World System Theory A Short Version

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Ann. Rev. Sociol. 1982. 8:81-106Copyright 1982 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved

WORLD-SYSTEM THEORYDaniel ChirotSchool of International Studies, University of Washington,Seattle,Washington 98195Thomas D. HallDepartment of Sociology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma73019WORLD-SYSTEM THEORYWorld-systemheory is a highly political approach o the problemof economicdevelopment in the Third World. It was created by policy-oriented intel-lectuals in countries at a mediumevel of development o account for theirsocieties demonstrable nability to catch up to the rich countries. In itscontemporaryAmerican orm, world-system theory has broadened into a morepurely academic nterprise designed o explain the historical rise of the West,as well as the continued poverty of most non-Western ocieties. But it hasgenerally remained he property of a left, whichdemandsedistribution of theworlds economicwealth and whichprovides theoretical and ideological sup-port for a "new international economicorder" (Dadzie 1980; Bhagwati1977).How It Differs From Modernization TheoryIn American ociology world-system heory evolved as a direct attack againstthe version of development heory that had prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s.The older theory had two main parts, one structural, and the other psycho-logical, and the two did not necessarily cohere. But together, they came ocomprise what was called "modernization theory."The structural side of modernization theory was a uniform evolutionaryvision of social, political, and economicdevelopment.As Portes (1976) hasexplained, the sociological portion of this vision had deep roots in classicaltheory and consisted chiefly of a belief in progressive, increasing differ-entiation as the key to modernization.Parsons(1951) was its principal modernprophet. Hoselitz (1960), Levy (1966), and Wilbert Moore Hoselitz &

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82 CH1ROT & HALL1963, Moore1979) were among ts most important interpreters. A similarapproach characterized political scientists grouped n the Committee n Com-parative Politics of the Social Science Research Council (Almond& Verba1963, Almond& Powell 1966). But it was an economist, W. W. Rostow, whogave modernization theory its most concrete and best-known form (1960).

The uniform evolutionary theory of development can be summarized nChart 1. According o this theory, all societies, once they begin the processof modernization, must move rom developmentstage A to B, B to C, and soon. Of course even the strictest follower of uniform evolutionary theoryrecognizes that the world changesand that a society going through stage A attime 4 is different from a society that has gone through stage A at time 2;however, he similarities betweenA2(as experienced by society I) and A3(asexperienced by society II) are more mportant than the differences caused bytheir experiencing stage A at different times. Followers of such theoriesrecognized that time periods are not uniform. Contemporarysocieties arelikely to move rom one stage to the next more quickly than, say, Englanddidin the past; and some ocieties, by purposefully accelerating the process, mayadvance more rapidly than normal. Uniform tages still exist, however, andin time all of the worlds societies will experience them.Rostows 1960) stages were: traditional economies, he transition to take-off (the adoption of scientific methodsof technology), the take-off (rapidcapital accumulation nd early industrialization), the drive to maturity (highindustrialization in which he standard of living of the massesremains low),and the age of high consumption. By the late 1960s, many ocial scientistswere predicting a sixth stage, "post-industrial" society (Bell 1973).The social-psychological version of modernization heory explained the riseof the West by claiming that Westerners(chiefly Protestant Westerners) werepossessed by a high need for achievementand rationality. McClelland 1967)and Hagen(1962) were this theorys best knownproponents, and thoughdetail their explanations were by no meanssimilar, their main points were.Both believed that a contemporary ocietys chances of developmentdependedChart 1 Societies I-V, seen at times 1-6, in developmental stages A-ESociety Times

1 2 3 4 5 6I Traditional A2 B3 C4 Ds E6II Traditional A3 B4 C~ D6III Traditional A4 B~ C6IV Traditional A5 B6V Traditional A6


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WORLD-SYSTEMHEORY 83on the psychological make-upof its members.Despite their attempts to linkthese theories with Weber 1958) and Schumpeter (1934), however, social-psychologicalwork ailed to incorporate the importantstructural variables thatdetermine the direction in whichachievement-oriented ndividuals are forcedby their surroundings(Portes 1976). Individual motivation can hardly explainwhy eal estate speculation is moreprofitable in one country, while in anotherinvestment n electronics factories attracts more apital.A more reasonable, but not much more satisfying version of social-psychological modernization theory saw "modem"men being produced bycontact with modemnstitutions (Lemer 1958, Inkeles & Smith 1974). Butthis hypothesis begs the question of why here are more "modem"nstitutionsin, say, Japan than in Java.

All versions of modernization heory were meliorative, admitting the possi-bility of accelerated change hrough such devices as foreign aid (to providecapital and modemnow-how), sychological manipulation to better motivateindividuals, refonaa of legal and economicnorms, or a combinationof these.But modernizationheory tended to refuse the idea that deep structural factorsmight prevent economicprogress, and more important, that the very inter-national context of modernizationmight itself be an obstacle.That recognition camefrom world-system theory, which claims that theuniform states of development osited by Rostow,Almond, nd the others arenonsensical. The existence of strong manufacturing owerswith the ability toextend their markets nd their political strength throughout he worldredirectsthe evolution of feebler societies. Englandmayhave gone through stages A2,A3, and so on, but Poland, for example, went through entirely different,though no less "modem"tages once it became grain exporting periphery ofthe northwestern Europeanmarket. Instead of going through stages A, B, andC, it turned into something England had never been--a dependency of thecapitalist world-system.All the more was this the case with Latin America,most of Asia, and later, Africa. Noneof these societies remained raditional,but all were forced into different paths of developmentby Westernpowers.Nor did Englandgo alone through the stages of development hat led to itsindustrialization: It proceeded nly with the aid of the surplus it extorted fromthe societies it exploited. What s today called thc Third World eached itspresent state by being systematically underdeveloped; t did not remain stuckin a stage similar to the Wests feudal period, or somehowemain even moreprimitive during the centuries in which t was exposed o, and colonized by,Western Europe.

The economistA. G. Frank, one of the most polemical and simplistic of theworld-system heorists, but one of the most intellectually influential, sum-marized his point of viewmost orcefully (1969). Traditional society, he said,was a myth. "The folk characteristics whichwere studied by Robert Redfield,


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84 CHIROT HALLand which Hoselitz seems to associate with the pattern variables of under-developed society, do not characterize any whole society existing today."According to Frank, McClellandcontributed no more than a suggestion thatpeople in poor countries be given a series of courses on how to improvethemselves. Rostows ypology neglected the benefits of the Wests coloniesto its development,and the destructive effects of that colonization on thecolonies themselves. Therelbre, his stages were nothing more than self-serving mythology, ike the rest of modernization theory.

