| | It is sad to record that Immanuel Wallerstein's work has now reached such a level of uncritical palatability that one now has to defend him against his epigones. One such is Rod Bush, one of the editors of Contemporary Marxism, who provides an introduction to this separately issued selection of articles from the journal. In this version of Wallersteinism, the British and French empires collapse because the US, as the hegemonic power, was no longer 'tolerant' of 'lesser powers' denying it market access (p. 1). Similarly, we are told that "Rockefeller can let Reagan and the South Africans take the rap for being brutal but we should be clear that one section of the ruling class is not really more 'enlightened' and 'humanistic' than another" (p.9). Finally, in a statement that is profoundly misleading, Bush argues that: "The anti-colonial movements of the late 1950s and early 1960s . . . had not been required to transcend their initial base in urban African trading and professional classes nor to mobilise, politically educate, and learn from the African proletarian and peasant populations" (p.6). These statements amply testify to the dangers of naive globalism. The history of anti-colonial movements is subordinated to a systemic crisis between free traders and imperialists; there is a chain of command set in motion by what is called 'the world capitalist class' ; while the struggles of workers and peasants are denuded of any power. These poor folks weren't even significant enough to be used as tools of the emergent petty bourgeoisie. While Wallerstein has rightly been criticised by Worsley (in a recent Socialist Register, 1980) for subordinating salient political divisions to an undifferentiated economism, he has never simplified the world in quite such crude terms as Bush - who cites Wallerstein repeatedly in defence of his views. Neither in his earliest book (Africa: the Politics of Independence, 1961) nor in his latest collection with de Braganza (The African Liberation Reader, 1982) do Africans appear as totally passive victims to wider economic forces beyond their control or comprehension. |
