Uneven
and Combined Development
in the Sociocultural
Evolution of
World-Systems*
Marcher Lord
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Marilyn Grell-Brisk
Institute
for Research on World-Systems
University
of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA. 92521
v. 3-9-16, 7525 words
This is IROWS Working Paper #
103 available at https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows103/irows103.htm
*Thanks to Dmytro Khutkyy for helpful
criticisms and suggestions on an earlier version.
The comparative world-systems
perspective advances the idea of semiperipheral development as a set of
processes that have been important in sociocultural evolution[1]
since the first emergence of interpolity interaction networks (world-systems). Whole
world-systems are conceived as systemic interaction networks based on intensive
exchange, cooperation and conflict. Very small world-systems are compared with
larger continental and global ones. The
notion of core/periphery relations is a fundamental concept in this theoretical
approach. Uneven development and coevolution are conspicuous features of the
emergence of complexity and hierarchy within and between human polities. Polities
that were in the middle of core/periphery structures were more likely to be the
locus of the implementation of new technologies and new forms of organization
that facilitated conquest and empire formation and that expanded and
intensified exchange networks. Sociocultural
evolution then, can only be explained if polities are seen to have been in
important interaction with each other since the Paleolithic
Age (Rosenberg 2010).
This idea was inspired by Leon Trotsky’s concepts of uneven and combined
development.
Semiperipheral
marcher states and semiperipheral capitalist city-states have been important
agents of sociocultural transformation in world history since the Bronze Age.
Studies of the growth of cities and of the territorial sizes of polities
confirm the importance of semiperipheral development as a cause of scale
changes in human sociocultural evolution. And the contemporary global system
continues to show signs of this phenomenon. In this chapter we advance the idea
that polities that have held intermediate positions in core/periphery structures
(the semiperiphery) have often been the locus of the implementation of new
technologies and forms of organization that have facilitated conquest, empire formation,
and the expansion and intensification of exchange networks.
Core,
periphery and semiperiphery are relational concepts that depend on the nature
of interpolity interactions and the nature of the polities that are
interacting. The semiperiphery is in
between the core and the periphery, but the specific meaning of that “in
between-ness” depends on the structure of the larger system and the nature of
the polities[2]
that are its parts. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (1997) made an
important distinction between core/periphery differentiation and core/periphery
hierarchy. Core/periphery differentiation exists when polities with different
levels of population density are systemically interacting with one another
(making war, alliances or trade).
Core/periphery hierarchy exists when some polities dominate and/or
exploit other polities. Chase-Dunn and
Hall do not assume that all world-systems (networks of systemic interpolity
interaction) are organized as core/periphery structures. Rather they see
core/periphery hierarchies as having emerged and evolved as capabilities for
domination and exploitation of distant peoples have been developed. The
inclusion of prehistorical small-scale polities in the scope of comparison
allows for the study of the emergence and development of interpolity
differentiation and hierarchy. The distinction between differentiation and
hierarchy is important because it allows for the analysis of known cases in
which less population dense polities (e.g. the Mongols) have exploited higher density
ones (e.g. China), and for the study of possible cases of semiperipheral
development in situations in which core/periphery differentiation, but not
core/periphery hierarchy were present (see below). The nature of the semiperiphery thus depends
on the nature of the interpolity system. In practice we can use population
density differences (settlement[3]
sizes) and differences in modes of production (foraging, farming, pastoralism,
etc.) to identify polities that are likely to have been semiperipheral to other
polities.