It was not Frank, however, but ImmanuelWallerstein whobrought world-system heory (including the name tself) into the sociological limelight in the1970s (Wallerstein 1974, 1979, 1980).Wallerstein s Macrosociological Theory of Economic ChangeWallerstein posits historical stages of development ifferent from the uniformevolutionary constructs of modernization heorists. At one time all societieswere minisystems. "A minisystem s an entity that has within it a completedivision of labor, and a single cultural framework. Such systems are foundonly in very simple agricultural or hunting and gathering societies. Suchminisystemsno longer exist in the world...any such system that became iedto an empire by the payment f tribute as protection costs ceased by that factto be a system..." (1979). It follows from this that the anthropologists whohave described"tribal" societies in the 19th and 20th centuries as if they wereminisystemsmisseda key ingredient. Virtually all such societies, as B alandierpointed out (1951; reprinted in English in Wallerstein 1966), existed withincolonies. Basedon such descriptions, the notion of "traditionalism" is vitiatedfrom he start.Then here cameworld-systems,"unit[s] with a single division of labor andmultiple cultural systems. It follows logically that there can...be two vari-eties of such world-systems, one with a common olitical system and onewithout." The former (politically united) are called "world-empires,"and thelatter "world-economies" (1979). Until the advent of capitalism, wofld~economies were unstable and tended toward "disintegration or conquest byone group and hence transformation into a world-empire. Examplesof suchworld-empires emerging from world-economies are all the so-called greatcivilizations of premodern imes, such as China, Egypt, Rome..." (1979).World-empires killed the economic dynamism f their areas by using toomuchof their surplus to maintain their bureaucracies. In about 1500 therebegan a novel type of world-economy, he capitalist one. "In a capitalistworld-economy,olitical energy is used to secure monopolyights (or as nearto it as can be achieved). The state becomesess the central economic nter-prise than the means of assuring certain terms of trade in other economictransactions. In this way, the operation of the market not the free operation


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WORLD-SYSTEMHEORY 85but nonetheless its operation) creates incentives to increased productivity andall the consequent accompaniment f moderneconomic development" 1974).The reasons for capitalisms success whenother world-economiesailed arecomplex,but two stand out. Newransportation technology allowed far-flungmarkets to be maintained, and Westernmilitary technology insured the powerto enforce favorable terms of trade (Cipolla 1965). Unburdenedrom the costsof maintaining unified empires within their economic ones, capitalists couldwax strong. The English and Dutch capitalists were able to beat back theHapsburg-Catholicattempt to tum the emerging world-economynto a world-empire, and after that capitalism proceeded to spread throughout the globe(Wallerstein 1974).This world-economy developed a core with well-developed towns,flourishing manufacturing, technologically progressive agriculture, skilledand relatively well-paid labor, and high investment. But the core neededperipheries from which o extract the surplus that fueled expansion. Periph-eries producedcertain key primary goods while their towns withered, laborbecamecoerced in order to keep down he costs of production, technologystagnated, labor remainedunskilled or even became ess skilled, and capital,rather than accumulating,was withdrawnoward the core. At first the differ-ences between he core and the periphery were small, but by exploiting thesedifferences and buying cheap primary products in return for dear manu-facturing goods, northwestern Europe expanded the gap. Uneven devel-opment, hen, is not a recent development r a mereartifact of the capitalistworld-economy;t is one of capitalisms basic components 1974).Wallerstein stresses the importanceof a third category, the semiperiphery.Societies in this group stand between the core and periphery in terms ofeconomicpower. Somemayeventually fall into the periphery, as did Spainin the 17th and 18th centuries, and others mayeventually rise into the core,as has modernJapan. Semiperipheries deflect the anger and revolutionaryactivity of peripheries, and they serve as goodplaces for capitalist investmentwhenwell-organized labor forces in core economiescause wages o rise toofast. As Spain controlled Latin America or the core in the 16th to early 19thcenturies, so did Sweden, nd later Prussia, control Poland in the 17th and18th (1980). Brazil plays a similar role in contemporary Latin America(1979), and presumably ran was slated for this role in the MiddleEast of the1980s. Wallersteinbelieves that without semiperipheries, he capitalist world-system cannot function.Finally, Wallerstein urns the Marxistnotion of class conflict into a questionof international conflict. It is not so muchhat the countries of the core are akind of upper class, the periphery an exploited working lass, and the semiper-iphery a middle class (though someof Wallersteins work suggests preciselythat). Rather, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are world-wide lasses that


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86 CHIROT HALLdo not operate merely within state boundaries. The term semiperipheral,however,applies only to states.

This implies that the class and even ethnic structures within particularcountries must be interpreted as mereadjuncts of the international capitalistdivision of labor. Theyare analytically important primarily because hey helpto explain the performance f individual countries in the international game.But no single country, or even groupof countries, can escape the logic of thistransnational system. It follows, therefore, that socialist revolution cannotoccur in a single country. Socialism will develop within a socialist world-system. Events within a single country mayadvance or retard the advent ofsocialism, but cannot, by themselves, be decisive. The Soviet Union, forexample, cannot be truly socialist even though it has advanced the worldfurther toward revolution. But until that transformation has been accom-plished, even its internal structure is deformed y the fact that it must act ina larger capitalist system. It mayeven be acting as another core power 1979).

Wallersteins work is in manyways an extraordinary tour de force becauseit brings together so manyhistorical periods and information about so manyplaces in a single, logical, and consistent framework.Demonstratinghat truesocialism cannot exist in the U.S.S.R. also shows that seeming "feudal"agrarian relationships in contemporary atin America re nothing of the sort,but yet another part of the pervasive world capitalist-system. The rise of theWest in the 16th century is explained with the same logic as the continuedpoverty of much f the world today. The failure of the proletariat to revolt oreven to sustain socialist ideologies in rich Westerncountries (a persistentproblemfor Marxists) is treated within the same context. The proletariat islargely located in the periphery, or at least consists of "ethnicities" thatoriginate in the periphery. So revolution will have to come hiefly out of theperiphery and semiperipherywhereproletariat class interests are clearer. Thefailure of the "rich" proletariat, bought off by the concentration of wealth inthe core, to carry out its mission is understandable,and does not destroy theoriginal Marxist vision. Both the satisfying scope of his workand his abilityto resolve manyof the contradictions of Marxist theory without giving up itsrevolutionary thrust have endeared Wallerstein to many ocial scientists.But significant and original as it is, Wallersteins work s itself the productof a long intellectual history. In one form or another, world-systemheory hasexisted for well over a century. It is important to understand this for tworeasons. First, knowledgeof its antecedents allows us to avoid needlessrepetition of many ld debates about the subject. Second, world-system heoryis by no meansguaranteed long-term success in American ocial science. Itmaywell be a passing phase. But in someother countries, it has much eeperand older roots, and is more central to prevailing political ideologies and


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WORLD-SYSTEMHEORY 87political conflict than in the UnitedStates, where t is only known y a smallgroupof professional intellectuals.

THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF WORLD-SYSTEMTHEORYList and the Issue of Comparative AdvantageSome of the problems raised by world-system theory had already beenbroachedby mercantilist theoreticians in the 17th and 18th centuries (Heck-scher 1955), but it was not until 1817 hat DavidRicardo formulated what wasto becomehe classical modern conomicheory of free trade. He argued thatunrestricted exchange between wo countries is always advantageous f theyproduce mutually desirable goods at different degrees of efficiency. Por-tuguese wine should be allowed in Britain, for example, n return for Britishcloth because the English producedcloth more efficiently than wine, and thePortuguese did the reverse. Even if the Portuguese could produce cloth morecheaply han the British, the fact that they producedwineeven more fficientlymeant hat it would ncrease their total productivity to specialize in wine.England, on the other hand, should specialize in manufacturedgoods whereit held a comparative advantage (Samuelson 1967; Robinson 1973).In 1841, in his National System of Political Economy, riedrich List arguedthat Ricardo was wrongbecause it might be to the long-run advantage of aneconomyo foster infant industries that could not, in the short term, competefreely with those of more advanced economies. The resulting advantages intechnological sophistication outweighed he short-run losses in total output(Senghaas 1977).The debate has continued between he two sides ever Since. With expansionand greater sophistication, Ricardos theory has remained he majority view-point amongWestern economists. From Alfred Marshalls The Pure Theoryof ModernTrade in 1879 (1930) to Paul Samuelson 1948, 1975), free tradehas been vigorously defended. On the other side, leftist economists haverepeatedly attacked it, going considerably further than List, whowas only amild protectionist (Robinson 1960, 1973; Emmanuel 972, 1977, 1980).

