Wallerstein - Wrold-Systems Analysis

Ch 1 historical Origins of World-systems Analysis
1ff) He constructs the history of the development of historical/social sciences through the 19th and 20th centuries. This begins with building up the systems which existed in the positivist/modernist world, the construction of the contemporary university system of arts/letters. Eventually this begins to collapse through the post WWII era. He names a few specific events which caused this: 1945 - the US becomes hegemonic world power; 1953 - Stalin dies. 1968 - world revolution in how things were thought.
18ff) Marxist theory starts to dissolve and morph. Braudel posits that monopolies were the end goal of capitalism, but that they were antagonistic to markets.
19ff) World-systems analysis are unidisciplinary. That is, they ignore traditional disciplines. This analysis shows a system which is bound in spacetime and the system changes as it moves through spacetime.
22) "To the extent that we each analyze out social prisons, we liberate ourselves from their constraints to the extent that we can be liberated."

Ch 2 The Modern World-System as a Capitalist World-Economy
23ff) World-Economy: large area in which there is a division of labor and an e xchange of goods. Capitalist is where there is a system in place for the accumulation of endless capital: accumulate wealth to make more wealth. The modern world is a capitalist world-economy.
25ff) Capitalism does not want a truly free market. Such a thing would radically reduce profits and inhibit the accumulation of wealth. That said, pure monopolies are problematic as well, as they allow Capitalism full control over the systems, and empires/governments tend not to allow that. Beyond monopolies, plundering can create profits, but they burn themselves out in the middle-term. Meanwhile, there's core-periphery issues. Households are complicated groups of people with various forms of income. Further, there are identity groups which makes things even more complicated. Both households and identities attempt to control behavior. There are also Universalism and Anti-universalism systems which push things together and apart.

Ch 3 The Rise of the State-System
42ff) Sovereignty grows out of the Treaty of Westphalia as does the state-system, the politlcal(ish) sub-system of the modern world-system. It assumes the existence of a state, and then posits that the state controls what is within its borders. Reciprocal recognition allows multiple state-systems to exist in the wider interstate systems.
45ff) Firms interact with states in several ways. They deal with border issues, property rights, taxes, interstate issues, etc. Often is it not that the firms want -no- state interference, but rather no negative interference with their decisions.
49ff) Class develops and the working class was relatively slow in gaining the political power to demand a more equal distribution of wealth. The French Revolution spurred much of the democratization of power on by promoting the idea of sovereignty originating from the people. However, the definition of "the people" has been a messy one over the centuries.
52ff) Strong states are ones which can carry out their political decisions. Weak states cannot. This does not mean how much power is in how few hands, rather it is a measure of the mechanism of the state contra mechanisms such as bribery, etc., breakdowns of the state system. These varied powered states interact in various ways. Often there are attempts at either world-empire or hegemony. The former seeks absolute control but rarely succeeds, the latter gains near-absolute influence/power, but inevitably fades.

Ch 4 The Creation of a Geoculture
60ff) The political realities of the French Revolution - the placement of sovereignty in the hands of the citizens, the ability for governments to radically change quickly, etc. - helped to birth a number of ideologies which began working toward and against these new ideas. Conservatives formed to react against change as the cause of the upheavals. Liberals formed to divorce change from the radical upheaval, saying change in inevitable and thus we should guide along the best path. Radicals called for the radical upheaval as a means to wipe away the current problems. 1848: The Spingtime of the Nations birthed the radical movement.
64ff) After 1848, all three wings saw their strategies evolve. Conservatives realized that harsh repression did not work, and opted for more moderate approaches. Liberals grew timid and proposed a very modest program of change. Radicals saw that flashes of violence only produced immediate repression and sought to push the liberals for further social change. In the end, the three work together to birth the modern liberal nation-state. This led to an increase (or birth of) nationalism which was strongly harnessed. While some intra-European competition was introduced, most of the violence was directed at non-European cultures, which saw Western powers as civilized and sought to push that out to the other nations.
67ff) Anti-systemic groups began working to expand the notion of "citizen", thus allowing greater change in the system by changing who was helping to make the decisions. Most of these groups started with competing ideas and goals, but in the end they tended toward a 2-step solution: 1) gain political power 2) enact desired change. These groups (socialist, feminist, or ethnic/racial) tended to view each other at best warily. In the end, most of these groups had achieved step 1 but none had achieved step 2.

