5
The Evolution of Societies
and World-Systems
Stephen K. Sanderson
INTRODUCTION
Evolutionary
theories of human social life
continue
to be much debated in modern social
science. Although there are still many advo-
cates
of these theories, especially among
anthropologists,
we are currently in a period
in
which such theories are unpopular among
sociologists. This unpopularity stems from a
wide
range of criticisms, but clearly one of
the
most important is the belief that evolu-
tionary
theories are unacceptably endogenist -
- that
they view social evolution as a process
occurring
fundamentally within the bounds of
reasonably
well-defined societies (cf. Nisbet,
1969;
Giddens, 1981, 1984).
As a result of this criticism, many histor-
ically
inclined sociologists have turned away
from
the analysis of individual societies and
in the
direction of larger constellations of
societies. Thus the creation by Immanuel
Wallerstein
in the early 1970s of world-system
theory,
a type of theory in which individual
societies
are viewed, not as autonomous, but
as
inserted into the operation of a larger
network. It is this network -- the world--
system
-- that is then said to be the only
proper
unit of analysis, with the fate of
individual
societies being determined princi-
pally
by their involvement in the world-system
as a
whole.
Wallerstein's concern has been with the
modern
capitalist world- economy that he
envisages
as originating in Europe in the
sixteenth
century and he has shown very little
interest
in the precapitalist era. However,
the
great appeal of his theory has led other
social
scientists to attempt to apply the
concept
of a world-system to the entire pre-
capitalist
era. It is thus claimed that
Wallerstein's
basic argument can be general-
ized
backward in time: There were precapi-
talist
world-systems, and the understanding of
world
history must focus on the operation of
these
systems rather than on individual soci-
eties.
Many world-system enthusiasts see their
work as
antievolutionary, or at least nonevol-
utionary,
in nature. Since they view evolu-
tionary
theories as endogenist theories, they
see
themselves as setting up an explicitly
exogenist
(and thus nonevolutionary) alterna-
tive. However, I hope to show that such a
notion
is based on a false distinction and a
misunderstanding
of the nature of social
evolutionism. While evolutionary theories
have
historically given pride of place to
endogenous
factors, such theories need not be
endogenist. They can give equal attention to
endogenous
and exogenous factors, or even be
highly
exogenist. Indeed, I shall argue that
Wallerstein's
world-system theory is a quinte-
ssentially
evolutionary theory. If I am right
-- if
one can be a Wallersteinian and an
evolutionist
at the same time -- then it is
quite
possible to take an evolutionary ap-
proach
to understanding precapitalist world-
systems. To do so involves demonstrating two
fundamental
things. It must first be shown
that
there really were precapitalist world-
systems
in some meaningful sense of that term.
And, if
this can be done, one must then try to
identify
the kind of "evolutionary logic"
these
systems contained. For, after all, this
is
exactly what Wallerstein has done for his
capitalist
world-system -- it is what makes
him a
type of evolutionist -- and thus if we
are to
apply his ideas successfully to the
precapitalist
era it is incumbent upon us to
do the
same.
Unfortunately, I shall be forced to con-
clude
that this effort to construct an evolu-
tionary
analysis of precapitalist world-sys-
tems
produces, at best, very mixed results.
There
are some types of precapitalist world-
systems,
but they differ in some very impor-
tant
respects from the modern capitalist
world-economy. Moreover, much of the social
evolution
that has occurred in the precapital-
ist
era, as well as in the transition to the
capitalist
era itself, suggests that the
proper
unit of analysis is not some sort of
world-system,
but rather something much more
akin to
the individual society of more tradi-
tional
evolutionary analyses. Are world-
systems
or individual societies the proper
unit of
evolutionary analysis? Which are more
important
determinants of social evolution,
exogenous
or endogenous factors? As we shall
see,
the answers to these questions depend
upon
the historical period and the type of
social
system with which we are dealing.
WHAT IS
AN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY?
In
order to establish the point that there is
no
inherent antagonism between an evolutionary
and a
world-system perspective, and that
Wallerstein's
world-system theory is a type of
evolutionism,
we first need a proper under-
standing
of what an evolutionary theory actu-
ally
is. There is, in fact, much misunder-
standing
on this count, a good deal of which I
have
reviewed elsewhere (cf. Sanderson, 1990).
Because
of space limitations, I shall confine
myself
here to a simple exposition of what I
take to
be the best definition of an evolu-
tionary
theory, that of Erik Olin Wright
(1983). Wright suggests that for a theory to
be
considered evolutionary it must have three
features:
(1) It must propose a typology of
social
forms with potential directionality.
(2) It
must order these social forms in the
way it
does on the assumption that the proba-
bility
of remaining at the same stage in the
typology
is greater than the probability of
regressing. (3) It must assert a probability
of transition from one stage of the typology
to
another. It therefore claims the
existence
of a
tendency toward directionality, no matter
how
weak, in social change. It is also
clear
that
Wright demands the presence of a mecha-
nism
that would explain such a directional
tendency. However, this need not be a single
universal
mechanism that would explain every
specific
evolutionary transition. He recog-
nizes
that "the actual mechanisms which might
explain
movement between adjacent forms on the
typology
need not be the same at every stage
of the
typology" (Wright, 1983:26-27).
As Wright is at pains to point out, his way
of
identifying an evolutionary theory makes no
claim
that the typology of social forms repre-
sents a
teleological unfolding of latent
potentialities,
something many critics of
evolutionism
falsely assume to be basic to an
evolutionary
theory. Nor does it claim that
such a
typology represents a rigid sequence of
stages
through which all societies must move.