Wehave neither the space nor the necessary knowledge of economics toresolve this old issue. But we can at least warnsociologists to be cautiousbefore they blindly accept either of these viewpoints. n almost all discussionsof world-system heory, however, he debate reappears in one form or anotheras if it had been resolved against Ricardo: Free trade benefits the advancedindustrial economiesbut slows developmentof poorer economies.


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88 CHIROT HALLLenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, and BukharinIn 1902, J. A. Hobsonpublished an attack against imperialism that provedimportant not so much ecauseof its influence on liberals (thoughat the timethat was considerable) but because of Lenins use of Hobsons deas and datain his 1917 work mperialism : The Highest Stage of Capitalism(1939). Leninargued that the final crisis of capitalism had been avoidedbecause of imperi-alist exploitation of colonial and quasi-colonial areas. Without he extra profitsgained from these sources, the rate of return on capitalist investment wouldfall, the working class in advancedcapitalist countries wouldbe impover-ished, and revolution wouldfollow. Consequently, the First WorldWarwaspart of a desperate struggle for colonial empires by the major powers.But Lenin did not discuss the effects of imperialism on the peasants in thecolonies. This Rosa Luxemburg ad done in 1913, particularly in the lastsection of The Accumulationof Capital (1951). She described, amongothercases, the results of the spread of capitalism into Egypt hrough nternationalloans in the 19th century. The Egyptian economy ad been revolutionized andhad become art of the greater capitalist system of exchange. Railroads hadbeen built, cash crops introduced, and the peasants had been deprived of theirland and mined. The Egyptian state had gone bankrupt and been seized by theBritish. Progress had gained great profits for Europeaninance to the detrimentof the Egyptians. Turkey, Russia, India, China, and North Africa were otherexamples of analogous developments. She called these regions "hinterlands"of capitalism.

In 1930 Trotsky added his revolutionary irony to the emergent Marxistconsensus on "cores" and "peripheries" by commenting on the "semi-peripheral" role played by prerevolutionary Russia. He wrote: (1959)Theparticipation f Russia in WorldWar] falls somewhereetweenhe participation fFrance nd hat of China.Russia aid n this wayor her right to oppress nd obTurkey,Persia,Galicia,and n general he countriesweakerndmore ackwardhanherself. Thetwofoldmperialismf the Russian ourgeoisieadbasically he character f an agencyorother mightierworld owers...theRussian utocracy n he onehand, he Russian our-geoisieon he other, containedeaturesof compradorism... Theyived andnourishedthemselvesponheir connectionsith oreignmperialism,ervedt, andwithoutts supportcould not have survived ... Thesemi-compradorussianbourgeoisiehad world-imperialisticnterests n the sameense n whichn agentworkingnpercentagesives by heinterestof his employers.

The communist heoretician who was the closest to modernworld-systemtheory was Bukharin. His writing about imperialism is not highly original (infact, he took much f his argumentdirectly from Hilferding), but his languageand emphasis on the importance of world-wide analysis foreshadowed themain hrust of the writings of Wallerstein, Frank, and their allies. In 1915,Bukharin wrote: "The cleavage between town and country, as well as the


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WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 89developmentof this cleavage, formerly confined to one country only, arenowbeing reproduced on a tremendously enlarged basis. Viewed rom thisstandpoint, entire countries appear to-day as towns, namely he industrialcountries, whereasentire agrarian territories appear to be country" (1929).Other Marxistwriters in the early 20th century contributed to the construc-tion of a general theory of imperialism see Hilferding 1923), but this sketchof the four best known hows the development of a kind of world-systemtheory long before the SecondWorldWar. More ecent Marxist works in thisarea (e.g. Baran 1957) have been elaborations and updates of these classicalpositions.Fascist World-System TheoryIt would be a mistake to consider such theories the exclusive property ofMarxists n the first half of this century. Acurious and today little-known factis that right-wing intellectuals in someof the moreadvanced oor countries ofthat time were also developing similar theories. Their appeal was to nation-alism rather than to proletariat internationalism, but their analysis was remark-ably similar to that of the Marxists.In 1929 Mihail Manoilescu, a Romanian,published The Theory of Protec-tion and International Trade (1931), in which he attacked the Ricardianconcept of comparative advantage. Wherehad it gotten Portugal, he asked?By the 20th century, Portugal had become one of the poorest and mostbackwardcountries in Europe after centuries of virtually open trade withEngland. It wouldbe better, he argued, for agricultural countries to closethemselvesoff from the world-capitalist market, to industrialize, and to unitetheir populations or the difficult struggle this would ntail. Only n this waywould he moreadvanced ndustrial countries be obliged to cede their unfairadvantages and restructure the international economymore equitably.But Manoilescu, who"impresses one as raising strikingly contemporaryissues..." (Schmitter 1978), was not a man of the left. His next inter-nationally knownbooks were The Century of Corporatism (1934) and TheSingle Party (1938), in whichhe laid out a political programo carry out hiseconomic deas. He called for Mussolinis kind of fascism to destroy narrowclass interests and discipline nations to overcomehe capitalist world-market.Manoileseus workhad wide appeal in eastern and southern Europe, and inLatin America Schmitter 1974). His suggestions fit the broad trend of polit-ical events in manyof the independent semideveloped countries of theseregions. In the ideological atmosphereof the 1930s fascism, not socialism,seemed o be the dynamic orce of the future.In 1977 ImmanuelWallerstein wrote, "The semi-peripheral state is pre-cisely the area where, becauseof a mix of economic ctivities, consciousstateactivities maydo most o affect the future patterning of economic ctivity. In


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90 CHIROT & HALLthe twentieth century, this takes the form of bringing socialist parties topower" 1979). In the 1930s, however, t took the form of bringing fascist andquasi-fascist parties to power n a string of semiperipheral countries caughtbetween he truly backward reas of the world and what Mussolini called the"bourgeois" or "plutocratic" nations above them (Chirot 1978). Experimentsin applying right-wing solutions ran from Brazil and Argentina to Portugal,Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania,Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and all the wayto Japan.

