1 Theda Skocpol, ‘Wallerstein’s world-capitalist system: a theoretical and historical critique’, American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 82, no. 5, 1977), p. 1089–1089.
2.
2 Herbert Hunter, ‘The world-system theory of Oliver C. Cox’, Monthly Review (October 1985), pp. 44–44, 54–54.
3.
3 Oliver C. Cox, The Foundations of Capitalism (London, Peter Owen1959); Capitalism and American Leadership (New York, Philosophical Library, 1962); Capitalism as a System (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1964).
4.
4 Sean P. Hier, ‘Structures of orthodoxy and the sociological exclusion of Oliver Cox’, Research in Race and Ethnic Relations (Vol. 11, 2000), p. 304–304.
5.
5 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, CUP1974). See also Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: concepts for comparative analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History (Vol. 16, 1974), pp. 387–415.
6.
6 Theda Skocpol (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press1984), p. 276–276.
7.
7 Neither Cox nor Wallerstein were by any means the first writers to discuss the international nature of capitalism. Marx, for example, in his final chapter of Capital (Vol. I, Chapter 33, p. 931), opened his discussion of ‘The modern theory of colonization’ with the declaration that: ‘Political economy confuses, in principle, two different kinds of private property, one of which rests on the labour of the producer himself, and the other on the exploitation of the labour of others... Where the capitalist has behind him the power of the mother country, he tries to use force to clear out of the way the modes of production and appropriation which rest on the personal labour of the independent producer.’ Nonetheless, although Marx realised the fundamental nature of colonial labour expropriation, Cox’s and Wallerstein’s writings on the capitalist system represent systematic attempts to formulate a specific theory of international capitalism.
8.
8 Herbert Hunter and Sameer Abraham, Race, Class and the World System (New York, Monthly Review Press1987).
9.
9 Although Cox had completed Caste, Class and Race while he was at Wiley, possibly earning for himself the reputation of a black scholar trying to publish a Marxist text, he was not able to publish the book until the late 1940s.
10.
10 Elmer P. Martin, The Sociology of Oliver C. Cox: a systematic inquiry (University of Atlanta, MA thesis, 1971), p. 22–22.
11.
11 Race, Class and the World System, op. cit., p. xxvii.
12.
12 It is important to realise that Cox was attracting no more support from leading black intellectuals such as Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier at Fisk and Howard, respectively, than he was from the larger white institutions. Like Cox, Frazier and Johnson had received their graduate training from Chicago but neither Johnson nor Frazier endorsed the critical, anti-orthodox position that Cox promoted. Johnson and Frazier, like their Chicago teachers, promoted a valueneutral sociology, not conducive to the critical social theory promoted by Cox. Given the fact that Cox had singled out leading sociological figures at Chicago, such as Robert Park, in Caste, Class and Race for critical evaluation, it should be of little surprise that support from Johnson and Frazier was not forthcoming.
13.
13 The Sociology of Oliver C. Cox: a systematic inquiry, op. cit.
14.
14 Following his retirement from Lincoln in 1970, Cox became Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University, Detroit, at the invitation of Alvin W. Rose. In the three years that he spent at Wayne State, he was able to complete Race Relations: elements and dynamics, published posthumously in 1976.
15.
15 Immanuel Wallerstein, Africa: the politics of independence (New York, Vintage Books1961); Social Change: the colonial situation (New York, Wiley, 1966); Africa: the politics of unity (New York, Random House, 1967).
16.
16 Immanuel Wallerstein, University in Turmoil: the politics of change (New York, Atheneum1969).
17.
17 Orlando Lentini, ‘Immanuel Wallerstein’, International Sociology (Vol. 13, no. 1, 1998), pp. 135–139.
18.
18 Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: concepts for comparative analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History (Vol. 16), p. 389–389.
19.
19 Ibid., p. 388.
20.
