DOUGLAS C. NORTH
Structure and Change in Economic History
Chapter 1: The Issues
Economic history explains the structure and performance of economies through time, where structure refers to the characteristics of a society which we believe to be the basic determinants of performance, and performance means total output, output per capita, and the distribution of income.
The neoclassical model alone is an insufficient model because of the weaknesses of its main assumptions, namely:
private and social returns are equated (zero transaction costs)
no diminishing returns to the acquisition and application of new knowledge
there is always a positive return to savings
the private and social costs of having children are equated
people's choices coincide with the desired results
The NC model need to be supplemented with a theory of demographic change, a theory of the growth in the stock of knowledge, and a theory of institutions. North is concerned only in developing a theory of institutions based on:
a theory of property rights that describes the individual and group incentives in the system
a theory of the state, since it specifies and enforces property rights
a theory of ideology that explains how different perceptions of reality affect the reaction of individuals to the changing ''objective situation''
In studying the problem of change in history, it is essential to specify the structure of an economic system in order to explain the dynamics of performance. In addition, one must recognize that social change does occur at the margin as NC theory implies (i.e., with changes in individual costs and benefits resulting in automatic changes in behavior), but other changes do not (such as the problem of the free rider). The NC model cannot account for behavior in which calculated self-interest is not the motivating factor. In addition, it is deficient in explaining stability and it lacks a theory of ideology.
Chapter 11: Structure and Change in Early Modern Europe
The period between 1450 and 1650 was one of many changes. Exploration, exploitation, trade, and settlement were expanded and there were changes in political-economic units. The European expansion was due to an alteration of relative prices, though there was always an ideological cast to these materialistic endeavors. There were two main consequences of this expansion: 1.) the institutions and property rights carried over from mother country shaped the subsequent development of the colonial areas, and 2.) the pattern of trade and flow of productive factors helped shape the pattern of development.
The 17th century, however, was a time of crises, including wars, falling wages, widespread social upheaval, and religious strife. Marxists explain this as a structural crisis over control of the state that led to the emergence of a set of property rights encouraging modern economic growth. However, the Marxian emphasis on technology is incorrect because the technological change associated with the Industrial Revolution required the prior development of a set of property rights, which raised the private rate of return on invention and innovation.
Countries responded differently to this crisis due to the nature of property rights. One must look at the interplay between the government and subjects regarding the expansion of the state's right to tax. In countries that were economically successful (e.g., Netherlands, England), property rights provided incentives to use factors of production more efficiently and directed resources onto inventive and innovating activity. Less successful countries (e.g., France and Spain) faced a Malthusian crisis.
France: The crown brought an end to the social and political chaos of the time in exchange for the right to tax without the consent of the governed. The crown traded monopoly rights in local areas for an assured source of revenue. This required a large bureaucracy which discouraged economic growth and led to the crisis.
Spain: In the 13th century tax revenue was traded for property privileges. This thwarted the development of efficient property rights in land for centuries. In the 1500's, guilds were granted exclusive monopolies for tax revenue. This led to bankruptcy, high rates of taxation, confiscation of property, and a slowing of trade and commerce.
Netherlands: The Dutch overcame their lack of resources by developing an efficient economic organization relative to their larger rivals and by taking advantage of the expanding world trade. The rulers discouraged restrictive practices and encouraged competition and the growth of trade and commerce. This improved the efficiency of Dutch markets.
England: The Tudors consolidated the power of the kind and increased crown revenues. Though the crown received the revenues from taxes, parliament won the right to set the level of tax, and the merchants achieved a monopoly of the trade. In 1689 the crown's initial control over property rights passed to a representative assembly which halted restrictive practices and increased competition. This allowed England to avoid a Malthusian crisis.
Chapter 12: The Industrial Revolution Reconsidered
Europe experiences significant changes between 1750 and 1830, including population growth, an increased standard of living, an increased life span, the replacement of agriculture with industry and service, a growing urban society which was accompanied by specialization, the division of labor, and interdependence, and continuous technological change.
The Industrial Revolution (IR) played an important role in these changes. However, it was not a radical break from the past, but rather an evolutionary culmination of a series of prior events. What was new about the IR was the magnitude of the changes, not their revolutionary character. The technological events of the IR were independent of developments in basic science. The technological events of the recent past, however, required major breakthroughs in science. The combination of science and technology produced the Second Economic Revolution.
Technological change is based on the reciprocal relationship between economic organization and technical change. Technical improvement depends of the developing of human skills. In addition, incentives for developing new techniques include the development of the patent system and an increasing rate of private return. An increasing rated of technological progress will result from either an increase in the size of the market or an increase in the inventor's ability to capture a larger share of the benefits crated by his/her invention.
The IR was initiated by the growing size of markets, which resulted in pressures to replace medieval and crown restriction circumscribing entrepreneurs with better specified common laws (Chapter 11). The growing size of the market also induced changes in organization, away from vertical integration to specialization. With specialization came the increasing transaction costs of measuring the inputs and outputs. The resultant increased supervision and central monitoring of inputs to improve quality radically lowered the cost of devising new techniques.
Chapter 13: The Second Economic Revolution
The First Economic Revolution created agriculture and ''civilization.'' The Second Economic Revolution (SER) created and elastic supply curve of new knowledge which built economic growth into the system. The SER is the result of two changes in the economic system: 1.) a change in the productive potential of the society as a consequence of a basic change in the stock of knowledge, and 2.) a change in organization to realize that potential. The development of the SER was the result of the development of scientific disciplines, and increased investment in human capital, and the evolution of property rights which raised the private rate of return closer to the social rate.
Technological breakthroughs that have characterized the SER include:
the development of automated machinery, which is the result of greater specialization
the creation of new sources of energy
the fundamental transformation of matter
The SER was accompanied by a Managerial Revolution, as Chandler explains. However, this led to the development of new rules to reduce transaction costs, which Chandler glosses over. The managerial revolution had to address many problems including: problems of quality control, labor discipline, bureaucracy, measuring inputs and outputs so that one could ascertain the contribution of individual factors and measure the output, and the formation of exchange relationship and contractual agreements extending over long periods of time. These problems increased resource costs of measuring the quality of output, increased the cost and occurrence of shirking, increased bureaucracy, and led to external effects such as environmental problems and the growth of government intervention.
Though the SER ushered in an era of unequaled prosperity in the Western world, it also induces a massive reaction against market economies and market forms of resources allocation. the control of the state was, for a brief period of time, in the hands of groups whose self-interest promoted the growth of market forms of resources allocation. However, control of the state passed into the hands of groups that favored the elimination or at least the modification of market forms of resource allocation. There are two hypotheses to account for the transformation:
1.) Market competition induces massive alimentation: Karl Polanyi argued, for example, that commoditization of land, labor, and money destroyed the social fabric of society. Occupational specialization and the division of labor led to the breakdown of communication and personal ties that had formed the fabric of a consensus ideology.,br>
2.) Market competition induced interest groups to shield themselves from its consequences by using the state to alter property rights and hence reduce competitive pressures.