Alongwith a material world-system there is an ideological one. It seemssubject to rapid shifts in fashion, but often the terminologys all that changes.Theunderlyingdissatisfaction of intellectuals and leaders in the semiperipheryand advancedperiphery is neither newnor radically different from that of ahalf century ago.Dependency TheoryFrom his intellectual and political climate of dissatisfaction in the moreadvanced countries of Latin America dependency theory was born. Becauseworld-system theory is in most ways merely a North Americanadaptation ofdependency heory, there is little to distinguish them from each other astheoretical constructs. To understand dependency heory, and to know tsliterature, is to hold a firm grasp of its latter-day little Yankee rother. Ofcourse, cultural imperialismbeing what it is, the world-system heorists fromthe North are nowbeing used by Southern dependencyheorists to legitimizetheir ideas. Nomore ronic illustration could exist of core domination nd useof peripheral resources. The periphery can now eimport the product it origi-nally exported, and leave behind a surplus of cultural prestige and strength inthe core.The father of dependency theory is Ra~l Prebisch, an Argentinian whoheaded the United Nations EconomicCommission or Latin America (ECLA,or CEPALn Spanish) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Wallerstein ascribesthe terminology of core and periphery to ECLA Kaplan 1978), thoughcourse the concepts are older (and in fact Weruer Sombart used almost thesamewords n the samecontext). Prebischs ideas originated with his experi-ences as a technical advisor to Argentine governments n the 1930s while thecountry was turning from a proof of the benefits of the Ricardo-Marshalltheory of free trade into a demonstration f the vulnerability of primaryexporteconomies n times of international economiccrisis. In 1949 Prebisch pub-lished an ECLAeport (Relative Prices of Exports and Imports of Under-Developed Countries: A Study of Postwar Terms of Trade between Under-Developed nd Industrialized Nations) showing hat the terms of trade had runagainst agricultural exportingcountries from he late 19th centuryuntil the late1930s. "On he average," said the report, "a given quantity of primaryexports




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WORLD-SYSTEMHEORY 91wouldpay, at the end of this period, for only 60 per cent of the quantity ofgoods which it could buy at the beginning of the period" (Love 1980). Thiswasbecauseof the more apid increase in productivity of industrial producers.Comparative dvantage, therefore, did not operate in favor of the primaryproducers.Prebisch denies having been directly influenced by Manoilescu; but asJoseph Love has written, "Manoilescus ideas--in Latin Americancircleswhere they were known--probably helped pave the way for acceptance ofECLAoctrines when hey appeared in 1949" (Love 1980). In any case, theRomanians heories were being published in Argentine economic oumals inthe late 1930s.ECLAs heories have since become"dependency heory." But the elabo-ration of the theory has gone further than economics; t has created an entiresociology and political theory of dependentdevelopment Cardoso & Faletto1969; Jaguaribe et al 1968; dos Santos 1972). It is important o emphasize, sdoes Portes (1976), that dependencyheory is more han a simple analysisa "quasi-colonial situation of economicstagnation and foreign control ofexport enclaves. On he contrary, contemporarydependency tudies addressa situation in whichdomestic industrialization has occurred along with in-creasing economicdenationalization; in which sustained economicgrowth hasbeen accompaniedby rising social inequalities; and in which rapid urban-ization and the spread of literacy have convergedwith the even moreevidentmarginalization of the masses."

Pablo Gonzalez Casanovas recent article on Mexico 1980) is a goodexample of this. Far from being backward and dominated by a small ruraloligarchy, Mexico s urbanized, industrial, and by Third World standards,rich. But the gap between ich and poor is increasing, the growingpopulationcannot be absorbed into the labor force, and the substantial middle classdemandsmoreconsumption.Foreign capital, allied to a domestic elite, pre-vents the redistribution of wealth that would xtend to the poor the benefits ofmodemization.Nor is the govemment,ied as it is to the international fiscalsystem, able to direct new investment and spendingwhere t wishes. Instead,it inflates the currency. Mexicoshuge newpetroleumwealth alleviates theseproblems or the time being, but it cannot provide a long-termsolution. To dothat, deep structural reforms are necessary. Thusforeign influence (primarilyNorth American) s morenoxious as a barrier to structural change than asdirectly exploitive colonizer. The MexicanRevolution and the subsequentpolicies of nationalizations in the 1930s did not go far enough.

The problem of inflation induced by the helplessness of Latin Americangovernmentso control their own inances is a key part of dependency tudies(Sunkel et al 1973). The Intemational Monetary und s viewedas particularlyvillainous because its remedies o inflation stifle growthand promote epres-


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92 CHIROT HALLsive regimes. Not only Latin Americanshave discovered this, but also NorthAmerican esearchers. John Sheehan, for example, found a high correlationbetween epression and the application of capitalist efficiency criteria in LatinAmerica. This makes"bureaucratic-authoritarian" regimes the favorites ofinternational finance (ODonnell & Frankel 1978; Sheehan 1980).Dependency heorists agree that US multinational subsidiaries hurt thelong-term prospects for development n Latin Americaby investing less thanthey withdraw. The debt service of Latin Americaneconomies (acquired tobuy the machinery with which to manufacture their ownsubstitutes for im-ports) takes too high a share of earnings. The only solution is greater unity inthe face of the giant of the North, and better, integration of Latin Americaneconomies with each other (Furtado 1970; Evans 1981).

Anequally important and related problem s the availability of technology.Celso Furtado, a former director of ECLA, as written (1980) that "the controlof technologynowconstitutes the foundation of the structure of internationalpower...the struggle against dependence s becomingan effort to eliminatethe effects of the monopoly f this resource by the countries of the core." Butthis has not yet happened.In other words, industrialization based on import substitution in the mostadvanced Latin American countries has merely created new forms of de-pendenceand new sociopolitical imbalances. These are not the sameones thatcharacterized the early, semi-colonial economies,but they are just as serious(Jaguaribe et al 1970).

Dependency heory has also flourished outside Latin America. While wecannot begin to list all of its important contributors in Africa and Asia, onewhohas caught the attention of North Americanworld-system theorists de-serves special mention: Samir Amin.Moreexplicitly radical than most of theLatin Americans, Aminsempirical experience has been with the far poorercountries of Africa (1973). Though is analysis of imperialism is similar, hisdemandor socialist revolution is more nsistent. Capitalism is "debased"and"sick." Under socialism, not only will exploitation vanish, but menwillbecomemore complete, and (how utopian) even social science, like govern-ment, will disappear because it will no longer be necessary. The Cambodianexperimentof Pol Pots Khmer ouges cited as a correct lesson for emulationby Africans (1977). This kind of global eschatological revolutionary vision(Amin1980), closer to Andre GunderFrank and to Wallersteins politicalessays (Wallerstein 1979) than to the more cautious likes of Prebisch andFurtado, stirs the blood of North Americanand Western EuropeanMarxists.

There is little point in arguing whetherdependencyheorists are "right orwrong." The prevailing view amongWestern development economists is thattheir conclusions are "overdrawn...and can be questioned on both theoreticaland empirical grounds" (Meier 1976). Evidenceshows hat the terms of trade


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WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 93of poorer economies ave not deteriorated continuously n the last century, buthave fluctuated widely. Prebischs data captured only a slice of reality (Ba-iroch 1977). Even an economist like W. Arthur Lewis, sympathetic to thecause of the Third World, believes that the solutions rest more on purelyinternal reforms than on altering the nature of world trade. He particularlystresses the need to concentrate on agricultural developmentover hastyindustrialization (Lewis1978).But the widespread kepticism about dependencyheory, at least in its moreextreme forms, does not negate its contribution. Its introduction into theUnited States has at least destroyed the naive optimism about developmentexpressed by the North Americanmodernization theorists of the 1950s and1960s.WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY AND CONTEMPORARYSOCIOLOGYWallersteins influence in macrosociology, istorical sociology, and the studyof social change has been immense. His 1974 volume reintroduced oldertheories and seized the imaginations of a newgeneration of sociologists.There were three reasons for this success. First, in the early 1970s mod-ernization theory had been politically discredited by the ViemamWar, whichseemed o be an application of the anti-communist, anti-revolutionary eco-nomic development principles of Walt Rostow 1960).

