The Modern World-System

The fundamental reason the Marxist view of the world is so successful and proliferated is its simplicity and easiness to understand. The Marxist communism has a fundamental idea which it applies upon whatever comes in their way; dividing a whole into two parts: the exploiter and the exploited. This is capitalism, they say. But only Marxists have this world-view.
      The idea is simple and intuitive, it is attractive. The basic structure of exploitation, of power, can be found everywhere in our everyday lives; in the family, at work, in politics. (If one wishes to see an unequal relationship, one can easily find one.) The identification of the weak being bossed around by the powerful speaks directly to our sense of morality, and of justice, of every individual’s “equal value.” This inequality calls for our sympathy – and our action.
      The Marxist philosophies take this fundamental idea and twists it until it seems like a sophisticated theory. They even claim it is the result of years of statistical or empirical research.
      Karl Marx identified two basic classes in the nineteenth century; the workers and the capitalists (bourgeoisie). He claimed these invented abstractions were for real, and that they, as wholes, were unequal. The unequal distribution of power between these abstractions caused a fundamental tension between the two, which Marx called capitalism.
      While Marx applied the idea only to national relations, Lenin identified the same relationship in international politics in 1917 by inventing a “core” abstraction and a “peripheral” abstraction of countries. It is in essence the same relationship as is identified by Marx, and it is the same relationship as identified by contemporary Marxist philosophers between men and women, whites and blacks, rich and poor, bourgeoisie and worker class.
      The core is exploiting the natural resources of the periphery to increase and keep their prosperity, and thus it explains imperialism and the colonized world. The basic idea is simple but not applicable, but by tilting it a bit it will fit whatever is studied.
      However, the world is constantly changing, making the Lenin theory of imperialism not fully accurate even when tilted. Thus, Immanuel Wallerstein, a famous American neo-Marxist philosopher, has reinvented the Lenin model and added parameters to make it fit the world today.
      Wallerstein claims the world-system of today is a [capitalist] world-economy, implying the exploitation relationship between abstractions of countries. However, since the world-economy is more complex today than in 1917 Wallerstein simply adds a new, intermediate abstraction; the semi-periphery, which encompasses most of the countries not fitting in the other two. This makes the theory seem much more advanced, but it is not. There is simply another exploitative relationship added; the core exploits the semi-periphery that in turn exploits the periphery.
      The World-System model, Wallerstein and other alike theorists claim, is empirically tested and proved. But it seems neither Wallerstein nor the others are willing to categorize existing countries into core, semi-periphery, and periphery respectively. Maybe such direct application of the model would prove the World-System theory does not fit the obvious reality, but only a Marxist illusory world.
      The simplicity of such Marxist theories make them very attractive to scientists and students, but they are all based on fundamental fallacies: the theories never include behavior of individual actors (which should be the rational basis of any model including actors), only abstractions; and they are based on a Marxist definition of capitalism. Thus, while arguing a Marxist model is correct, it is necessary to fabricate a Marxist “real” world.
      Wallerstein argues the modern World-System clearly shows capitalism contains a basic contradiction. There is, he says in Unthinking Social Science (page 261, Polity Press, 1991), “systemic structures” making “one set of behaviour optimal for actors in the short run, and a different, even opposite set of behaviour optimal for the same actors in the middle run”.
      This is explained by Hobden and Wyn Jones in Globalizing World Politics (page 132-133, Baylis & Smith (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997), who claim it is a short-term interest of capitalists “to maximize profits through driving down the wages of the producers, i.e. their workers.” But “to realize their profits, capitalists need to sell the products that their workers produce to consumers who are willing and able to buy them.” The contradiction, they say, exists in that “the workers are also the potential consumers, and the more that wage levels are driven down in the quest to maximize profits, the less purchasing-power the workers enjoy. Thus, capitalists end up with shelves full of things that they are unable to sell and no way of getting their hands on profits.”
      In any limited one factory-society this would probably be true. In a market society it is obviously not.
      Another Marxist-inspired theory tries to explain a market economy, claiming everyone’s acting in their self-interest (which should be the rational outcome of a free market) will inevitably make everybody worse off. If everyone is acting in their self-interest, the theory claims, the capitalists would like to cut their workers’ wages, while other capitalists should not. But since all capitalists are alike, they all cut wages. The result is lower income for all workers, and thus marginalized profits for capitalists since nobody can afford buying their products.
      Marxists even claim a free-market economy is fundamentally based on the coercion of the state, since capitalism needs a [government] framework within which property rights can be upheld and enforced. Also, Hobden and Wyn Jones argue, the state offers services no capitalist would ever think of producing: capitalists fail to “invest in the human and physical infrastructure necessary for their [the capitalists’] long-term prosperity.” Examples of this, they claim, are educational services and transportation, which “obviously” cannot be provided for by capitalists.
      It seems to be Marxist one has to rewrite history and see the world radically different than as it really is. Otherwise their beautifully simple theories are not worth a damn. But no matter how the Marxists try to make the world fit their models, it will not. It can not. Their theories are simple and made out of abstractions, but the real world is not.




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