Conclusion:
The pluralist control of the state has produced the disintegration of the earlier structure of property rights and replaced it with a struggle in the political arena to redistribute income and wealth at the expense of the efficiency potential of the SER. Moreover, this resultant struggle has not led to a new ideological social fabric that resolves the organizational tensions. Manipulation of the money supply by contending interest groups is a major destabilizing force in the modern world.
WILLIAM OGBURN
William F. Ogburn on Social Change.
''Social Evolution Reconsidered''
I. Writers of the late 19thc. spoke and wrote as if men created civilization rather than as if it evolved. Since society was assumed to be created by man, it was also assumed that the men with the more complex and elaborate civilizations had greater mental abilities and superior brains. The identification of civilization with behavior and the correlation of behavior with organic structure were great stumbling blocks in the scientific inquiry of the causes of social evolution, for civilization was seen as society and society as social behavior dependent on organic structure. Civilization was not seen as an accumulation of culture or as a conditioning environment .
The destruction of the belief that culture evolved only as biological man evolved did not provide an explanation of how culture did evolve. If it is not society that is evolving, it is culture. Social evolution then becomes cultural evolution, and the evolution of groups since glacial times is part of the evolution of culture./
II. Four factors that explain cultural evolution:
1)invention: the combination of existing and known elements of culture, material an/or non-material, or a modification of one to form a new one. Inventions result from 3 factors: mental ability, demand, and the existence of other cultural elements out of which inventions are fashioned -- ''the cultural base.'' Social demand directs the learning process and may be much greater in one sector of culture than another.
2)accumulation: occurs when more new elements are added to the cultural base than are lost. Society is both behavior and an accumulation. Biological behavior is constant over time, but learned behavior is accumulative. The advantage in studying social evolution or emphasizing accumulation is that it destroys the ethnocentric myth that man created his civilization. Much truer is the idea that he inherited it. Different peoples are born into different accumulations of culture. Though they have the same inherited mental abilities, their operating mental abilities may vary enormously, according to the ''pile'' of culture into which they were born.
The number of inventions is a function of the size of the cultural base - the # of existing elements in the culture. The accumulation of culture tends to grow exponentially. One seminal invention can proliferate many others. The view of culture as a growing accumulation is more realistic than the conception of it as behavior or as the creation of peoples.
3)diffusion: the spread of inventions from one area to others, usually from the areas of their origin. The spread of inventions is promoted by the various communication and transportation inventions. It is the importation of culture. The evolution of culture is more rapid because of diffusion. Isolated places benefit less by diffusion than locations at crossroads of peoples
4)adjustment: of one part of society to another is important in understanding the evolution of culture, for the parts of culture are intertwined in varying degrees. this type of interrelationship is the organization of culture. Because of this interrelationship, an invention occurring in one part and producing a change there will also occasion a change in a part closely correlated. The adjustment of one part of culture to a change in another part is a source of invention, but we treat it as a new factor in social evolution, along with invention, accumulation, and diffusion, b/c of its great potentiality in producing changes in culture.
A society in equilibrium experiences no social evolution. A society in disequilibrium makes adjustments and evolves in order to re-equilibrate.
III. The problem of social evolution is seen as the problem of explaining how society changes and of answering our q.'s as to how our modern civilization came to be.
The traditional explanation for this is inherited mental ability, but we don't even have any proof that inherited mental ability has changed. Thus, cultural change can't be explained by this ''constant.'' the four factors that explain cultural evolution are invention, accumulation, diffusion, and adjustment.
''Social Trends''
''Social trends'' is a better term than others in the analysis of social change because it has statistical connotations, it is impersonal and has no necessary moral implications, and trends can be verbally described instead of just statistically described. However, the problem of describing trends without stats is that it can lead to misstatements based on impressions. There can also be difficulty in distinguishing a fluctuation around the trend from the trend itself.
A very important characteristic of social trends is that they seldom change their direction quickly. Thus the projection of the trend line into the future has some trustworthiness and tells us with some degree of probability what the future will be. There are three cautions however, that should be observed when extending trend lines:the past trend should be of some duration, the further the projection is made, the greater the error, and the projection of trend lines into the future is not a forecast of what the time series will actually be. It is only a forecast of what the trend line will be, not the fluctuations around the line. Where exact forecasts are needed, the projection of the trend lines does not meet the exact requirements,but in most instances, this level of exactness is not necessary. Probabilities in trends are often 9/10.
The knowledge of social trends shows that there is much stability in society, even when there are periods of great and rapid social change. This gives us a sense of certainty that revolutions are rare and evolution is the rule. Social institutions are essentially stable, though in the long run they change.
There is a sort of inevitability about social trends. They are very unlikely to be changed by individuals or groups. Success is more likely to come to those who work for and with a social trend than those who work against it.
''Technology and the Standard of Living.''
The standard of living in the US was two times as high at mid-century than at the beginning. The probability for a continuing rise during the second half of the century is discussed.
I The reduction of poverty
Incomes of the poor from 1900-50 more than doubled, and the rich became less rich. The rise in per capita income in the first half of the 20th c. seems to have reduced poverty in the cities by 80 or 90%.
Improvement in health
If sickness is more prevalent among the poor, then a reduction in poverty will improve health. The rise of the standard of living from 1900-50 lowered the infant mortality rate -- a strong indicator of improvement in health.
The lessened appeal of socialism
A drop in the socialist vote is due to increased optimism about an increase in wages in the present economic system.
IIFuture rises in the standard of living
If the rate of increase in the standard of living continues (now keep in mind this was written in the 50's!) should be twice as high in the year 2000 as in 1950.
The further the projection extended, the greater the error. Also, exponential curves cannot go on increasing at the same rate for long. After a while the curve flattens as the rate lessens. However, Kuznets predicts (in 1950) that the per worker net national product may more than double from 1950 to 2000.
Future inventions and discoveries
The most important inventions bringing about the rise in the standard of living (from 1950-2000) will be technological developments and applied science. Non- technological influences on production may also occur and could have adverse affects, however --such as: a destructive war, a long industrial depression, preparation for war(this could have positive or negative effects), the depletion of natural resources, and a slower rate of capital formation.
III What are the social implications of such a great rise in the standard of living?
Mass production of high-priced goods
A larger market will open up for high priced goods because mass production should be cheaper.
Social classes
the working class as previously known will cease to exist and will move up to the middle classes as defined in terms of purchases.
Poverty
If per capita income doubles again, poverty should be reduced to a minimum and virtually disappear.
''The Economic Factor in the Roosevelt Elections''
Roosevelt was disliked by the rich and supported by the poor. (in Indiana,Ohio, Illinois, and Penn). This difference in attitudes became accentuated around the middle of his first term. The poor and the rich tended to vote for R. in 1936 in about the same proportion as they did in 1932.
The economic index does not show a very great cleavage in the R. vote along economic lines and very little shift between 1932 and '36. In the midwest (Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska), those with higher incomes (well-to-do farmers)voted more for R. Those with lower incomes voted less for him. In these 3 states, the conclusions seem to be that the economic index which we have used does not present a sharp cleavage between the rich and the poor, and that there is quite a bit of difference between this group and that of IN, IL, OH, and PA). The well to do farmers in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas also seemed to vote more for R. in '36 than in '32.
The analysis of the R. vote so far has been made on differentials between the counties in existing economic status. It is also possible to approach the R. vote to differentials in change in status.
