World System Theory A Short Version

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Ann. Rev. Sociol. 1982. 8:81-106 Copyright 1982 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 1982.8:81-106. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org by University of Minnesota - Wilson Library on 10/29/05. For personal use only.
Daniel Chirot School of International Studies, University of Washington,Seattle, Washington 98195 Thomas D. Hall Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019 WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY
World-system theory is a highly political approachto the problemof economic development in the Third World. It was created by policy-oriented intellectuals in countries at a medium level of development to account for their societies demonstrableinability to catch up to the rich countries. In its contemporaryAmericanform, world-system theory has broadened into a more purely academic enterprise designedto explain the historical rise of the West, as well as the continued poverty of most non-Westernsocieties. But it has generally remainedthe property of a left, whichdemands redistribution of the worlds economicwealth and whichprovides theoretical and ideological support for a "newinternational economicorder" (Dadzie 1980; Bhagwati1977). How It Differs From Modernization Theory
In American sociology world-systemtheory evolved as a direct attack against the version of development theory that had prevailed in the 1950sand 1960s. The older theory had two main parts, one structural, and the other psychological, and the two did not necessarily cohere. But together, they cameto comprise what was called "modernization theory." The structural side of modernization theory was a uniform evolutionary vision of social, political, and economicdevelopment.As Portes (1976) has explained, the sociological portion of this vision had deep roots in classical theory and consisted chiefly of a belief in progressive, increasing differentiation as the key to modernization.Parsons(1951) was its principal modern prophet. Hoselitz (1960), Levy (1966), and Wilbert Moore(Hoselitz & 81 0360-0572/82/08l 5-$02.00
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1963, Moore1979) were amongits most important interpreters. A similar approach characterized political scientists groupedin the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council (Almond & Verba 1963, Almond & Powell 1966). But it was an economist, W. W. Rostow, who gave modernization theory its most concrete and best-known form (1960). The uniform evolutionary theory of development can be summarizedin Chart 1. According to this theory, all societies, once they begin the process of modernization, must movefrom developmentstage A to B, B to C, and so on. Of course even the strictest follower of uniform evolutionary theory recognizes that the world changesand that a society going through stage A at time 4 is different from a society that has gone through stage A at time 2; however,the similarities betweenA2(as experienced by society I) and A3(as experienced by society II) are moreimportant than the differences caused by their experiencing stage A at different times. Followers of such theories recognized that time periods are not uniform. Contemporarysocieties are likely to move from one stage to the next more quickly than, say, Englanddid in the past; and somesocieties, by purposefully accelerating the process, may advancemore rapidly than normal. Uniformstages still exist, however, and in time all of the worlds societies will experience them. Rostows(1960) stages were: traditional economies,the transition to takeoff (the adoption of scientific methodsof technology), the take-off (rapid capital accumulationand early industrialization), the drive to maturity (high industrialization in whichthe standard of living of the massesremains low), and the age of high consumption. By the late 1960s, manysocial scientists were predicting a sixth stage, "post-industrial" society (Bell 1973). The social-psychological version of modernizationtheory explained the rise of the West by claiming that Westerners(chiefly Protestant Westerners) were possessed by a high need for achievementand rationality. McClelland (1967) and Hagen(1962) were this theorys best knownproponents, and though detail their explanations were by no meanssimilar, their main points were. Both believed that a contemporarysocietys chances of developmentdepended
Chart 1 Societies I-V, seen at times 1-6, in developmental stages A-E Society 1 I II III IV V Traditional Traditional Traditional Traditional Traditional 2 A2 Times 3 B3 A3 4 C4 B4 A4 5 Ds C~ B~ A5 6 E6 D6 C6 B6 A6
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 83 on the psychological make-upof its members. Despite their attempts to link these theories with Weber(1958) and Schumpeter(1934), however, socialpsychologicalworkfailed to incorporate the importantstructural variables that determine the direction in whichachievement-orientedindividuals are forced by their surroundings(Portes 1976). Individual motivation can hardly explain whyreal estate speculation is moreprofitable in one country, while in another investmentin electronics factories attracts morecapital. A more reasonable, but not much more satisfying version of socialpsychological modernization theory saw "modem"men being produced by contact with modem institutions (Lemer 1958, Inkeles &Smith 1974). But this hypothesis begs the question of whythere are more "modem" institutions in, say, Japan than in Java. All versions of modernizationtheory were meliorative, admitting the possibility of accelerated changethrough such devices as foreign aid (to provide capital and modem know-how), psychological manipulation to better motivate individuals, refonaa of legal and economicnorms, or a combinationof these. But modernization theory tended to refuse the idea that deep structural factors might prevent economicprogress, and more important, that the very international context of modernizationmight itself be an obstacle. That recognition camefrom world-system theory, which claims that the uniform states of development posited by Rostow,Almond, and the others are nonsensical. The existence of strong manufacturing powerswith the ability to extend their marketsand their political strength throughoutthe worldredirects the 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" stages once it becamea grain exporting periphery of the northwestern Europeanmarket. Instead of going through stages A, B, and C, it turned into something England had never been--a dependencyof the capitalist world-system.All the more was this the case with Latin America, most of Asia, and later, Africa. Noneof these societies remained traditional, but all were forced into different paths of developmentby Westernpowers. Nor did Englandgo alone through the stages of developmentthat led to its industrialization: It proceeded only with the aid of the surplus it extorted from the societies it exploited. Whatis today called thc Third Worldreached its present state by being systematically underdeveloped; it did not remain stuck in a stage similar to the Wests feudal period, or somehow remain even more primitive during the centuries in whichit was exposedto, and colonized by, Western Europe. The economistA. G. Frank, one of the most polemical and simplistic of the world-systemtheorists, but one of the most intellectually influential, summarizedthis point of viewmostforcefully (1969). Traditional society, he said, was a myth. "The folk characteristics whichwere studied by Robert Redfield,
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline 84 CHIROT & HALL
and which Hoselitz seems to associate with the pattern variables of underdeveloped society, do not characterize any whole society existing today." According to Frank, McClellandcontributed no more than a suggestion that people in poor countries be given a series of courses on how to improve themselves. Rostowstypology neglected the benefits of the Wests colonies to its development,and the destructive effects of that colonization on the colonies themselves. Therelbre, his stages were nothing more than selfserving mythology,like the rest of modernizationtheory. It was not Frank, however, but ImmanuelWallerstein whobrought worldsystemtheory (including the nameitself) into the sociological limelight in the 1970s (Wallerstein 1974, 1979, 1980). Wallerstein s Macrosociological Theory of Economic Change