Ch 5 The Modern World-System in Crisis.
76ff) Historical systems eventually come to a time of crisis and face some sort of choice in direction on how to move beyond their borders and evolve. The current system is having a crisis of profitability. The problem stems from rising cost of employment, a rising cost of materials (both tech and raw/semi-finished materials), and taxes.
83ff) Then 1968 happened. Since step 2 above never came to fruition, growing numbers were disillusioned with the liberal social hope. Rather than try to expand the majority, the revolutions of 1968 sought to promote the liberty of the minority.

Reaction
The analysis he provides allows for a complicated (even complex) imagining of the process of history. He covers a number of interacting arenas in history and shows how they interact in the modern world. In the last two chapters, he describes 1848 and 1968 as key crises which birthed and changed the system, however I am unconvinced that they are as key, or as individual event-sounding, as he makes them out to be. Both of those years had a number of influences leading into them which helped bring about those revolutions. Yes, they provide useful structural points to base the analysis on, but I think focusing on such events (even multiple inter-related events) is too simplistic a notion to explain changes within a world-system.
Rather I think there is a constant evolution of the world-system. There are events which provide useful conceptual focuses, that allow clear contrasts to be made between things on either side of them, but those events are not without causes in the prior world-system-state. 1968 requires a 1967. And a 1966. Why is 1968 more important than 1967? Why is Luther more important to the Protestant Reformation than Gutenburg?

White, "Metahistory", Ch 7&8

Pt III - Repudiation of "Realism" in Late Nineteenth Century Philosophy of History
Ch 7 - Historical Consciousness and the Rebirth of Philosophy of History
(267ff) The mid-19th century had effectively ignored Marx and Nietzsche. Historians at large had their ideas of how history should be written and ignored philosophical questions of etiology. Marx and Nietzsche on the other hand were questioning the idea of objectivity as historically bound, which effectively makes any attempt by the historian to be objective by its very nature subjective (or at least, culturally bound).