In the more industrial states of the midwest and east, an increases in economic level as measured by the combined index of wage and farm value shift, was accompanied by a slight decrease in the Roosevelt vote, while the opposite was true for the western states.
An increase in age also indicated a decrease in the vote for R. The reason the elderly tended to vote against Roosevelt was very slightly influenced by the economic factor. Similarly, the tendency for the poor counties to vote for R. was very slightly affected by the fact that poor counties have more old people.
Conclusions
The stats in this article support the popular opinion that the poor tended to vote for R. and the well to do against him, but they provide a very valuable check in numerical measurement, The actual measurement seems to indicate that the differentials between the social classes may not be so great as might be inferred from talking with a member of either the extreme upper or the extreme lower income groups
There was a negligible shift of voters along economic lines between 1932 and '36 in support for Roosevelt. This may have been due to the fact that the economic cleavage precipitated by R. might not have been felt by the population in '36.
MANCUR OLSON
The Rise and Decline of Nations Ch. 2-4
Now is it just me or are the readings for social change way longer than any of the other sections? Well that aside, he begins our section with a paradox. that large groups at least if they are composed of rational individuals will not act in their group interest. Says that this book is outgrowth of the Logic of Collective Action which we also have on the list. The argument in Chapter 2 is that those groups who have access to selective incentive will be more likely to act collectively to obtain collective goods than those who do not, and smaller groups more likely to engage in collective action than larger groups. In the Logic he showed that this holds for the US. Even though the groups that the theory says cannot be organized do not appear to be organized, anywhere there are differences across societies and periods of time that the groups that the theory says should be organized are actually organized.
Chapter 3 details nine implications and goes into detail about what each entails. I think that it is sufficient to list and know these (plus it also make my job so much easier). There will be no countries that attain symmetrical organization of groups with a common interest and thereby attain optimal outcomes through comprehensive bargaining. Stable societies with stable boundaries accumulate more organization for collective action over time. Members of ''small'' groups have disproportionate organizational power which diminishes but does not disappear in stable societies. Special interests organizations reduce efficiency and aggregate income and make political life more divisive (no way!!) Encompassing organization, e.g., a labor union that encompasses all manual workers, have some incentive to make their society more prosperous, and an incentive to redistribute income to their members. Distributional coalitions, e.g., OPEC make decisions more slowly than individuals and firms of which they are comprised, they tend to have crowded agendas and to fix prices. Distributional coalitions slow down a society's capacity to adopt new technology and to reallocate resources, reduce rate of economic growth. Distributional coalitions once big enough become exclusive seek to limit diversity of income and values of membership. Accumulation of distributional coalitions increases the complexity of regulation, role of govt. complexity of understandings and changes the direction of social evolution.
Thus far the argument is : countries whose distributional coalitions have been emasculated or abolished by totalitarian govt. or foreign occupation should grow quickly after a free and stable legal order is established (God Bless Democracy). In chapter 4 he presents evidence to back up his theory about interest groups and how they organize and have their voices heard. However, the growth and effectiveness of these groups seems to be best after a period of instability and worst over a period to time. The policy implication of his argument is that there should be freer trade and fewer impediments to the free movement of factors of production and of firms. This free trade undercuts distributional coalitions which Olson is against.
The last section that we have to read is about unstable societies. Olson says that the dense network of distributional coalitions that emerge in stable societies is harmful to the economic efficiency but so is instability. Just as special interest groups lead to misallocation of resources so does instability lead to misallocation of resources; but other things being equal the most rapid growth will occur in societies that have lately experienced upheaval but are expected to be stable for the foreseeable future.
The basic thrust of Olson is that the best set of circumstance for economic efficiency is where a number of small groups are competing for public goods and if cartels or distributional coalitions as he calls them, develop well then this is bad because they have a monopoly and there is stagnation and no growth or efficiency. The optimal circumstances for Olson and the key that ties him into social change is that after an upheaval with the promise of stability then will be the period of greatest growth and efficiency. This is basically an economic approach to social change and all Olson is worried about is efficiency and the way of the market.
CHARLES SABEL
''The Structure of the Labor Market''
Note: This is another example of the dual economy theory and fits in well with the other readings of this type in the stratification section.
The capitalist organization of production creates clusters of jobs offering workers systematically different opportunities for the use and acquisition of skills, and for regular employment. The types of jobs the capitalist offers depend on the sort of investment strategy he pursues; and his choice of investment strategy depends on his firm's position in the market. The result is usually two kinds of firms: 1.) the primary sector which counts on sizable and stable demand for products, invests in technological innovations that reduce production costs and redistribute skills among workers; they are large firms characterized by innovation, long term investment, standardization, and routinization; and 2.) the secondary sector, which is smaller and faces fluctuating demand, pursues short-term investment strategies requiring less-specialized use of labor, and is not as technologically advanced.
In order to understand the division of labor and its relation to the use of technology and the organization of the labor market, Sabel employs a model created by Michael Piore. Piore's model rests on two postulates he draws from Adam Smith: 1.) productivity depends on the division of labor, and 2.) the division of labor depends on the extent of the market. The demand for a product that persists at the lowest point in the industry's business cycle determines the degree of development of the division of labor. Demand has two components: stable demand (demand at the bottom of the business cycle) and unstable demand (the difference between actual demand and the stable portion). The primary sector satisfies the stable component of demand and the secondary sector satisfies the fluctuating component of demand. This model predicts only that production units will be assigned to one or another sector of the market; it does not specify what the institutional arrangement of the firms, products, and types of markets will be.
Three strands of evidence point to the importance of extramarket developments in shaping contemporary technology and industrial structure. The first suggests that the factory system was not a simple result of technological advance, but a product of a particular distribution of property that encouraged a corresponding set of technological developments. The second strand challenges the notion that the essentials of mechanization were the result of the factory system. The third calls attention to the ways in which difference in market structure, rooted in divergent political histories, led to market differences in the pattern of industrialization.
Looking at Western countries, there were essentially two patterns of development: 1.) mass market is associated with mass production (Fordism), such as in the U.S., and 2.) a system of mechanized artisanal production, such as in France. The first pattern, Fordism, which developed in the primary sector, was more successful because of the fear of foreign competition and its military potential.
The dualist model presumes that capital costs are relatively fixed and labor costs are relatively variable. Sable argues that this is not necessarily so. fixed and variable costs depend on the structure of the capital and labor markets; and market structure depends on political and institutional factors that cannot be deduced simply from examination of the technology of production.
The distinguishing feature of the unstable sector is its use of labor, not technology. Workers fall into two categories: 1.) the great majority have either no skills or have informally acquired capacities that are taken so much for granted that they aren't even considered skills, and 2.) broadly skilled craftsmen who install, maintain, and supervise the operation of the capital equipment.
In the stable sector, Fordist conditions lead to an increase in the division of labor, which creates demand for a mixture of new skills, even as it destroys old ones. A skill hierarchy develops in which the intermediate range is a hybrid of skilled workers. The idea of a skill hierarchy and on-the-job training is compatible with both the idea that management encourages subservience through its promotions policy and the idea that workers, once they have learned their new jobs, do have substantial skills.