Semiperipheral
development has taken different forms. A kind of semiperipheral development
occurred in prehistoric California in two small world-systems composed of sedentary
hunter-gatherer polities. And there were semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms in
the Pacific that conquered other polities and formed island-wide paramount
chiefdoms (Kirsch 1994). Semiperipheral and peripheral marcher states were the
most frequent agents of the formation of large empires in world history (Inoue et al. 2016). Semiperipheral capitalist
city-states encouraged the production of surpluses for exchange and
commercializing since the Bronze Age. Europe was a semiperipheral promontory of
Afroeurasia that rose to global hegemony because the
weakness of its tributary empires allowed the emergence of capitalist states
(Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, p. 90-93). All the modern hegemons (Netherlands,
United Kingdom and the United States) were formerly semiperipheral states
before their rise to hegemony (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Anievas
and Nisancioglu 2013). And the contemporary global
system continues to demonstrate signs of semiperipheral development both in
terms of upward mobility and transformation. The concepts of uneven and
combined development in the writings of Leon Trotsky have played a significant
role in the formation of the idea of semiperipheral development.
In his
studies of the 1905 Russian revolution (Results
and Prospects and Our Revolution which
he wrote in 1906 and 1907 respectively), Leon Trotsky contended that Russia
could not reproduce the kind of capitalism that had emerged in Western Europe. Rather
Russian development would need to be constructed in the context of the already
existing Europe-centered world economy. Trotsky explained this by proposing his
twin laws of uneven and combined development: “Unevenness, the most general law
of the historic process, reveals itself most sharply and complexly in the
destiny of backward countries… From the universal law of unevenness thus
derives… the law of combined development—by which we mean a drawing together of
the different stages of the journey, a combining of separate steps, an amalgam
of archaic with more contemporary forms” (Trotsky 1932, p. 5-6). For Trotsky,
development was uneven because history had already established that different
countries grew economically at different rates and development was combined
because backward countries, like Russia, would simply import and implement and
execute the most advanced aspects of technology and organization from Western
Europe. However, this was not done ‘slavishly’ as “a backward country does not
take things in the same order” (Trotsky 1932, p. 4). Countries could move decades
ahead of the developmental process by simply taking advantage of the knowledge
and experience of the more advanced and developed countries, the result being
an interlacing of backward and advanced processes of development – combined
development.
Trotsky’s
twin laws have been a source of inspiration for thinkers across disciplines such
as the economic historian, Alexander Gerschenkron’s (1962)
idea of the advantages of backwardness as a boon for rapid industrialization, cultural
anthropologist Elman Service’s (1971) concept of adaptivity
as a spur to adaptive evolutionary change and historian Carroll Quigley’s (1979)
notion of a semiperiphery that mixes cultures to gestate new combinations that
lead to competitive success. More recently, world historian and ethnographer Philippe
Beaujard (2005) has contended that core, peripheral
and semiperipheral polities co-evolve with one another despite interpolity
exploitation and domination. Trotsky’s twin laws have also been developed into
a transhistorical and
non-Eurocentric theory of international relations (e.g. Rosenberg 2010),
and an explanation of the emergence of
hegemons (Matin 2007; Anievas
and Nisancioglu 2013). For Justin Rosenberg (2010),
archaeological evidence shows that transitions to agricultural societies were
uneven in time and space depending upon environmental differences. And so
uneven and combined development preceded the international one but also was
important in the emergence of geopolitics. The case for uneven and combined
development informing a theory of international relations based on historical
sociology is advanced by Rosenberg (2010) and by Kamran Matin
(2007). Matin (2007: p. 432) contends that “the high mobility, predatory
and war-attuned nature of nomadism were of the utmost importance in shaping the
outcome and forms of the interrelation between the nomads and sedentary
societies" . He applies this idea to pre-modern Iran. According to Matin, the use of a nomadic institution called the uymaq. (a political-administrative unit
consolidated in Iran under Tamerlane), produced the underdevelopment of private
property. This was in part because of pre-modern Iran’s relations with nomadic peoples
and the resulting form taken by the Persian sultanates.
All these scholars inform the central idea of this chapter, which is that much
of sociohistorical systemic transformation occurred in, and was fueled by, peoples
and polities who were in semiperipheral, and sometimes peripheral, locations
within the world-systems in which they lived.