Wright
does not even assume that all (or even
most)
societies necessarily evolve. Regression
is
entirely permitted, and it is fully ac-
knowledged
that in most societies "long-term
steady
states may be more likely than any
systematic
tendency for movement" (Wright,
1983:26).
WORLD-SYSTEM
THEORY AS SOCIAL EVOLUTIONISM
I
believe that Wright has come closer than
anyone
else to pinpointing the genuinely
irreducible
features of an evolutionary theo-
ry. Using his characterization of an evolu-
tionary
theory, it can be shown that Waller-
stein's
world-system theory is evolutionary in
a
thoroughgoing way. Of course, this
approach
to
historical change is scarcely thought of as
evolutionary,
and in fact is often identified
as
strongly antievolutionary. The
painstaking
detail
with which Wallerstein has, in the
three
volumes of The Modern World-System
(1974a,
1980, 1989), analyzed historical
events
seems strikingly at odds with the works
of
social evolutionists. Moreover, Waller-
stein
has frequently cited with approval the
basic
arguments of Robert Nisbet's Social
Change
and History (1969), no doubt the lead-
ing
antievolutionary work written by a sociol-
ogist
in the past quarter-century. Surely
Wallerstein
cannot be an evolutionist.
In fact, though, he is, and very decidedly
so. What has thrown people off the track
about
Wallerstein involves his condemnation of
the
sort of evolutionism that reigned supreme
in
American social science in the 1950s and
1960s. But Wallerstein is opposed only to
this
particular type of evolutionism and to
other
versions that share key features in
common
with it. He is only opposed to what he
has
called the developmentalist perspective,
by
which he means functionalist evolutionism
(and
its modernization variant) and certain
rigidly
unilinearist versions of Marxist
evolutionism. As he has said, "What thus
distinguishes
the developmentalist and the
world-system
perspective is not liberalism
versus
Marxism nor evolutionism versus some-
thing
else (since both are essentially evolu-
tionary)"
(1979:54; emphasis added).
Careful analysis of Wallerstein's works,
especially
some of his theoretical essays,
clearly
reveals that he means what he says
when he
describes his world-system perspective
as a
type of evolutionism. Following Wright,
an
evolutionary theory is minimally one that
defines
some general directional trend in
history. The history Wallerstein is interest-
ed in
is that of capitalism since the six-
teenth
century, and for him capitalism most
assuredly
has an overall directionality to it.
It is
of course, a directionality of the
world-system
as a single unit rather than
individual
societies or nation-states. These
latter
evolve only as parts of the whole.
Along what lines is the capitalist world-
economy
evolving? Wallerstein (1984a) tells
us that
there are three main directional
trends
involved: increasing mechanization of
production,
increasing commodification of the
factors
of production (which includes as a
very
important element the increasing prole-
tarianization
of the labor force), and in-
creasing
contractualization of economic rela-
tionships. These three trends are part and
parcel
of a "deepening" of capitalist develop-
ment, a
deepening that derives from the accum-
ulationist
motivations of capitalist entrepre-
neurs. It is this drive for the accumulation
of
capital that constitutes the "evolutionary
logic"
of modern capitalism -- the "motor"
that
drives it from one stage to another.
Furthermore, Wallerstein has not shied away
from
the identification of specific stages in
the
evolution of the capitalist world-system
(cf.
Wallerstein, 1974b). The first stage
(approximately
1450-1640) involves the emer-
gence
of capitalism from the crisis of feudal-
ism and
its initial expansion to cover signif-
icant
portions of the globe. The second stage
(roughly
1640-1750) is a stage of the "consol-
idation"
of the world-system. The third stage
(about
1750-1917) marks the eruption of indus-
trial
capitalism. It is a period of renewed
expansion
of the world-system, which by the
end of
this period covers virtually the entire
globe. The fourth stage began with the Rus-
sian
Revolution and is a stage of the "consol-
idation"
of the industrial capitalist world-
economy.
I also think it is very obvious that Wal-
lerstein
has retained a great deal of what
might
be called Marx's "evolutionary eschato-
logy." Like Marx, Wallerstein is convinced
that
capitalism is essentially evil, that it
is rife
with contradictions that will tear it
apart
in the end, and that when it collapses
it will
lead to something more humane. It is
just
that all of this occurs on a world rather
than a
national scale. The gap between core
and
periphery continues to widen, and this
spawns
"antisystemic movements" that increas-
ingly
threaten the continued viability of the
system. Within the next 100-150 years capi-
talism
will disintegrate and will be replaced
by,
most likely, a socialist world-government.
What
will this world-government be like?
Wallerstein
describes it in terms that are
highly
evocative of Marx (1984b:157):
The idea is that on the basis of an ad-
vanced technology, capable of providing
a rate of global production adequate to
meet the total needs of all the world's
population, the rate and forms of pro-
duction will be the result of collective
decisions made in virtue of these needs.
Furthermore, it is believed that the
amount of new labor-time to maintain
such a level of productivity will be
sufficiently low as to permit each indi-
vidual the time and resources to engage
in activities aimed at fulfilling his
potential.
The global production required will be
attained, not merely because of the
technological base, but because the
egalitarian collectivity will be inter-
ested in realizing the full "potential
surplus." This being the case, the
social motivations for collective ag-
gressive behavior will have disappeared,
even if, in the beginning phases, not
all the psychological motivations will
have done so. Since collective deci-
sions will be pursued in the common
interest, then worldwide ecological
balance will follow as an inherent ob-
jective.
