Peony, from Tang Dynasty Times, asked me to recount an exchange I had, years ago, with eminent economic historian Andre Gunder Frank. There's no ancient Chinese philosophy in this, just a rather amusing personal story. It's a bit long, so I am putting it below the fold, for any who are interested.
The year is 1981. May. I am finishing my first year of full-time graduate study in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My graduate adviser, Ed Friedman, has organized a conference, the fifth session of the Political Economy of the World-System Conference (PEWS V), that will consider "Ascent and Decline in the World System." All the big time names of the World Systems theoretical universe will be there: Immanuel Wallerstein himself, along with other notables, such as Andre Gunder Frank. Another of my teachers, Barbara Stallings, encourages me to submit a paper for presentation at the conference, which will be held in Madison. I do. The paper is entitled,"The Taiwanese Ascent: System, State, and Movement in the World-Economy."
I present the paper at the conference and Frank is the discussant. Now, you have to realize just how out of my league I am at this point. Frank is an academic giant. I had read him in college; he was central to any consideration, at that time, of international political economy. He was a major proponent of "dependency theory," which, in one of its guises - the one that Frank was then propounding - held that "development" was essentially impossible in the capitalist world-economy. What appeared to be "economic development" in a place like Taiwan in the 1960's and 70's, was not really meaningful. World-systems theory, which was then absorbing and pressing beyond dependency theory, held that "ascent," or development, was possible within the capitalist world-economy, and it sought to understand the dynamics of ascent and decline of various states historically. Frank's presence at the conference, then, was quite interesting. How far and in what manner would be accept the emerging world-systems theory view on "ascent"?
It turns out, I was something of a guinea pig on this question. I presented my paper, which argued that Taiwan had, indeed, ascended from one structural position to another within the world-economy, that both systemic and domestic factors explained that ascent, and that our understanding of Taiwan could tells us something more general about the process of ascent. (The article was later published in this book) Then it was Frank's turn.
He torn me to shreds, invoking the most rigid formulation of dependency theory to slap aside my entire argument with a categorical "there can be no development in the capitalist world-economy." I then was give a chance to rebut him. There I am, a first year graduate student who had just been publicly eviscerated by a giant the field in front of the luminaries of the world-systems theory world. What can I say? I can't find the arguments to defend myself, so I sheepishly repeat my basic premise. My vulnerabilities are glaringly obvious for all to see.
Then, when questions are solicited from the audience, Stallings comes to my rescue. She raises her hand and is recognized. And she says she has two questions for Prof. Frank. And it turns out she knows just how to come back at him. What are the two worst things you can say to a Marxist?
She says that she does not understand why Prof. Frank is being so ahistorical (ouch) in not recognizing the obvious changes that have taken place in Taiwan; and why Prof. Frank's analysis is so undialectical (ooph) in refusing to see the interactions of system and state. Can Prof. Frank please enlighten her on his obvious shortsightedness here? Frank cannot; he simply reasserts, without further analytic justification, that there can be no development in a capitalist world-economy. She has skewered him. Dependency theory is unable to engage with world-systems theory. The old Frank must give way to a new Frank, and does.
In the meantime, I am still sitting there. And when asked for a rejoinder, I say, essentially, "what she said." I am off the hook.
Now I must say that while this was a fleeting intellectual victory of sorts for me, the more remarkable thing is the continuing evolution of Frank intellectually. Not only did he move away from a rather doctrinaire formulation of dependency theory and become an avatar of a more flexible world-systems approach, he eventually moved even further, as he dug deeper and deeper into Asian history, to question the very categories of Marxist analysis that had been so closely associated with him for so long, as he relates in the Preface to his book, ReOrient:
In this regard, I have related before (Frank 1991, 1996) what my then about 15 year old sons told me almost two decades ago. It turns out to be even more relevant to the thesis of the present book than I, or presumably they, could realize at the time: Paulo said that if Latin America had been colonial, it could not have been feudal. Miguel said in 1978 that England is an underdeveloping country. The significance of these observations to the present book is several-fold: If Latin America was colonial it was because it was part and parcel of the world system. Therefore, not only can it make no sense to call it "feudal." It also makes questionable sense to so categorize it at all - even as "capitalist" - other than as a dependent part of the world economy or system. What do we gain by any such "definition," if we can even "define" it at all? Really nothing; indeed this focus on "modes of production" only diverts our attention from the much more importantly defining world system of which everything is a part, as I already argued elsewhere (Frank 1991, 1993, 1996).
His backing away from "modes of production" and "feudalism" suggests a certain intellectual openness and honesty that we can all learn from.
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