Wallerstein posits historical stages of development different from the uniform evolutionary constructs of modernizationtheorists. At one time all societies were minisystems. "A minisystemis an entity that has within it a complete division of labor, and a single cultural framework. Such systems are found only in very simple agricultural or hunting and gathering societies. Such minisystemsno longer exist in the world...any such system that becametied to an empireby the payment of tribute as protection costs ceased by that fact to be a system..." (1979). It follows from this that the anthropologists who have described"tribal" societies in the 19th and 20th centuries as if they were minisystems misseda key ingredient. Virtually all such societies, as B alandier pointed out (1951; reprinted in English in Wallerstein 1966), existed within colonies. Basedon such descriptions, the notion of "traditionalism" is vitiated fromthe start. Thenthere cameworld-systems,"unit[s] with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems. It follows logically that there can...be two varieties of such world-systems, one with a common political system and one without." The former (politically united) are called "world-empires,"and the latter "world-economies" (1979). Until the advent of capitalism, wofld~ economieswere unstable and tended toward "disintegration or conquest by one group and hence transformation into a world-empire. Examplesof such world-empires emerging from world-economies are all the so-called great civilizations of premoderntimes, such as China, Egypt, Rome..." (1979). World-empires killed the economicdynamism of their areas by using too muchof their surplus to maintain their bureaucracies. In about 1500 there began a novel type of world-economy,the capitalist one. "In a capitalist world-economy, political energy is used to secure monopoly rights (or as near to it as can be achieved). The state becomes less the central economic enterprise than the means of assuring certain terms of trade in other economic transactions. In this way, the operation of the market(not the free operation
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 85 but nonetheless its operation) creates incentives to increased productivity and all the consequent accompaniment of moderneconomicdevelopment"(1974). The reasons for capitalisms success whenother world-economies failed are complex,but two stand out. New transportation technology allowed far-flung markets to be maintained, and Westernmilitary technology insured the power to enforce favorable terms of trade (Cipolla 1965). Unburdened from the costs of maintainingunified empires within their economic zones, capitalists could wax strong. The English and Dutch capitalists were able to beat back the Hapsburg-Catholicattempt to tum the emergingworld-economy into a worldempire, 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, skilled and relatively well-paid labor, and high investment. But the core needed peripheries from whichto extract the surplus that fueled expansion. Peripheries producedcertain key primary goods while their towns withered, labor becamecoerced in order to keep downthe costs of production, technology stagnated, labor remainedunskilled or even became less skilled, and capital, rather than accumulating,was withdrawn towardthe core. At first the differences betweenthe core and the periphery were small, but by exploiting these differences and buying cheap primary products in return for dear manufacturing goods, northwestern Europe expanded the gap. Uneven development,then, is not a recent development or a mereartifact of the capitalist world-economy; it 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 of economicpower. Somemayeventually fall into the periphery, as did Spain in the 17th and 18th centuries, and others mayeventually rise into the core, as has modernJapan. Semiperipheries deflect the anger and revolutionary activity of peripheries, and they serve as goodplaces for capitalist investment whenwell-organized labor forces in core economiescause wagesto rise too fast. As Spain controlled Latin America for the core in the 16th to early 19th centuries, so did Sweden, and later Prussia, control Polandin the 17th and 18th (1980). Brazil plays a similar role in contemporary Latin America (1979), and presumably Iran was slated for this role in the MiddleEast of the 1980s. Wallersteinbelieves that without semiperipheries,the capitalist worldsystem cannot function. Finally, Wallersteinturns the Marxistnotion of class conflict into a question of international conflict. It is not so much that the countries of the core are a kind of upperclass, the periphery an exploited working class, and the semiperiphery a middle class (though someof Wallersteins work suggests precisely that). Rather, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are world-wide classes that
do not operate merely within state boundaries. The term semiperipheral, however,applies only to states. This implies that the class and even ethnic structures within particular countries must be interpreted as mereadjuncts of the international capitalist division of labor. Theyare analytically important primarily becausethey help to explain the performance of individual countries in the international game. But no single country, or even groupof countries, can escape the logic of this transnational system. It follows, therefore, that socialist revolution cannot occur in a single country. Socialism will develop within a socialist worldsystem. Events within a single country mayadvanceor retard the advent of socialism, but cannot, by themselves, be decisive. The Soviet Union, for example, cannot be truly socialist even though it has advanced the world further toward revolution. But until that transformation has been accomplished, even its internal structure is deformed by the fact that it must act in a larger capitalist system. It mayevenbe acting as another core power(1979). Wallersteins work is in many ways an extraordinary tour de force because it brings together so manyhistorical periods and information about so many places in a single, logical, and consistent framework. Demonstrating that true socialism cannot exist in the U.S.S.R. also shows that seeming "feudal" agrarian relationships in contemporary Latin America are nothing of the sort, but yet another part of the pervasive world capitalist-system. The rise of the West in the 16th century is explained with the same logic as the continued poverty of much of the world today. The failure of the proletariat to revolt or even to sustain socialist ideologies in rich Westerncountries (a persistent problemfor Marxists) is treated within the same context. The proletariat is largely located in the periphery, or at least consists of "ethnicities" that originate in the periphery. So revolution will have to comechiefly out of the periphery and semiperipherywhereproletariat class interests are clearer. The failure of the "rich" proletariat, boughtoff by the concentration of wealth in the core, to carry out its mission is understandable,and does not destroy the original Marxist vision. Both the satisfying scopeof his workand his ability to resolve manyof the contradictions of Marxist theory without giving up its revolutionary thrust have endeared Wallerstein to many social scientists. But significant and original as it is, Wallersteins workis itself the product of a long intellectual history. In one form or another, world-system theory has existed for well over a century. It is important to understand this for two reasons. First, knowledgeof its antecedents allows us to avoid needless repetition of many old debates about the subject. Second, world-system theory is by no meansguaranteed long-term success in Americansocial science. It maywell be a passing phase. But in someother countries, it has much deeper and older roots, and is more central to prevailing political ideologies and
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 87 political conflict than in the UnitedStates, whereit is only known by a small groupof professional intellectuals.