The
semiperiphery lies between the core and the periphery. Given its position in
the core/periphery hierarchy, the semiperiphery includes regions that mix both
core and peripheral forms of organization. Semiperipheries may also be spatially
located between two or more competing core regions. And they may be regions where
mediating activities link core and peripheral polities. They may also include
regions in which institutional features are intermediate in form between those found
in the core and periphery (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, Chapter 5). So many
semiperipheral polities are likely to be engaging in some form of combined
development. The intermediate position between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’
explains why semiperipheral polities are most capable of reaping what Trotsky
termed the “privileges of backwardness.” This implies that the roots of those
processes of developmental “catch up and overtake” that Trotsky associated with
combined forms of development stem
mainly from the structural specificities of each world-system.
But it
is important to note that engaging in transformational activities in the
semiperiphery is not a guarantee of advancing into another phase or stage of
development or of upward mobility into the core. Conceptualizing the semiperiphery
as being a stage in development ignores the relational and hierarchical aspects
of interpolity relations in a larger world-system. The possibility of moving up
into the core or down into the periphery is dependent, not just on the
activities being engaged in, but also on the relations that are operating in
the world-system of which the semiperipheral polity is a part (Babones 2005).
World-systems
have taken rather different forms depending on the predominant modes of
accumulation (kin-based, state-based, capitalist). Furthermore, upward mobility into the core and
transformational activity are not necessarily the same. It is possible for a
semiperipheral polity to change the logic of social action within a
world-system (as semiperipheral capitalist city-states did for thousands of
years) without moving into the core.
Before
proceeding with our argument that the semiperiphery should be seen as a wellspring
of sociocultural evolution, we should first define, and therefore reimagine,
the spatial boundaries of world-systems. Immanuel Wallerstein conceived of the semiperiphery
as an essential and permanent element of the modern world-system (Wallerstein
1974, 1976). He sees the world-system as trimodal, with
multicultural economies and a structurally unequal division of labor in the
production of necessary goods for everyday life. An anthropological framework of
comparison that considers both the prehistory and the history of world-systems
is possible by defining whole systems as interpolity interaction networks in
which the interactions (trade, warfare, communications, etc.) are important for
the reproduction of the internal structures of the composite units and cause
changes that occur in these local structures (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997). Examinations
of small scale world-systems show that Wallerstein’s notion of ‘reciprocal minisystems’
in which polities interact within a single homogenous cultural context
(Wallerstein 1984) are actually rather rare. Most small scale systems are
multicultural and so spatially bounding them must focus on interactions such as
alliance formation, warfare and trade that often occur between polities that
have different languages and cultures.
Human
polities have evolved from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states, to empires
and then to the modern interstate system of republics and hegemonic leadership.
In Rise and Demise, Chase-Dunn and
Hall (1997) contended that there have been three predominant modes of
accumulation since the Stone Age: kin-based, tributary and capitalist (Wolf
1982). The qualitative transformations involved in the emergence of state-based
and then capitalist logics of integration have often involved initiatives taken
by actors from semiperipheral locations. Some types of semiperipheral development lead
to upward mobility of the polities that implement innovations, while others do
not do that but they do contribute to transforming the institutional structure
of the whole system.
Hub
theory scholars contend the innovations are most likely to occur in the core
where information crossroads promote the recombination of ideas (e.g. Hawley
1950; McNeill and McNeil 2013; Christian 2004). Others claim that the
semiperiphery, or even the periphery (Lattimore 1980), are important loci of
new organizational, ideological and technological developments. Our position is
that the most important thing for uneven and combined development is not where
innovations occur but in what places they are implemented. Semiperipheral
polities have a greater incentive and less disincentive to devote resources to
new forms of organization and technology than do most core polities. This is
what Trotsky referred to as the ‘penalties of priority’ whereby earlier
developed and dominant states suffer from a certain conservatism in adopting
new technological and organizational innovations).
