Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 10:53:17 -0500 From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: M-I: Andre Gunder Frank, 3 of 3 NO EUROPEAN EXCEPTIONALISM We must take exception to this alleged European "exceptionalism" on several related grounds: -- 1. As already noted above, the theses of AfroAsian "Orientalism" and European "exceptionalism" empirically and descriptively MIS-represent how Asian economies performed and societies were. Not only the alleged AMP and "Oriental" Despotism, but also the allegations about non-rational, anti- profit seeking, and other supposed pre-/non-/anti- commercial/productive/capitalist features of Asia are very much off the mark, as demonstrated by our review of Asia's participation in the world economy. In fact, AfroAsian economic and financial "development" and institutions were not only up to European "standards," but largely excelled them in 1400 and still in 1750 and even in 1800. -- 2. For over these three centuries as also earlier, there was nothing "exceptional" about Europe, unless it was Europe's exceptionally marginal far off peninsular position on the map and its correspondingly minor role in the world economy. That may have afforded it some "advantage of backwardness" (Gerschenkron 1962). None of the alleged European "exceptionalisms" of "superiority" is borne out by historical evidence, either from Europe itself or from elsewhere, as Hodgson (1993) warned long ago and Blaut (1993) unequivocally again demonstrated recently. Therefore, the really critical factors in Europe's economic participation and "development" have also been both empirically and theoretically misrepresented by almost all received historiography and social theory from Marx and Weber to Braudel and Wallerstein. No matter what its political color or intent, their historiography and social theory and that of Tawny or Toynbee, and Polanyi or Parsons and Rostow -- is devoid of the historical basis from which its authors claimed to derive it. Just as Asia was not stuck-in-the-mud, so did Europe not raise itself by its own bootstraps. -- 3. The comparative method itself suffers from inadequate holism and misplaced concreteness. At its worst, and alas Marx was among these, some "features" were rather arbitrarily declared to be essential [to what?] but wanting everywhere except in Europe. At best, western observers [and alas also some from Asia and elsewhere] "compare" "Western" civilizational, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, military, geographical, climatic, in a word racial "features" with "Oriental" ones and find the latter wanting on this or that [Eurocentric] criterion. Among the classical writers, Weber devoted the greatest study to the comparisons of these factors, and especially to embellishing the above cited Marxist notions about Oriental "sacred customs, moral code, and religious law." His many followers have further embellished this comparative approach with still more "peculiar" features. Even if these comparisons were empirically accurate, which we have observed that most were not, they had and still have two important shortcomings: One is how to account for the allegedly significant factors that are being compared; another is the choice to compare these features or factors in the first - and last - place. Yet the choice of what features or factors to compare is based on the prior explicit or implicit decision that European characteristics are significant, distinct and therefore worth comparing with others. Let us examine these decisions and implicit choices in turn. -- 4. The sometimes explicit supposition but mostly implicit assumption is that the institutional basis and mechanisms of production and accumulation, exchange and distribution, and their functional operation are determined by "traditional" historical inheritance and/or other or local, national, or regional developments. This kind of "analysis" does not even consider the possibility that the factors under consideration were local, national, or regional responses to participation in a single world-wide economic system and process. Yet as we have argued and demonstrated above, accumulation, production, and distribution and their institutional forms throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas did adapt to and reflect their common interdependence. Certainly the institutional form and very lifeblood of all entrepots like Hormuz and Malacca, and most other ports and caravan crossroads was a function of their increasing and decreasing participation in the world economy. But so were their productive and commercial hinterlands. My study of Mexican agriculture 1520-1630 showed how successive institutional forms of labor recruitment and organization were local responses to world economic and cyclical exigencies (Frank 1979). In Chapters 2, 3 and 4 we observed analogous institutional adaptations and development on the Bengal frontier (Eaton 1993), South China (Marks 1995), South East Asia (Lieberman 1995), and the Ottoman Empire (Islamoglu-Inan 1987). Even related "civilizational" or "cultural" variables are not so much determinant or independent, as they are themselves derivative from and dependent on the world-wide economic structure and process. All attempts to account for or explain local, national or regional ripple "development/s" primarily in terms of their respective supposedly cultural or class "determinants" are too limited in their purview. They neglect the fundamental world economic sea change of which the local ones often are only superficial expressions and