THE INTELLECTUAL THEORY List

ROOTS
OF WORLD-SYSTEM
and the Issue of Comparative Advantage
Someof the problems raised by world-system theory had already been broachedby mercantilist theoreticians in the 17th and 18th centuries (Heckscher 1955), but it was not until 1817that DavidRicardo formulatedwhat was to become the classical moderneconomic theory of free trade. He argued that unrestricted exchangebetweentwo countries is always advantageousif they produce mutually desirable goods at different degrees of efficiency. Portuguese wine should be allowed in Britain, for example,in return for British cloth because the English producedcloth more efficiently than wine, and the Portuguese did the reverse. Even if the Portuguese could produce cloth more cheaplythan the British, the fact that they produced wineeven moreefficiently meantthat it wouldincrease their total productivity to specialize in wine. England, on the other hand, should specialize in manufacturedgoods where it held a comparative advantage (Samuelson 1967; Robinson 1973). In 1841, in his National Systemof Political Economy, Friedrich List argued that Ricardo was wrongbecause it might be to the long-run advantage of an economy to foster infant industries that could not, in the short term, compete freely with those of more advancedeconomies. The resulting advantages in technological sophistication outweighed the short-run losses in total output (Senghaas 1977). The debate has continued betweenthe two sides ever Since. With expansion and greater sophistication, Ricardos theory has remainedthe majority viewpoint amongWestern economists. From Alfred Marshalls The Pure Theory of ModernTrade in 1879 (1930) to Paul Samuelson(1948, 1975), free trade has been vigorously defended. On the other side, leftist economists have repeatedly attacked it, going considerably further than List, whowas only a mild protectionist (Robinson 1960, 1973; Emmanuel 1972, 1977, 1980). Wehave neither the space nor the necessary knowledgeof economicsto resolve this old issue. But we can at least warnsociologists to be cautious before they blindly accept either of these viewpoints.In almost all discussions of world-systemtheory, however,the debate reappears in one form or another as if it had been resolved against Ricardo: Free trade benefits the advanced industrial economiesbut slows developmentof poorer economies.
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline 88 Lenin, CHIROT & HALL Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Bukharin
In 1902, J. A. Hobsonpublished an attack against imperialism that proved important not so much becauseof its influence on liberals (thoughat the time that was considerable) but because of Lenins use of Hobsonsideas and data in his 1917 workImperialism : The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1939). Lenin argued that the final crisis of capitalism had been avoidedbecause of imperialist exploitation of colonial and quasi-colonial areas. Withoutthe extra profits gained from these sources, the rate of return on capitalist investment would fall, the working class in advancedcapitalist countries wouldbe impoverished, and revolution wouldfollow. Consequently, the First WorldWarwas part of a desperate struggle for colonial empires by the major powers. But Lenin did not discuss the effects of imperialism on the peasants in the colonies. This Rosa Luxemburg had done in 1913, particularly in the last section of The Accumulationof Capital (1951). She described, amongother cases, the results of the spread of capitalism into Egyptthroughinternational loans in the 19th century. The Egyptian economy had been revolutionized and had become part of the greater capitalist system of exchange. Railroads had been built, cash crops introduced, and the peasants had been deprived of their land and mined. The Egyptian state had gone bankrupt and been seized by the British. Progress had gained great profits for European finance to the detriment of the Egyptians. Turkey, Russia, India, China, and North Africa were other examplesof analogous developments. She called these regions "hinterlands" of capitalism. In 1930 Trotsky added his revolutionary irony to the emergent Marxist consensus on "cores" and "peripheries" by commenting on the "semiperipheral" role played by prerevolutionary Russia. He wrote: (1959) Theparticipation of Russia [in World War I] falls somewhere between the participation of France andthat of China. Russia paidin this way for herright to oppress androbTurkey, Persia,Galicia,andin general the countries weaker andmore backward thanherself. The twofold imperialism of the Russian bourgeoisie hadbasically the character of an agency for other mightier world powers...the Russian autocracy onthe onehand,the Russian bourgeoisieonthe other, contained featuresof compradorism .... They lived andnourished themselves upon their connections withforeign imperialism, served it, andwithout its support could not have survived.... Thesemi-comprador Russianbourgeoisiehad worldimperialistic interestsin the same sense in which an agent working onpercentages livesbythe interestof his employers. The communisttheoretician who was the closest to modernworld-system theory was Bukharin.His writing about imperialismis not highly original (in fact, he took much of his argumentdirectly from Hilferding), but his language and emphasis on the importance of world-wide analysis foreshadowed the mainthrust 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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developmentof this cleavage, formerly confined to one country only, are nowbeing reproduced on a tremendously enlarged basis. Viewedfrom this standpoint, entire countries appear to-day as towns, namelythe industrial countries, whereasentire agrarian territories appear to be country" (1929). Other Marxistwriters in the early 20th century contributed to the construction of a general theory of imperialism(see Hilferding 1923), but this sketch of the four best knownshows the development of a kind of world-system theory long before the SecondWorldWar. Morerecent Marxist works in this area (e.g. Baran1957) have been elaborations and updates of these classical positions. Fascist World-System Theory It would be a mistake to consider such theories the exclusive property of Marxistsin the first half of this century. Acurious and today little-known fact is that right-wing intellectuals in someof the moreadvanced poor countries of that time were also developing similar theories. Their appeal was to nationalism rather than to proletariat internationalism, but their analysis was remarkably similar to that of the Marxists. In 1929 Mihail Manoilescu, a Romanian,published The Theory of Protection and International Trade (1931), in which he attacked the Ricardian concept of comparative advantage. Wherehad it gotten Portugal, he asked? By the 20th century, Portugal had become one of the poorest and most backwardcountries in Europeafter centuries of virtually open trade with England. It wouldbe better, he argued, for agricultural countries to close themselvesoff from the world-capitalist market, to industrialize, and to unite their populationsfor the difficult struggle this wouldentail. Onlyin this way wouldthe moreadvancedindustrial countries be obliged to cede their unfair advantages and restructure the international economy more equitably. But Manoilescu, who"impresses one as raising strikingly contemporary issues..." (Schmitter 1978), was not a man of the left. His next internationally knownbooks were The Century of Corporatism (1934) and The Single Party (1938), in whichhe laid out a political program to carry out his economicideas. He called for Mussolinis kind of fascism to destroy narrow class interests and discipline nations to overcome the capitalist world-market. Manoileseusworkhad wide appeal in eastern and southern Europe, and in Latin America (Schmitter 1974). His suggestions fit the broad trend of political events in manyof the independent semideveloped countries of these regions. In the ideological atmosphereof the 1930s fascism, not socialism, seemedto be the dynamicforce of the future. In 1977 Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, "The semi-peripheral state is precisely the area where,becauseof a mix of economic activities, consciousstate activities maydo mostto affect the future patterning of economic activity. In