Second, he domestic urmoil of the 1960s had awakened ociologists to theinequities and uneven development of the United States itself. Marxismseemed o be a theoretical solution, and Wallerstein presented it in a mod-ernized international context that tied both foreign and domesticproblems ntoa neat package.Third, a significant minority of youngersociologists thirsted for concretehistorical knowledge enied themby the sterile functionalist positivism thathad prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. That history should have been held insuch low esteem by the sociology of that period was somewhat strange,because manyof its great figures--Homans, Merton, Bendix, Eisenstadt,Barrington Moore,and Lipset--had written major historical works. Perhapsit was that history was viewed only as a useful "data source." Wallersteinlegitimized historical sociology for its own ake, and for this the field oweshim a great debt.

It is paradoxical and alarming hat in the last few years Wallersteins workhas been misused by somesociologists, whoonce again claim that dredgingthrough historical information will allow us to prove or disprove variousconventional and unimaginativesocial theories. But this development houldnot let us forget the breath of fresh air that his workoriginally gave us.




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94 CHIROT & HALLWallersteins FollowersMany f the first books that followed Wallersteins theories and style wereproducedby his ColumbiaUniversity students. Hechter (1975) showed hatcore-periphery relation could be used to explain persisting ethnic tensions incore societies. The exploited Celtic fringe of the United Kingdom ad beenturned into Englandsperiphery. Rather than diminishing Celtic particularism,this fringes integration into the United Kingdomhad perpetuated andstrengthened it. By analogy, the same model might be applied to Canada,Spain, the United States, and perhaps even France. Industrialization had not,as previously predicted, ended regionalism, local ethnic nationalism, or other"status" distinctions in favor of pure class divisions. Chirot (1976) analyzeda typically peripheral society, Romania, laiming that after a long exposure ocapitalist market forces, it had found itself hopelessly poor and backward.Moulder 1977) explained Japans rapid development y its ability to shielditself from economiccolonialism. Qing China, on the other hand, had sup-posedly been penetrated by western capitalism in the 19th century, and hadbeen peripheralized so that its development was blocked. Block (1977)explained the modem apitalist banking and financial system in world-systemic terms.This kind of work has continued and spread (see Kaplan 1978; Goldfrank1979; Hopkins & Wallerstein 1980; Rubinson 1981). Billingss 1979).first-rate study of post-Civil WarNorth Carolinas industrialization demon-strates the utility of world-system theory in explaining domestic Americansocial history. Peter Evanss book on Brazil (1979) combinesa sophisticateduse of Latin American dependency theory and Wallersteinian concepts toexamine the role of the world economy and multinational firms in thatcountrys spectacular but uneven ndustrialization in the 1960s and 70s. Thepolitical scientist Bruce Cumings,while not directly a "world-system the-orist," has used someof the theory to propose a major new interpretation ofthe origins of the KoreanWar(1981). Many ecent and forthcoming booksa variety of countries and historical situations incorporate some ofWallersteins ideas.Quantitative WorM-System TheoryIn his ownwork Wallerstein has been studiously nonquantitative, but histheories are not logically inconsistent with strict quantitative positivism. Hech-ter (1975) was one of the first to see this. In the late 1970sa whole choolquantitative world-system theorists grew up at Stanford. The world-systemcomponent nd the major theoretical impetus camefrom John Meyer, and thequantitative vigor from Hannan see the articles in Meyer&Hannan 979).Beginning with a project to study world education, and moving o problemsof ethnicity, they came o adopt many f Wallersteins ideas and to urge theirstudents to test them with cross-national quantitative data. Rubinsonand




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WORLD-SYSTEMHEORY 95Chase-Dunn ave become he best knownof their students. Though hey donot limit themselves o quantitative cross-national data analysis, that is wherethey have made their reputations (Rubinson 1976; Chase-Dunn 975; Chase-Dunn& Rubinson1977). Bergesen has edited a useful book extending tradi-tional hypothesis-testing techniques to historical materials (1980).Such work has gained quick popularity. It combines he ideological andpolitical punch of Marxismwith the safe and marketable technology taught tomodemociology graduate students. Because t is so easy to find someUnitedNations data, run it through a machine, and tack on a little world-systemverbiage, it is a style that has been abused. But it has produceda few inter-esting ideas and tests of Wallersteins theories and those of his followers.Ragin, occasionally working with Delacroix (also from the Stanford group)has published major articles in this genre (Ragin 1977; Delacroix & Ragin1978). He has discussed both the pattern of world economicdevelopment ndethnic survival and reaction in developed countries to show some of theimportant limitations of world-system formulations. Snyder & Kick (1979)have devised a way o use block modelling in world-systemic studies.Cultural AnthropologyOneof the most fruitful areas for the development f world-system heory hasbeen cultural anthropology. There, these ideas have helped liberate fieldworkfrom overly narrow description by suggesting ways in which major inter-national currents have affected seemingly solated and primitive cultures (Dan-ielle 1981). Schneider & Schneiders book about the peripheralization ofSicily (1976) is a goodexampleof this, as are many f the articles in CarolSmiths edited volumes (1976). Verdery is presently completing a bookTransylvanianhistory that combines he systematic study of a village with alarger historical study of the Austro-HungarianEmpire and its role in thespread of capitalism to c~entral and eastern Europe forthcoming). John Cole(1977) has argued that the recent reexamination of European peasantsanthropologists has been influenced by a world-systemic perspective.Writers on subjects as different as the Peruvian wool rade (Orlove 1977),the British Royal Botanical Gardens(Brockway 979), and pre-contact Meso-american trade patterns (Pailes & Whitecotton 1979) have used Wallerstein.Thoughhis literature is not by sociologists, it exemplifies the artificialityof the boundarybetweenvarious disciplines that study theoretically relatedtopics.The Fernand Braudel CenterAfter his great success, Wallerstein moved o the State University of NewYork at Binghamtono head the new Fernand Braudel Center. There, assistedby TerenceHopkins,he has established himself at the heart of an international