In short, the socialist mode of produc-
tion seeks to fulfill the objective of
the rational and free society which was
the ideological mask of the capitalist
world-economy. In such a situation,
repressive state machinery will have no
function and will over time transform
itself into routine administration.
Marx
thus turns out in the end to be basically
right
in his prediction of the evolutionary
demise
of capitalism. It is just that he had
his
units of analysis mixed up, and so he
failed
to gauge accurately the timing of the
transition
from capitalism to socialism.
It must be recognized that Wallerstein's
evolutionism
is certainly of a complex sort.
Mixed
in with his evolutionism is a strong
emphasis
on economic cycles (Kondratieff
waves). But this does not vitiate my claim
that
Wallerstein's basic framework is evolu-
tionary
-- it only qualifies it. There is no
incompatibility
between an emphasis on cycli-
cal
rhythms and an evolutionary perspective,
because
the cycles occur within (and are basic
to) the
overall directional trends of the
capitalist
world-economy.
WERE
THERE PRECAPITALIST WORLD-SYSTEMS?
The
enormous success of Wallerstein's world-
system
model quickly led some social scien-
tists
to ask whether it might have more gener-
al applicability. One of the first to do so
was
Jane Schneider (chapter 2, this volume;
orig.
1977). Schneider claimed that one of
the
main difficulties with Wallerstein's work
was
that it "suffers from too narrow an appli-
cation
of its own theory" (1977:20). That
is,
it sees
the capitalist world-economy as having
no
parallels during the precapitalist era.
Schneider
went on to argue that one of the
reasons
for Wallerstein's stance on this
matter
concerns his distinction between the
exchange
of fundamental goods and the exchange
of
preciosities, and his insistence that a
world-economy
is based on the former rather
than
the latter. Indeed, for Wallerstein the
exchange
of preciosities is something that is
nonsystemic,
or that occurs between a world-
economy
and its external arena. This leads him
to
exclude precapitalist Europe from involve-
ment in
a world-economy, since its exchanges
with
other regions were exchanges of luxuries
rather
than fundamental goods.
Schneider objected to Wallerstein's diminu-
tion of
the importance of trade in preciosi-
ties. She claimed that such a trade is of
much
greater significance than Wallerstein was
willing
to grant, and that therefore it is
"possible
to hypothesize a precapitalist
world-system,
in which core areas accumulated
precious
metals while exporting manufactures,
whereas
peripheral areas gave up these metals
(and
often slaves) against an inflow of fin-
ished
goods" (1977:25). She saw
precapitalist
Europe
as deeply involved in a larger world-
system
in which it was peripheral to the
better
established civilizations of the Levant
and
Asia. She also saw the existence of
such
a
Eurasian world-system as having significance
for the
historical transition from feudalism
to
capitalism in Europe, viewing the transi-
tion as
a world-system event rather than an
endogenous
evolution of feudal Europe. Within
the
Eurasian world-system, she claimed, Europe
shifted
its position from periphery to core
over
many centuries, eventually becoming
dominant
over those areas to which it previ-
ously
had been subordinated.
Other scholars were soon to follow Schnei-
der's
lead. In a long essay, Jonathan Fried-
man and
Michael Rowlands (1978) made the
notion
of "external relations" central to
understanding
the original rise of civiliza-
tion. According to them (1978:271):
The development of the early central
civilizations clearly depended on the
productive activity of very large areas,
and in order to fully understand the
evolutionary process it is necessary to
take account of these larger systems of
reproduction. The transformation of
societies does not occur in a vacuum and
the relation between units in a larger
system may determine the conditions of
evolution of any one of them.
This
idea has been substantially elaborated by
Friedman
and Kajsa Ekholm (Ekholm and Fried-
man,
1982; Ekholm, 1981). Ekholm and
Friedman
see
world-systems as very general historical
phenomena,
and as the basic unit to which
evolutionary
analyses should apply. Ekholm
denies
the relevance of focusing on individual
societies,
claiming that "evolution occurs
only
at the level of the system as a
whole"
(1981:245). Like Schneider, Ekholm applies
this
idea to understanding the European tran-
sition
from feudalism to capitalism:
"Thus
the
development of capitalism in Europe is not
the
result of an evolution from feudalism as a
system,
but the result of a shift in accumula-
tion
from east to west in a single system"
(Ekholm,
1981:245).
At the moment the scholar most vigorously
pursuing
a world-system approach to the devel-
opment
of Western capitalism is Janet Abu-
Lughod
(1988, 1989). Abu-Lughod claims that
by the
middle of the thirteenth century there
existed
a world-system centered around long-
distance
trade that had a strongly capitalis-
tic
character. This system consisted of
eight
subsystems,
and the "kingpin of the entire
system
lay at the land bridge between the
eastern
Mediterranean and the outlets to the
Indian
Ocean on the south and between the
Mediterranean
and Central Asia" (1988:10). At
this
time Asia was at least on a par with, and
perhaps
in a more favorable position than,
Europe. What happened in the centuries ahead
to
change all that? Abu-Lughod insists that to
answer
this question we should not look, as
most
Western scholars have, to the internal
features
of Europe and Asia to see why the
former
surpassed the latter. Rather, we should
focus
on the interactions among the subsystems
of the
entire world-system. She argues that
the
rise to economic dominance of northwest
Europe
resulted from geopolitical shifts in
the
relations among crucial subsystems (Abu-
Lughod,
1988:11): "When the large system
tipped,
it was because the Mediterranean
northwestern
European links deepened and
diversified
while the link between the eastern
Mediterranean
and the Orient began to fray in
places
and was rudely torn in others."
