Robinson’s critical appraisal appraised

Abstract

The crucial difference between Robinson’s view of the world today and mine has to do with what has been happening in the last 30–50 years. Robinson sees ‘globalization’ as a new stage in capitalism, in which financial institutions are the main mechanisms of capitalist accumulation. I see the same period as one in which capitalist structures have moved so far from equilibrium that they cannot survive. The world-system has entered into a structural crisis and a bifurcation that, in the next 20–40 years, will result in a new world-system (or systems), which may be worse than the current system or much better. In analysing my views, he asserts they are state-centric unlike his. This is incredible, given that the very name of the perspective, world-systems analysis, is used because the basic premise is that social reality occurs within a world-system and not within the states. Robinson’s view is based on a misreading of our concepts of core and periphery. They do not refer to states, but to a relation, in which the crucial difference is the degree of monopolization of the productive process. These processes are located in all states. It is true that the concentration of core-like and peripheral processes is different in different states, which results in a different national politics. But this is a political, not an economic, difference.