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96 CHIROT & HALLenterprise to develop and spread his theories. The Center publishes its ownjournal, Review,in which he latest related findings and debates can be found.Wallerstein also edits a series in conjunction with the FrenchMaisondesSciences de lHornme or CambridgeUniversity Press. It has published booksranging from Romanianural history (Stahl 1980), through the history of earlycolonial Mexico (Frank 1979), to studies of Algerias economy nd eth-nography during its colonial period (Bourdieu 1979).Two f the Braudel Centers most interesting projects are the study of longcycles in the capitalist world-economynd the examinationof the history ofOttomanperipheralization.The capitalist economyhas always been subject to waves or cycles ofexpansion and contraction, and the reasons for these are imperfectly under-stood. There is little question, for example, hat after the boom f the 1950sand 1960s, most capitalist economies ntered a period of relative stagnationin the 1970s. This slowdown hreatens to becomea major world economiccrisis in the 1980s. It has affected someof the peripheral and semiperipheraleconomies ven more strongly than the core, though a weakcore economyikeBritains has been badly hurt. Nor have communisteconomies, which reen-tered the capitalist trading network in the 1960s, been spared. High inter-national debt, falling agricultural production, and inflation have increasedsocial tensions in such different countries as Poland, Romania,Nigeria, Tan-zania, and Peru.Kondratieffs 1926 study of long (47-60 years) cycles in the capitalistword-economyound three periods of rise and fall from the 1780s until thestart of the post-WorldWar slump (Kondratieff 1979). His predictions havebeen surprisingly accurate. The downturn hat began n the 1920s lasted untilthe late 1930s, and completed he cycle that had begunwith the rising pros-perity of the 1890s. The post-WordWarII boom an from the late 1940s untilabout 1970, equalling the average 25 year period of previous up cycles. Couldit be that the present down art of the cycle will last into the 1990s?The Braudel Centers research on this question (see Review, II, 4, 1979)begins with Kondratieff, and has tried to extend his waves urther into the pastas well as to project them nto the future. So far, convincingexplanations forthe cycles have not fully materialized. Conventional theories have concen-trated on the discovery of new techniques for exploiting previously unusedresources. This causes a rapid rise in profits for those whocontrol the newtechnologies. There follows a period of falling returns as the new resourcebecomes elatively less abundant and dearer to exploit. In these terms (ofcourse we are simplifying) the cycle after 1945 might be viewed as a wavedominated by petroleum, which has gone from being an abundant, cheapenergy source, to being an expensiveone in the 1970s. The great merit of theBraudelCenters approach s to tie economic ycles to cycles of political and


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WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 97economichegemony y particular core powers, and to the creation and ex-ploitation of newperipheries in each cycle. The latest cycle has been charac-terized by Americandominance and now decline in the world-economy.

Whether or not a good explanation will be found for this phenomenonremainsan openquestion. It is not even certain that we are in a lasting 20 or30 year decline. But it is at this level that world-system heory offers thegreatest promise for the discovery of new ideas, and where a genuinelyworld-wide perspective enriches the narrower view of conventional econo-mists and students of social change.TheOttoman roject (see Review, I, 3) is morehistorically specific, but itpromises o give us a greater understandingof howperipheralization occurs.World-systemheory has been rather weak n distinguishing betweendifferenttypes of pre-industrial agrarian empires (see below). If the study of Ottomandecline and the absorption of its territories into the capitalist world-economyfrom the 17th to the 19th century comes o fruition, this weaknesswill bepartially remedied. Again, this is an area much tudied by historians, butworld-system heory can offer new deas and integrate regional history withlarger trends.Despite this activity and someunquestionable successes, serious questionshave arisen about the adequacyof world-system heory, and about major gapsit has left unexplored in the history of social change and economicdevel-opment.SOME CRITICISMS OF THE THEORYWorld-system heory has had few critics in sociology. Those whodislike itmoreor less ignore it, and those whopractice it tend to take its fundamentalassertions as received truths. Minormodifications or additions are made,butfrontal attacks on Wallerstein and his followers have so far been limited tooccasional book reviews (e.g. Skocpol 1977; Janowitz 1977; Chirot 1980).Some istorians have attacked particular applications of his theories, but fewscholars in any field have the encyclopedic knowledge equired to tackle thewhole ntellectual system directly.Reversed Causality: Brenners CritiqueAn important exception is historian Robert Brenner. In 1976 he showed hatthe economicbackwardness f eastern Europe primarily Poland) in the earlymodernperiod did not arise from "dependence." Rather, it was backwardnessthat eventually produced the "dependent" pattern. In England, it was thereverse. Internal agrarian transformations made ts rapid economicdevel-opmentpossible, and it was only this that allowed England to create itsEmpire.


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98 CHIROT & HALLIn 1977 Brenner attacked Wallerstein directly using, among thers, theworks of the Pole Marian Malowist, whohad been one of Wallersteins maininspirations. Brenners explanations were not new. They repeated the con-

ventional wisdom stablished by most economichistorians whohad studiedthese questions. But by tackling Wallerstein, Frank, and their followers (aswell as Sweezy)Brenner highlighted the key gap in their work: They neglectto study the reasons for the economicsuccess, the technological dynamism,and the fundamental novelty of what was happening in England and theNetherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries.In a little-noticed book review that generally praised Wallerstein, Lenski(1976) had expressed his surprise at Wallersteins neglect of technology.Brenner (1977) proved that this was not an oversight, but was instead the keyto Wallersteins attempt to prove that Poland was not muchbehind the mostadvanced parts of western Europe n the 15th century. Perry Anderson 1974)had correctly concluded that in the late middle ages Poland was a vast,underpopulated area with predominantly poor soils, a backwardagriculturaltechnology, and a fragile, decayingurban networkbefore the grain trade withthe West began.Brenner 1977)noted that Wallersteinserror is tied to his refusal to analyzethe interplay betweenclass structure and economic rowth. It also leads to astrange misunderstanding bout the presence or absence of strong states. Corestates are necessarily strong, and weakstates are peripheral according toWallerstein. True, Poland in the 17th century had becomea weak (decen-tralized) state, but so were the Netherlandscomparedo, say,. France. Waller-stein (1980) nevertheless continues to maintain hat the Netherlandscompriseda strong state whose ong-term economicsuccess was based on internationalpower and conscious manipulation of markets by a strong core government.The reality was different. The very class structures that favored independentcapitalists made t impossible for absolutist royal bureaucracies o flourish.The capitalists were then successful in their international business becausethey were more nnovative and efficient than their competitors, not because oftheir "strong states."This error, the unwillingness o analyze internal class dynamicsn search ofexplanations for capitalisms economic strength, has consequences for theanalysis of late 20th century economicproblems. Brenner (1977) shows hatthe Wallerstein-Frank hesis proposesautarkic closure as the best strategy fordevelopment y contemporaryThird-World ountries. But this shifts the focusaway rom increasing productivity of labor to nationalism. It is easy to see howthis "leftist" analysis rejoins the fascist prescriptions of Mussoliniand Man-oilescu even if today it appeals primarily to a certain type of neo-Marxist.(Wallerstein nowdenies that he favors autarky for most peripheral and semi-peripheral countries. Nevertheless, his workencourages autarkic solutions,