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the twentieth century, this takes the form of bringing socialist parties to power"(1979). In the 1930s, however,it took the form of bringing fascist and quasi-fascist parties to powerin a string of semiperipheral countries caught betweenthe truly backwardareas of the world and what Mussolini called the "bourgeois" or "plutocratic" nations above them (Chirot 1978). Experiments in applying right-wing solutions ran from Brazil and Argentina to Portugal, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania,Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and all the way to Japan. Alongwith a material world-system there is an ideological one. It seems subject to rapid shifts in fashion, but often the terminology is all that changes. Theunderlyingdissatisfaction of intellectuals and leaders in the semiperiphery and advancedperiphery is neither newnor radically different from that of a half century ago. Dependency Theory Fromthis intellectual and political climate of dissatisfaction in the more advanced countries of Latin America dependency theory was born. Because world-system theory is in most ways merely a North Americanadaptation of dependencytheory, there is little to distinguish them from each other as theoretical constructs. To understand dependencytheory, and to knowits literature, is to hold a firm grasp of its latter-day little Yankee brother. Of course, cultural imperialismbeing what it is, the world-system theorists from the North are nowbeing used by Southern dependency theorists to legitimize their ideas. Nomoreironic illustration could exist of core domination and use of peripheral resources. The periphery can nowreimport the product it originally exported, and leave behind a surplus of cultural prestige and strength in the core. The father of dependency theory is Ra~l Prebisch, an Argentinian who headed the United Nations EconomicCommissionfor Latin America (ECLA, or CEPAL in Spanish) in the late 1940sand early 1950s. Wallerstein ascribes the terminology of core and periphery to ECLA (Kaplan 1978), though course the concepts are older (and in fact WeruerSombartused almost the samewordsin the samecontext). Prebischs ideas originated with his experiences as a technical advisor to Argentine governments in the 1930s while the country was turning from a proof of the benefits of the Ricardo-Marshall theory of free trade into a demonstration of the vulnerability of primaryexport economiesin times of international economiccrisis. In 1949 Prebisch published an ECLA report (Relative Prices of Exports and Imports of UnderDeveloped Countries: A Study of Postwar Terms of Trade between UnderDeveloped and Industrialized Nations) showingthat the terms of trade had run against agricultural exportingcountries fromthe late 19th centuryuntil the late 1930s. "Onthe average," said the report, "a given quantity of primaryexports
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 91 wouldpay, at the end of this period, for only 60 per cent of the quantity of goods which it could buy at the beginning of the period" (Love 1980). This wasbecauseof the morerapid increase in productivity of industrial producers. Comparativeadvantage, therefore, did not operate in favor of the primary producers. Prebisch denies having been directly influenced by Manoilescu; but as Joseph Love has written, "Manoilescus ideas--in Latin Americancircles where they were known--probably helped pave the way for acceptance of ECLA doctrines whenthey appeared in 1949" (Love 1980). In any case, the Romanians theories were being published in Argentine economicjoumals in the late 1930s. ECLAs theories have since become"dependencytheory." But the elaboration of the theory has gone further than economics; it has created an entire sociology and political theory of dependentdevelopment(Cardoso &Faletto 1969;Jaguaribe et al 1968; dos Santos 1972). It is importantto emphasize,as does Portes (1976), that dependency theory is morethan a simple analysis a "quasi-colonial situation of economicstagnation and foreign control of export enclaves. Onthe contrary, contemporarydependencystudies address a situation in whichdomestic industrialization has occurred along with increasing economicdenationalization; in which sustained economicgrowth has been accompaniedby rising social inequalities; and in which rapid urbanization and the spread of literacy have convergedwith the even moreevident marginalization of the masses." Pablo Gonzalez Casanovas recent article on Mexico(1980) is a good exampleof this. Far from being backwardand dominated by a small rural oligarchy, Mexicois urbanized, industrial, and by Third World standards, rich. But the gap betweenrich and poor is increasing, the growingpopulation cannot be absorbed into the labor force, and the substantial middle class demands moreconsumption.Foreign capital, allied to a domestic elite, prevents the redistribution of wealth that wouldextend to the poor the benefits of modemization. Nor is the govemment, tied as it is to the international fiscal system, able to direct new investmentand spendingwhereit wishes. Instead, it inflates the currency. Mexicoshuge newpetroleumwealth alleviates these problemsfor the time being, but it cannot provide a long-termsolution. To do that, deep structural reforms are necessary. Thusforeign influence (primarily North American)is morenoxious as a barrier to structural change than as directly exploitive colonizer. The MexicanRevolution and the subsequent policies of nationalizations in the 1930sdid not go far enough. The problem of inflation induced by the helplessness of Latin American governments to control their ownfinances is a key part of dependency studies (Sunkel et al 1973). The Intemational Monetary Fundis viewedas particularly villainous because its remediesto inflation stifle growthand promoterepres-
