Immanuel Wallerstein's contribution to the understanding of the international structure is worth mentioning. One believes that it is crucial to highlight the rationale that one implies from reading his piece. That is, the reason Wallerstein has used world-system, as his unit of analysis is the spread of capitalist forces throughout the world. One thinks that Wallerstein finds these capitalist forces, as part of a complex whole, and consequently, a structure emerges that Wallerstein perceives is running the world economy.
Wallerstein also argues that the whole system that is in place today has a history and the emergence of this system can be seen in Western Europe's core role. He describes that the capitalist forces grew into eminence when the Western Europe got the capacity to produce surplus from the agricultural production. He also believes that other neighboring states to Western Europe became semi-periphery and periphery states. The semi-periphery states, Wallerstein argues, relied on Western Europe partially for goods and services. However, they also had capacity to produce on their own either agriculturally or industrially. On the other hand, the peripheral states completely depended upon the Western Europe for manufactured goods and in exchange, they provided natural materials to the Western Europe.
One believes that Wallerstein's explanation of this structure of the world at the time of Western European hegemony is to provide a background for the readers to think about the nature of contemporary capitalist forces and their influence on world production system. That is why, he terms these modern capitalist forces as the multinational corporations and maintains that they assert their influence on the state administration when they divert from their incentives and interests. As a whole, Wallerstein's argument is convincing that the capitalist forces will maintain their eminence in the world economic system and it is a rare chance that this system be replaced in the future.
Its interesting how you are convinced by Wallerstein's argument but do you really think that the exploitation levels will never reach a level where the only outcome is a revolt by the weak states. Which will eventually result in a system change as socialism will replace capitalism
ReplyDeleteGood points, but Wallerstein would argue that this capitalist system will eventually collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions giving rise to socialism all over the world.
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