Ch 8 Marx
(281ff) Marx saw society as the force that (in his day) was both liberating humanity from nature and at the same time alienating humans from each other. However, he had a Romantic turn to his history. Society progressed and would eventually lead to transformation of society into community, wherein humans were liberated both from fear of nature and fear of other, leaving only the self as the obstacle to contentment.
(282ff) Historians of Marx's day preferred to portray history without attempting to make ethical or moral judgements of it. Marx countered that the entire point of studying history was to learn a better way to "do" society. Historians should not just depict historical events, but should posit how better things might be done.
(285ff) Humanity, for Marx, is in a tragic condition on the micro level. However, with a more macro-scale lens, humanity will eventually end up in the communistic utopia, that is, history is ultimately comic, even if on the individual scale it is tragic.
(287ff) For Marx, Value evolves. At first, value is determined through barter. Chickens for wheat, Wheat for pottery, but those relationships do not correspond with each other. Then a commodity establishes its value in all other forms (a chicken is worth X wheat, Y barley, Z pottery). Third, all commodities eventually are valued upon one (still socially useful) commodity (Wheat, Barley, pottery are all valued in chickens). Fourth, value is set to a meaningless commodity: Money (gold for him). Interesting that in the modern world, gold has found a se beyond simple decoration.  Value of commodities represents, in some way, the abstraction of human labor which went into a particular commodity. The final layer of abstraction becomes Ironic: that is, everything is valued in gold/money, but gold/money is itself valueless.
(297ff) Humanity differentiates itself from nature not through consciousness, but rather though its will to change its environment and its imaginative efforts to do so. Society forms out of this, starting first with the tribal world, then slave, then Feudal, then Capitalist.  Humanity begins to divide itself from nature and from each other as soon as it moves out of this "Primitive Communism" of a proto-tribal world. Eventually, this estrangement is strongest when Capitalism comes to bear.
(303ff) This estrangement grows. As technology advances, it does not alter the basis of society, rather it only incrementally solves particular problems in the base of a culture. Humanity is further trapped in the social construction of its own making. Individuals are trained into highly specialized tasks, and in the end that is all they are allowed to do. We, as humans are rendered into mere cogs in the machine. The irony in this is that we, humans, made the machine. Thus, what is necessary to fix the problems of the machine of society is a complete dissolution of the society at hand and its [ethical] reconstruction.
(309ff) Marx emplotted his history in a tragic-comic method, and saw much of the traditional elements of the acts of drama in his own history. The proletariat would slowly awaken to its own exploitation and eventually rise against their exploiters. Since the money system of Capitalism was the use of an absurd item as the symbol of value, it would eventually collapse when the proletariat learns this and begins to value labor itself. Then, Communism/Socialism can arise.
(317ff) In a concrete example, Marx uses this same idea of progression to explain the problems with the 1848 French revolution/civil war. At first, it begins with a "beautiful" revolution, because the bougious and the proletariat are working together. It falters when they turn on each other in June.
(320ff) This revolution (1848) was a farce of the tragedy of the 1789 revolution. Rather than hopes being dashed, no one seemed to have those hopes to being with, and in the end they end up in a situation worse than before the 1789 revolution. This absurdity would only grow, said Marx, through time, since after all, the economic system put its worth in something as worthless as gold. What would he say today with the complete abstraction of money?
(327ff) Marx sees the individual acts of history as Tragic, but he had the belief that the ultimate end of history would be Comic. That is, through our failures, Humanity would eventually transcend its alienation.

More on Marx

A thought occurred to me during our class working through the Base/Superstructure dichotomy of society in Marx. What happens when labor has been more-or-less removed from the Base?

This may sound completely impossible. And I suspect that as long as it is cheaper to exploit some worker (in some likely Third World/Developing Nation) and then import the product than it is to let robots do all the work, we are not likely to see this. But even so, there are some jobs which cannot be moved from their territorial locations (agriculture), and those are becoming even more automated.

Agriculture is a prime example. This would at first seem to be something that is destined to be perpetually labor-intensive. Someone has to plant and harvest. Yet modern farming equipment is becoming more technologically advanced.

Looking primarily at grain (corn/soy/wheat) production, the implements which are used in their planting, care, and harvest could become automated. Modern tractors can include GPS-based tracking of fields. This allows the driver to maneuver through the field down the exact same path that they went through it last time. With just a little automation in the steering, this could be adapted to effectively mean that after the initial plowing of a field, the tractor steers itself through planting, spraying, and harvest, the human farmer likely only determining when such actions take place and perhaps monitoring the progress. Additionally, computing optimal planting paths could likely be automated, thus even the initial path of the tractor might be computer generated. While this doesn't fully remove the human from the process, it does mean that they are involved in much less of the work, and what work they do have to do is increasingly indebted to the superstructure (education).

This may not work for everything, but I suspect that we will increasingly find ways to remove human labor from the workforce, especially as exploited work forces begin to make the same demands that Western labor made in the early 20th century. Could it be that the revolution Marx saw was not to be as violent as he might have thought? (Or as abrupt?)

I'm curious how much of the Base Marx thought could be replaced with technology. Or does the Base shift to include the technicians at that point?

