have always been. Robinson seems very negative about, and uncomfortable with, the whole discussion of the role of the interstate system. What he misses is the advantages capitalists derive from the existence of a hegemonic power.
There are two crucial ones. The capitalists located primarily in the hegemonic power’s political jurisdiction draw direct advantage in rerouting key transactions into their enterprises and banks. And those located primarily in other countries draw advantage from the relative state of world order that the hegemonic power is able to enforce. To be sure, this constantly breaks down. The quasi-monopoly of hegemonic powers lasts only a relatively short time. That is both the weakness and the strength of the system. The inability to reproduce this anew today is one of the sources of structural crisis.
When Robinson says that world-systems analysis is based on nation-state centrism and state structuralism, I feel as though I am in Alice in Wonderland. Have we not named our point of view ‘world-systems analysis’ to underline our fundamental rejection of nation-state centrism and state structuralism? That’s the entire point of the exercise.
So where does Robinson draw such a lopsided picture of our point of view? He draws it largely from the terms ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ and the fact that, imprudently, in the beginning we used the shorthand of ‘core states’ and ‘peripheral states.’ Precisely because we realized how this was being misinterpreted, we stopped doing this a long time ago.
Let me make clear our position. Core and periphery are a relation, not an essence. There are core-like processes and peripheral processes, which I think reside precisely in the degree to which a given process is monopolized or competitive. These processes are to be found in every state in the world-system. It is however true that the percentage of such activities located in particular states varies. There are some states in which the percentage of core-like activities is high and others in which the percentage of peripheral activities is high. These percentages constantly go up and/or down. There is therefore a seeming geographical correlation but geography does not define coreness or peripherality.
This brings me to the term ‘semiperipheral.’ It is quite different from the terms ‘core’ and ‘periphery.’ It is not a relation, but the characteristic of certain states, those that find themselves having a fairly even mix of core-like and peripheral activities. We then point to the political impact such semiperipheral states have on the functioning of the system. They push the states’ authorities towards certain political decisions, in the hope of enlarging significantly the percentage of core-like activities in their states. Or conversely they are struggling against a diminution of such activities. We see this today in how the BRICS are operating. But other states were doing the same kinds of things in previous centuries.
For someone who asserts that he is basing his own explanations on Marxist theorizing, Robinson very strangely omits two crucial subjects from his discussion. One is class analysis. And the second is the relation of capitalists to the state.
World-systems analysis places class analysis right in the center of its reasoning. What it says however is that classes are not, and never have been, located in states. Classes are classes of the world-system as a whole. There is certainly something we can call a bourgeoisie (or some other name that means the same thing). 3 The crucial thing to notice is that the world-system’s bourgeoisie is not evenly distributed in the various states. In some, perhaps 50% or more of the population are bourgeois; in others perhaps 5% or less. This has an enormous impact on the politics of the various states. To summarize it crudely, those states with 50% or more tend to breed electoral systems with alternation between slightly different right-of-center and left-of-center political forces. Those with 5% or less tend to breed political systems that seem more authoritarian. But the interests of the upper strata and the lower strata are quite transnational, as precisely Marx always insisted.
The other thing left out by Robinson is the relation of capitalists to the state. Capitalists talk an anti-state line, but they do not really mean it and have never really meant it. They have an ambiguous relationship with the state. On the one hand, they cannot make real profits without securing quasi-monopolies in leading products. And for that they absolutely need the states, which are the only structures that can guarantee quasi-monopolies. But on the other hand, capitalists compete with each other. And the quasi-monopoly of one is the barrier for his/her competitor, who then leads an anti-state charge.
Of course capitalists also need the states to help them fight the class struggle. However, those with state power need to do things to retain state power, which makes them under certain circumstances responsive to the pressures from below. So sometimes capitalists have to get out from under their state authorities, and the existence of a world-economy and an interstate system makes it possible for them to do so. This is the whole ingenious structuring of the capitalist world-system.
So, yes, there is a qualitative difference today (or since the late 20th century). But it does not consist of a restructuring of how capitalism functions. It is the structural crisis of capitalism. I will not take up space here to repeat my arguments about this. I refer the reader to a version published in New Left Review in March–April 2010, entitled ‘Structural crises.’