Combined Development in
Prehistoric California
The sedentary foragers of indigenous late
prehistoric California provide two interesting examples of semiperipheral
development in kin-based world-systems. Indigenous California has been the focus of
intensive ethnographic studies mapping cultural, linguistic and material
characteristics of native Californians, (Kroeber 1976; Voegelin
1942) and of systematic studies by archaeologists (Jones and Klar 2007). In The Wintu and Their Neighbors, Chase-Dunn and Mann (1998) presented
a study of late prehistoric Northern California as a system of interaction
networks that linked small-scale polities (tribelets)
across major linguistic divides. That study revealed
that the Northern California systemic interaction networks were formed by
warfare, trade and intermarriage ties that extended for many kilometers around
the Sacramento River Valley and that linked Northern and Central California
into a single prestige goods network based on the exchange of clam-shell disk
beads. Chase-Dunn and Lerro (2014) note that the Northern
California core/periphery hierarchy was very slight, but that there was an
important degree of core/periphery differentiation constituted as interaction
between valley-dwellers (Wintu) with larger villages
and hill-dwellers (Yana) with smaller villages.
Northern California displayed an
interestingly different version of what some anthropologists (Schneider 1977; Peregrine
1992) have called prestige goods systems. In most prestige goods systems, a
local elite used its monopoly on the importation of prestige goods to reward
and control local subalterns. You could not get married if Uncle Joe did not provide
you with a special kind of pot or other ritually necessary exotic item. In Northern California local headmen were the
ones who carried out inter-village exchange. This interpolity exchange was
mainly organized as gift-giving among village heads who were competing with one
another to establish and maintain reputations of generosity. This was not a
commodified trading system, but this gift-giving was an important institutional
substitute for raiding during periods of scarcity. These exchange networks were facilitated by
the use of “protomoney” in the form of clam disk
shell beads, a storable symbol of value that allowed village headmen to
accumulate wealth that could be exchanged for food or other goods. This kind of
prestige goods system was not very hierarchical, but the facilitation of
exchange networks across tribelet boundaries reduced
the impetus to raiding, creating the conditions for greater population density
and a relatively pacific structure of interpolity interaction. So where is the semiperipheral development
in this? It turns out that the Pomo, who
lived adjacent to Clear Lake in Central California, were the main manufacturers
of clam disk shell beads. They obtained clam shells by trading with the Coast
Miwok that lived at Bodega Bay and they devoted a large amount of family labor
time to producing round beads with a hole in them for stringing into the “protomoney” that was used in the large down-the-line trade
network[4]
linking Central and Northern California, including the Wintu
and their neighbors (Vayda 1967). But were the Pomo “semiperipheral”
in any important sense?
First we shall describe a similar, but
also somewhat different, instance of this kind of interpolity economic
specialization that existed in late prehistoric Southern California. The
Chumash were sedentary foragers who lived along the Southern California coast
in what is now Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. They built and used a
distinctive plank canoe (tomol)
that allowed them to fish offshore and to develop a trade network that linked
those living on the Northern Channel Islands with the villages on the
mainland. The large coastal villages
were also connected by trade in food items with smaller inland villages in the
mountains and valleys adjacent to the coast.
As population increased on the Northern Channel Islands the islanders
increasingly specialized in the production of olivella
shell beads that came to function as proto-money in a rather large
down-the-trade network that linked the Chumash with the Yokuts
in the San Joaquin Valley and the Gabrieleno (Tongva) peoples in what became Los Angeles and Orange
Counties. The island Chumash came to devote a rather substantial portion of
their labor time to the production of shell bead money, which gave them
something to exchange for food from the mainland (Arnold 2004). The natural
resources of the islands were somewhat depleted by population pressure, which
encouraged the islanders to specialize in the production of shell beads in
order to have something to exchange for food from the mainland. Was this semiperipheral development?
As with Northern California, there is
no evidence of interpolity exploitation or domination between island and
coastal villages. Neither the Pomo nor the island Chumash lived in a
core/periphery hierarchy in which some polities were exploiting and/or
dominating other polities. But they did live in a situation of core/periphery
differentiation – in which systemic interaction was occurring among polities
with different degrees of population density.