An analysis of skill levels, however, cannot account for an obvious fact: wherever one looks, the same kind of workers wind up with the same kinds of jobs. To understand why women, immigrants, and agricultural workers so often are found in unskilled jobs in both sectors of the economy, and why they tolerate them when other workers do not, it is necessary to look at the broader question of the differences between their reasons for taking industrial jobs and the ambitions of other groups in the work force.
THEDA SKOCPOL
States and Social Revolutions
Social revolutions: basic transformations of a society's state and class structure; they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts.
Distinguishing characteristics from other sorts of conflicts and transformative processes:
Its distinguishing characteristic is the combination of two coincidences:
1) the societal structural change with class upheaval
2) the political and social transformation
Skocpol's Major Efforts:
First, she critically reviews and reject four major modes of explaining social revolution:
1) Marx's theory
2) aggregate-psychological theories - Gurr
3) Political-conflict theories - Tilly
4) System/value consensus theories - Johnson
She strongly argues against their ''purposive'' image and ''voluntarist'' analyses, and rather emphasizes the emergence , but not making, or revolutionary situations.
Second, she combines a marxian approach with a Weberian one, but in a way that differs from either - providing a structural perspective of explaining the emergence and success of social revolution. This structural perspective emphasizes the joint effect of :
1) international political influences - structure in the world system
2) organization of state in relation to classes, particularly the landed upper class - structure at the national level
3) degree of peasant autonomy - structure at local level
4) degree and kinds of solidarity of peasant communities - structure at the group level
Third, she carries out a comparative historical analysis of the revolutions in China, Russia, and France which share certain basic features (in contrast to Japan, Prussia, and England - which are her ''negative cases'')
Fourth, she focuses on the activities, rather than the social origins or ideologies, of revolutionary leaders to account for the processes and the outcomes of revolutions.
Main points of her perspective:
Two necessary and sufficient conditions for social revolution in commercialized agrarian bureaucracies:
1) breakdown of old states under competitive pressure
2) widespread peasant insurrection
Structural forces weakening old state:
1) overwhelming military pressure
2) a politically entrenched landed upper class
(these two forces can fatally weaken partially bureaucratic states in a dynamically competitive international system)
Structural conditions for peasant insurrections:
1) high degree of solidarity of peasant communities
2) high degree of peasant autonomy from control by landlords and their agents
3) the relaxation of state coercive sanctions against peasant revolts due to the international and socioeconomic pressures on the states.
Comparative Historical Analysis: emergence and timing of social revolution in China, Russia and France in contrast to Japan and Prussia
Why a breakdown of states in China, Russia, and France?
French and Chinese cases: the international and socioeconomic pressures are either moderate or strong. But the upper landed classes blocked autocratic attempts at reforms intended to increase the states' capacity in world politics
Russian case: the upper landed class was not an obstacle, but the international pressure was extremely great
However, in Japan and Prussia: the economic structure and development (fairly prosperous agrarian economies) released the states from international and socioeconomic pressure
Why revolution in China, Russia, and France?
France and Russia: peasantries were communally organized and fairly autonomous during the state breakdown, which led to much more rapid revolutions than in China, where the degree of solidarity and autonomy of peasantry is low.
Why elite reform in Japan and Prussia?
the international pressures were roughly the same on China, France, Japan, and Prussia. The difference between the former two and the latter two lies in the presence or absence of politically landed classes.
[The bulk the original summary for Skocpol (which does not appear here) consists of an elaboration of Skocpol's summary table from the conclusion to Part I. See the original summary on disk, or Skocpol pp. 155 - 157.]
W.I. THOMAS
from On Social Organization and Social Personality
CHAPTER 1: Social Disorganization and Reorganization,br> The concept of social disorganization here refers primarily institutions and only secondarily to individuals. Social disorganization never exactly corresponds to individual disorganization. The progress of social differentiation is accompanied by the growth of special institutions, consisting essentially in a systematic organization of a certain number of socially selected schemes for the permanent achievement of certain results. Thomas ( and Znaniecki) state that there is a reciprocal dependence between social organization and individual life-organization.
Social Disorganization: decrease of the influence of existing social rules of behavior upon individual members of the group. The decrease can range from a single break of a particular rule by one individual up to a general decay of all the institutions of the group. The actual content of the social rules/institutions (even as they change over time) is not the important thing here. What really matters is the degree to which they are adhered to by the group.
Individual Disorganization: a decrease of the individual's ability to organize his/her whole life for the efficient, progressive and continuous realization of her/his fundamental interests.
During periods of social stability the continuous incipient disorganization is continuously neutralized by such activities of the groups as reinforce with the help of social sanction the power of existing rules. The stability of group institutions is thus simply a dynamic equilibrium of processes of disorganization and reorganization.
Social Reconstruction: (basically the same thing as social reorganization) - process countering social disorganization which goes beyond a mere reinforcement of the decaying organization and further involves a production of new schemes of behavior and new institutions better adapted to the changed demands of the group.
Mr. Clean goes into the difference/relation between attitudes and values (see the Methodological Note chapter for more on this). Basically causality in social theory must be established through the interaction of both objective social values and subjective, socio-psychological attitudes. An attitude is never produced by an external influence alone (i.e. value), but by an external influence plus a definite tendency or predisposition (i.e. a value-attitude complex, although I'm not sure he would put it quite this way).
Disorganization comes about with the appearance of such attitudes as impair the efficiency of existing rules of behavior and thus lead to the decay of social institutions. The causal explanation of any case of social disorganization requires that we find (1) that particular attitudes whose appearance manifests itself socially in the loss of influence of the existing social rules and then (2) determination of the causes of these attitudes. Attitudes are, therefore, the building blocks of social disorganization.
In cases where social disorganization derives from the exposure of an isolated community (Polish peasants for T and Z) to new groups and social influence, for the process of social reorganization/reconstruction to proceed the principle of the community has to be modified and extended so as to apply to all those social elements with which the primary group is or soon will be in contact. A wider community is thus gradually evolved. The social system which develops on this basis naturally tends to reconcile, by modifying them, the two originally contradictory principles - traditional absorption of the individual by the group and the new self-assertion of the individual against or independently of the group.
CHAPTER 5: Family and Community
Disorganization of the Family
There are two main factors in familial disorganization: (1) emigration of individual family members abroad and (2) emigration of whole families from the country to the city. Change of conditions merely furnishes influences which will produce definite effects only when combined with definite preexisting attitudes and is a cause of social happenings only together with the latter (more of that value/attitude stuff). {The following material was all developed by T and Z in connection with their work on Polish peasant communities. So the propositions and conclusions below were derived from and apply most closely to these groups. Obviously, if there were no generalizability to this stuff we would not be reading it now...}
On the basis of his data, Thomas proposes several general conclusions about social disorganization in the family:
1) The real cause of all phenomena of family disorganization is to be sough tin the influence of certain new values - new for the subject - such as: new sources of hedonistic satisfaction, new vanity values, new individualistic types of economic organization, new forms of sexual appeal. This presupposes not only a contact between the individual and the outside world but also the existence in the individual's personality of certain attitudes which make him/her respond to these new values. New values acting on old ''We-attitudes'' eventually generate new ''I-attitudes'' in which the individual's wishes are separated in her/his consciousness from those of other family members. Disorganization of the family as a primary group is an unavoidable consequence of modern civilization.
