Frank thinks the concept of mode of production is irrelevant, that concepts like feudalism and capitalism "are useless for the analysis and understanding of world history. He derides that very rich Marxist debate over modes of production as "analogous to those about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" (336). World history requires the "holistic" analysis that only world systems theory can offer. "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" (329). If what goes on in the world-system list is any indication of the vitality and relevance of this theory, then we have to wonder whether we have now learned most, if not all, world system theory had to teach, and whether this research program is, accordingly, in a regressive state. After four months or so in the wsn list, I have yet to read a single intellectually stimulating exchange! Believe me the Hegel list is far richer. Here I re-write something I sent earlier to the WS list concerning Frank's appropriation of the concept "holism", namely, that it is extremely misleading to say that world-sytem theory (ws) looks at the whole whereas those who do national history only look at the parts. For ws theory understands the whole only in the geopraphical-market sense of analyzing the exchange connections between the different economic regions of the world. When Frank writes in ReOrient that "the whole is not only greater than the sum of its parts. It also shapes the parts and their relations to each other, which in turn transform the whole" (xxvii), he is really *reducing* the whole to the world market. And while he acknowledges that the parts "in turn transform the whole", it is clear he means 1) parts which have already been fundamentally shaped by the whole, and 2) parts which are mere *economic* regions of a world economic market. Frank's ws theory sounds all the more ludicrous when we consider the figues earlier cited by me on world trade and its distribution by countries.... But even then it is a plain contradiction to embrace holism at the very moment that one seeks to *derive* every non-economic factor (or indeed regional economic trends) from world-market relations. Holism and reductionism are simply incompatible. Approaching regions in terms of their relations to the whole world should never preclude an appreciation of the relative distinction of each part, both between and within each part - beyond mere economic differences. If Landes "prioritizes ONLY or primarily" independent parts, as Frank said in a recent post, Frank "prioritizes only or primarily" world market relations; relations which are just another part, external exchange relations, a part which should not be ignored but which nonetheless is just another part. Truth is that on questions of methodology and understanding of rationality, there is little difference between Frank and Landes: both reduce the meaning of history to rational economic action, except that Frank has yet to provide a full rational microtranslation of his macrosystem. Moreover both have a very narrow, incomplete understanding of Weber's writings on rationality - something which Frank in particular has to be faulted with since Re-Orient is constructed precisely as a challenge (mainly) against the Weberians. Their basic flaw here is 1) the common one of limiting Weber's interpretation of the rise of the West to the Protestant-capitalist connection, and 2) the confounding of practical, formal, and theoretical rationality - something which Goody's East in the West does as well. thanks, ricardo