Studies of village sizes in late prehistoric California show that both
the Pomo and the island Chumash had villages that were smaller than the village
sizes that existed in adjacent polities. In Southern California the biggest
villages, and the biggest concentration of villages, were on the mainland coast.
In Northern California the biggest villages were those of the Patwin in the southern Sacramento River Valley (King 1978,
p. 60). The island Chumash example also
suggests another aspect of semiperipherality. Some natural locations contain more resources
that are useable to humans than do others.
One cause of uneven social development is simply the uneven geography of
natural capital. Core polities are those that occupy the best locations and
non-core polities occupy less fecund sites.
The island Chumash had less access to land-based resources such as deer
and acorns, than did the mainland Chumash and so their villages were smaller.
And the Pomo had less access to riverine resources (anadromous fish runs) than
did the Patwin who lived along the Sacramento
River. If these were cases of
semiperipheral development, the specialized activities of the protomoney manufacturers facilitated the emergence and
intensification of the interpolity gift exchange network. This activity allowed
a larger population to live on the islands and facilitated a regional world-system
that had relatively more peaceful exchange and relatively less warfare.
Semiperipheral Development: Upward
Mobility and/or Transformation
Arnold Toynbee (1946) contended that the
ecologically marginal locations that semiperipheral polities occupy are a
motivating factor in their implementation of risky new technologies and
strategies that often cause social change. Owen Lattimore (1980) also argued
that non-core polities were often the source of important investments in new
organizational and technological innovations. Innovations are often developed
within core polities, at central nodes in transportation and communications
networks, but semiperipheral polities are more likely to implement these than
core polities are because they are less risk averse. Again, this is reminiscent of Trotsky’s
concept of “penalties of priority” that afflict older sclerotic core polities.
Geographical unevenness is also
important in Patrick Kirch’s (1984) model of island
settlement and the rise of semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms in the Pacific. The
first arrivals to an island occupied the best locations with fresh water and
good soil, usually on the windward side that received the most rainfall. Later
arrivals populated the less desirable locations and so the conical clan system of
closeness to the ancestors came to match the ecological unevenness of the
island locations. The oldest, most senior, lineages occupied the best
locations. But it was usually a junior chief from the leeward side of the
island that conquered the rest to form an island-wide paramountcy, changing the
scale of political organization and facilitating greater organizational
complexity – both upward mobility and transformation.
Semiperipheral capitalist city-states,
on the other hand, long performed transformation without much upward mobility.
These were states out on the edge of core regions that specialized in
interpolity trade. Most often they were maritime enterprises (Dilmun, the
Phoenician city-states, Melaka) but sometimes they organized trade over land
(the Old Assyrian city-state). These
trading states expanded exchange networks and incentivized the production of
tradeable surpluses since the Bronze Age, but they did not take power in the
core until a concentration of them in one region, Europe, coincided with the
relative weakness of tributary empires. As was the case in late prehistoric
California, the capitalist city-states did not move into the core for a very
long time, but they did make it possible for larger, more complex and hierarchical
world-systems to emerge by expanding and intensifying exchange networks.
Marcher Lords
Semiperipheral marcher states – semiperipheral
polities that conquer older core polities and form larger empire states – are
both upwardly mobile and transformative. Examples include the Qin dynasty, the
Neo-Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Inka and the
Aztecs (Inoue et al 2016). The Akkadian
empire is one of the oldest empires produced by a conquest of states. Prior to
its unification by Sargon of Akkad, the Sumerian city-states had existed for
well over seven centuries. These city-states interacted through a complex
economic network with a definitive core-periphery hierarchy. The core had a
written language, theocratic government and irrigated agriculture. The
periphery consisted of pastoralists, horticulturalists, and specialized quarrying
and manufacturing villages. An exchange network is known to have existed
amongst the core and peripheral polities with both “backwash and spread effects”
(Myrdal 1963, p. 152). If the network
dynamic between the core cities and the rest of Sumer was mostly a prestige
good network with the older core dominating most resources, as Friedman and
Rowlands have claimed (1977), a spread effect would be understandable. However,
metalworking throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages has been attributed to
mountain societies. Additionally, some amount of manufacturing occurred in the
remote villages near large soapstone deposits. Both co-evolution and “the
development of underdevelopment” (Frank 1967) were occurring in the
Mesopotamian system before the rise of the Akkadian Empire.