The notion of precapitalist world-systems
has
continued to find strong proponents. In
1987 an
important volume of conference procee-
dings
was published on this topic (Rowlands,
Larsen,
and Kristiansen, 1987). The authors
of the
individual essays tried to demonstrate
the
existence of world-systemic networks in
ancient
times in such places as the ancient
Near
East, Scandinavia, and ancient Rome.
Perhaps
the strongest proponent of the idea of
precapitalist
world-systems is Christopher
Chase-Dunn
(1986), who has gone considerably
beyond
previous work in attempting to develop
an
elaborate typology of world-systems (see
also
Chase-Dunn and Hall, chapter 1, this
volume). Chase-Dunn suggests six basic types
of
world-systems: (1) stateless world-sys-
tems,
in which bands, tribes, and chiefdoms
are
engaged in various types of economic
exchange; (2) primary world-economies, which
involve
regional systems of core/periphery
specialization
among the pristine states, but
without
any imperial political structure; (3)
primary
world-empires, or the earliest forms
of
core/periphery specialization to have
acquired
an imperial political structure; (4)
complex
secondary world-systems, in which
primary
world-empires were combined into
larger
world-empires; (5) commercializing
world-systems,
or precapitalist world-systems
with an
unusually high level of commercializa-
tion or
"premodern capitalism"; (6)
the
capitalist
world-economy, which rose to domi-
nance
via a shift of influence within the
larger
"super world-system" that preceded it.
This typology has much to recommend it,
especially
in giving us food for thought in
dealing
with questions of social evolution,
but
some cautions seem in order. First, the
whole
notion of stateless world-systems ap-
pears
questionable. This is not to deny that
bands,
tribes, and chiefdoms have engaged in
significant
levels of economic exchange with
each
other, nor is it to deny that these
exchanges
may have influenced the evolutionary
trajectories
of the individual societies. The
problem
is that, in order for us to use the
concept
of world-system at all meaningfully,
there
must be more than just a larger system
of
economic exchanges in which individual
societies
figure as elements. At the very
least
there must be some sort of core/periphe-
ry
structure, and this structure must have a
hierarchical
organization such that at least
some
minimal degree of "development of under-
development"
occurs. This implies some sort
of
dominance of the core and an exploitative
relationship
between the core and the periphe-
ry. It seems very dubious that the relations
among
stateless societies can be characterized
in such
a way, at least as a regular and
systematic
feature. What I think we are
dealing
with here are what might be called
world-networks:
loose exchange relationships
in
which the parts of the whole maintain great
autonomy.
When we turn to the other types of world-
systems
Chase-Dunn proposes, I think we also
have to
exercise caution. I agree that there
were
world- economies and world-empires throu-
ghout
the precapitalist era after the rise of
civilization
and the state, and I agree that
these
world-systems may well have had a core/-
periphery
kind of structure and at least
something
that could be described as the
development
of underdevelopment. Yet I am
concerned
about pushing this idea too far, for
the
parallels between the modern capitalist
world-system
and earlier world-systems may be
rather
limited. As Phil Kohl has remarked in
an
attempt to apply a world-system model to
the
Bronze Age Near East (1987:16):
There is little reason to doubt that
patterns of dependency or, perhaps bet-
ter, interdependency were established as
a result of intercultural exchange in
the Bronze Age world-system. . . . De-
pendency could lead to exploitation, and
. . . the more powerful urban societies
could dictate the terms of the exchange.
But the relations between ancient cores
and peripheries were not structurally
analogous to those which underdevelop-
ment theorists postulate are character-
istic of First-Third World relations
today. Unless conquered (i.e., incorpo-
rated into a larger polity), ancient
peripheries could have followed one of
several options ranging from with-drawal
from
the exchange network to substitu-
tions of one core partner for another.
Archaeological and historical evidence
converge to suggest that most intercul-
tural exchange systems in antiquity were
fragile, lasting at most a few genera-
tions before collapsing. This inherent
instability is related to the relative
weakness of the bonds of dependency that
existed between core and peripheral
partners.
Even in
the case of world-empires, it remains
to be
shown that dependency and the develop-
ment of
underdevelopment closely corresponded
to what
prevails in our modern world-system.
THE
EVOLUTIONARY LOGICS OF WORLD-SYSTEMS
Although
Chase-Dunn's work on world-systems is
at this
point substantially typological, he
has not
failed to ask about the dynamics of
these
systems. He has suggested that dif-
ferent
types of world-systems have different
dynamics,
or what might be called "evolutio-
nary
logics," built into them. We already
know
what the evolutionary logic of the modern
capitalist
world-economy is: the ceaseless
drive
for the accumulation of capital. And we
know
that this evolutionary logic was basical-
ly
absent, or at least not well developed, in
precapitalist
world-systems. On what kind of
evolutionary
logics, then, did the different
precapitalist
world-systems depend? In the
remainder
of this paper I want to sketch the
beginnings
of an answer to this question. It
will
become clear that, in the process of
doing
so, I will be making some significant
modifications
of Chase-Dunn's ideas.
Stateless
World-Systems
Again,
I want to emphasize that I do not
really
accept the notion of a stateless world-
system. That being the case, I want to argue
that
the evolution of stateless societies --
bands,
tribes, and chiefdoms, as they are
commonly
known among anthropologists and
archaeologists
-- is largely a process of
endogenous
evolution. Exchange relations
between
stateless societies play only a secon-
dary,
and perhaps very minor, role in the
evolutionary
transformation of such systems.