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WORLD-SYSTEMHEORY 99and he greatly admires countries such as North Korea that have tried toapproach autarky. Other world-system and dependency theorists, such asSamir Amin,have retained their faith in autarky despite the obvious lim-itations of that policy where t has been tried.)Whatever onfirmation of world-systemheory exists in short-term statisti-cal analysis of Third-Worldeconomiesperpetuates Wallersteins reversal ofcausality. Noone denies that patterns of dependencyxist, or that there is agreat transnational capitalist market. But whetherdependencys a cause or aneffect of backwardnessmakesall the difference in which remedies are sug-gested. (For discussion of more nstances of this error in world-systemheory,see Chirot 1981.)A Comprehensive Theory?Despite the claims of its supporters, world-system heory is far from compre-hensive. The treatment of pre-capitalist societies is skimpy despite the inter-esting review article by Moseley& Wallerstein (1978)]. No one can faultWallerstein or not knowingll history, but his insistence on the failure of theclassical empires o industrialize because their political and economicystemshappened o coincide leads to another error symptomaticof a more generalexplanatory gap.Certain long-lasting "world-economies"ailed to producea capitalist world-economy. The Persian Gulf, the Iranian Plateau, "and the eastern Me-diterranean formed such a "system" for two thousand years. So did India fromthe time of the Maurya o the British conquest, another two millenia. TheIslamic Near East and North Africa from the collapse of centralized Abbasidrole to the Ottomanconquest were a veritable "world-economy" or fivecenturies. Why, hen, was Europe so special in the 15th century?Subsumingall world-empires under one, inherently stagnant rubric isgrossly misleading. China from the time of the Han to the Mingwent throughperiods of rapid technological and economicgrowth (Elvin 1973). To comparethis case with that of Egypt, whichwas moreor less stagnant between he timeof the Pyramidsand the Macedonianonquest 2300 years later, is to believemistakenly that there existed a single "Asiatic modeof production."By urning all pre-capitalist states into a uniform traditional" type, world-system heory finds it difficult to explain why he reaction to capitalist pene-tration was so different fromplace to place and continues to vary in importantways oday. The general tendency o lumpall precapitalist societies into twosimple types (and "minisystems" are an even more simplistic type than"world-empires")s perilously close to the ahistorical eurocentrism hat char-acterized modernizationheory. It leads to the same nability to discriminatebetween ifferent societies without resorting to irrelevant and artificial con-structs.


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100 CHIROT HALLSocialism?Mostprominentworld-system heorists share an enthusiastic faith in socialismas a solution to problemscausedby capitalist exploitation. This faith affectstheir analysis of the world. It mustbe questionedbecause t leads to moreblindspots.Wallerstein (1979) excuses manyof the faults of communistcountriesshowing hat they are obliged to operate in a capitalist world-system. Theycannot, therefore, move o their ideal state until world capitalism is over-thrown. But is this a useful way to understand what goes on in communistcountries? It is surely no coincidence that world-systempractitioners havenever produced a serious book about communist ocieties, even though theyhave written dozensof interesting ones about the effects of peripherality andsemiperipherality in the rest of the world.Wallersteins own nomenclature should have suggested a better way ofanalyzing the Soviet Union han those used so far by world-system heorists.Far from being a core or semiperipheral society, the Soviet Union is anold-fashioned world-empire, perhaps the last of its kind. It does not exploiteastern Europeand Cuba, t subsidizes them n return for military and strategicadvantages. Like Rome,at least from the early 2nd century, it is run by andfor a military-bureaucratic ruling class. Its only dynamic mpulse comes romheavy industry used for armaments. Otherwise, like the late RomanEmpire,it is beset by inherent problemsof stagnation and the discontent of subjectpeoples in its administrative periphery.The emphasis in Wallerstein on future world-socialist revolution entirelyavoids the issue of class dynamics nder socialism, and it fails to ask the basicquestion: How s long-run increasing labor productivity possible outside cap-italism? Amongheoretical issues few could be more mportant or further frombeing solved than this one. [For a first-rate study of these problems, seeHirszowicz (1980).]

World-systemheorys transposition of Marx o an international plane hasbeen accompaniedby an assertion that, on the whole, economically periph-eralized people are being continuously immiserized. That is why here willeventually be a world revolution against the "bourgeois" core. Wallerstein(1979) believes that capitalist economic rowth is a zero-sumgame.Countriesthat develop do so only at the expenseof others that lose. Since only a fewgrow, most decline. The widening gap in per capita GNPbetween rich andpoorcountries, then, is not an anomaly ut a natural result of capitalist growth.Onlysocialism can change this.But is capitalist economicdevelopment a zero-sum game?Kuznets (1971)and Bairoch (1977) have shown hat it is not, and that in the post-SecondWorldWarperiod the growthrate of poorer countries has been higher than the




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WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 101

historic growth rate of the old core. More ecent data (NewYork Times1979)confirm his. Thehigher per capita growth ate of richer countries is entirelya function of the rapid population growth n the poorer parts of the world; andno matter what one thinks about population problems, this growth is itselfproof of the increasing availability of material goods and services that insurehigher survival rates. As Morris (1979) has shown,almost the whole world hasexperiencedgreat improvementn the measurable quality of life" in the lastseveral decades.Capitalism may, indeed, fail to stimulate production sufficiently to meetfuture population growth, and we mayone day be faced with a desperateMalthusian risis. But this is by no stretch of the imagination he result of aconstant trend towardabsolute immiserization,nor is it even a certain future.Blaming apitalism and hoping for a socialist revolution to rescue the worldonce again obviates study of what is going on within countries. Why avesome imited their population growth while others have not?Economicistorians are no longer sure that capitalist colonialism itself washarmful to economic growth in the periphery. The outcomedepended on thecolony, the colonizers, and the period of colonization. For example, theeffects of plantation slavery in the Caribbeanmayhave been negative (Mintz1977)for the reasonsasserted by world-systemheory, but British rule in Indiamaynot have retarded industrialization at all (Morris et al 1969).The Issue of CultureFor world-system heorists as for most other Marxists deas are merely epiphe-nomenal.But even if cultures are ultimately produced by material conjunc-tions, once they are in place they take on a life of their own. World-systemtheorys refusal to study such matters reduces its grasp of social changeandeconomicprogress.That the triumphof a specific type of capitalist rationality in westernEuropein the 16th and 17th centuries resulted from the success of the bourgeoisclasses in asserting their independence rom church and king, and that it hadfurther consequences n the flowering of modemcience, is part of Weberscentral theory of capitalist development (Weber1968). Merton (1970)others have shown hat the historical connection between ncreasing religiousrationality and the growthof science was tight.The capitalist cores ability to exploit weakperipheries was neither a newnor an unusual phenomenon, nd it maynot have been decisive in sustainingeconomic rowth. But toleration and eventually support of free thinking intel-lectuals for so long and on such a large scale was unique. It remainsan unusualphenomenonutside the capitalist core to this day.Capitalisms toleration goes beyondsupport of intellectuals. It has been