Sargon the Great, the eventual conqueror
and unifier of the Sumerian city-states, was a cupbearer to the king of Kish,
one of the core Sumerian city-states. Sargon was a servant belonging to a class
of Semitic-speaking non-Sumerian immigrants who had long been present in the
Mesopotamian heartland of cities. Sargon
was able to unify all of Sumer through a military campaign creating a very
large empire-state. He was described as a ‘marcher lord’ and a pioneer of
hegemonic empire (Mann 1986). In Chapter 5 of The Sources of Social Power, Michael Mann argues that the Akkadians
were successful in their war effort and at unification of the city-states
because they combined the Sumerian core-type military strategy (the use of
heavy infantry) with a pastoralist military technology (composite bows). While
the idea that Sargon used a combination of core and peripheral organizational
and military technologies to conquer Sumer has been supported (e.g. Diakonoff 1991; Mann 1986) other scholars have proposed
other factors such as class and ethnic rebellion as having been important to
the Akkadian rise (Yoffee 1993).
Typically polities and interpolity
systems cycle through centralization (by conquest or incorporation) and
decentralization resulting from the decline of centralized power. When a polity
within a region sustains a significant
increase in size from thelargest previous polity size
in the region, it is called an “upsweep” (Inoue et al. 2010). The Institute for
Research on World Systems Polities and Settlements (SetPol)
Research Working Group at the University of California Riverside has quantitatively
identified most of the major upsweeps in the territorial sizes of polities since
the early Bronze Age in the world regions in which evidence is available about
the changes in the territorial sizes of the largest polities. The SetPol Research Working Group identified twenty-one such
upsweeps in five world regions since the early Bronze Age.
We examined these to determine whether or not they were the result
of semiperipheral marcher conquests (Inoue et al 2016). We
found that over half of the polity upsweeps were produced by marcher states
from the semiperiphery (10) or from the periphery (3). This means that the
hypothesis of semiperipheral development does not explain everything about the
events in which polity sizes significantly increased in geographical scale, but
also that the phenomenon of semiperipheral development cannot be ignored in any
explanation of the long-term trend in the rise of polity sizes.
The semiperipheral capitalist
city-states promoted trade and commodification for millennia, increasingly
linking Afroeurasia into a connected multicore world
economy. The relative weakness of tributary empires in the West in the context
of a commodified institutional matrix allowed a strong regional trade matrix of
autonomous city-states to emerge, and then the emergence of larger states that
were under the control of capitalists. The rise of the West was another
instance of uneven and combined development that occurred on a promontory of
Eurasia.
And the spiral of development within the modern
Europe-centered system continued to display uneven and combined development. Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu (2015) have
argued that the developmental trajectory of European capitalism was significantly
affected by the 13th to 14th century Pax Mongolica. In particular, Europe
benefitted significantly from what Trotsky called “the privilege of historic
backwardness.”. Anievas and Nisancioglu
write, “Arising late on the periphery of this world system, European
development had the most to gain from the new intersocietal
links being forged, particularly through the diffusion of new technologies and
‘resource portfolios’ spreading from East to West” (p. 87). And all
of those capitalist nation-states that were forereachers
of the emerging capitalist world-system (the United Provinces of the Netherlands
in the seventeenth century, the United Kingdom of Great Britain in the
nineteenth century, and the United States of America in the twentieth century)
were all formerly semiperipheral powers who led in the deepening and expansion
of capitalist economic development. The 20th century peasant wars
and revolutions that challenged the core of the capitalist world-system
attained their greatest power in semiperipheral Russia and China.