What,
then, is the motor of evolution in such
societies?
The answer, I believe, has to do with the
ecological
adaptations of human communities.
The two
great evolutionary transformations in
the
precapitalist era were the Neolithic
Revolution
and the rise of civilization and
the
state. In recent years many
archaeologis-
ts have
implicated population pressure as a
cause
of the shift from hunting and gathering
to
agriculture as a mode of production.
This
variable
has been given greatest prominence by
Mark
Cohen (1977). Cohen's position is that
ancient
hunter-gatherers eventually outgrew
the
capacity of their foraging technologies to
support
them at an acceptable standard of
living. Once this began to occur, they en-
countered
a "food crisis" that could be effec-
tively
solved only by the gradual replacement
of
foraging by cultivation and animal hus-
bandry.
To my mind, the most persuasive theory of
the
origin of the state is Robert Carneiro's
(1970,
1981, 1987) circumscription theory.
This
theory is too well known to need more
than
brief summary here. Carneiro holds that
the
earliest states developed in environments
that
were highly circumscribed or impacted.
These
were areas of fertile soil that had
definite
geographical limits to the expansion
of
human populations. As population
density
rose
within these regions, warfare was set off
as a
response to declining land and resource
scarcity. Groups conquered and incorporated
other
groups. Tribes consolidated into chief-
doms,
and with further increases in population
pressure
and warfare chiefdoms consolidated
into
states.
One of the interesting things about Carnei-
ro's
theory from the point of view of this
paper
is that it is neither a strictly endoge-
nist
nor a strictly exogenist theory.
Popula-
tion
pressure may be regarded as an endogenous
variable,
but the warfare it leads to impli-
cates
many different societies in each other's
fates. Chiefdoms and states arise only as the
result
of significant intersocietal contact.
However,
this contact is decidedly different
from
the kind of contact (economic exchange)
that
traditional world-system theory has
primarily
been concerned with, and thus we are
not
dealing with a world-system phenomenon in
any
strict sense of that term.
Marvin Harris (1977, 1979) has subsumed
these
theories and others like them into a
general
materialist theory of social evolu-
tion. For Harris, the motor of social evolu-
tion is
the need to advance technology against
the
lowered living standards that inevitably
occur
as a result of population pressure and
environmental
degradation. But technological
advance
is only a temporary solution, for it
in turn
ultimately exacerbates population
pressure
and environmental degradation, thus
leading
to the need for a new and more inten-
sive
wave of technological change. Social
evolution
-- or at least precapitalist social
evolution
-- is thus primarily a spiraling
process
of environmental depletion and inten-
sification
in which population growth plays a
vital
role.
For reasons that I have detailed elsewhere
(cf.
Sanderson, 1988, 1990) and do not have
space
to discuss here, I believe that Harris's
theory
is probably our best general theory of
social
evolution in stateless societies. It
is
obvious that it gives priority to the
productive
forces rather than the relations of
production
as the motor of change, thus putt-
ing it
at a considerable remove from the
arguments
that world-system enthusiasts are
advocating. But while this may be a strength
of
Harris's theory at the level of stateless
systems,
it seems to be a significant weakness
when we
move to the level of states and world-
systems. At this level, the relations of
production
deserve more consideration than
Harris
usually gives them.
World-Empires
I shall
have little to say about what Chase-
Dunn
calls the primary world- economies,
simply
because at this point I have not stud-
ied
them sufficiently. Basically, it seems
that
Wallerstein's point that these tended
always
to evolve into world-empires has little
to
contradict it. Let me then try to talk
about
the evolutionary logic of world-empires.
The conventional view of world-empires,
shared
by Wallerstein, Weber, and many other
thinkers
of different theoretical and politi-
cal
persuasions, is that they contain strong
built-in
obstacles to the movement toward some
qualitatively
different kind of socioeconomic
system
or mode of production. It is during
the era
of history dominated by world-empires
that we
find that a cyclical, rather than an
evolutionary,
theory of world history seems to
be most
appropriate. As Owen Lattimore has
said in
describing the rise and fall of Chine-
se
dynasties (1940:531):
The brief chronicle of a Chinese dynasty
is very simple: a Chinese general or a
barbarian conqueror establishes a peace
which is usually a peace of exhaustion.
There follows a period of gradually in-
creasing prosperity as land is brought
back under cultivation, and this passes
into a period of apparently unchanging
stability.
Gradually, however, weak
administration and corrupt government
choke the flow of trade and taxes.
Discontent and poverty spread. The last
emperor of the dynasty is often vicious
and always weak -- as weak as the found-
er of the dynasty was ruthless. The
great fight each other for power, and
the poor turn against all government.
The dynasty ends, and after an interval
another begins, exactly as the last
began, and runs the same course.
The
theme of the absence of any real "evolu-
tionary
potential" to the historic world-
empires
has been echoed by Jonathan Friedman.
Friedman
notes (1982:182; emphasis added)
that while there is clearly an . . .
evolutionary process of formation of
states and civilizations, there is no
obvious continuity of social evolution
after the emergence of civilization. It
would appear that the regional systems
of civilizations, with their commercial
centers, peripheral chiefdoms and
tribes, and marginal bands, have been
stable organizations until the modern
period.
While centers of accumulation
have shifted, there has been no funda-
mental change in form, only differences
in dominant economic sectors -- state
versus private -- and the form of ex-
ploitation -- peasant, serf, slave, or
wage labor -- that have been prevalent.