20 The caste school of race relations held that the American South was characterised by a split-stratification system whereby a social barrier divided the black and white ‘races’ into distinct castes. Not only did its proponents conceive of a caste system stratified along racial lines, but argued that, within each caste, there existed a stratified class system. The caste school argued that class movement/mobility within castes was socially permitted, but inter-caste mobility was socially restricted.
21.
21 Cox argued that, while race is a closed system, the same could not be said for caste. Directing attention to the Hindu caste system, Cox asserted not only that the Hindu system had never been based on skin colour or blood relations, but that, unlike the southern United States, the Hindu system could not be characterised by conflict.
22.
22 Wallerstein believed that it was the fundamental shortcoming of the Marxist distinction between merchant and industrial capitalism that led many observers to question the label of ‘capitalist’ for any structural organisation prior to the industrial revolution in England. On the contrary, argued Wallerstein, despite the debate over the degree of proletarianisation of labour power or the centralisation of production prior to the eighteenth century, the ultimate fallacy of this type of thinking is to place too great an emphasis on the specific characteristics of wage labour. Hence, he proceeded to draw attention to the unique nature of commodified labour power in the sixteenth century, which he believed was significantly different from the relationship of a feudal serf to his lord in eleventh-century Burgundy, where the economy was not oriented to a world market and where labour power was neither bought nor sold. Indeed, serfs in Poland or encomienda in New Spain, Wallerstein claimed, were in fact ‘paid’ for cash cropping in the sixteenth century in a manner different from, but inherently related to, wage labour under ‘industrial capitalism’.
23.
23 The Modern World-System: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century, op. cit., pp. 15–49.
24.
24 The Foundations of Capitalism, op. cit., p. 57.
25.
25 Ibid., pp. 25–8.
26.
26 Ibid., p. 27.
27.
27 Ibid., pp. 30–139.
28.
28 Capitalism as a system, op. cit., p. 19.
29.
29 The central feature of the religious establishment in Venice was that it was under the control of the state. Cox argued that religion was virtually inseparable from the philosophical, scientific and economic thinking of the people. He believed that it was never economically sound for religion to be repressed by the state and argued that, while religious freedom was everywhere highly restricted, Venice had early on discovered the utility of tolerance.
30.
30 Herbert M. Hunter, The Life and Work of Oliver C. Cox (University of Boston, PhD Thesis, 1981); ‘Oliver C. Cox: a biographical sketch of his life and work’, Phylon (Vol. 44, no. 14, 1983), pp. 249–61; ‘Oliver C. Cox: Marxist or intellectual radical?’, Journal of the History of Sociology (Vol. 11, no. 5, 1983), pp.1–27; ‘The world-system theory of Oliver C. Cox’, Monthly Review (October, 1986), pp. 43–53; ‘The political economic thought of Oliver C. Cox’, in Thomas Boston’s A Different Vision: African American economic thought (New York, Routledge, 1996); Race Class and the World System, op cit.; ‘The sociology of Oliver C. Cox: new perspectives’ (ed.), Research in Race and Ethnic Relations (Vol. 11, 2000).
31.
31 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time (New York, Rinehart1944); Maurice Dobbs, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York, International, 1963).
32.
32 ‘Structures of orthodoxy and the sociological exclusion of Oliver Cox’, op. cit.
33.
33 After completing his PhD at Chicago, Frazier held a professorship at Fisk from 1929 to 1934 before assuming the position of head of sociology at Howard in 1934 and the presidency of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association) in 1948. Johnson graduated with his doctorate from Chicago as well, going on to become president of Fisk University in 1949. And Allison Davis became widely recognised when he published Deep South under the leadership of W. Lloyd Warner, with Mary and Burleigh Gartner in 1941.
34.
34 Robert Miles, ‘Class, race and ethnicity: a critique of Cox’s theory’, Ethnic and Racial Studies (Vol. 3, no. 2, 1980), pp. 169–187; Herbert Hunter, ‘Oliver C. Cox: marxist or intellectual radical?’, Journal of the History of Sociology (Vol. 11, no. 5, 1983), pp. 1–27.
35.
35 ‘The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: concepts for comparative analysis’, op. cit., p. 415.