sive regimes. Not only Latin Americanshave discovered this, but also North Americanresearchers. John Sheehan, for example, found a high correlation between repression and the application of capitalist efficiency criteria in Latin America. This makes"bureaucratic-authoritarian" regimes the favorites of international finance (ODonnell & Frankel 1978; Sheehan1980). Dependencytheorists agree that USmultinational subsidiaries hurt the long-term prospects for development in Latin Americaby investing less than they withdraw. The debt service of Latin Americaneconomies(acquired to buy the machinery with which to manufacture their ownsubstitutes for imports) takes too high a share of earnings. The only solution is greater unity in the face of the giant of the North, and better, integration of Latin American economieswith each other (Furtado 1970; Evans 1981). Anequally important and related problemis the availability of technology. Celso Furtado, a former director of ECLA, has written (1980) that "the control of technologynowconstitutes the foundation of the structure of international power...the struggle against dependenceis becomingan effort to eliminate the effects of the monopoly of this resource by the countries of the core." But this has not yet happened. In other words, industrialization based on import substitution in the most advanced Latin American countries has merely created new forms of dependenceand new sociopolitical imbalances. These are not the sameones that characterized the early, semi-colonial economies,but they are just as serious (Jaguaribe et al 1970). Dependencytheory has also flourished outside Latin America. While we cannot begin to list all of its important contributors in Africa and Asia, one whohas caught the attention of North Americanworld-system theorists deserves special mention: Samir Amin.Moreexplicitly radical than most of the Latin Americans, Aminsempirical experience has been with the far poorer countries of Africa (1973). Though his analysis of imperialismis similar, his demand for socialist revolution is moreinsistent. Capitalism is "debased"and "sick." Under socialism, not only will exploitation vanish, but menwill becomemore complete, and (how utopian) even social science, like government, will disappear because it will no longer be necessary. The Cambodian experimentof Pol Pots Khmer Rouge is cited as a correct lesson for emulation by Africans (1977). This kind of global eschatological revolutionary vision (Amin1980), closer to Andre GunderFrank and to Wallersteins political essays (Wallerstein 1979) than to the more cautious likes of Prebisch and Furtado, stirs the blood of North Americanand Western EuropeanMarxists. There is little point in arguing whetherdependency theorists are "right or wrong." The prevailing view amongWestern development economists is that their conclusions are "overdrawn...and can be questioned on both theoretical and empirical grounds" (Meier 1976). Evidenceshowsthat the terms of trade

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of poorer economies havenot deteriorated continuouslyin the last century, but have fluctuated widely. Prebischs data captured only a slice of reality (Bairoch 1977). Even an economist like W. Arthur Lewis, sympathetic to the cause of the Third World, believes that the solutions rest more on purely internal reforms than on altering the nature of world trade. He particularly stresses the need to concentrate on agricultural developmentover hasty industrialization (Lewis1978). But the widespread skepticism about dependency theory, at least in its more extreme forms, does not negate its contribution. Its introduction into the United States has at least destroyed the naive optimismabout development expressed by the North Americanmodernization theorists of the 1950s and 1960s. WORLD-SYSTEM SOCIOLOGY THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY
Wallersteins influence in macrosociology, historical sociology, and the study of social change has been immense. His 1974 volume reintroduced older theories and seized the imaginations of a newgeneration of sociologists. There were three reasons for this success. First, in the early 1970s modernization theory had been politically discredited by the Viemam War, which seemedto be an application of the anti-communist, anti-revolutionary economic development principles of Walt Rostow(1960). Second,the domesticturmoil of the 1960shad awakened sociologists to the inequities and uneven development of the United States itself. Marxism seemedto be a theoretical solution, and Wallerstein presented it in a modernized international context that tied both foreign and domesticproblems into a neat package. Third, a significant minority of youngersociologists thirsted for concrete historical knowledge denied themby the sterile functionalist positivism that had prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. That history should have been held in such 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. Perhaps it was that history was viewedonly as a useful "data source." Wallerstein legitimized historical sociology for its own sake, and for this the field owes him a great debt. It is paradoxical and alarmingthat in the last few years Wallersteins work has been misusedby somesociologists, whoonce again claim that dredging through historical information will allow us to prove or disprove various conventional and unimaginativesocial theories. But this development should not let us forget the breath of fresh air that his workoriginally gaveus.
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CHIROT & HALL
Wallersteins
Followers
Many of the first books that followed Wallersteins theories and style were producedby his Columbia University students. Hechter (1975) showedthat core-peripheryrelation could be used to explain persisting ethnic tensions in core societies. The exploited Celtic fringe of the United Kingdom had been turned into Englandsperiphery. Rather than diminishingCeltic particularism, this fringes integration into the United Kingdomhad perpetuated and strengthened 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, endedregionalism, local ethnic nationalism, or other "status" distinctions in favor of pure class divisions. Chirot (1976) analyzed a typically peripheral society, Romania, claiming that after a long exposureto capitalist market forces, it had found itself hopelessly poor and backward. Moulder(1977) explained Japans rapid development by its ability to shield itself from economiccolonialism. Qing China, on the other hand, had supposedly been penetrated by western capitalism in the 19th century, and had been peripheralized so that its development was blocked. Block (1977) explained the modem capitalist banking and financial system in worldsystemic terms. This kind of work has continued and spread (see Kaplan 1978; Goldfrank 1979; Hopkins & Wallerstein 1980; Rubinson 1981). Billingss 1979). first-rate study of post-Civil WarNorth Carolinas industrialization demonstrates the utility of world-system theory in explaining domestic American social history. Peter Evanss book on Brazil (1979) combinesa sophisticated use of Latin American dependency theory and Wallersteinian concepts to examine the role of the world economy and multinational firms in that countrys spectacular but unevenindustrialization in the 1960sand 70s. The political scientist Bruce Cumings,while not directly a "world-system theorist," has used someof the theory to propose a major new interpretation of the origins of the KoreanWar(1981). Many recent and forthcoming books a variety of countries and historical situations incorporate some of Wallersteins ideas. Quantitative WorM-System Theory
In his ownwork Wallerstein has been studiously nonquantitative, but his theories are not logically inconsistent with strict quantitative positivism. Hechter (1975) was one of the first to see this. In the late 1970sa wholeschool quantitative world-system theorists grew up at Stanford. The world-system component and the major theoretical impetus camefrom John Meyer, and the quantitative vigor from Hannan(see the articles in Meyer&Hannan 1979). Beginning with a project to study world education, and movingto problems of ethnicity, they cameto adopt many of Wallersteins ideas and to urge their students to test them with cross-national quantitative data. Rubinsonand
