The conceptual force of Frank’s argument is in the way he both broadens and narrows the scope of his study. He feels the weight of his argument is in looking at the “world system as a whole.” Other world systems theorists, it seems, have taken the current dominant system—where the North/West is the “core” of capitalist production—and simply started their story about the world system from the origins of the development of that system. This requires a narrow view of history and of the world system itself, so that the focus is on Europe and its colonies until these become dominant in the world system itself and then Asia becomes significant.
From the “Perspective on the World” told from a Eurocentric perspective, this makes some logical sense: the global system is noteworthy when one is able to participate in it and before that time, the world market is a tabula rasa. Frank wants to make it clear that he is broadening the focus to look at Asia from well before “European Hegemony” and that what he finds is “Asian hegemony”—and one which extents well into the period usually reserved for the power of the West (he says 1800 is when the change is mostly complete.)
I can’t judge the validity of his evidence, but what is amazing to me is that in many ways it doesn’t challenge the dominant narrative in the way that one expects. That narrative could be completely true from the perspective of Europe. It is for this reason that his story doesn’t really challenge the totality of western social theory, even if it does throw it off center and give it much to account for. In many ways it just makes it look silly and provincial. How can you not realize that there is a bustling world of trade of which you only have a tiny slice? And yet, it makes complete sense that they didn’t. Frank uses the analogy of the drunk looking for his keys under the street lamp “because that’s where the light is.” This is a perfect way to argue for how broadening the focus was something that always would have led us to this understanding, this global perspective, but, like dopes, we just kept looking in the same place. I can’t prove any of his analysis is correct, but I’m sure some of it is and, knowing how easy it is to make a stupid mistake—even for 200 years—I can believe it doesn’t take much to displace the center of the European narrative since it was always already centered on Europe.
But even as He widens the focus, he narrows it. For instead of considering political economy, or culture, or even society, Frank is almost solely concerned with the objects of “economics” in its most technical, monetarist mode. The data he chooses to prove his point is the kind of argument that Chicago School folks would make. Chapter 2 is on trade ratios; chapter 3 is on silver and other forms of “money” and the monetary systems that existed. Chapter 4 is about the differences in productivity, population growth, GDP growth, etc. He is so economistic that he derides others for thinking about economics in terms of “mode of production” and so focused on macro-structural causality that he sees the social formations that are formed in each country—including the mode of production—as nothing more than the likely effect of that country or regions position within the world “economic” (i.e. not capitalist) system.
I find this to be disingenuous. Despite his throwaway dismissal of anyone who tries to ask him to consider culture or society (mostly in the introduction chapter), I don’t think this is something so easily dismissed. Frank wants to say that not only has it been wrong to think of, for instance, enlightenment rationality or the capitalist mode of production, as being something that is entirely internally generated within Europe, but it is only correct to think of it as entirely a response to external pressures, i.e. that “all societies are shaped by their common participation in a single world economy” (26). Okay, fair enough. Then why are their so many variations in societies and cultures? Why are their differences between them? Why did certain countries on the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia decide to begin colonizing countries around the globe?
Though Frank addresses these in some part, he usually only does so, again, in terms of economics. For instance, on p. 54, he argues—with supporting quotes from other scholars—that part of the reason for the countries of Europe roaming around the globe, taking advantage of cheap labor and trying to find specie or other resources is to compete with and participate in the Asian dominated economy. Even if there is some sort of ideological support that could be discussed, some homegrown rationale of what they are doing, Frank, despite his holistic approach, is wholly uninterested.
Dussel, on the other hand…
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