2) The appearance of the new individualistic attitudes may be counteracted (like any cause) by the effects of other causes. A suppression of the new attitude may develop chiefly influence through the primary community of which the family is a part - provided that family solidarity is still valued.
3) Manifestations of family disorganization in individual behavior are the effects of the subject's attitudes and of the social conditions, which must be taken as having a certain meaning for the acting individual (as opposed to an outside observer. The character/manifestation of the disorganization depends on the nature of the individual values and the reaction of the family/community.
4) It is evidently impossible to revive the original family psychology after it has been disintegrated. I-attitudes cannot be unlearned only to return to the primary we-attitudes. Reorganization of the family is possible, but on a new basis - that of a moral, reflective coordination and harmonization of individual attitudes for the pursuit of economic purposes.
Disorganization of the Community
Indications of disorganization of the community:
-Social opinion degenerates and instead of being interested in matters of a public character, it becomes absorbed in details or private life.
-Inconsistency and disharmony of its attitudes
-Decay of communal solidarity
Disorganization of the community begins as son as its members begin to define situations exclusively as economic, intellectual, religious, hedonistic, not as social; when their needs for (self-defined) success in any specific line becomes more important subjectively than the need for social recognition. The more intense and extensive the contact between a community and the outside world, the wider becomes the sphere of privacy its members are allowed to have.
In the new generation the desire for new experience s always stronger originally than the desire for security and becomes checked only by a social training which limits the field of possible novelties. So when the community enters in contact with the outside world, the youth are the first to develop new attitudes and to import new values. Initial effects of foreign influence are largely superficial - dress, manners, leisure. A violent/negative reaction by the older generation may cause the youth (at once revolting against tradition and its bearers) to reject not only the superficial and external mores but even those social rules of behavior without which the community cannot exist.
For a variety of reasons, returning emigrants generally exert little influence over community life. A much deeper, because more permanent, effect can be seen in the disorganization of the young generation in the community when it is produced by strangers who settle among the local inhabitants. These strangers bringing with them different mores and themselves fail to be assimilated into the community. A community which has a continual influx of strangers cannot preserve its integrity and sooner or later dissolves into a vague and incoherent social body within which organizations of a completely different type are formed.
The process of social disorganization is most radical and rapid when the community becomes connected with some industrial or commercial center where the younger generation goes to work. Social contacts between members of the young generation working in the city and various city groups become as close or even closer than those which they maintain with the rest of their community. City mores penetrate rapidly into the community; but as they offer little or nothing of which could take the place of the old country mores in organizing individual life, social disorganization is often accompanied by personal demoralization. Personal demoralization is much easier among those who have immigrated into the city from more distant villages and find themselves outside of any social control, than among those who still live in their old milieu.
The disorganization which starts with the youth is very seldom purely individual but assumes a group character. The individual seems to be able to emancipate him/herself from the dependence upon the large community only by relying for social response and recognition on a smaller community with congenial interests. This form of disorganization is, further, essentially a dissolution of social opinion. Unless a new basis of unity is reached, there comes a more or less marked decay of social solidarity - both because divergence of appreciation and action breeds hostility and because most of the forms in which solidarity used to manifest itself are no longer adequately enforced by social opinion an rely only on individual moral feeling or desire for response.
Aside from this form of disorganization, there is another kind of social disorganization that originates as a decay of solidarity between the members of the old generation. This manifests itself as a failure of social education and moral control of the community over its members. A particular form of this social disharmony is the tendency to individual self-redress. Here, when the community is inactive or its standards are no longer seriously and unhesitatingly acknowledged by its members, its judiciary and executive authority can no longer have any influence.
T and Z do stress, however, that the entire process of disorganization is only temporary. For social disintegration in whatever form never goes as far as to destroy entirely in the group the demand for a regulated, organized and harmonious social life.
CHARLES TILLY
From Mobilization to Revolution
This book is key to understanding social movements. I suggest reviewing the book, especially Chapter 2 since it gives a good overview of other literature on the subject. Tilly has a whole bunch of diagrams in this book, and some are really important. I tried to note the key ones, since most of us have the book.
Chapter 1: Introduction
The study of collective action includes the need to know the particular circumstances in which the participants found themselves, the need to analyze large-scale changes behind the conflicts of the moment, and the general consideration of the way people act together in pursuit of shared interests. The main components of collective action are: interests, organization, mobilization, opportunity, and collective action itself (these are defined in Chapter 3). Social movements differ from other forms of collective actions such as groups (which combine populations and beliefs) and events (which combine populations and actions) because they combine populations, beliefs, and actions.
Chapter 2: Theories and Descriptions of Collective Action (see p. 15)
Marx: People recognize their shared interests with others in their class against the other classes, and act accordingly in ''rational'' collective action. This view stresses intense grievances, a high degree of internal communication, a consciousness of common interests, and a collective vision. Marx's view of collective action is best seen in his analysis of class struggle in France. Current followers of Marx (e.g., Barrington Moore and Eric Wolf) derive shared interests from common positions in the organization of production and changes in interest from shifts in the organization of production. They also tend to focus more on coalitions among classes.
Durkheim: Society is strained by a continuous struggle between forces of integration and disintegration (notably rapid differentiation). The division of labor threatens shared consciousness and a new one based on interdependence (organic solidarity) is slow to develop. Collective action can be normal and reinforce social solidarity (such as religious rituals in the Elementary Forms) or anomic (such as revolutions). Other theorists who follow this tradition are Huntington, C. Johnson, and Gurr. This model neglects the analysis of organization and mobilization in favor of an interest and opportunity model.
Mill and the Utilitarians: Collective action is a calculating pursuit of individual interest. Contemporary models are those of collective choice, i.e., the determinants of alternative outcomes in situation in which two or more parties make choices effecting the outcomes. Coleman, Hirschman (exit, voice, and loyalty), and Olson fall into this category. Olson treats collective action as the effort to produce collective goods, which are any goods that cannot be withheld from other members once one member has obtained it. Other theories that fall here are those that focus on the tactics and strategies of interaction, such as game theory. These theorists develop a careful formulation and statistical estimation of their arguments; however, they do not explain how people define, articulate, and organize their interests.
Weber: Groups commit themselves to collective definitions of the world and of themselves. The structure and action of a group spring largely from the initial commitment to a particular kind of belief system. Relating to his discussion of authority, Weber claims that traditional authority represents equilibrium, and two sources of change are the powers of rationality and charisma. Weber does not develop a manageable general scheme for the explanation of rationalizing movements. He also offers no theory of when social movements arise. Followers of this tradition included Michael Useem (1960 Resistance Movement), Joseph Gusfield (Temperance Movement), and Roberta Ash (Temperance Movement). They have pursued the problems in collective action more persistently and effectively than followers of Durkheim or Marx.
Tilly: He is strongly anti-Durkheimian, pro-Marxian, and sometimes indulgent to Weber and Mills. Marxists have given a lot of attention to interests and organizations , have sometimes dealt with mobilization, but have generally neglected opportunity. Weberians pay great attention to prevalent belief systems and the rise and decline of movements. Tilly emphasizes the effects of urbanization, industrialization, state-making, and the expansion of capitalism.
