The Transition Debate,
Period II
Lecture class: „Transition and Transition Debates in Global History“,
25.04.06, David Mayer
Overview
Summary of Transition Debates Period I
The early 1970s and the emergence of
World-Systems Theory
World-Systems Theory on Transition
Robert Brenner and the Brenner-Debate
Central topics/ issues at stake.
What is the feudal society? What is serfdom?
What is the role of towns?
What is the role of handicraft?
What is the role of merchant capital and the
European expansion?
What is the ‚prime mover‘ of change?
What is the role of state power (absolutism)?
What is the character of revolutionary events?
Two kinds of outlooks
based on Marxian categories
„In this exchange, we recognize the emergence and
divergence of two kinds of Marxist analysis of economic
history and development. One is decidedly economic,
focusing on exchange relations, as in Sweezy‘s critique.
The other in politico-economic, focusing on the social
relations of production directing us towards class-struggle
analysis.“ (Kaye, British Marxist Historians, p. 46).
Productionists vs.
Internalists
vs.
Property/social vs.
relations
Circulationists
Externalists
Exchange-/market relations.
An Anglo-saxon debate?
France: debate about the French Revolution and
the character of the Ancien Régime (Albert Soboul
et al.)
Germany: Proto-industrialization debate
(Kriedte/Medick/Schlumbon 1977)
Dependency-Theory in Latin America
Modes of production-debate in USSR and parts of
the ex-colonial world
Other Debates in the „real-socialist“-countries:
e.g. GDR: Jürgen Kuczynski (Berlin), Leipzig School
World-Systems Analysis
Emergence of WorldSystems Theory in the
early 1970 selfpresentation of it‘s genesis
by one of its founders and
main proponents:
Immanuel Wallerstein,
World-Systems Analysis.
An Introduction, Duke
University Press,
Durham/London 2004.
Setting the scene for the emergence
of World-Systems Analysis
According to Wallerstein, modern
Western sciences by 1945 had developed
a specific structure
Disciplinary boundaries, divide between
humanities and natural sciences etc.
This structure was altered after WWII
emergence of area studies, paradigm of
development, worldwide expansion of
university system
1945-1970: Four debates, that shook
hitherto unquestioned certainties
Four debates as intellectual roots
Dependency Theory:
Debate on “Asiatic mode of
production” in USSR and Communist
Parties
Transition Debate Dobb-Sweezy
French Annales-group.
(cf.: Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems
Analysis. An Introduction, Durham/London
2004, p. 11-19)
Dependency Theory:
• UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America
(ECLA/CEPAL )
• Key Concepts: Core-Periphery (Raúl
Prebisch), Unequal Exchange, Development
of Underdevelopment (A. G. Frank)
Debate on “Asiatic mode of
production” in USSR and Communist
Parties
• “the scholarly equivalent to the Khrushchev
speech in 1956”
Transition Debate Dobb-Sweezy
Wallerstein sees this debate as basically
one about the unit of analysis (countries
vs. larger units)
French Annales-group.
“Histoire totale”
Fernand Braudel -> focus on temporal
(longue durée etc.) and spatial
dimensions of history.
Defining the modern world-system
„a) The modern world-system is a capitalist
world-economy, which means that it is
governed by the drive for the endless
accumulation of capital, sometimes called
the law of value.
b) This world-system came into existence
in the course of the sixteenth century,
and its original division of labor included
in its bounds much of Europe (but not
the Russian or Ottoman Empires) and
parts of the Americas.
Defining the modern world-system (II)
„c) This world-system expanded over the
centuries, successively incorporating other
parts of the world into its division of labor.
[...]
e) The capitalist world-system is constituted
by a world-economy dominated by coreperipheral relations and a political
structure consisting of sovereign states
within the framework of an interstate
system.“
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Rise of East Asia, or The WorldSystem in the Twenty-First Century,
in:http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwrise.htm
Transition to the modern world system
Crises of feudal society (14th/15th
centuries): wars, peasant revolts,
struggles for power among the nobility,
economic decline, famine, plague,
population decline.
„Response“ during long 16th century:
Geographical expansion of economic system
(food, raw materials, bullion)
New division of labour within expanded trading
area
Development of interstate system
What is subsumed within what?
For Wallerstein various modes of labour
control (slave labour on plantations,
coerced cash crop production on landlord
estates of Eastern Europe ) are subsumed
within one single capitalist world-economy.
-> Unit of analysis: The Totality of a tradebased division of labour.
Focus on long-range interaction and the
transition as world historical process.
Robert Brenner –
the primacy of class structure
Critique of Wallerstein for his focus on
trade-based division of labour:
„The Origins of Capitalist development: A Critique of NeoSmithian Marxism“, in: New Left Review 104, 1977, p.
25-92.
1976: Instigates the ‘Brenner Debate’,
criticising the ‘demographic’ and
‘commercialisation’ models of transition.
T.H. Aston/C.H.E Philpin, The Brenner Debate, Agrarian
Class Structure and Economic Development in PreIndustrial Europe, Cambridge 19933.
Focus on production, property, class and class struggle.
Class structures (relations among producers, property
relations, surplus-extraction relations) are decisive.
They “tend to impose rather strict limits and possibilities
[…] on a society’s economic development.”
In “class conflicts – the reaffirmation of the old property
relations or their destruction and the consequent
establishment of a new structure – […] is to be found
perhaps the key to the problem of long-term economic
development in late medieval and early modern
Europe.“
Robert Brenner, Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial
Europe, in: T. H. Aston/C. H. E. Philpin, The Brenner Debate. Agrarian Class Structure and Economic
Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Cambridge 19933, S. 12)
Unintended consequence…
The key issues for Brenner:
To explain the transition to capitalist agriculture in
England
To explain why Western Europe (France, Western
Germany) and Eastern Europe experienced a different
development
To explain the role of the state in this process.
The development of capitalist agriculture in England
(private property of land with leasehold tenancy) was
the unintended consequence of both landlords and
peasants trying to maintain themselves in a feudal
way.
-> transition as contingent process?