Session 16: The Odds Were Never In Your Favour

This article by Immanuel Wallerstein is the first that we’ve read by someone whose primary field is sociology, not International Relations. Wallerstein presents his World Systems Theory which is a categorization of the different countries in the world into three divisions, each of which performs a different task.

Taking a Marxist view of the international system, he talks about how imperialism and capitalism came about. The move from imperial to feudal to capitalist systems is well defined. Industrialization was fueled by colonization and the need for raw materials from poor countries. Capitalist thought grew and there was a new era of consumerism across the world. This rise of consumerism eventually lead to decolonization as markets needed to be free from imperial rule to function properly. With all this in mind, Wallerstein introduces the new world system organized into three classes: the core, the semi-periphery and the periphery.

The core is the technologically advanced countries like Britain which caught their stride in the Industrial Revolution and developed new technology and methods of production. They buy from or sometimes exploit the periphery which comprises states with a low skill work force and lack of technology. The semi-periphery lies in between; it dominates the peripheral states but is economically subservient to the core. It is a Marxist view of the international system whereby the periphery and the semi-periphery are the proletariat and the core is the bourgeoisie.

The first thing that came to my mind when reading this piece was the striking similarity to Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games series. The Capital or the core is the strong one which has a large consumer base which exploits the further districts (districts 5 to 12) i.e. the periphery; for raw materials. However, there are slightly more dominant districts which constitute the semi-periphery: Districts 1 -4. These districts have more technology and higher skilled labour than the periphery does but they are ultimately all serving the end of the Capital. It’s even more striking that the core is called The Capital. And in the end, Katniss brings about a revolution to bring down the Capitalist system.

Wallerstein predicts that there will be the creation of a socialist world order which he will come from a long struggle. He makes it sound like capitalism is a ticking time bomb and that the world will ultimately arrive at socialism, but maybe he should be more careful since Marx’s original ideas failed to show in the international system. There’s a reason why Fukuyama wrote The End of History. Wallerstein’s ideas seem sensible on paper but there are always ups and downs in the new world system. Who knows, maybe we’ll have to call Fukuyama about a sequel.