manifestations. In short, all attempts to account for features and factors of "development" on the basis only or even primarily of local antecedents and in the absence of their world economic "function" can result only in the neglect of factors that are essential to any satisfactory explanation. -- 5. Therefore, even the best comparative studies violate the canon of holism, for they do not study the global whole and the world economy/system from which the factors to be compared are or may be derivative. That is, we also need to construct a holistic theory and analysis of this global economy and world system, as well as of its own operation and transformation. For these also generate and shape the institutional forms themselves. A vivid illustration that we need such a completely different approach is the issue on NEW APPROACHES TO EUROPEAN HISTORY published in the Turkish journal Metu. Development Studies, 22,3 1995. It offers a "Theory of the Rise of the West" by John A. Hall and its discussion by several Turkish colleagues. Hall admits to "more than a touch of megalomania" in being "able to offer a completely new account" of the rise of the West in which he "is going to solve Max Weber's problem in entirely different terms" (ibid: 231-2). He begins with his own examination of China and brief references to Islam and Hindu/Buddhist India, which he still compares unfavorably with Europe, as he already did before (Hall 1985). Economic development allegedly was impossible in China because of the imperial state, in India because of Hindu caste, and under Islam because of nomadic pastoral tribalism. All allegedly lacked the unique European state and inter-state system. So Hall reverts to the same old argument about European exceptionalism, except that he gives the latter a slightly "new" twist. One of his Turkish commentators makes "rather a defense of Mr. Hall. I think most of the counter-arguments base themselves on a certain misunderstanding" (ibid:251). Alas, the "counter-arguments" of his Turkish colleagues do no more than take exception to some of Hall's European exceptionalism and comparisons. They themselves have no alternative explanation or even approach to offer whatsoever, least of all a holistic one that would not just compare but relate Europeans and Ottomans within a single world system. We have only just begun this task here ! -- 6. However, studies that compare "Western" and "Oriental" societies are therefore already vitiated by their choice of the features or factors to be compared, unless that choice is itself derived from the study of the whole world economy/system to begin with. And of course it is not. Indeed, the choice of the very features and factors to be compared is derived from focusing on a part, be that Britain, Europe, the West or wherever. That is, the very design of the study, from Marx and Weber to Braudel and Wallerstein, et al suffers from the misplaced concreteness of looking for the explanandum with a magnifying glass or even a microscope, but only under the European streetlight. The real task is first to take up a telescope to gain a holistic view of the global whole and its world economy/system. Only that can reveal what passive features, or more likely active factors, we then need to regard with greater care with a magnifying glass. To that task as well, we turn in the discussion of implications below. But first, there are some more derivative conclusions about what not to do, because doing so prevents seeing "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" in the global whole. NO BREAK IN 1450/1492/1498/1500 Another and derivative but inescapable conclusion is that the alleged break before and after 1500 never took place. Historians often mark a break in "world" history in 1500 (eg. Stavarianos 1966, Reilly 1989). Even Bentley's (1996) innovative proposals in The American Historical Review to derive "Periodization in World History" not only from European but from world-wide processes still marks the beginning of the last period in 1500. Historians and social theorists of Europe, both of earlier generations and still contemporary ones mark this same break all the moreso. So do world-system theorists like Wallerstein (1974), and still Sanderson (1994) and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1996). The allegation that there was a sharp break around 1500 was already reflected in the above-cited opinions of Smith and Marx that 1492 and 1498 were the most important years in the history of mankind. Perhaps they were directly so for the peoples of the "New World" and indirectly so for those of Europe. However, Braudel (1992:57) disputed Wallertstein's allegation of this break in Europe, where Braudel saw continuity since at least 1300 and even from 1100. Indeed, even Wallerstein (1992) refers to the widespread agreement that an expansive "A" phase from 1050 to 1250 was followed by a contractive "B" phase from 1250 to 1450 and then after that by still another expansive "A" phase in the "long sixteenth century" from 1450 until 1640. The evidence above, however, suggests that this expansive phase already began in much of Asia in 1400 -- and that it lasted there until at least 1750. Wallerstein's European "long sixteenth century" probably was a belated and more temporary expression of this world economic expansion itself. Indeed, the very voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama themselves should probably be regarded as expressions of this world economic expansion, to which Europeans wanted to attach themselves in Asia. Therefore, the continuity across 1500 