Michael Mann (1986) has characterized the
view
represented by Lattimore and Friedman as
the
negative view of empires, and suggests
that it
is overdrawn. "Although the milita-
rism of
imperial states certainly had its
negative
side," he argues, "it could lead to
general
economic development" (1986:148).
Mann
argues that the leading example of milit-
arism
having a catalyzing effect on economic
development
is the Roman Empire. In this
case,
militarism contributed to economic
development
in a number of ways, but particul-
arly in
terms of the consumption needs of the
army. These needs greatly stimulated demand
and,
hence, production (Mann refers to this as
a sort
of "military Keynesianism").
In the
end,
though, Mann is forced to admit that
militarism
led more often to quite different
results,
and that empires "contained no devel-
opment,
no true dialectic" (1986:161).
What has been said above about world-emp-
ires in
general applies just as well, I think,
to what
Chase-Dunn has called commercializing
world-systems. These were systems that had an
unusual
amount of mercantile activity in them.
Chase-Dunn
(1986) suggests that China in the
eighth
century A.D. was such a system, and
that
capitalism came close to becoming domi-
nant
there at the time of the Sung dynasty.
But was
this really the case? Was the situa-
tion
here so different from what we find in
other
world-empires? Certainly the outcome
was
basically no different for, as Chase-Dunn
himself
notes, this nascent Chinese capitalism
was
crushed by the state because the economic
interests
of private entrepreneurs were a
significant
threat to the state.
Chase-Dunn also considers as an example --
undoubtedly
the leading example -- of a com-
mercializing
world-system the so-called Afro-
Eurasian
super world-system. He accepts the
argument
of Schneider, Ekholm, and Abu-Lughod
that it
was the character of this world-system
that
led to the development of capitalism in
Western
Europe in the sixteenth century. I
would
like to suggest, however, that there was
no such
world-system -- there was at best only
a loose
world-network of trade in which Europe
participated
-- and that the transition from
feudalism
to capitalism had much to do with
evolutionary
forces that were endogenous to
Europe
itself. As we shall see, there was an
important
exogenous dimension to the feudal-
ism-capitalism
transition, but this transition
cannot
be interpreted as a world-systemic
phenomenon
in any strict sense of that term.
This
suggests another important limitation to
the
effort to apply a world-system model to
the
precapitalist era.
THE
EVOLUTIONARY LOGIC OF FEUDAL SYSTEMS
The
Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in
Western
Europe
Any
intelligent analysis of the European
transition
from feudalism to capitalism must
begin
with the famous debate between Maurice
Dobb
and Paul Sweezy that was conducted short-
ly
after the end of the Second World War.
In
his
classic Studies in the Development of
Capitalism
(1963; first edition 1947), Dobb
set
forth a Marxist theory of the transition
that emphasized the internal contradictions
of
feudalism as a mode of production. What
led the
feudal system into crisis and ultimat-
ely
tore it apart, Dobb asserted, was the
growing
class struggle between landlords and
peasants. The intensified exploitation of the
peasantry
by the landlord class provoked a
peasant
flight from the land that was the
major
cause of the crisis and the transition.
Sweezy (1976; orig. 1950) questioned the
basic
logic of this theory by asserting that
it
improperly concentrated on endogenous
forces. He argued that there were no endoge-
nous
forces within feudalism strong enough to
transform
it and proposed as an alternative a
basically
exogenist theory. It was the reviv-
al,
from about the eleventh century, of long-
distance
trade between Europe and other world
regions
that he saw as the impetus for the
feudal
crisis and the move toward capitalism.
The
revival of this trade caused feudalism to
be
increasingly involved in a market economy.
As
towns grew in size and importance, serfs
were
increasingly attracted to them and they
fled
the land in large numbers. Moreover,
feudal
lords themselves were increasingly
attracted
by the possibilities inherent in the
market
economy for the generation of large
fortunes.
This exogenist interpretation of the rise
of
capitalism bears considerable resemblance
to the
recent theory of the capitalist transi-
tion
being promoted by a number of world-
system
enthusiasts (i.e., that the transition
was a
matter of a geopolitical shift from east
to west
within the Afro-Eurasian super world-
system). By itself, it is a highly dubious
interpretation. What strikes me most about
Sweezy's
theory is its highly ethnocentric
character. Sweezy seems to assume that the
mere
existence of a system of production-for-
exchange
is sufficient to pull feudal lords
away
from their customary system of produc-
tion-for-use. Again and again we see him
characterizing
feudalism as a mode of produc-
tion
inferior to capitalism, and he clearly
assumes
that feudal lords would have seen it
that
way too.
I do not think that Sweezy's interpretation
is
irrelevant to understanding the rise of
capitalism,
but by itself it does not get us
very
far. As for Dobb's theory, I believe
that it
is moving in the right direction by
focusing
on the internal structure of feudal-
ism as
a mode of production. However, what is
wrong
with this theory is Dobb's failure to
offer a
convincing explanation for the flight
of
serfs from the land. He attributes this to
increasing
exploitation by the landlord class,
but he
provides no plausible (to me at least)
reason
why there should have been such an
increase
in exploitation.
There is, however, another interpretation
that
can explain the things that Dobb's theory
cannot. This theory, also an endogenist
theory,
is the demographic argument put for-
ward by
such scholars as Postan (1972), Wil-
kinson
(1973), North and Thomas (1973), Le Roy
Ladurie
(1974), and Perry Anderson (1974a).
