Ok I just came up with something and it kinda blew my mind...need some critiques: Ive been struggling to come up with a way to explain the connection between the Capital/Labor dialectic and World Systems Theory. The major difference between these two is that the antithetical forces are isolated: For Marx its wage laborers against capitalists. For Wallerstein its peripheral nations against core nations. How do we make the connection? The connection is this: there exist varying levels of proletarianization in each nation, which is defined by the percentage of the workforce that is directly proletarian, ie...they strictly work a wage and experience the very alienation described by Marx. Most importantly, the proletarian sees the *least* amount of value for his work. The degree to which a nation is proletarian is relational to their position in the Core/Periphery/Semi-Periphery. America, for example, has a well-fed middle-class. This term middle class can be used to denote a group of exploited workers who receive enough benefit from their socio-political circumstance that the need to rebel or resist the system is insufficient. Thus we are forced to shift to the nation-state as the arbiter of capital accumulation between these zones. MAKE NO MISTAKE: Capital accumulation and surplus-value are extracted from ALL workers in ALL zones. But the role of the nation-state can be seen as the agent by which relative stability was manifested in Core nations. This contributes to some downfalls in social movements. For one, it causes people to consider the geographic borders of a nation-state as the sole battlefield within which they can wage their resistance. From the Core to the Semi-Periphery, the nation-state is still seen as the end point by which change is fundamentally possible. This overtly ignores the interdependency of these states in the global system. In summation: We can link Marxs historical materialism to world systems theory by seeing WST as an *advancement* of historical materialism to a world-theory. No longer do we need to solely consider the capital/labor dialectic of the nation, but rather we now have a model to explain the capital/labor dialectic of capitalism throughout the world. The main agents in this are nation-states and capital interest groups.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:44:11 +0000
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