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 95 Chase-Dunn have becomethe best knownof their students. Thoughthey do not limit themselvesto quantitative cross-national data analysis, that is where they have made their reputations (Rubinson 1976; Chase-Dunn 1975; ChaseDunn&Rubinson1977). Bergesen has edited a useful book extending traditional hypothesis-testing techniquesto historical materials (1980). Such work has gained quick popularity. It combinesthe ideological and political punch of Marxism with the safe and marketable technology taught to modem sociology graduate students. Becauseit is so easy to find someUnited Nations data, run it through a machine, and tack on a little world-system verbiage, it is a style that has been abused. But it has produceda few interesting 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 &Ragin 1978). He has discussed both the pattern of world economicdevelopmentand ethnic survival and reaction in developed countries to show some of the important limitations of world-system formulations. Snyder &Kick (1979) have devised a wayto use block modelling in world-systemic studies. Cultural Anthropology
Oneof the most fruitful areas for the development of world-systemtheory has been cultural anthropology.There, these ideas have helped liberate fieldwork from overly narrow description by suggesting ways in which major international currents have affected seemingly isolated and primitive cultures (Danielle 1981). Schneider &Schneiders book about the peripheralization of Sicily (1976) is a goodexampleof this, as are many of the articles in Carol Smiths edited volumes(1976). Verdery is presently completing a book Transylvanianhistory that combines the systematic study of a village with a larger historical study of the Austro-HungarianEmpire and its role in the spread of capitalism to c~entral and eastern Europe(forthcoming). John Cole (1977) has argued that the recent reexamination of European peasants anthropologists has been influenced by a world-systemic perspective. Writers on subjects as different as the Peruvian wooltrade (Orlove 1977), the British Royal Botanical Gardens(Brockway 1979), and pre-contact Mesoamerican trade patterns (Pailes &Whitecotton 1979) have used Wallerstein. Though this literature is not by sociologists, it exemplifies the artificiality of the boundarybetweenvarious disciplines that study theoretically related topics. The Fernand Braudel Center
After his great success, Wallerstein moved to the State University of New York at Binghamton to head the new FernandBraudel Center. There, assisted by TerenceHopkins,he has established himself at the heart of an international

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enterprise to develop and spread his theories. The Center publishes its own journal, Review, in whichthe latest related findings and debates can be found. Wallerstein also edits a series in conjunction with the French Maisondes Sciences de lHornmefor Cambridge University Press. It has published books ranging from Romanian rural history (Stahl 1980), through the history of early colonial Mexico (Frank 1979), to studies of Algerias economyand ethnographyduring its colonial period (Bourdieu 1979). Two of the Braudel Centers most interesting projects are the study of long cycles in the capitalist world-economy and the examinationof the history of Ottomanperipheralization. The capitalist economyhas always been subject to waves or cycles of expansion and contraction, and the reasons for these are imperfectly understood. There is little question, for example,that after the boom of the 1950s and 1960s, most capitalist economiesentered a period of relative stagnation in the 1970s. This slowdownthreatens to becomea major world economic crisis in the 1980s. It has affected someof the peripheral and semiperipheral economieseven more strongly than the core, though a weakcore economy like Britains has been badly hurt. Nor have communisteconomies, which reentered the capitalist trading networkin the 1960s, been spared. High international debt, falling agricultural production, and inflation have increased social tensions in such different countries as Poland, Romania, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Peru. Kondratieffs 1926 study of long (47-60 years) cycles in the capitalist word-economy found three periods of rise and fall from the 1780s until the start of the post-WorldWarI slump (Kondratieff 1979). His predictions have been surprisingly accurate. The downturnthat beganin the 1920s lasted until the late 1930s, and completedthe cycle that had begunwith the rising prosperity of the 1890s. The post-Word WarII boomran from the late 1940s until about 1970, equalling the average 25 year period of previous up cycles. Could it be that the present down part 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 wavesfurther into the past as well as to project theminto the future. So far, convincingexplanations for the cycles have not fully materialized. Conventional theories have concentrated on the discovery of new techniques for exploiting previously unused resources. This causes a rapid rise in profits for those whocontrol the new technologies. There follows a period of falling returns as the new resource becomesrelatively less abundant and dearer to exploit. In these terms (of course we are simplifying) the cycle after 1945 might be viewedas a wave dominated by petroleum, which has gone from being an abundant, cheap energy source, to being an expensiveone in the 1970s. The great merit of the BraudelCenters approachis to tie economic cycles to cycles of political and

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97
economichegemony by particular core powers, and to the creation and exploitation of newperipheries in each cycle. The latest cycle has been characterized by Americandominanceand now decline in the world-economy. Whether or not a good explanation will be found for this phenomenon remainsan openquestion. It is not evencertain that we are in a lasting 20 or 30 year decline. But it is at this level that world-systemtheory offers the greatest promise for the discovery of new ideas, and where a genuinely world-wide perspective enriches the narrower view of conventional economists and students of social change. TheOttoman project (see Review,II, 3) is morehistorically specific, but it promisesto give us a greater understandingof howperipheralization occurs. World-system theory has been rather weakin distinguishing betweendifferent types of pre-industrial agrarian empires (see below). If the study of Ottoman decline and the absorption of its territories into the capitalist world-economy from the 17th to the 19th century comesto fruition, this weaknesswill be partially remedied. Again, this is an area much studied by historians, but world-systemtheory can offer newideas and integrate regional history with larger trends. Despite this activity and someunquestionable successes, serious questions have arisen about the adequacyof world-systemtheory, and about major gaps it has left unexplored in the history of social change and economicdevelopment. SOME CRITICISMS OF THE THEORY
World-system theory has had few critics in sociology. Those whodislike it moreor less ignore it, and those whopractice it tend to take its fundamental assertions as received truths. Minormodifications or additions are made,but frontal attacks on Wallerstein and his followers have so far been limited to occasional book reviews (e.g. Skocpol 1977; Janowitz 1977; Chirot 1980). Some historians haveattacked particular applications of his theories, but few scholars in any field have the encyclopedicknowledge required to tackle the wholeintellectual systemdirectly. Reversed Causality: Brenners Critique An important exception is historian Robert Brenner. In 1976 he showedthat the economicbackwardness of eastern Europe(primarily Poland) in the early modernperiod did not arise from "dependence."Rather, it was backwardness that eventually produced the "dependent" pattern. In England, it was the reverse. Internal agrarian transformations madeits rapid economicdevelopmentpossible, and it was only this that allowed England to create its Empire.

