The Return Of The
Other
Eurocentrism vs. Globalism
Presentation by Juliana and Judit
PLAN
• Eurocentrism – I round:
 Civil society as a Western concept
• Eurocentrism – II round:
Euromarxism as a context
Brenner’s argument
• Critique
• Synthesis
DEFINITION
EUROCENTRISM:
• Form of ethnocentrism
• Being centered on Europe or the Europeans, especially
reflecting a tendency to interpret the world in terms of
western and especially European values and experiences
• The belief that European culture is superior to all others
• An inability to appreciate Non-European cultures
• An inability to see a common humanity and human condition
facing all women and men in all cultures and societies beneath
the surface variations in social and cultural traditions
Civil Society
EUROPEAN CONCEPT
• Free market and Democracy
Representation
Parliamentary government
Pluralistic – individualistic
Justice and laws
Human rights
Rationality and
Modern knowledge system
Civil Society
WESTERN CONCEPT OF THE OTHER
• Formulated as “lack”, which means:
Authoritarian
Absolutist regime
Static
Despotism
Irrational
Stagnant and oriental mode of production
Goody’s Critique on Eurocentism
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Extreme universalism vs. cultural relativism
Achievements of Mesopotamia and Arab Near East
Indian and Chinese trade systems in Antiquity
Eastern knowledge systems – Sung encyclopedias
Different kinds of democracy and representation
Not identical but similar regimes
Examples:
Civil society in pre-colonial Africa
Communities with alternative lifestyle in Asia
Euromarxism as a Context
• Post Vietnam radical thought
• Reactionary Euromarxism
• Brenner’s article needs to be placed in the
context of this debate
Brenner on Capitalism
• "Agrarian class structure and economic development in
pre-industrial Europe” (1976)
Marxist critique
• "The origins of capitalist development: A critique of
Neo-Smithian Marxism” (1977)
restatement of the theory about the European origins of
capitalism
critique of "Third-Worldist" deviations in modern radical
scholarship
Two main characteristics: eurocentrism and diffusionism
R. Brenner’s “Agrarian Roots of
European Capitalism”
• Social-property systems (class & property):
Historically developed
Impose the course of the economic evolution (income
distribution & productive forces development)
• Feudalism case – economic stagnation and involution:
Class reproducing strategies, incompatible with
requirements of growth
Declining productivity and socio-economic crisis
Feudalism mechanism of class
reproduction
MORE!
lords
[surplus extraction by means of
extra-economic compulsion]
classes
FOOD, MASTER…
peasants
[production for subsistence]
•No specializations of productive units
•No systematic reinvestments of surpluses
•No technical innovation
The Breakthrough
• SELF-SUSTAINING GROWTH
 Breakthrough of the system of lordly surplus
extraction by means of extra-economic compulsory
Undermining the process of full peasant ownership
of the land
Novel social-property system
ORGANIZERS
OF
PRODUCTION
MEANS OF
REPRODUTION/
SUBSISTENCE
(especially land and
labor)
SELL
/BUY
•Specializations of productive units
•Systematic reinvestments of surpluses
•Technical innovation
MARKET
/COMPE
TITION
Differences within Europe
• Different long-term processes of class formation in
the various regions
Demographic growth and declining labor productivity
Various property settlement in different places
Different forms and outcomes of the class conflicts as
response to it
• There was no simple “unilinear drift” towards
capitalism by economic evolution – no trans-historical
laws
England
• Aristocracy
High level of solidarity
Self-organization (military obligatory)
Common interests
Need of their mutual relationship regulation
Total law domination on peasantry
• Monarchy
Increasing capacity as a reflection on the aristocracy
coherence
King’s law to freeman (exception of the unfree peasants)
Reintensification of the seigneur power
Decentralized surplus extraction by extra-economic
compulsion
England
• Peasantry
Highly dependant on aristocracy
Even density of the population
Separated from the land
• Economy development
Competitive rates of land
Export (wool, cloth production)
Industrial employment based on wage labor
Increase of agricultural production
Economic differentiation of the peasantry – no choice but
compete and innovate
• End of political and economical fusion
France
• Aristocracy
 Competing feudal lords
 Involved in the king’s court as employed
 Conditional domination over the peasantry
• From monarchy to absolutism as new form of centralism
 Extreme fragmentarisation
 Lack of effective political organization
 Centralized system of surplus extraction over the aristocracy (king’s
household)
 Accepting peasants’ appeals on lords
 Custom laws
 Tax office state
 Loyalty through private proper rights – private property in public
sphere
France
• Peasantry
United peasantry community which can not be expelled
from land
Peasant mobility
Royal taxes, collected by peasantry
Greater consumption possibilities – more surplus of their
own to reinvenst
Population growth
Strengthening of the peasantry brought renewal of the old
peasant-base economy
Pulverization and leveling of the peasantry
Economy Comparison
• ENGLAND
 Capitalistic-agricultural system
 Commercial economy based
on high quality production
 Export - import economy
 Independent regional
specialization
• FRANCE
 Peasant possessors
 Static type of agricultural
system
 Once and for all
 No qualitative agricultural
improvement and innovation development for economic
growth
Criticism
• Dobb-Sweezy debate
• Blaut
• Andre Gunder Frank
Jim Blaut
• England is nothing special
Asia, Africa showed the same level of development in
terms of:
• Untied peasantry, cash tenancy, rural wage labor, large
scale production for sale, peasant struggle, urban
processes, commercial activities
• Why Europe?
Location and accessibility
Colonial accumulation was the basic external cause of
European emergence
Andre Gunder Frank
• Key point: Belief in the continuous history and development
of a single world system in Afro-Eurasia for at least 5,000
years.
• Emphasis on
trade relations
process of capital accumulation
center-periphery structure is one of the characteristics of
the world system
alternation between hegemony and rivalry
long economic cycles of ascending and descending
phases
Wallerstein versus Gunder
• Discontinuity versus continuity
”The West first bought itself a third class seat on the
Asian economic train, then leased a whole railway
carriage, and only in the nineteenth century managed to
displace Asians from the locomotive”
(Gunder)
Implications
• European exceptonalism is a myth
• It is no use to talk of modes and transitions
• "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.” (Chaudhuri)
Has capitalism ever been born?
• The rise of Europe represented a
hegemonic shift from East to West
• It is impossible to specify what sets the
present world system apart from previous
ones
Ceaseless accumulation
Trinity of center/periphery, A/B phased cycles, and
hegemony/ rivalry
How to do history?
• Gunder’s recommendations
• And yours? What do we gain and lose with each
approach?