File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9801, message 461


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 ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005