SOC251 week6 世界体系

The feudal crisis

After population and commerce expanded during 1150-1300, there was a feudal crisis by serval reasons

• Agricultural production fell or remained stagnant

• 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. [ “Little Ice Age”, Black Death]

World economy

• Capitalism is a world system (and today’s system); instead, feudalism is local and regional

• emerged around 15-16 centuries

• Different with empire

  • Empire: maintained specific political boundaries, maintained control through bureaucracy and army

  • Capitalist world system: based on an international division of labor that determined relationships between different regions as well as the types of labor conditions within each region.

4 different categories in world system

1. Core

2. Semi-periphery

3. Periphery

4. External

The Core

• Benefited the most from the capitalist world economy

• Northwestern Europe (England, France, Holland)

• 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

The Periphery

• 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.

• Eastern Europe (Poland) and Latin America

  • In Poland: Kings lost power to nobility, landlords forced rural workers into a “second serfdom” to gain sufficient cheap and easily controlled labor

  • In Latin America: destroyed indigenous authority structure, replaced them with weak bureaucracies under the control of these European states

• Enslavement of the native populations, the importation of African slaves, and the coercive labor practices 为了输出原料而非内部消费

  • Encomienda

  • Forced mine labor made possible the export of cheap raw materials to Europe

The Semi-Periphery

• Either core regions in decline or peripheries attempting to improve their relative position in the world economic system

• Exhibited tensions between the central government and a strong local landed class because they often served as buffers between the core and the peripheries.

• Portugal and Spain

  • Spain gained gold from America but those wealth went to core region rather than improve domestic manufacturing sector

• Exploited by the core but, often were exploiters of peripheries themselves.

External Areas

• Maintained their own economic system and manage to remain outside the modern world economy

• Russia

  • Government regulate the economy and limited foreign commercial influence

Stage of growth 1 and 2

• 1450-1670

• Western European states attempted to strengthen their respective positions within the new world system.

• They increase internal political economic and social resources by

  • Bureaucratization: through collecting taxes, the kings increased power → absolute monarchy

  • Homogenization of the local population: to encourage local businesses to develop, expel ethnic minorities

  • Expansion of the militia: to support the centralized monarchy and to protect the new state from invasions.

  • Absolutism: Combating feudalism, improving capitalism

  • Diversification fo economic activities: maximize profits and strengthen the position of the local bourgeoisie.

• World system structure was changed over time (around 1640 Spain became semi-periphery rather than remained core)

• Workers in Europe experienced a dramatic fall in wages → capitalists accumulated surplus and capitalism developed

• Long-distance trade with the Americas and the East provided enormous profits → strengthened the merchants' hold over European agriculture and industries → This powerful merchant class provided the capital necessary for the industrialization of European core states.

Stage of growth 3 and 4

• 18th century and beyond

• Industrial rather than agricultural capitalism represented this era

• European explored and exploited new markets

• More and more countries got involved into this system: Indian Ocean, Latin American, Asia and Africa (most of them are peripheral zones) → increased the available surplus, allowing more areas like US and Germany to enhance their core status

• Core regions shifted from a combination of agricultural and industrial interests to purely industrial concerns.

• Core areas encouraged the rise of industries in peripheral and semi-peripheral zones so that they could sell machines to these regions.

why modernization had such wide-ranging and different effects on the world

• Geographic expansion of the capitalist world economy altered political systems and labor conditions wherever it was able to penetrate.

• 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

• Controlling relationships:

  • Core region training forced army in periphery

  • Local comprador elites (landlords) in periphery who worked with core region to gain profit

Crisis

Crisis(1970s) → Globalization → Crisis(2008)

This is because of the hegemonic cycle

1960-1970s both hegemonic cycle and overall economic cycle were declined

Kondratieff cycle

1. Expansion starts with infrastructure investment and rising demand for capital goods.

2. Expected returns gradually decline and fall below interest rates

3. Investment falls, while overcapacity creates excess inventories

4. Firms respond by cutting costs and laying off workers, which depresses consumption.

5. A long period of stagnation follows, until a new round of investment is triggered by infrastructure, resource booms, or technological innovation

• A-phase: world-economy is expanding significantly some ‘leading; products are relatively monopolized and large amounts of capital can be accumulated

• B-phase: monopolies are self-liquidating - new producers enter the world market, competition rises, prices go down and therefore profits go down too. Products decline sufficiently, the world economy cease to expanse

raison d’être

Capitalism is a system in which the endless accumulation of capital

Accumulate capital:

• 生产者能够获利 - Obtain profits from their operations

  • How：In a situation fo perfect competition, there should be a monopoly, or at least a quasi-monopoly, of world-economic power is required

• 世界体系中有某种相对稳定的秩序保障这个获利 - Some kind of global order

  • Wars destroy capitals and disturbed international trade

  • Hegemonic power: set up global rules, keep the system work and the profits achieve

Hegemonic cycles

• The hegemon is then able to set the rules by which the interstate system operates, to assure its smooth functioning and to maximize the flow of accumulated capital to its citizens and productive enterprises

• geopolitical quasi-monopoly

• Hegemonic cycles have been much longer than Kondratieff cycles

  • E.g. United Provinces(17c), UK(19c), US(20c)

• 生产上领先，然后国际规则上主导

• The problem for the hegemonic power is the same as that facing a leading industry: its monopoly is self-liquidating

  • Need militarily to maintain order, but wars cost money and lives

  • Other countries begins to rise

Displacing the old left

The world revolution of 1968

1. 1960s, old left rise (communists, social-democrats and national liberation), control some world/nations’ power (普通民众在A周期中获得权益保障）, Decolonization and similar movements happened, America hegemony decline

2. 1968, old left didn’t fulfill the promise

   1. other social problems besides class emerged (race, gender…)

   2. Rigidity and Bureaucracy

3. Neoliberal globalization rise: destroy the welfare state, improve free market

The offensive of the world right was both a great success and a great failure.

Success

• Sustained the accumulation fo capital - keep capitalism as world system

Failure

• Turn from seeking profits through productive efficiency to seeking them though financial manipulation

• Key mechanism has been the fostering of consumption via indebtedness

• Happened in every Kondratieff B-phase (after the expansion in A-phase)

• Bubbles moved through the whole world-system

systemic overheads

production costs are those of personnel, inputs and taxation. All three have been rising as a percentage of the actual prices for which products are sold.

• personnel costs

  • A-phases: wages of the relatively unskilled workforce tend to increase

  • B-phases: capital tries to reduce wage costs through relocation

  • But in the long run, cost pressures cannot be completely eliminated

• input costs

• taxation

The spirit of Davos

One of the possible new system after the weakening of old world system from 1968

• A successor system that still resembles the present one

• Hierarchical, exploitative, and polarizing

• Internally divided into two tendencies:

  • a highly repressive tendency that relies on direct control by privileged rulers over submissive subjects

  • a meritocratic tendency that seeks to preserve inequality through persuasion, expertise, and limited force

The spirit of Porto Alegre

One of the possible new system after the weakening of old world system from 1968

• A radically different successor system

• Relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian

• Internally divided into two tendencies:

  • a decentralized-democratic tendency that values rational long-term allocation, broad social accountability, and innovation without insulated expert rule 自下而上

  • a top-down transformational tendency led by cadres and specialists, favoring a more coordinated and integrated system with formal egalitarianism 自上而下