was actually far more important and is theoretically far more significant than any alleged break or new departure. Thus I suggest that it is not appropriate or even necessary, as the so common argument has it, to regard early modern and still contemporary history as the result and/or as the harbinger of a significant historical break. The widespread dis-continuity theses are far less a contribution, let alone a necessity, and far more and impediment to understanding the real world historical process and contemporary reality. These mis-leading discontinuity theses have been presented in various forms, including the "birth of capitalism," the "Rise of the West," "the incorporation of Asia into the European world-economy," not to mention the West's alleged "rationalism" and "civilizing mission." I prefer to leave for philosophical consideration by others elsewhere whether or not modern and contemporary history is a vehicle or manifestation of "progress," unilinear or otherwise. Here, I prefer to re-consider and question the scientific validity or analytic usefulness to such time related concepts and terms as "proto-capitalism" or "proto-industrialization," or for that matter such "quantitative" ones as "petty-capitalism," "semi-feudalism" or "proto-socialism"] here in Europe or there in Asia. The endless disputations about the alleged transitions from one to another of these categories at particular but different times in any part the world is a literally blind alley, which cannot possibly lead to even the faintest enlightenment. For only the study of the continuing structure and dynamic of the one and only world [system] can illuminate the hows, whys, and wherefores of the "development," "rise" or "fall" of any part of the world [system], be it in Europe, America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and/or any part thereof. CAPITALISM? Of late, that is since Marx, the "fascination" [as Braudel (1982:54) called it] with 1500 as the date of a new departure that makes a supposed break with the past is mostly a function of the allegation that it ushered in a new, previously unknown or at least never before dominant, "capitalist mode of production." That was of course the position from Marx and Sombart to Weber and Tawney, and all it is still shared by their many contemporary followers. This is still the position of "world-system" theorists from Wallerstein (1974) and Frank (1978) to Sanderson (1995) and Chase-Dunn (1996). Even Amin's (1991,1993) and Blaut's (1993) vehement critiques of Eurocentrism stop short of abandoning 1500 as the dawn of a new age of European born and borne capitalism. All of the above Marxists, Weberians, Polanyists, world- systematizers, not to mention most "economic" and other historians, balk at pursuing the evidence and the argument to examine the sacred cow of "capitalism" and its allegedly peculiarly exceptional or exceptionally peculiar "mode of production." Therefore, the mere suggestion that perhaps this conviction might or even should be open to question is already rejected as unacceptable heresy. Having already broached this heresy to little effect before (Frank 1991, Frank and Gills 1993), there is little point in trying to pursue the argument further here. Suffice it to point out that the same evidence and argument that support the first four conclusions above also have implications for the idea of "capitalism." These conclusions deny the AMP and European exceptionalism, but affirm a world economy and its continuity across 1500. Yet world-system theorists and Blaut accept the first two above-cited conclusions about the AMP and European exceptionalism, but they reject the last two that affirm the continuity of a global economy and deny the break in 1500. Braudel in turn also denies the break in 1500 and de facto recognizes a global economy, even if hit does not fit it into his model of a European "world-economy." Yet all four of the previous conclusions inexorably render questionable to say the least the very concept of a "capitalist" mode of production and the supposed significance of its alleged spread from Europe to the rest of the world. Indeed, the first four conclusions question the very significance imputed to different "modes of production," of course including "feudalism" and "capitalism," not to mention any alleged "transition" between them. This received conceptualization has at the very least diverted our attention away from the much more significant world systemic structures and processes, which themselves engendered the organizational forms that were then misleadingly termed "feudal" and "capitalist" "modes of production." As we have observed, not only was there no unilinear "progress/ion" from one "mode" of production to another; but all manner of relations of production were and remain widely intermingled. Many different relations of production have "delivered" products that have been competitive on the world market. However, it has not been so much one relation or another, and still less any "mode," of production that has determined the success and failure of particular producers. Instead, competitive pressures and exigencies on the world market have been and continue to be much more determinant of the choice and adaptation of relations of production themselves. The incessant discussions about non-, pre-, proto-, blooming-, full blown-, declining-, post-, or any other "stage" and quantity or quality of capitalism or the lack thereof have led us down the garden path and diverted us from analyzing the real world. A recent example was already mentioned: Hill