The
argument goes something like this. From
about
the eleventh until the end of the thir-
teenth
century, feudalism was undergoing
significant
demographic expansion. As popula-
tion
grew, new and more marginal lands were
increasingly
brought under cultivation until
eventually
Europe became "filled up." By 1300
a
serious state of overpopulation had been
reached. The crisis induced by this overpopu-
lation
turns out in effect to have led to its
own
"cure." Increasing famine,
malnourish-
ment,
and other disease -- especially the
Black
Death that first swept Europe in 1348-
50 --
led to a population decline that contin-
ued
until around 1450. This population
decline
led to a severe labor shortage, which
caused
a dramatic fall in the incomes of the
landlord
class and shifted the balance of
class
power in the direction of the peasantry.
The
landlord class reacted to their markedly
changed
economic fortunes in a number of ways,
but
especially by expropriating the peasantry
from
the land and turning their estates over
to the
raising of sheep in order to sell their
wool on
the market. Landlords were moving
more in
the direction of becoming capitalist
farmers. Moreover, many peasants stayed on
the
land, but not as traditional serfs. They
became
transformed into wageearning farmhands
who
assisted their former landlords in running
a
capitalist agricultural enterprise.
Some
peasants
even became transformed into capital-
ists --
yeoman farmers -- themselves.
While all of this was happening, the towns
were
growing in importance. The power and
significance
of the merchants were increasing,
and the
peasants who fled the land were becom-
ing a
growing source of labor for the economic
activity
of the towns. Now to explain all of
this I
think we need to bring Sweezy's theory
back
into the picture. As Michael Mann
(1986)
has
asked, why did the demographic and econom-
ic
crisis of feudalism get resolved in the way
it
did? Why did the landlord class react
to
their
declining economic fortunes by gradually
transforming
themselves, and many of their
serfs,
into capitalists? Why did they not
respond
to the growing power of the peasants
by
intensifying their repression and exploita-
tion of
the peasantry? Mann offers a plausi-
ble
answer to these questions (1986:411):
If the feudal mode of production gave to
the lords a monopoly of the means of
physical violence, could they not re-
spond with military force at times when
relative product and factor values did
not favor them? . . . This is not an
idle question, for in many other times
and places the response of lords to
labor shortages has been to increase the
dependency of their laborers. . . . The
immediate answer to these questions is
that the European lords did try repres-
sion and they nominally succeeded, but
to no avail. Returning to the example
of late-fourteenth-century labor short-
ages, there was a wave of landlord reac-
tion. The lords attempted with violence
and legislation to tie the peasantry to
the manor and to keep down wages (just
as late Roman landlords had). All
across Europe the peasantry rose up in
rebellion, and everywhere (except Swit-
zerland) they were repressed. But their
lords' victory proved hollow. The lords
were compelled not by the peasants but
by the transformed capitalist market and
by opportunities for profit, and threat
of loss, within it. The weak state
could not implement legislation without
the local cooperation of the lords; it
was the lords. And individual lords
gave in, leased out their demesnes, and
converted labor services into money
rents. . . . The feudal mode of produc-
tion was finally broken by the market.
Now that would be a deeply unsatisfying
sentence -- if we stopped the explana-
tion there. Neoclassical economists do
leave it there, because they assume the
existence of a market in the first
place.
The "market variant" of Marxism
(e.g., Sweezy 1976) also leaves it
there.
So, in other words, Sweezy's exogenist
theory
has a contribution to make, but only in
the
context of the endogenous evolution of
feudalism
itself. The revival of long-dis-
tance
trade historically converged with this
endogenous
evolution, but had it not been for
the
internally generated crisis of feudalism,
the
revival of trade and the market could not
have
transformed feudal society. Feudalism
would
have changed somewhat, but it still
would
have been feudalism. Capitalism would
never
have emerged.
The
Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in
Japan
Although
I find the interpretation just ad-
vanced
highly convincing, some will not. For
them it
may seem, at best, only one of several
plausible
interpretations. Let me therefore
suggest
an additional line of evidence that
supports
my argument for the great significan-
ce of
endogenous forces in the feudalism-
capitalism
transition: the approximately
parallel
case of Japan.
Perry Anderson (1974b) has argued that the
feudal
mode of production (in the restrictive
sense
in which he conceives of it) has existed
in only
one civilization outside Europe. From
approximately
the fifteenth to the nineteenth
centuries
a form of feudalism very similar to
European
feudalism prevailed in Japan. In
tracing
the historical development of Japanese
feudalism,
Anderson has shown that it under-
went a
remarkable degree of commercialization
during
its evolution. More boldly, one might
say
that Japanese society underwent its own
transition
from feudalism to capitalism. From
the
point of view of the concerns of this
paper,
the extraordinary thing about this
transition
was that it was a completely endog-
enous
process. Indeed, it had to be, because
Japan
sealed itself off from the rest of the
world
between 1638 and its "opening" in the
middle
of the nineteenth century. During this
time
Japan was a highly autonomous society
that
was not part of any world-system, or even
of any
much looser world-network of societies.
As
Jacques Mutel has argued, in Japan "the
first
accumulation of capital, as contrasted
with
Europe, owed nothing to a distant over-
seas
trade. This is proof, if one were need-
ed,
that one has overestimated, if not the
place,
at least the necessity of such trade in
the
birth of modern society" (1988:142).