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In 1977 Brenner attacked Wallerstein directly using, among others, the works of the Pole MarianMalowist, whohad been one of Wallersteins main inspirations. Brenners explanations were not new. They repeated the conventional wisdomestablished by most economichistorians whohad studied these questions. But by tackling Wallerstein, Frank, and their followers (as well as Sweezy)Brenner highlighted the key gap in their work: They neglect to study the reasons for the economicsuccess, the technological dynamism, and the fundamental novelty of what was happening in England and the Netherlands 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) provedthat this was not an oversight, but was instead the key to Wallersteins attempt to prove that Poland was not muchbehind the most advancedparts of western Europein 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 backwardagricultural technology, and a fragile, decayingurban networkbefore the grain trade with the West began. Brenner(1977)noted that Wallersteinserror is tied to his refusal to analyze the interplay betweenclass structure and economic growth. It also leads to a strange misunderstanding about the presence or absence of strong states. Core states are necessarily strong, and weakstates are peripheral according to Wallerstein. True, Poland in the 17th century had becomea weak (decentralized) state, but so were the Netherlandscompared to, say,. France. Wallerstein (1980) nevertheless continues to maintainthat the Netherlandscomprised a strong state whoselong-term economicsuccess was based on international power and conscious manipulation of markets by a strong core government. The reality was different. The very class structures that favored independent capitalists madeit impossible for absolutist royal bureaucraciesto flourish. The capitalists were then successful in their international business because they were moreinnovative and efficient than their competitors, not because of their "strong states." This error, the unwillingnessto analyze internal class dynamics in search of explanations for capitalisms economicstrength, has consequences for the analysis of late 20th century economicproblems. Brenner (1977) showsthat the Wallerstein-Frankthesis proposesautarkic closure as the best strategy for development by contemporary Third-World countries. But this shifts the focus away from increasing productivity of labor to nationalism. It is easy to see how this "leftist" analysis rejoins the fascist prescriptions of Mussoliniand Manoilescu even if today it appeals primarily to a certain type of neo-Marxist. (Wallerstein nowdenies that he favors autarky for most peripheral and semiperipheral countries. Nevertheless, his workencourages autarkic solutions,
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 99 and he greatly admires countries such as North Korea that have tried to approach autarky. Other world-system and dependency theorists, such as Samir Amin,have retained their faith in autarky despite the obvious limitations of that policy whereit has been tried.) Whatever confirmation of world-system theory exists in short-term statistical analysis of Third-Worldeconomiesperpetuates Wallersteins reversal of causality. Noone denies that patterns of dependency exist, or that there is a great transnational capitalist market. But whetherdependency is a cause or an effect of backwardnessmakesall the difference in which remedies are suggested. (For discussion of moreinstances of this error in world-system theory, see Chirot 1981.) A Comprehensive Theory? Despite the claims of its supporters, world-system theory is far from comprehensive. The treatmentof pre-capitalist societies is skimpy [despite the interesting review article by Moseley& Wallerstein (1978)]. No one can fault Wallersteinfor not knowing all history, but his insistence on the failure of the classical empiresto industrialize because their political and economic systems happenedto coincide leads to another error symptomaticof a more general explanatory gap. Certain long-lasting "world-economies" failed to producea capitalist worldeconomy. The Persian Gulf, the Iranian Plateau, "and the eastern Mediterranean formedsuch a "system" for two thousand years. So did India from the time of the Mauryato the British conquest, another two millenia. The Islamic Near East and North Africa from the collapse of centralized Abbasid role to the Ottomanconquest were a veritable "world-economy"for five centuries. Why,then, was Europeso special in the 15th century? Subsumingall world-empires under one, inherently stagnant rubric is grossly misleading. China from the time of the Han to the Mingwent through periods of rapid technological and economicgrowth (Elvin 1973). To compare this case with that of Egypt, whichwas moreor less stagnant betweenthe time of the Pyramidsand the Macedonian conquest 2300 years later, is to believe mistakenly that there existed a single "Asiatic modeof production." Byturning all pre-capitalist states into a uniform"traditional" type, worldsystemtheory finds it difficult to explain why the reaction to capitalist penetration was so different fromplace to place and continues to vary in important waystoday. The general tendencyto lumpall precapitalist societies into two simple types (and "minisystems" are an even more simplistic type than "world-empires") is perilously close to the ahistorical eurocentrismthat characterized modernization theory. It leads to the sameinability to discriminate between different societies without resorting to irrelevant and artificial constructs.
