Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall

Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems

Westview Press, Boulder, CO 1997
From Chapter 2: Defining World-Systems, Pp. 29-32.

Modes of Accumulation

The world-systems perspective has stimulated a new approach to the understanding of capitalism that emphasizes the necessity of peripheral forms of capitalism, the importance of the interstate system, and the various forms and degrees of the commodification of labor within the capitalist world-economy (Chase-Dunn 1989). The extension of the world-systems perspective to precapitalist settings raises new questions and reopens old debates about other modes of accumulation and systemic transformations.
One such is the "substantivist/formalist" debate, discussed in Chapter 1.Substantivists argue that exchange relations are embedded in social structures; whereas formalists argue that economic rationality is found in all human societies.Another debate is that between the "primitivists" and "modernists" about the natures of modern, classical, and ancient societies.[1] The modernists argue that economic development in the ancient or classical worlds already involved commodified relations and processes of economic development quite similar in their basic nature to modern societies (e.g., Rostovtzeff 1941). The primitivists emphasize the existence of important differences between modern and classical societies with respect to the logic of competition, the rationality of accounting practices, the nature of taxation, forms of property, types of labor control, etc. (e.g., Finley 1973).
As we saw in the preceding chapter, these debates have been reincarnated the discussions of "capital-imperialist" mode of accumulation (Ekholm and Friedman 1982) and the argument for 5000 years of continuous capital accumulation (Frank and Gills 1993a). The arguments of these scholars are similar to those of the formalists and modernists. On the other side the claims of the transformationists reinvigorate the ideas of the substantivists and primitivists.
In order to shed light on these debates we formulate our concepts in ways that facilitate evaluation by comparative empirical research. We expect that if the continuationists (Ekholm and Friedman; Frank and Gills) are correct they will be able to demonstrate the existence of important similarities among all world-systems.Likewise, if we (the transformationists) are correct, we expect to be able to demonstrate the existence of fundamental transformations in systemic processes through detailed empirical and explicitly comparative studies.

In order to clarify the terms in this debate we define "mode of accumulation" as the deep structural logic of production, distribution, exchange and accumulation.We prefer it to "mode of production" because we do not want to restrict our focus solely to the analysis of production. Rather, we want to focus on the institutional mechanisms by which labor is mobilized and social reproduction is accomplished. In all societies reproduction and change is related to the accumulation of surplus. Even egalitarian (classless) groups organized accumulation in the sense that foodstuffs were stored and resource usage was socially regulated.

We derive the following heuristic typology from the works of Amin (1980, 1991) and Wolf (1982), supplemented by Polanyi (1944, 1977).We distinguish among four classes of systemic logics:

1.kin-based modes of accumulation, in which social labor, distribution, and collective accumulation is mobilized by means of normative integration based on consensual definitions of value, obligations, affective ties, kinship networks, and rules of conduct -- a moral order; 

2. tributary modes, in which accumulation of surplus product is mobilized by means of politically institutionalized coercion based on codified law and formally organized military power; 

3. capitalist modes, in which land, labor, wealth and goods are commodified and strongly exposed to the forces of price-setting markets and accumulation occurs primarily through the production of commodities using commodified labor; and

4. socialist modes, an hypothetical class of logics in which major policy, investment and allocation decisions are controlled democratically by the people they affect according to a logic of collective rationality.

We stress that this typology is heuristic and subject to reformulation based on further empirical research.We choose terms that are broadly familiar to students of long-term social change.We note further that the typologies developed by most evolutionary thinkers are broadly convergent, even while differing in the details.[2]We now turn to the relationship between modes of accumulation and world-systems.