According to the account given by Perry
Anderson,
the Japanese feudal epoch was wit-
ness to
a considerable commercialization of
agriculture. In the eighteenth century there
had
developed a considerable regional special-
ization,
and many crops were being produced
directly
for the market. "By the end of the
[Tokugawa]
Shogunate, it is clear that a
remarkably
high proportion of total agricul-
tural
output was commercialized" (Anderson,
1974b:448). Mercantile activity was also
becoming
much more vigorous, and many large
towns
developed and grew in importance.
Anderson
even speaks of a "crisis of Japanese
feudalism"
that he believes had become ap-
parent
by the early nineteenth century.
Jon Halliday (1975) tells much the same
story
as Anderson. Halliday makes much of the
growing
importance of urban merchants during
the
Tokugawa epoch, and he also describes a
process
of evolution in Japan that is strik-
ingly
similar to what Wallerstein has describ-
ed for
Europe: a feudal aristocracy gradually
becoming
bourgeois. One might conclude from
Anderson's
and Halliday's analyses that, by
the
time Commodore Perry arrived in Japan in
1853,
Japan remained a society that was so-
cially
and politically feudal, but within a
framework
that was essentially capitalist.
The
economic order had changed dramatically
from
the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate
in
1603.
Now it must be recognized that there were
some
importance differences between the Japa-
nese
transition and the European one, and that
these
differences were linked to Japanese
isolation. As Anderson has commented (1974b:-
453-454):
These sealed frontiers were henceforward
a permanent noose on the development of
merchant capital in Japan. One of the
fundamental preconditions of primitive
accumulation in early modern Europe was
the dramatic internationalization of
commodity exchange and exploitation from
the epoch of the Discoveries onwards. .
. . The Shogunal policy of seclusion, in
effect, precluded any possibility of a
transition to the capitalist mode of
production proper within the Tokugawa
framework.
Deprived of foreign trade,
commercial capital in Japan was con-
stantly reined in and re-routed towards
parasitic dependence on the feudal no-
bility and its political systems.
Yes, the isolation of Japan from interna-
tional
economic exchanges certainly limited
its
development, and thus it was only after
the
opening of Japan to the West that it
really
developed into, in Anderson's phraseol-
ogy, a
"capitalist mode of production proper."
But the
fact that it had evolved so far in the
direction
of that mode of production in such a
short
time, and that it had done so in virtual
seclusion,
suggests that there is something
about
feudalism as a mode of production that
gives
it a fundamental, endogenous impetus to
breakdown
and transformation toward a specifi-
cally capitalist
system. Most everyone agrees
that
the highly decentralized character of
feudalism,
a character that permits merchants
a
freedom of economic maneuver that is gener-
ally
denied in more centralized political
systems,
is a crucial aspect of this impetus.
In
Europe, the demographic and ecological
limitations
of feudalism also seemed to play a
vital
role, as we have seen. Was this also
the
case in Japan? Ester Boserup (1965)
has
suggested
that major demographic changes
occurred
within Tokugawa Japan, but her argu-
ment is
much disputed, and in any event our
knowledge
of Japan in this area is much too
thin to
give a definitive answer.
But regardless of whether or not demograph-
ic
change played a major role in the Japanese
transition
from feudalism to capitalism, it
seems
undeniable that this transition was a
fundamentally
endogenous process in its early
phases. If the full emergence of Japanese
capitalism
was to require the participation of
Japan
in the larger Europe-centered world-
economy,
this only shows that exogenous fac-
tors
played a significant role as well. In
the
end, then, the evolution of capitalism in
both
Europe and Japan exemplifies what Hal-
liday
has fittingly called "the dialectic of
the
internal and the external."
CONCLUSIONS
This
essay has been largely devoted to answer-
ing a
fundamental question: Is the basic unit
of
social evolution the individual society or
some
sort of world-system? The answer, of
course,
is that it is both. But when it is
the
one, and when the other, depends very much
on
circumstances. In the case of stateless
societies,
most social evolution is internal
to
societies themselves, the most important
stimuli
to evolutionary change being popula-
tion
pressure and environmental degradation.
In the
case of the two great feudal civiliza-
tions
of world history, it would also seem
that
societies rather than world-systems are
the
appropriate unit. After all, neither
feudal
Europe nor feudal Japan constituted
world-systems,
even in the form of world-econ-
omies. In the case of feudal Europe there
existed
one of the features that Wallerstein
has
identified as basic to a world-system,
viz., a
multiplicity of cultures. But al-
though
these cultures interacted, they did not
do so
via the existence of the type of econom-
ic
specialization -- a core/periphery hierar-
chy --
that is a crucial defining feature of a
world-system.
That still leaves us with a fair amount of
room
for the application of a world-system
perspective
to social evolution. Much of what
went on
in agrarian civilizations of the past
no
doubt can -- and often must -- be analyzed
from
the point of view of their involvement in
larger
world-economies and world-empires
(although,
again, the impetus to evolutionary
transformation
is very weak; disintegration,
or
dynastic cycles, were the rule). Then
there
is our modern capitalist world-economy.
Wallerstein
and others have convincingly
demonstrated,
that to my satisfaction at
least,
the modern world-system is the basic
unit of
analysis for understanding the evolu-
tion of
the individual societies that are part
of
it. This does not mean that factors
endog-
enous
to individual societies play no role.
It
simply means that those factors can exert
their
effects only within the context of the
constraints
of the larger system. As Waller-
stein
(1985:35) has elegantly put it, "It is
not that
there are no particularities of each
acting
group. Quite the contrary. It is that
the
alternatives available for each unit are
constrained
by the framework of the whole,
even
while each actor opting for a given
alternative
in fact alters the framework of
the
whole."
NOTES