Chapter 3: Interests, Organization, and Mobilization
Here Tilly reviews some of the basic features of two elementary models:
The Polity Model consists of :
government = the organization which controls the principle means of coercion
contender = applies pooled resources to influence the government
polity = the collective action of the members and the government
coalition = a tendency of a set of contenders and/or governments to coordinate their collective action
The Mobilization Model consists of:
interests = the shared gains and losses likely to accrue to one population as a result of interaction with another population
organization = the extent of common identity and unifying structure
mobilization = the extent of resources under the collective control of the contender
collective action = the extent of a contender's joint action in pursuit of common ends
opportunity: consists of three components
a.) power = the extent to which the outcomes of interaction favor the group's interests over others
b.) repression = the costs of collective action to the contender
c.) opportunity/threat = the extent to which other groups are either vulnerable to new claims which would enhance the contender's realization of its interests, or threatening to make claims which would reduce the contender's realization of its interests
These elementary models insufficiently address interests, organization, and mobilization.
Interests: Tilly argues that one must treat the relations of production as predictors of the interests people will pursue on the average and in the long run. One must also rely on people's own articulation of their interests. Treat the degree of conflict between individual and collective interests as a variable effecting the likelihood and character of collective action.
Organization: Tilly borrows from Harrison White. A category refers to a common characteristic. A network is an interpersonal bond. Catnet is a set of individuals comprising both a category and a network. Given all this, organization = catness X netness.
Mobilization: The process by which a group goes from being a passive collection of individuals to an active participant in public life. A group must accumulate resources and increase its claims on resources by lowering competing claims, altering the program of collective action, and changing the satisfaction due to participation in the group as such. Mobilization can be defensive, offensive, or preparatory. In order to determine the resources a group controls, you must assess the value of the resource and the probability the resource will be delivered when called for.
Action is collective to the extent that it tends to produces collective goods. Collective action is a function of interests, organization and mobilization (see diagram on p. 87).
Chapter 4: The Opportunity to Act Together
Mobilization deals only with the capacity to act; one must also look at the opportunity to act. Opportunity is a function of repression and facilitation. Regimes vary in their willingness/ability to repress and facilitate collective action (see pp. 111, 113). The extent of repression/facilitation is determined by the scale of action and power in the group. The power of the group is the extent to which its interests prevail over the others with which it is in conflict. Power can vary according to whether it maximizes effectiveness or efficiency. Power is also related to parties (the degree of control over the means of coercion), interests (pluralist, reformist, or radical), and interaction. (Important diagrams of power are on pp. 120-123.)
The contention for power links the mobilization and polity models. Members of the polity are those who have achieved recognition of their collective rights to wield power. Challengers are all other contenders. The idea of polity sums up the major relationships among repression, power, and collective action. Further research needs to look more effectively at timing of collective action, quality of action, and strategic interaction.
Chapter 5: Changing Forms of Collective Action
Collective actions can be classified by their different types of claims:
competitive: lay claim to resources also claimed by other groups
reactive: efforts to reassert established claims when someone else challenges them
proactive: assert group claims which have previously not been exercised
Collective actions can also be classified according to their repertoires of action. These are a function of the probability of adopting a particular means and the dissimilarity of this particular action from existing means (see p. 154).
Tilly applies his model to understand strike activity in France. He argues that the forms, frequencies, and personnel of collective action depend on the existing structure of government and politics.
Chapter 8: Conclusions and New Beginnings
The easy part about theorizing about collective actions is showing that concepts such as mobilization and repression point to broadly similar processes in different settings. The hard part is the research agenda: there are problems with measurement and with connecting causal and purposive action. The largest theoretical problem s accounting for interests, which are usually given a priori. It is also difficult to choose between historical particularism and the attempt to compare and generalize.
CHARLES TILLY
Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990, Ch. 4
From Wasps to Locomotives
A state's essential minimum activities form a trio:
statemaking: attacking and checking competitors and challengers within the territory claimed by the state
warmaking: attacking rivals outside the territory already claimed by the state
protection: attacking and checking rivals of the rulers' principal allies, whether inside or outside the state's claimed territory
Crucial fourth activity:
4. extraction: drawing from its subject population the means for the above processes
Other state activities:
adjudication: authoritative settlement of disputes among members of the subject population
distribution: intervention in the allocation of goods among members of the subject population
production: control of the creation and transformation of goods and services by members of the subject population
Both the character and the weight of state activity varied systematically as a function of the economy that prevailed within a state's boundaries. In coercion-intensive regions, rulers commonly drew resources for warmaking and other activities in kind, through direct requisition and conscription. In capital-intensive regions, the presence of capitalists, commercial exchange, and substantial municipal organizations set serious limits on the state's direct exertion of control over individuals and households, but facilitate the use of relatively efficient and painless taxes on commerce as sources of state revenue. In regions of capitalized coercion, an intermediate situation prevailed; however, uneasily, rulers relied on acquiescence from both landlords and merchants, drew revenues from both land and trade, and thus created dual state structures.
Bargaining, Rights, and Collective Action
The actual forms and sequences of state impact on interests, collective action, bargaining, and establishment of rights varied greatly as a function of the relative salience of coercion and capital as the basis of state formation. The subject population's class structure helped to determine the state's organization: its repressive apparatus, its fiscal administration, its services, its forms of representation. To the extent that a state's population was segmented and heterogeneous, the likelihood of large-scale rebellion declined, but the difficulty of imposing uniform administrative arrangements increased. In a homogenous, connected population, an administrative innovation installed and tested in one region had a reasonable chance of working elsewhere, and officials could easily transfer their knowledge from one locality to another. In the period of movement from tribute to tax, from indirect to direct rule, from subordination to assimilation, states generally worked to homogenize their populations and break down their segmentation by imposing common languages, religions, currencies, and legal systems, as well as promoting the construction of connected systems of trade, transportation, and communication. When those standardizing efforts threatened the very identities on which subordinate populations based their everyday social relations, however, they often stirred massive resistance.
Mass rebellion occurs under the following conditions:
--the state's demands and actions offended citizens' standards of justice or attacked their primary collective identities
--the people touched by offensive state actions were already connected by durable social ties
ordinary people had powerful allies inside or outside the state
--the state's recent actions or interactions revealed that it was vulnerable to attack
Under these circumstances, popular rebellion not only was likely to occur, but also had some chance of success.
When faced with resistance, dispersed or massive, rulers bargain; bargaining is the way of negotiating with the bulk of the pop. Bargaining created or confirmed individual and collective claims on the state, individual and collective rights vis-à-vis the state, and obligations of the state to its citizens. The core of what we now call citizenship consists of multiple bargains hammered out by rulers and ruled in the course of their struggles over the means of state action, especially the making of war. Through struggle, negotiation, and sustained interaction with the holders of essential resources, states came to reflect the class structures of the subject populations. The dominant classes had the largest effects, so that states dominated by great landlords developed very different structures from those controlled by capitalists.