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102 CH1ROT & HALLextended to much f the population of Westerncapitalist societies. This hascontributed to raising large portions of the masses o a high level of skill andeducation. It has, over time, with much ifficulty, and with frequent reverses,inculcated a secular, scientific approach o the calculability of economic c-tions.The failure of world-system heory to grapple with these facts is evident inits inability to explain whyeconomicdevelopment ffects large areas withroughlysimilar historical and cultural traditions in similar ways, regardless oftheir poweror position in the world-system.Thus northwestern Europe, whichindustralized before the rest of the world, included England, followed closelyby Belgium,northern France, western Germany,Switzerland, and the Nether-lands. Switzerland was a weak, internationally insignificant state; Belgiumwas not independentuntil well after its industrialization; and westernGermanywas politically subordinated to the state that absorbed it. Later, industri-alization spread to Scandinaviawhere n the 18th century there had supposedlyexisted only a peripheral (Denmark)and a failed semiperipheral (Sweden)society destined for the same ate as Spain after its failure a century earlier(Wallerstein 1980; Bairoch 1965).These facts are no more surprising than the later successes of the UnitedStates, Canada, and Australia, despite their entry into the world-systemasprimary exporters, and despite the continued peripherality (in strict de-pendency heory terms) of the latter two. Some ocieties learned the cultureof industrialization easily because hey were close to it from he start.CONCLUSIONWorld-system heory and its close ally dependency heory have many laws.Their economic history sometimeshas been wrong. The naked political biasand revolutionary polemicevident in someof their writings showhoweasy itis to fall into blind dogmatism.The attack against capitalism has not beenaccompanied y a convincing explanation of what might replace it. There aremajor empirical and theoretical gaps. But this cannot deprive them of theirimportanceand real virtues.Studying ndividual societies in isolation fromeach other is both misleadingand dangerous. It hides the powerful transnational forces that have been amajor part of all social and economicransformations since the 15th century.It yields incomplete, and often wrongconclusions about the nature of socialproblems. Sociologyhas tended to fall into this kind of a trap. World-systemtheory can thus be seen as a necessary remedy.Whether r not one agrees withall of its conclusions, it is abundantlyclear that a world-wide erspective hasbecomea minimal requirement for the intelligent study of social change.




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WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 103Wallersteinandhis followers have reminded s, too, that such a perspectivemustnecessarily be historical anddeal in centuries, not merelydecades, evenfor the study of contemporaryroblems.

None f this is new, nor must t comewith a leftist bias. Webers rogramfor the study of sociology was broadly comparative nd historical, and itcombinedconomic,political, andcultural research. But because Weber adbeenmore ited than followed, it wastime to bring back hat kind of visionto the forefront of sociology. That it came n the particular formknown sworld-systemheory s the product f intellectual and deological forces in ourworld. Thoseof us whodislike these forces are nonethelessobliged to recog-nize the contribution madeby world-system heory. Thoseothers of us who,on the contrary, are pleased by the ideology that accompanies he theoryshould equally recognize that its importances not based primarilyon itsideological stance.Literature CitedAlmond, G. A., Powell, G. B. 1966. Com-parative Politics: A Developmental Ap-proach. Boston: Little Brown. 348 pp.Almond, G. A., Verba, S. 1963. The CivicCulture: Political Attitudes and Democracyin Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniv. Press. 562 pp.Amin, S. 1973. Neo-Colonialism in West Af-

rica. NY: Monthly Review. 298 pp.Amin, S. 1977. Imperialism and Unequal De-velopment. NY: Monthly Review. 267 pp.Amin, . 1980.Lenouvel rdre~conomique:quel avenir? Rev. Tiers-Monde21;41-61Anderson, P. 1974. PassagesfromAntiquity toFeudalism. London: NLB.304 pp.Bairoch, P. 1965. Niveau de drveloppement6conomique au XIXe si~cle. Ann. ECS20:1092-1117Bairoch, P. 1977. The EconomicDevelopmentof the Third Worm since 1900.Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. Calif. Press.260 pp.Balandier, G. 1951. La situation coloniale: ap-proche throrique. Cah. Int. Sociol.11:47-79Baran, P.A. 1957. The Political Economy fGrowth. NY: Monthly Review. 308 pp.Bell, D. 1973. The Comingof Post-lndustrialSociety: A Venture in Social Forecasting.NY: Basic Books, 507 pp.Bergesen, A., ed. 1980. Studies of the ModernWorM-System. NY: Academic. 281 pp.Bhagwati, J. N., ed. 1977. The New nter-national EconomicOrder: The North-SouthDebate. Cambridge, MA:M.I.T. 390 pp.Billings, D. B. 1979. Planters and the Makingof a "NewSouth": Class, Politics, and De-velopment in North Carolina, 1865-1900

Chapel Hill NC: Univ. N. Carolina Press.284 pp.Block, F. 1977. The Origins of lnternationalEconomicDisorder. Berkeley/Los Angeles:Univ. Calif. Press. 282 pp.Bourdieu, P. 1979. Algeria 1960. Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press. 158 pp.Brenner, R. 1976. Agrarian class structure andeconomicdevelopment n pre-industrial Eu-rope. Past and Present 70:30-75Brenner, R. 1977. The origins of capitalist de-velopment:a critique of neo-SmithianMarx-ism. NewLeft Rev. 104:25-92Brockway, L. H. 1979. Science and colonialexpansion: the role of the British RoyalBo-tanical Gardens. Am. Ethnol. 6:449-65Bukharin, N. I. 1929. Imperialism and WorldEconomy.NY: Int. Publ. 173 pp.Cardoso, F. H., Faletto, E. 1969. Depen-dencia y desarrollo en AmericaLatina: En-sayo de interpretacirn sociolrgica. MexicoCity: Siglo XXI. 166 pp.Chase-Dunn,C. 1975. The effects of inter-national economic dependence on devel-opment and inequality: a cross-nationalstudy. Am. Sociol. Rev. 40:720-38Chase-Dunn, C., Rubinson, R. 1977. Towarda structural perspective on the world-system. Pol. Soc. 7:453-76Chirot, D. 1976. Social Change n a Periph-eral Society: The Creation of a Balkan Col-ony. NY: Academic. 179 pp.Chirot, D. 1978. A Romanian relude to contemporary debates about development. Re-view 2:115-23Chirot, D, 1980. ImmanuelWallerstein. TheModem World-Economy. Soc. Forces59:538-43


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104 CHIROT & HALLChirot, D. 1981. Changing fashions in thestudy of the social causes of economic ndsocial change. In The State of Sociology,ed.J. F. Short, pp. 259-82. Beverly Hills: SageCipolla, C. M. 1965. Guns, Sails and Em-pires: Technological Innovation and theEarly Phases of European Expansion1400-1700. NY: Minerva. 192 pp.Cole, J. W. 1977. Anthropology comes part-way home: community studies in Europe.Ann. Rev. Anthropol. 6:349-78Cumings, B. 1981. The Origins of the KoreanWar: Liberation and the Creation of Sepa-rate Regimes, 1945-1947. Princeton, NJ:Princeton Univ. Press. 522 pp.Dadzie, K. K. S. 1980. Economic devel-opment. Sci. Am. 243:58-65Danielle, M. 1981. Fieldwork. NY: Avon. 220pp-Delacroix, J., Ragin, C. 1978. Modernizinginstitutions, mobilization, and third worlddevelopment: cross-national study. Am. J.Sociol. 84:123-50Dos Santos, T. 1972. Socialismo ofascismo, elnuevo caracter de la dependencia y el di-lema latinoamericano. Buenos Aires:Perfireria SRL. 342 pp.Elvin, M. 1973. The Pattern of the ChinesePast. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press. 346PP.Emmanuel, A. 1972. Unequal Exchange. NY:Monthly Review. 453 pp.Emmanuel, A. 1977. Gains and losses fromthe international division of labor. Review1:87-108Emmanuel,A. 1980. Le "prix r6mun6rateur",6pilogue ~ T6change in6gal". Rev. Tiers-Monde21:21-39Evans, P. 1979. Dependent Development: TheAlliance of Multinational, State, and LocalCapital in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniv. Press. 362 pp.Evans, P. 1981. Recent research on multi-national corporations. Ann. Rev. Sociol.7:199-223

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