> Ulhas writes:>>There is no undiffrentiated mass of nations called the Third World.
I wrote:
>>Of course. What's constant amongst these countries, though, is the relationship between the center and the periphery, the relationship of domination and subordination. In addition, some countries are more peripheral than others.<<
Ulhas has
> Some questions:
>
> 1. How does one know this without having studied in depth each social formation in the periphery so-called?<
a lot of people have studied a lot of countries, along with the relationships between countries. In any event, our knowledge of _anything_ -- including the periphery -- consists, like all knowledge, of working hypotheses, which may be replaced or modified in the future.
> 2. Does the ruling class always rule through domination? At least Gramsci did not think so.<
In my view, forceful domination and non-forceful legitimation both play a role, often complementary. No society can be ruled totally by force, while no exploitative society can be ruled totally via legitimation.
> 3. Cuba is subjected to trade embargo by the US,but not by the EU. China doesn't face a trade embargo, but enjoys huge trade surplus with the US. Surely, the so-called Centre has a flexible set of economic policies?<
The center is not some sort of unified policy-making organization (though sometimes the G-7 and similar organizations try to make policy). (The US government, the leader of the center, often faces conflicting political forces, so we see the kind of conflict you mention.) Rather, the center represents the more powerful and exploitative location in a world-wide social structure of imperialism.
> Everyone knows that the US balance of payment deficit an engine of growth on the Asia-Pacific region and China is biggest beneficiary there. What domination/subordination model is involved here?<
Countries can sometimes take advantage of the center/periphery structure, especially if they have some autonomy from the capitalist world system. South Korea, for example, was able to rise from being peripheral to being semi-peripheral (perhaps temporarily) by imitating and modifying Japan's earlier method of pursuing a strategy of state intervention to promote exports. Luckily for it, the Cold War meant that the US was willing to accept its alternative strategy, while actually helping it along (through aid, spending on the peninsula, and, during the Vietnam war, high demand). China is currently imitating and modifying that strategy. The country's political-economic power (partly inherited from its communist period) allows it some autonomy here, and thus the ability to profit from the system. But the workers there seem to be getting rock-bottom wages, so they're not getting much out of the system.
I should mention that I am far from being a hard-core Wallersteinian (especially since I don't read his stuff very often). In some ways, the core/periphery distinction is useful, while in some ways it's not: the model doesn't seem to allow for the fact that low wages in China encourage low wages all around (as part of the world-wide "race (or creep) to the bottom").
Jim