The Institution of Direct Rule
A widespread movement from indirect to direct rule occurred with the nationalization of military power. It offered a seductive but costly opportunity to ordinary people. After 1750, in areas of nationalization and specialization, states began moving aggressively from a nearly universal system of indirect rule to a new system of direct rule: unmediated intervention in the lives of local communities, households, and productive enterprises. As rulers shifted from the hiring of mercenaries to the recruitment of warriors from their own national populations, and as they increased taxation to support the great military forces of the 18th C warfare, they bargained out access to communities, households, and enterprises, sweeping away autonomous intermediaries in the process. The growth of domestically recruited standing armies offered a strong stimulus to direct rule. Mercenaries had the severe drawbacks of being unreliable when poorly paid, seeking booty, etc., when not closely supervised, causing widespread trouble when demobilized, and costing a great deal of cash. These circumstances encouraged rulers to establish durable domestic military administrations, and then to conscript, co-opt, and penetrate. These steps bypassed intermediaries, and led the way from indirect to direct rule.
In one of their more self-conscious attempts to engineer state power, rulers frequently sought to homogenize their populations in the course of installing direct rule. From a ruler's point of view, a linguistically, religiously, and ideologically homogenous population presented the risk of a common front against royal demands; homogenization made a policy of divide and rule more costly. But homogeneity had many compensating advantages: with a homogenous population, ordinary people were more likely to identify with their rulers, communication could run more efficiently, and an administrative innovation that worked in one segment was likely to work elsewhere as well. People who sensed a common origin, furthermore, were more likely to unite against external threats.
State Expansion, Direct Rule, and Nationalism
The most dramatic expansion of nonmilitary state activity began in he age of military specialization after 1859 or so. in that period, which extends to the recent past, military organization moved from a dominant, partly autonomous segment of state structure to a more subordinated position as the largest of several differentiated departments under control of a predominantly civilian administration. In the process of installing direct rule, European states shifted from what we might call reactive to proactive repression, especially with respect to potential enemies outside the national elite. Up to the 18th C, agents of the European states spent little time trying to anticipate popular demands on the state, rebellious movements, risky collective action, or the spread of new organizations. With the installation of direct rule came the creation of systems of surveillance and reporting that make local and regional administrators responsible for prediction and prevention of movements that would threaten state power or the welfare of its chief clients. Euro states began to monitor industrial conflict and working conditions, install and regulate national systems of education, organize aid to the poor and disabled, build and maintain communication lines, impose tariffs for the benefit of home industries, and the thousand other activities Europeans now take for granted as attributes of state power. The state's sphere expanded far beyond its military core, and its citizens began to make claims on it for a very wide range of protection, adjudication, production, and distribution. As national legislatures extended their own ranges well beyond the approval of taxation, they became the targets of claims from all well-organized groups whose interests the state did or could affect. Direct rule and mass national politics grew up together, and reinforced each other mightily. As direct rule expanded throughout Europe, the welfare, culture, and daily routines of ordinary Europeans came to depend as never before on which state they happened to reside in. Internally, states undertook to impose national languages, national educational system, national military service, and much more. Externally, they began to control movement across frontiers, to use tariffs and customs as instruments of economic policy, and to treat foreigners as distinctive kinds of people deserving limited rights and close surveillance. As states invested not only in war and public services but also in economic infrastructure, their economies came to have distinctive characteristics, which once again differentiated the experiences of living in adjacent states. To that degree, life homogenized within states and heterogenized among states. National symbols crystallized, national languages standardized, national labor markets organized. War itself became a homogenizing experience.
The later stages of Europe state formation produced both of the disparate phenomena we group together under the label nationalism. The word refers to the mobilization of populations that do not have their won state around a claim to political independence. Nationalism in the first sense ran throughout Euro history, whenever and wherever rulers of f given religion or language conquered people or another religion or language. Nationalism in the sense of heightened commitment to a state's international strategy appeared rarely before the 19th century, and then chiefly in the heat of war. The homogenization of the population and the imposition of direct rule both encouraged this second variety of nationalism. During the 20th C, the two kinds of nationalism have increasingly intertwined, with one nationalism provoking the other -- the attempt of rulers to commit their subjects to the national cause generating resistance on the part of unassimilated minorities, the demand of underrepresented minorities for political autonomy fostering commitment to the existing state on the part of those who benefit most from its existence.
Unintended Burdens
Struggle over the means of war produced state structures that no one had planned to create, or even particularly desired. Because no ruler or ruling coalition had absolute power and because classes outside the ruling coalition always held day-to-day control over a significant share of the resources rulers drew on for war, no state escaped the creation of some organizational burdens rulers would have preferred to avoid. A second, parallel process also generated unintended burdens for the state: as rulers created organizations either to make war or to draw the requisites of war from the subject population they discovered that the organizations themselves developed interests, rights, perquisites, needs, and demands requiring attention on their own. When municipal officers did not meet their responsibilities, they faced the possibility of rebellions based on coalitions of their own enemies with the urban poor. On the whole rebellions did not occur when people were hungriest, but when people saw that officials were failing to apply standard controls, tolerating profiteering or, worst of all, authorizing shipments of precious local grain to other places.
Militarization = Civilization
The state transforming processes we have surveyed produced a surprising result: civilization of government. The result is surprising because the expansion of military force drove the processes of state formation.
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN
The Rise and Future Demise of the Capitalist World System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis
Capitalism involves not only appropriation of the surplus-value by an owner from a laborer, but an appropriation of surplus of the whole world-economy by core areas. There are no socialist systems in the world economy any more than there are feudal systems because there is only one world system. It is a world economy and it is by definition capitalist in form. Socialism involves the creation of a new kind of world-system, neither a redistributive world-empire nor a capitalist world economy, but a socialist world-government.
Marxist theories which have not examined the totality are guilty of not operating at the proper level of analysis. A fundamental error of ahistorical social science (including ahistorical versions of Marxism) has been to reify parts of the totality into ''stages'' and then to compare these reified structures. If a stage can be skipped, it isn't a stage, so all this comparison of routes travelled by various countries from primitive economic forms to socialism or capitalism is not the important question. Rather than looking at the individual economic systems of various finite places (like, say, countries), we should be looking at the World Capitalist System. We should be talking of stages of social systems, of totalities, if we are going to talk of stages.
The defining characteristic of a social system is the existence within it of a division of labor, such that the various sectors or areas within are dependent upon economic exchange with others for the smooth and continuous provisioning of the needs of the area. Such economic exchange can clearly exist without a common political structure and even more obviously without the sharing of a culture.
Two totalities have existed historically: mini-systems and world-systems. A mini-system has within it a complete division of labor and a single cultural framework. These no longer exist, and were found only in very simple agricultural or hunting and gathering societies. Any such system that became tied to an empire by the payment of tribute as protection costs by that fact was no longer a mini-system, since it no longer had a self-contained division of labor.
A world-system is a unit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems. There are two varieties of world system: world-empires (which have a common political system -- eg the Roman Empire) and world-economies (which don't have a common system -- eg, the world today). World economies have historically been unstable, leading either towards disintegration or conquest by one group and, hence, transformation into a world empire.
It was only with the emergence of the modern world-economy in sixteenth century Europe that we saw the full development and economic predominance of market trade. This is the system called capitalism. Capitalism and a world economy (single division of labor with multiple polities and cultures) are two sides of the same coin; one does not cause the other, but they coexist.