Contemporary
Semiperipheral Development
In
the contemporary global system, the semiperiphery continues to push the
boundaries in terms of both upward mobility and innovative systemic change. The
economic and political development of the semiperipheral BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa) represent global challenges to the centrality of
the United States, Europe and Japan. Contemporary semiperipheral polities are
contributing to social change by implementing organizational and ideological
forms that facilitate their own upward mobility and that transform, to some
extent, the logics of social reproduction and development. The form of state
capitalism that has emerged in China contributes a new note to the complex
music of the varieties of capitalism in the global system.[5]
Giovanni Arrighi (2007) contended that the form of
Chinese diaspora capitalism emerging in East Asia represents a somewhat
progressive improvement over the financialized, bellicose and work-destroying
Western version. Whether or not the Chinese version of foreign investment and
resource extraction turns out to be better or worse than that of the West is
still being played out in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America (Bergesen 2013; Grell-Brisk 2015).
Core-periphery interactions continue to
evolve with the development of increasingly sophisticated digital and military
technologies from the core, and organizations and institutions like ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America),
the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank from the
Asian and Latin American semiperiphery. The increasing economic and political power of
the semiperipheral challengers drives a certain amount of reorganization of the
global political economy. Many see U.S.
hegemony as being in slow decline, and the emergence of the multipolar world
that the BRICS say that they want (e.g. Chase-Dunn et al. 2011)
It is indisputable that deindustrialization and financialization
have been major trends in core polities since the 1970s. This is most evident
in the United States, where financialization has been pushed to its limits and
has been widely viewed as the main cause of the global economic recession of
2008. To a lesser extent there has also been a move toward financialization amongst
the semiperipheral polities. Some of the BRICs are becoming wise to the
diminishing advantages of rapid export-oriented industrialization. One could go
so far as to state that the BRICS are in fact engaging in combined development.
With its continued focus on economic growth and development through
manufacturing while concurrently engaging in high finance (as with the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)), China is a good example of a semiperipheral
country that is confronting the new twists of globalization flexibly, combining
elements in new ways. For instance, China could be seen as engaging in a form
of combined development in the management of its economy. The Chinese approach
has been termed anything from ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’ (Yasheng Huang 2008), to ‘state-controlled capitalism,’ ‘socialist
market economy,’ and ‘Chinese capitalism’. All these phrases suggest that China has combined and applied the different
elements of the economies of advanced countries to its own socio-historical and
political condition.
It has
been noted by some scholars that the contemporary semiperipheral polities are
not hot-beds of progressive revolution or even evolution. The “pink tide”
reaction against neoliberalism in Latin America led by President Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela spread to most Latin American countries, but not to other regions of
the world (Chase-Dunn et al 2015). Many semiperipheral countries are under the
control of reactionary elements and others are just trying to move up the food
chain of global capitalism. Patrick Bond’s (2013) article in the journal Links goes as far as to call the BRICS sub-imperialist powers that peddle and
reaffirm neoliberal policies, and that help maintain the modern capitalist world-system
and its institutional power structures. Bond points to, among many things, the numerous
corporations such as DeBeers, Gencor (later BHP
Billiton), and Liberty Life Insurance that benefited from South Africa’s financial
deregulation and the transition from ‘racial to class apartheid’ in the 1990s. Bond also reminds us about Ruy
Mauro Marini (1972) who developed the concept of sub-imperialism in the 1970s.
Marini saw Brazil to be the most prominent example of subimperialism. He contended
that Brazil’s expansionist policy in Latin America and Africa was driven by a
quest for new markets, an effort to gain control over sources of raw materials and
was intended to prevent potential competitors from having access to such resources.
Bond
claims that South Africa has pursued these same kinds of subimperial
policies, as have most of the other BRICS. In fact, according to Bond, the 2013
BRICS summit held in South Africa declared support for corporate
land grabs, worsened Africa’s retail-driven de-industrialization, and revived the
New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) program – the embodiment of
neoliberal policies in Africa, and of course, the BRICS bank.