Gates (1996) does very well to examine the relations between commercialism and patriarchy in a thousand years of China's Motor. However, her continued insistence on using the categories of "the tributary and petty capitalist modes of production" and their uneasy relations handicaps instead of illuminating her analysis of the real world issues. The review of van Zanden's "marchant capitalism" also rebuts the contention that it represented a distinctive "articulation of modes of production" between "non-capitalist" modes of reproduction and use of labor "outside the system" and others inside the "world market" of the "world-economy." However, the hidden but most revealing aspect of this discussion is that, irrespective of which side of the arguments they support, all of the discussants recur to these terms in quotation marks again and again. But they all use them without quotation marks, because they largely agree on the meaning and referents of what is allegedly excluded by these terms. Indeed, van Zanden and others even name several of them: slaves, peasants, those who work at home in cottage industry, in West Africa, and in East Asia (van Zanden 1997: 260). In all this discussion and the related literature it refers to, all these producers and even traders remain outside their universe of discourse in which "admittedly, the Dutch Republic became the largest staple market the world had even known;" so "Amsterdam was both the central warehouse of world commerce and the pivotal money and capital market of the European world-economy at the same time;" and therefore it was "the world-economy's control booth" (Lis and Soly 1997: 233, 211, 222). That is, for all these discussants about "modes of production." the real world economy, of which Amsterdam was but an outpost, does not exist. Indeed, Wallerstein's (1997: 244) intervention even stresses "let us not quibble about the unit of analysis"! But the most important issue in this whole discussion is precisely the unit of analysis, which all of the participants disregard: the world economy and not their little European one. The moment we recognize that, the whole discussion about "modes of production" more than pales into insignificance and irrelevance: For then it can finally been seen as the distraction that it really is from the real issue, which is the holistic analysis of the whole. Therefore, it is much better to cut [out] the Gordian knot of "capitalism" altogether. That was already my argument in Frank (1991), Frank and Gills (1992, 1993), and Frank (1994,1995); and it is well put by Chaudhuri (1990:84) writing under the title Asia Before Europe: "The ceaseless quest of modern historians looking for the 'origins' and roots of capitalism is not much better than the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone that transforms base metal into gold." Indeed, that is the case not only for the origins and roots, but the very existence and meaning of "capitalism." So, best just forget about it, and get on with our inquiry into the reality of "universal history, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist." APPENDIX A chapter summary of ReORIENT: GLOBAL ECONOMY IN THE ASIAN AGE [University of California Press forthcoming April 1998] by Andre Gunder Frank The introductory Chapter 1 suggests that received historiography and social theory fall seriously short of what we need. Marx and Weber or Parsons and Rostow and their many disciples are far and away too Eurocentric, and Braudel and Wallerstein also are still not nearly holistic enough. None of them is able, or even willing, to address the global problematique, whose whole is more than the sum or its parts. Chapter 2 outlines the productive division of labor and the multilateral trade framework, as well as the sectoral and regional inter-connections within the global economy. Chapter 3 signals how American and Japanese money went around the world circulatory system and provided the life blood that made the world go round. Chapter 4 examines the resulting world population, productive,income and trade quantities, the related technological qualities and institutional mechanisms, as well as how several regions in Asia maintained and even increased their global preponderance therein. Chapters 5 and 6 propose a global marcohistory that treats the Decline of the East and the Rise of the West as related and successive processes within and generated by the global world economic structure and dynamic. Chapter 6 inquires how Asia's world economic advantage between 1400 and 1800 turned to its disadvantage and to the [temporary] advantage of the West to face the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. World-encompassing macro- and micro-economic analysis is used to account for The Rise of the West in global instead of the received Eurocentric terms. The concluding Chapter 7 then builds on the historical evidence and argument of this book to derive theoretical conclusions about how to analyze this global whole. Only a globally holistic analysis can permit a better, indeed any even minimally satisfactory, comprehension of how the whole world economic structure and dynamic shape and differentiate its sectoral and regional parts East and West, North and South. Recourse to a more holistic global historiography and social theory suggests how Asian, and particularly Chinese, predominance in the world economy through the eighteenth century presages its return to dominance also in the twenty-first century. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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