Glenda Claborne
Soc 500b
April 12, 1999
Beyond skepticism
Truth is the lie of the mighty, Marx said. At the beginning of this century, such skepticism nurtured the passions for revolutionary movements around the world. At the end of this century, however, skepticism can only inspire us to be cool about everything.
But there is no neutral ground. To think there is is to substitute for the lie of the mighty a bigger lie that is not mighty in any way.
There must be something to which we can subject all "lies" (if we have to call competing truths that). Something that would let us see the truth behind Eurocentrism, Sinocentrism, Afrocentrism, etc. A something that can purify our truths of our lies and still allows us to act with passion from our truths within a bigger truth.
That we might define that bigger truth by ever expanding the boundaries of our frameworks of knowledge is the value of the idea of a world system or any broader system larger than the world. But broadening frameworks cannot be just a matter of tearing down narrow boundaries, of shifting centers of domination and control from one locus to another nor of instituting a canopy large enough to contain everything. A broadening of frameworks must, above all, provide a firm ground on which to stand under the canopy.
So it is that in considering Frank's thesis, one must indeed look at the narrow boundaries and the false centers of Weber's or Marx's thesis. But beyond opening up and decentering, one must be able to look back at what can be salvaged from the past that has continuity with our present and that can give us hope for the future.
Salvaging Marx and Weber
Frank's thesis of a global network of trade and production with Asia at its center and Europe at its periphery from the 16th to the 18th centuries points us to the reality of a long-existing global system in which individual nation-states are interconnected. It is a reality that is not the result of European colonialism and capitalism but of a "spirit of capitalism" that could move any group of people anywhere in the world under the right conditions. Furthermore, the decline of Asia and the rise of Europe in the 18th century and the decline of the West's hegemony and the rise of several East Asian capitalist economies in the latter part of this century points to a cyclical pattern of the rise and fall of world economies. In view of this knowledge, we must therefore approach Weber's thesis of the emergence of capitalism from a sense of religious vocation of a particular group of Europeans and Marx's thesis of a linear progression from capitalism to socialism with the proletariat as the center to be only partially substantiated.
Do Weber and Marx still have something to say to the reality of a world system that is shifting its center from the West, which seems to have reached the apogee of capitalism and rationalization, to the East which seems to be regaining its capitalistic power and dominance? I think they do. Take out the narrow boundaries and false centers out of Weber's and Marx's writings and still find that "intellectual gravity" that transcends economic, political, religious and cultural boundaries and that speaks to a center that is at once particular and universal. These pillars of sociology may have shifted the model of social order from individualistic utilitarianism to collectivistic social relations but they still speak to flesh and blood humanity moving in real space and time.
Marx's early writings on estranged labor cannot fail to make us think of what man is in relation to his labor, to the products of his labor and to those who use the products of his labor. It is an idealization of man as an economic being, as part of a sensuous nature that creates and is created. Weber's conclusions from his observations of differences between Protestants and Catholics are unscientific and hardly can be proven but his effort at finding explanations for the phenomenon of capitalism in the beliefs of Protestants points us to the deeper reservoirs of motivation why people, any group of people, order their economic, cultural, political and religious lives the way they do. The events of this century, since Marx and Weber, only have proven that once societies become alienated from their deeper reservoirs of happiness and well-being, even in the name of reason and progress, people's humanity as well as the natural environment of which people are an integral part degenerate. Indeed, if anything, this pathos of alienation of man from the things that make his life full and meaningful as a result of man's domination and control of nature (human and external nature) is the gravity that still pulls us back to Marx's and Weber's works.
Reconceptualizing alienation
In view of the world system, it can be said that Marx's and Weber's concepts of alienation are still limited to specific historical periods in time and limited by their European worldviews. Their application of their humanistic views still can be considered imperialistic since they implicitly take their European worldviews as the ideal for all humanity much like the universalistic zeal of Christian missionaries who believed that Christ is for all people but must declare that other gods are false. This type of universalism only can endeavor either to neutralize, expropriate or incorporate the truths of differing worldviews from and into a particular worldview. Thus there is always the danger that one can recognize and understand the "other" and still deny its right to its own valid existence. We can expand our concept of alienation not only to mean alienation from the very things that are meaningful to us according to our particular worldview but alienation to mean the exclusion of the "other's" worldview in our understanding of our selves and of the world. In the world system, the "other" are people whose customs, habits, beliefs and environs are different from us. One can validly ask how can one open one's self to an understanding of the other without using one's own a priori knowledge of things as points of reference and comparison and thus face the possibility that one always can be biased either in favor of one's own viewpoint or in condescension to the other's viewpoint? Does this bring us to a radical pluralism where the choice can be only either to fall back into our particular worlds and become indifferent to other worlds, to deny one's own world and lose one's self in the other's world, or to remain suspended in a debilitating neutrality? How can one be true and strong in one's convictions without excluding the other? How can one fully acknowledge the other without losing one's self completely in the other? How can one operate in between without falling through the cracks? These are questions that have been asked wherever boundaries have been torn down and people faced an open space of possibilities and choices. This also moves the consideration of social/world order not only in the realm of social/world systems but to the very realm of the meaning of self and consciousness. Indeed, one can lament with William James that the very meaning of life is at stake and one can understand the choice that pragmatists and postmodernists have taken to deal with life on a creative moment-by-moment living of the present in the face of the validity of different worldviews.
Reconceptualizing rationality
I don't pretend to have the answers for questions that probably have plagued people whenever they must open themselves to threatening changes but at some point, we must take the courage to believe that we have a basis for the unity of the past, present and future and a basis for unity in diversity in the world system. The basis is our oneness as a human species and our diversity within one world system. We might want to account for human unity and diversity by reconceptualizing rationality not in terms of differential intellectual ability to control and dominate nature but as reasonable responses of people to the needs and constraints that they face at a particular time and place much like Joas' continuum of activity and inactivity. Frank rightly asserts that the reason the Asians did not develop labor-saving technologies but instead put more pressure on their large populations to produce was that it was their rational response to the available resources that they had and had not. This response is no less rational than the invention of several labor-saving technologies in Europe as a response to Europe's particular balance of capital, wages, population and demand and supply of goods. The difference in the internal balance of supply and demand in different regions of the world can further be explained by the global economic structures of trade and production that determine the internal trade and production within a particular region of the world. From this we can speculate that the reason many people in poor countries think more in terms of concrete objects rather than abstract concepts is because they are forced to deal daily with the concrete concerns of living and existence while people in rich countries are, for the most part, freed from these concrete concerns and therefore can spare time for abstract intellectual pursuits. Much like Maslow's hierarchy of needs only here we say that the different levels at which different countries find themselves is largely a function of a global economic system.
However, in explaining differential human conditions in terms of economics we may be underestimating the capacity of the human spirit to transcend the constraints of economics and actually achieve greatness amidst misery and suffering as has been demonstrated throughout the ages by men and women from all races. We may also be overestimating the capacity of structures to elevate the human condition as can be seen in wealthy nations where the human spirit has, in many cases, actually dwindled to vulgar sensuality and self-serving self-consciousness amidst affluence and opportunity. [Just as Weber pessimistically wrote about.]