World-Systems and Modes of Accumulation

Comparisons between the contemporary global political economy and earlier regional intersocietal systems raise the question whether human societies sometimes change their basic modes of social reproduction, or only alternate between different forms of the same basic logic. We refine this question by further examination of the relationship between world-systems and modes of accumulation.
As we noted earlier, we use "accumulation" instead of "production" to emphasize that we do not restrict our analysis to production processes or class relations.Since all world-systems are organized at several levels, the understanding of class relations and production necessitates comprehension of all levels of control and resistance. By mode of accumulation we mean a logic of development in which the reproduction of social structures and cyclical processes occur by means of certain typical forms of integration and control.
The main features of modes of accumulation that can be used as empirical indicators are forms of exchange (gift-giving, state-administered exchange, market trade) and forms of control that are employed to mobilize social labor and/or to extract surplus product (normative regulation, serfdom, slavery, taxation, tribute, wage-labor). We recognize that different modes of accumulation are often present within the same system, and that some forms of exchange and control have elements of more than one mode. We speak of "predominant" modes, and our analysis of transitions and transformation utilizes Foster-Carter's (1978) notions of articulation (complementary interpenetration of two modes) and contradiction (conflict and competition between different modes). 
We do not claim that modes of accumulation are features of whole societies or of whole world-systems. As logics of interaction, modes of accumulation may exist at any level of a system (see Chase-Dunn 1989:335-337). The broad category of tributary modes includes both centralized and decentralized political forms that rely on coercion to mobilize labor and to extract taxation, tribute, or rent. Thus, feudalism is a sub-type of the tributary mode, one of its most decentralized forms.Similarly, the so-called "Asiatic" form, in which the state owns the land, is one of the most centralized forms of the tributary mode. 

We claim that different modes may coexist within the same system, and we also acknowledge that some forms of organization are best understood as transitional or mixed. For example, class-stratified but stateless systems in which kinship metaphors are used to legitimate the exploitation of commoners by a noble class (e.g., precontact complex chiefdoms in Hawaii) constitute a mix of kin-based and state-based (coercive) systems.[3]

Slavery is often found in mixed modes. Slavery in tributary modes is usually based on state-organized coercion but, when slaves are treated as the private property of individuals and can be traded on a price-setting market, slavery is partially-commodified labor. We conceive of the commodification of labor as a variable, with commodified slavery depending more on laws and a coercive state apparatus than does the commodification of labor time in the wage system. 

"Market socialism" is another mixed mode that is made up of both capitalism and socialism. We contend that the socialist mode has never been predominant in any existing society or world-system, and thus, in a pure form, it is an empirically empty category. The communist states were mixtures of capitalism, socialism, and tributary modes. We maintain that the possibility of constructing a socialist mode remains--despite the failure to do so up to now.[4]

These possible transitional and mixed forms clutter and complicate the analysis of transitions and transformations. Still, we contend that there have been qualitatively distinct logics of accumulation. We do not assume a theory of unilinear evolution by which one mode necessarily changes into another. Rather, we seek to uncover, via empirical analyses the patterns, possibilities, probabilities of past transformations.We assert further that modes of accumulation are differentially desirable with respect to their consequences for the quality of human life.We also contend that it is possible--even if difficult--to use knowledge of past transitions to help humans choose among more desirable future alternatives.Obviously, this last contention must remain more of a hope than an established claim until we can explain past transitions and delimit future possibilities.

We see the coherence of modes of production, relations of production, and forces of production as a typical consequence of the integration of local and intersocietal interaction processes within the dominant mode of accumulation.Many world-systems articulate different modes into a single, larger, more-or-less coherent system which derives from the dominant mode of accumulation.Rather than proclaim ex cathedra how these modes of production articulate and how transformations happen, we seek to study them empirically.Such empirical research is necessary to evaluate the transformationist - continuationist debate.

Our typology and concepts differ from those of other world-system scholars.We review these differences in order to clarify our position.


[1]Pearson (1957) provides a helpful review of the older literature on this debate.
[2]Moseley and Wallerstein (1978) present a useful concordance of most evolutionary typologies.
[3].3.Another mixed mode is the "Germanic mode of production" or "decentralized stratified society" described by Kristiansen (1991:19) in connection with his study of systemic cycles in Bronze age Europe.
[4].4. This argument is elaborated in Chase-Dunn (1992c).To explicate it fully here would take us too far from the main points of discussion.Obviously, there may other, as yet unthought of, and unseen modes of accumulation.