The first thing we need to do is to demonstrate that there is in fact a single division of labor in the world. A small farming community whose only significant link to outsiders is the payment of an annual tribute does not constitute a single division of labor because the assumptions of the persons living in it concerning the provision of protection involve an exchange with other parts of the world empire. Economic actors operate on some assumption (obviously seldom clear to any individual actor) that the totality of their essential needs will be met by their own productive activities and exchange in some form. The smallest grid of interdependence that would substantially meet the expectations of an overwhelming majority of actors within those boundaries constitutes a single division of labor.
The essential feature of a capitalist world economy is: production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin. Capitalism means labor as a commodity, but wage-labor is only one of the modes in which labor is recruited and recompensed in the labor market (thus, something like sharecropping, which other thinkers have called a ''second feudalism'' is to Wallerstein a capitalist form).
Specialization of production occurs in specific and differing geographic regions of the world economy. This regional specialization comes about by the attempts of actors in the market to avoid the normal operation of the market whenever it does not maximize their profit. The attempts of these actors to use non-market devices to ensure short-run profits makes them turn to the political entities which have in fact power to affect the markets -- nation states. By about 1640, the three structural positions in the world economy -- core, periphery, and semi-periphery -- had been stabilized.
Given slightly different starting points, the interests of various local groups converged in northwestern Europe, leading to the development of strong state mechanisms, and diverged sharply in the peripheral areas, leading to very weak ones. Once we get a difference in the strength of the state-machineries, we get the operation of unequal exchange, which is enforced by strong states on weak ones, by core states on peripheral areas. Thus, capitalism involves not only appropriation of the surplus value by an owner from a laborer, but an appropriation of surplus of the whole world-economy by core areas.
While the state-machineries of core states were strengthened to meet the needs of capitalist landowners and their merchant allies, the states were not puppets. Any organization, once created, has a certain autonomy from those who pressed it into existence for two reasons: 1) it creates a stratum of officials whose own careers and interests are furthered by the continued strengthening of the organization itself and 2) in the process of creating the nation state itself, certain constitutional compromises had to be made with other forces within the state boundaries, and these institutionalized compromises limit, as they are designed to do, the freedom of maneuver of the managers of the state machinery.
The strengthening of the state machineries in the core areas has as its direct counter-part the decline of the state-machineries in the peripheral areas. There are two reasons for this: 1) in the peripheral areas, the interests of the capitalist landowners lie in an opposite direction of those of the local commercial bourgeoisie; the capitalist landowners want to maintain an open economy to maximize their profit from world-market trade (no restrictions on exports and access to lower-cost industrial products from core countries) and want to eliminate the local commercial bourg. in favor of outside merchants who pose no political threat. That is, indigenous capitalist elites work (whether they intend it or not) to both screw over their fellow people, and to undermine the power of their own states. 2) the strength of the state machineries in the core states is a function of the weakness of other state-machineries. Hence, the intervention of outsiders via war, subversion, and diplomacy is the lot of peripheral states.
The semi-periphery is needed to make the capitalist economy run smoothly. Three major mechanisms have enabled to world system to retain relative political stability (not in terms of who occupies what spots, but in terms of systemic survival itself). 1) The concentration of military strength in the hands of the dominant forces. 2) The pervasiveness of ideological commitment to the system as a whole. This is not legitimation, but, rather, the degree to which the staff or cadres of the system (IW leaves the term deliberately vague, he says) feel that their own well-being is wrapped up in the survival of the system as such and the competence of its leaders. This staff not only propagates the myths: it is they who believe them.
Neither 1 nor 2 would be enough, however, if it weren't for the semi-periphery. It is assigned a role in the system for reasons more political than economic. Without the semi-periphery, the world system would be much less stable politically, because it would be polarized. Because of the semi-periphery, the upper stratum is not faced with the unified opposition of the lower stratum; the semi-periphery is both exploited and exploiter
Now, we can examine the stages of the development of the world capitalist economy. The European world-economy arose in the 'long' sixteenth century (1450-1640). The system-wide recession of 1650-1730 consolidated the European world-economy and opened stage two. Stage three begins a stage of industrial, rather than agricultural capitalism. Industrial production is henceforth no longer a minor aspect of the world market but comprises an ever large percentage of world gross production -- and, even more important, of world gross surplus. This has a number of consequences:
1) further geographic expansion of the European world-economy to include the whole of the globe. This resulted both from improved technology (better ships, improved military firepower), and from the fact that industrial production required raw materials of a nature and quantity which could not be supplied within the former boundaries.
2) this expansion meant the elimination of other world-systems as well as the absorption of the remaining mini-systems.
3) the internal structure of core-states changed fundamentally. For core areas, industrialism involved divesting themselves substantially from agricultural activities. Eventually, the core decreasingly provided manufactures, and increasingly provided the machines to make the manufactures (eg, US makes shoe-making machines, which it sells to SomewhereElse, where they make shoes to sell in the US), as well as the provision of infrastructure (eg, railroads).
4) The rise of manufacturing created for the first time under capitalism a large-scale urban proletariate. Anti-capitalist mass spirit which was translated into concrete organizational forms (eg., trade unions) threatened the stability of states and of capitalist forces; also, there was too much surplus production. So, by expanding the purchasing power of the industrial proletariate of core countries, the world-economy was unburdened of two problems: 1) the bottleneck of demand and 2) the unsettling class conflict of the core states (hence the social liberalism or welfare state ideology that arose just at that point in time).
The decline of U.S. state hegemony has increased the freedom of action of capitalist enterprises, the larger of which have now taken the form of multi-national corporations and are able to manoeuver against state bureaucracies whenever national politicians become too responsive to internal worker pressures.
What have been the consequences for the world system of the emergence of many states in which there is no private ownership of the means of production? It has undermined the ideological justifications of world capitalism, both by showing the political vulnerability of capitalist entrepreneurs and by demonstrating that private ownership is irrelevant to the rapid expansion of industrial production. But to the extent that it has raised the ability of the new semi-p. areas to enjoy a larger share of the world-surplus, is has once again depolarized the world. In the peripheral areas, both the continued economic expansion of the core (even though the core is seeing some reallocation of the surplus internal to it -- eg, Western Europe is outstripping the US) and the new strength of the semi-p has led to a further weakening of the political and hence economic position of the peripheral areas.
This leads us to conclude that stage four has been the consolidation of the capitalist world economy.
Now, we've said a lot about what the system's like, but let's cheer ourselves up by thinking about its decline.
Neat, tidy and efficient as this system sounds (and, in other writings, Wallerstein links all kinds of things to the workings of the world system, from ethnic movements, to peasant insurrections, to women's rights), there remain, though, two fundamental contradictions of the CWE. 1) whereas in the short run the maximization of profit requires maximizing the withdrawal of surplus from immediate consumption of the majority, in the long run continued production of surplus requires a mass demand which can only be created by redistributing the surplus withdrawn. Because these two considerations move in opposite direction, the system has constant crises which in the long run both weaken it and make the game for those with less privilege worth playing. 2) whenever the tenants of privilege seek to co-opt an oppositional movement by including them in a minor share of the privilege, they may eliminate opponents in the short run, but they also up the ante for the next oppositional movement created in the next crises of the world-economy.