Marx and the Post-Scarcity Economy

After finishing Wolff's book Why Read Marx Today, I find myself questioning some of the conclusions made in the book. Specifically, Wolff (and many others today) claims that communism failed. While it is true that the communist experiments of Eastern Europe fell and Chinese communism is in the process of moving to capitalism, I feel none of these really embody what Marx was speaking of when he talks of communism. Especially, if as Wolff says, he felt that a certain level of abundance was required, I'm not sure we could say any of the 20th century communist experiments attained this level of abundance. What was lacking is what is called in science-fiction/futurism the Post-Scarcity Economy.

What is the Post-Scarcity Economy? Go find an episode of Star Trek (any series, but The Next Generation might be the best example). How do the people on the ship deal with property? Mostly, they don't. In the many of the modern series (TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager), technology they call replicators effectively bridge the matter-energy barrier, allowing things to be created out of thin air. Since Star Trek already assumes abundant (meaning, easily available in virtually any quantity) energy, being able to create matter out of energy effectively removes any barrier to owning goods (or food, or clothing, etc.).

But that was the far future, right? Maybe not. Today, there is the MakerBot. There is an internet video linking the MakerBot to the emergent Post-Scarcity Economy, it can be found here. Yes, it's full of internet humor and cultural references, but the point is still there. If 3D printers (and the elements required run it) become as ubiquitous as home computers and printers are now, goods effectively become abundant.

What does this have to do with Marx? Could it be that Marx was more prescient than he knew, but was just off by a few centuries? Star Trek after all presents a world where money is virtually unused, save possibly between cultures. The Federation seems effectively to be a communistic culture per Marx: people do their jobs because they want to, goods are virtually free, and there is little want. (There are episodes pushing the boundaries of this, but I am focusing primarily on the Federation at its best.)

What would Marx do with a MakerBot? Is this the level of abundance that he was looking for? We already see some of the failure of capitalism in non-physical goods (music, videos, books, information) with the internet. Despite the vast amounts of money that traditional media companies have thrown at piracy, it still occurs. Further, there is a growing body of artists, programmers, authors, etc. who have embraced new methods of distribution and sales, many of which are done from a post (information) scarcity position, after all, there is no cost to making another pdf copy of a book, another mp3 of music, etc. If supply never bounds supply, how does supply/demand work? Does it work at all? Is this the collapse of capitalism that Marx foretold?

White, Hayden: Metahistory

(18ff) Contextualists start with an element (large or small) and pick out the relationships of other important elements within its context. Contextualism and Formism are the dominant methods. Organicism and Mechanicist thought tend to be "lasps" or "wandering into Philosophy"
(21) "There does, in fact, appear to be an irreducible ideological component in every historical account of reality."
22ff Explanation of Ideological Implication
(23) Why does no one have a good definition of Fascism yet everyone uses it?
The four political attitudes: Anarchist, Liberal, Conservative, Radical
Conservative - change should be delayed and slow.
Liberal - change is a number of small changes made to attune society
Radical - reconstruct society from the ground up
Anarchist - abolish wider "society" in favor of smaller "communities"
29 ff The problem of Historiographical Styles
Historiographical Styles are combinations of the three elements: emplotment, Mode of Argument, Mode of Ideological Implication. However, not all combinations are possible.
Historians first identify and classify the elements of the historical field. Then attempt to define the relationships between them and offer an explanation based on this.
Tropes provide a way to classify the possible explanation strategies.
31ff The Theory of Tropes
Four Tropes: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecodoche, and Irony
Metonymy. Synecodoche, and Irony are kinds of Metaphor.
Excellent nuancing of all the tropes
38ff The Phases of Nineteenth Century Historical Consciousness
First was Ironic at the opening.
Pre-Romantics react against this. Eventually end up with a Synecdochic/Organicist view. Three big "schools": Romantic, Idealist, Positivist
Marx attempts to react against this, tending toward a combined Synecdochic and Metonymical strategy.
Nietzsche champions a rebirth of Irony.

