Many thanks to Mine for info on the 1999, number 3 of "Review", published
by Wallerstein's Braudel Center. I ordered it because I was extremely
interested to see what Arrighi, Wallerstein and Amin had to say on A.G.
Frank's "Re-Orient" which I had just finished reading. I wasn't
disappointed. It is a real eye-opener and would be of particular interest
to anybody who participated in threads on PEN-L about the Brenner thesis or
Jared Diamond. (BTW, Jim Blaut's new book "8 Eurocentrist Historians,
available soon from Guilford, has a chapter on Diamond.)
I had no idea that the divisions between Frank and the other 3 were so
deep. There's a tendency to assume that anti-Eurocentric thinkers, because
they share a critique of the Asiatic Mode of Production theory, etc., might
be united on the question of how capitalism emerged. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
The useful thing about the "Review" is that it encapsulates the thinking of
key figures in this current and shows how they contrast with an extreme
dialectical pole within it. Amin comes from a Marxist perspective and
argues that Frank fails to appreciate the radically different nature of the
industrial revolution, which is not too surprising when you consider
Frank's argument in "Re-Orient" that there is no such thing as capitalism
(!!!!) Arrighi notes that there is almost zero concern with military and
political matters in Frank's book, which would go a long way in explaining
the rise of the west. I have Arrighi's "The Long 20th Century" and plan to
tackle it before long. Wallerstein is probably the most devastating of the
3. With dry polemical style, he points out that Frank's obsession with
"trade" in some ways is a hearkening back to his roots as a U. of Chicago
Friedmanite economist.
The Review costs $10 and can be ordered from http://fbc.binghamton.edu/.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