Socialism? Mostprominent world-system theorists share an enthusiastic faith in socialism as a solution to problemscausedby capitalist exploitation. This faith affects their analysis of the world. It mustbe questionedbecauseit leads to moreblind spots. Wallerstein (1979) excuses manyof the faults of communistcountries showingthat they are obliged to operate in a capitalist world-system. They cannot, therefore, move to their ideal state until world capitalism is overthrown. But is this a useful way to understand what goes on in communist countries? It is surely no coincidence that world-systempractitioners have never produced a serious book about communistsocieties, even though they have written dozensof interesting ones about the effects of peripherality and semiperipherality in the rest of the world. Wallersteins own nomenclature should have suggested a better way of analyzing the Soviet Unionthan those used so far by world-systemtheorists. Far from being a core or semiperipheral society, the Soviet Union is an old-fashioned world-empire,perhaps the last of its kind. It does not exploit eastern Europeand Cuba,it subsidizes themin return for military and strategic advantages. Like Rome,at least from the early 2nd century, it is run by and for a military-bureaucratic ruling class. Its only dynamicimpulse comesfrom heavy industry used for armaments. Otherwise, like the late Roman Empire, it is beset by inherent problemsof stagnation and the discontent of subject peoples in its administrative periphery. The emphasis in Wallerstein on future world-socialist revolution entirely avoids the issue of class dynamics undersocialism, and it fails to ask the basic question: How is long-run increasing labor productivity possible outside capitalism? Among theoretical issues few could be moreimportant or further from being solved than this one. [For a first-rate study of these problems, see Hirszowicz (1980).] World-system theorys transposition of Marxto an international plane has been accompaniedby an assertion that, on the whole, economically peripheralized people are being continuously immiserized. That is whythere will eventually be a world revolution against the "bourgeois" core. Wallerstein (1979) believes that capitalist economic growth is a zero-sumgame.Countries that develop do so only at the expenseof others that lose. Since only a few grow, most decline. The widening gap in per capita GNP between rich and poorcountries, then, is not an anomaly but a natural result of capitalist growth. Onlysocialism can change this. But is capitalist economicdevelopment a zero-sum game?Kuznets (1971) and Bairoch (1977) have shownthat it is not, and that in the post-Second WorldWarperiod the growthrate of poorer countries has been higher than the

WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY 101
historic growth rate of the old core. Morerecent data (NewYork Times 1979) confirmthis. Thehigher per capita growthrate of richer countries is entirely a function of the rapid populationgrowthin the poorer parts of the world; and no matter what one thinks about population problems, this growth is itself proof of the increasing availability of material goodsand services that insure higher survival rates. As Morris (1979) has shown,almost the whole world has experiencedgreat improvement in the measurable"quality of life" in the last several decades. Capitalism may,indeed, fail to stimulate production sufficiently to meet future population growth, and we mayone day be faced with a desperate Malthusiancrisis. But this is by no stretch of the imaginationthe result of a constant trend towardabsolute immiserization,nor is it evena certain future. Blaming capitalism and hoping for a socialist revolution to rescue the world once again obviates study of what is going on within countries. Why have somelimited their population growth while others have not? Economic historians are no longer sure that capitalist colonialism itself was harmful to economicgrowth in the periphery. The outcomedepended on the colony, the colonizers, and the period of colonization. For example, the effects of plantation slavery in the Caribbeanmayhave been negative (Mintz 1977)for the reasonsasserted by world-system theory, but British rule in India maynot have retarded industrialization at all (Morris et al 1969). The Issue of Culture For world-system theorists as for most other Marxistsideas are merelyepiphenomenal.But even if cultures are ultimately produced by material conjunctions, once they are in place they take on a life of their own.World-system theorys refusal to study such matters reduces its grasp of social changeand economicprogress. That the triumphof a specific type of capitalist rationality in westernEurope in the 16th and 17th centuries resulted from the success of the bourgeois classes in asserting their independence from church and king, and that it had further consequencesin the flowering of modem science, is part of Webers central theory of capitalist development (Weber1968). Merton (1970) others have shown that the historical connectionbetweenincreasing religious rationality and the growthof science was tight. The capitalist cores ability to exploit weakperipheries was neither a new nor an unusual phenomenon, and it maynot have been decisive in sustaining economic growth.But toleration and eventually support of free thinking intellectuals for so long and on such a large scale was unique. It remainsan unusual phenomenon outside the capitalist core to this day. Capitalisms toleration goes beyondsupport of intellectuals. It has been

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extended to much of the population of Westerncapitalist societies. This has contributed to raising large portions of the massesto a high level of skill and education. It has, over time, with much difficulty, and with frequent reverses, inculcated a secular, scientific approachto the calculability of economic actions. The failure of world-system theory to grapple with these facts is evident in its inability to explain whyeconomicdevelopmentaffects large areas with roughlysimilar historical and cultural traditions in similar ways, regardless of their poweror position in the world-system.Thus northwestern Europe, which industralized before the rest of the world, included England,followed closely by Belgium,northern France, western Germany,Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Switzerland was a weak, internationally insignificant state; Belgium was not independentuntil well after its industrialization; and westernGermany was politically subordinated to the state that absorbed it. Later, industrialization spread to Scandinaviawherein the 18th century there had supposedly existed only a peripheral (Denmark)and a failed semiperipheral (Sweden) society destined for the samefate as Spainafter its failure a century earlier (Wallerstein 1980; Bairoch 1965). Thesefacts are no more surprising than the later successes of the United States, Canada, and Australia, despite their entry into the world-systemas primary exporters, and despite the continued peripherality (in strict dependencytheory terms) of the latter two. Some societies learned the culture of industrialization easily becausethey were close to it fromthe start.
CONCLUSION
World-systemtheory and its close ally dependencytheory have manyflaws. Their economichistory sometimeshas been wrong. The naked political bias and revolutionary polemicevident in someof their writings showhoweasy it is to fall into blind dogmatism.The attack against capitalism has not been accompanied by a convincing explanation of what might replace it. There are major empirical and theoretical gaps. But this cannot deprive them of their importanceand real virtues. Studyingindividual societies in isolation fromeach other is both misleading and dangerous. It hides the powerful transnational forces that have been a major part of all social and economic transformations since the 15th century. It yields incomplete, and often wrongconclusions about the nature of social problems. Sociologyhas tended to fall into this kind of a trap. World-system theory can thus be seen as a necessary remedy.Whether or not one agrees with all of its conclusions, it is abundantlyclear that a world-wide perspective has becomea minimal requirement for the intelligent study of social change.

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Wallersteinandhis followers have reminded us, too, that such a perspective must necessarily be historical anddeal in centuries, not merelydecades,even for the study of contemporary problems. None of this is new,nor mustit come with a leftist bias. Webers program for the study of sociology was broadly comparative and historical, and it combined economic,political, andcultural research. But because Weber had beenmore cited than followed, it wastime to bring backthat kind of vision to the forefront of sociology. That it camein the particular formknown as world-system theoryis the product of intellectual andideological forces in our world. Thoseof us whodislike these forces are nonethelessobliged to recognize the contribution made by world-system theory. Thoseothers of us who, on the contrary, are pleased by the ideology that accompanies the theory should equally recognize that its importance is not based primarilyon its ideological stance.
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