White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Initial thoughts on Van Seters' "The Biblical Saga of King David"

Van Seters traces an original story and a later expansion of the story of David's rise to power and reign. The original account he ascribes to the Deuteronomist (Dtr) and places its composition at the end of the monarchy. (Though he argues that even if Dtr is was composed later, it still precedes the other account.) The expansion of the narrative he labels the David Saga (DS). This text, which is effectively 1 Sam 16:14-1 Kings 2 as we have it, takes the original Dtr account of David and radically subverts the themes within it.

Van Seters claims that the Dtr account of David functions as the center of the larger Dtr corpus. The establishment of the iconic king is necessary for Dtr in order to link the traditions of the north/Israel (Moses, the judges, etc.) with the Judahite tradition of David. Thus, David function to unite the kingdom and established an archetype for the ideal king.

In the DS account, the author subverts nearly all of the main parts of Dtr's ideology. David is portrayed as manipulative with a number of key characters in the narrative. Yet at the same time, David is constantly manipulated by Joab, among others. In the end, the very prophet who condemns David in his adultery with Bathsheba manipulates David's choice of heir. David and his family are shown breaking law after law (murder, adultery, incest-rape, theft, etc.) while the Dtr account claims that David was the king par excelance. By the end of the narrative, DS is subverting the very nature of the monarchy (Saul does no better than David, nor Solomon).

Van Seters places the composition of DS in the late Persian era. The court and military portrayed in it match Persian culture. With the end of exile, there would have been many political questions being asked. DS poses the question: Do we really want a monarchy? Van Seters points to Chronicles as the response to DS, in which the monarchy is presented as much more palatable.

Van Seters labels the genre of the account by Dtr as historiography. He calls DS a saga. In the case of Dtr, he claims it was an attempt to de-mythologize the past of Israel-Judah. For DS, the sagas he compares it to are the Icelandic sagas, specifically Njal's Saga. Sagas were used to create serious entertainment from history. Historiographical works were often used as sources. Feast, violence, and feuds are just some of the hallmarks of these sagas. All of these items are found in DS. However, like Njal's Saga, DS uses these ironically to remove the nostalgic veneer from the past.

Engaging White's terminology, I would label the Dtr account of David as a Conservative Romance with a Mechanistic argument: change occurs at YHWH's decree, David emerges victorious and establishes an utopian (or proto-utopian) kingdom.  The DS account is then an Anarchist* Satire with a Formist argument and heavy use of irony: David, the "perfect king," abuses royal and religious power, which is something every king does. The Anarchist designation is a bit arbitrary. DS mostly critiques the Dtr account. DS paints change as the arbitrary outcome from the personal machinations of political actors. As Van Seters has defined it, DS does not present how change should happen nor the society it envisions as ideal. It shows the possibility of abrupt change, but its argument is mostly aimed turning away from a particular vision, rather than presenting its own.

Further Foucault

Working through Foucault, one issue that comes to mind is how many times do you continue the circle of questioning traditions/basis? How low-level do we need to start before we can actually work out what we know?

For example, in biblical studies, the very nature of the discipline is built on a tradition: the text of the Bible. The notion of canon would need to be questioned. Do we go further? If the texts in the canon were written in conversation with other texts, which are now lost, can we even say anything about the texts?

In more general history, does our task get further complicated (or made impossible) the further back we go in time? If we suspect there are further texts available, do we need those before we can claim complete work?

Further, how do Foucault's theories work in the light of complexity/fractal theory? Complexity/fractals would claim that the rules providing us with the infinite complexity can be stated simply. While mathematics (in which I have engaged complexity theory the most, though not recently), the rules/terms of the system are often perhaps more easily stated than perhaps in history or literature, this does not mean that it wouldn't apply to other areas. History in particular lends itself to complexity's infinite (or near infinite) inputs into a system, regardless of how simple the rules of the system might be. Foucault lets (encourages) us render a discourse down into the specifics that we need to see how complex this actually becomes.