Bond is not alone in his view that
these semiperipheral polities are mainly engaged in propping up the existing
power structure. William I. Robinson (2015) decries the state-centric view of
now globalized capitalism. He notes that the rise of China has been mainly due
to foreign investment in manufacturing that uses cheap Chinese labor, and he
stresses the extent to which China is an integrated part of global capitalist
accumulation and an important player in what he calls an emergent transnational
state. Ho-Fung Hung (2015a) and SS Karatasli and Sefika Kumral (2015) claim that China
has pursued economic and political policies that primarily maintain the global
status quo. In a recent New York Times article, Hung (2015b)
contends that the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has
become a multilateral organization that can only serve to buttress the
prevailing global economic structures. Although China provided the initial
financial support for the AIIB, in order to garner the support of most of the allies
of the United States China had to forgo veto power over the actions of the new bank
(Wei and Davis 2015). Hung points out that U,S, hegemony at its height exerted
huge power over the bilateral and multilateral institutions it helped to found
after World War II. Hung also notes that the AIIB’s capacity for influence and power
in the global economy is limited given its multilateral nature and that it is
unlikely to provide China with the means to supplant the United States as a
global leader .
Still, the extent to which China and/or the other BRICS are shoring
up the current core-periphery hierarchy is a point of contention. Bond sees the
BRICS as mainly reproducing the hierarchical structures of the system because
he has another world in mind – an egalitarian, cooperative and sustainable
world society. Upward mobility in the
system does not necessarily challenge the basic logic of the system or reduce
its injustices. Bond is right about
that. But this approach ignores the changes compelled by the rise of the BRICS.
A shift of economic power away from Europe and North America toward the
semiperiphery changes the equation with regard to global racial stratification.
It makes global culture even more multicultural than it has previously been. It
probably does not lower the magnitude of global inequality, because inequality
within the BRICS countries has been increasing.
The idea that China could replace the U.S. as a global hegemon
has been suggested by some scholars, (e.g. Frank 1998, 2014; Arrighi 2007) but
few now really believe this. The rise of
BRICS portends a more multipolar, less US-centric, system. That is a big change
from what has existed since World War II. Despite arguments that the AIIB will
not help in China’s rise to hegemonic power, the bank could serve as a serious
alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for
development funding and foreign aid in the Global South. China has been praised
by many African governments as being more attuned to the needs of the Global
South. Writing for the Financial Times
in 2008, the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade,
explained, “China’s approach to our needs is simply better adapted than the
slow and sometimes patronizing post-colonial approach of European
investors…. economic relations are based
more on mutual need…. [And] China, which has fought its own battles
to modernize, has a much greater
sense of the personal urgency
of development in Africa
than many western nations” (Wade 2008).
The AIIB is in direct competition with the World Bank. The semiperipheral and
peripheral polities are creating new anti-systemic and reformist institutions that
facilitate a certain amount of disengagement with the old core. The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) is
intercontinental. The Development Bank
of Latin America, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC),
the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the African
Development Bank and a myriad of other new institutions have been organized in
the Global South to counter the prevailing global structures of power. The most influential of these are those from
the semiperiphery such as the NDB and the AIIB. The discourse about the need
for an alternative to the U.S. dollar in the global economy continues to
persist. The dollar alternative issue may become more feasible if AIIB and NDB
grow in size and influence despite the arguments made by Hung (2015a) and Bond
(2013a, 2013b)..
Many
people in the Global South, especially the urban poor, have been under siege from
the Washington Consensus and the neoliberal structural adjustment programs of
the International Monetary Fund. The imposed Structural Adjustment Programs
have been very unpopular and have not resulted in improved lives for the vast
majority of people. This has resulted in
populist reactions in many semiperipheral and peripheral states. The World
Social Forum emerged in 2001 as a popular response to neoliberal policies. The
semiperiphery, where so many of the impacts of neoliberal policies have been
felt, has nurtured this kind of anti-systemic thinking. With its history of uneven
and combined development and empowering transnational social movements, the
semiperiphery has the potential to reshape the trajectory of global system.
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