Globalisation: System Analysis
Introduction
Immanuel Wallerstein (2000) proposed the world-system analysis to explain the beginning of globalization as a phenomenon, which began in Europe in the sixteenth century with the development of the capitalist world economy and culminated in the twentieth century. By culmination, it is meant that the globalization process has reached nearly all of the nations in the world, which are connected by the global economy. It is crucial to briefly return to Europe in the Middle Ages in order to explain the beginnings of globalization. A base and superstructure crisis was occurring in Europe in the sixteenth century. The feudal system, the economic foundation upon which the superstructure of Europe was built, was in decline. The internal contradictions of this system, which required peasants to give the landlord surpluses from the land they farmed in exchange for living and working there, the increased number of wars that Europe was waging at the time, which required the peasants to work hard to produce even more surpluses in order to maintain the feudal aristocracy and the army, and finally, natural conditions were among the reasons for the gradual decline of feudalism.
A power struggle between the Church and the feudal princes was occurring concurrently in the superstructure, which was also experiencing its own crisis. New production methods began to enter Europe as the feudal base and superstructure began to fall. The emergence of an arts and crafts economy in urban centers, the transition from subsistence and community-based farming to cash crop farming, and most importantly, the expansion of the European economy into other parts of the world for trade and conquest, were the earliest characteristics of the new modes of production. During the sixteenth century, North West Europe led the way in integrating these new production methods, and as a result, this region advanced more than the rest of the world in terms of economy, politics, and military power. The North West European nations were able to establish their gains in comparison to the nations they traded with or conquered thanks to these advantages. One of the most significant effects of this new global trade in which Europe participated was the development of a modern world-system, the main characteristic of which was a division of labor by geography and occupation within the framework of a global economy.
Wallerstein defined the world-system as ‘a unit with a single division of labour and multiple cultural systems’
"A unit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems," according to Wallerstein (1974: 390), is how he described the world-system. He referred to it as a historical system with a clearly defined structure, bound by laws, and composed of elements that were economically interdependent. Wallerstein referred to the contemporary world-system as a "world economy" due to these characteristics as well as the fact that it was larger than any single political entity. The world economy is a particular kind of social system known as the world-system. Wallerstein used the term "social system" to refer to the global system in this instance. He meant a system with a shared division of labor connecting its various components in order to satisfy their economic needs. Multiple political centers and a single cultural system are features of the contemporary world-economy, which is a world-system. North West Europe experienced the emergence of the global economy in the sixteenth century, which led to the marketization of trade. This is essentially the distinguishing feature of the capitalist system, according to Wallerstein (2000). Since the principle of capital accumulation through the extraction of surpluses served as the underlying force that propelled the global economy, it was capitalist. As a result, both people and things were made commodities. Without the existence of multiple political centers where the stronger governments could maneuver and impose their interests on the weaker ones, who subsequently submitted to a very unequal form of exchange, which helped the world-system itself to expand, the world-system would not have been able to survive.
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in North West Europe, the modern world economy first began to take shape. At that time, agricultural products were primarily bought and sold on the global market. This type of wage labor, which is one of the ways in which workers are compensated, is what Wallerstein (2000) referred to as agricultural capitalism. Peasants, sharecroppers, and slaves performed additional labor. However, what was important in this case was that there were various types of labor control in use in various parts of the global economy. This was the "regional specialization," according to Wallerstein (Ibid. ) in the management of labor and the mode of production. This was developed by the bourgeois of the powerful North West European core to manipulate the global market and maximize profits. The bourgeois turned to the state because it controlled the military and the resources to speed up transportation to far-off regions (like ports), helping them to maintain this regional specialization and expand to new territories for conquest and plunder.
The regional specialisation led to the formation of three structural positions within the worldeconomy
Three structural positions—the core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery—have emerged within the global economy as a result of regional specialization. North West Europe experienced specific "historical, ecological and geographical" conditions in the sixteenth century as a result of what Wallerstein (2000) referred to as "a series of accidents" (Ibid.). ) advantages over the rest of the world, which allowed it to move past agricultural capitalism and into manufacturing, which was advantageous to industrial capitalism, i. e. metals, textiles, and ships. As a result, North West Europe became the center where "tenancy and wage labor as modes of labor control" (Ibid.) could conveniently meet the needs resulting from its specialization in industrial manufacturing. ). Mediterranean Europe emerged as the semi-periphery that specialized in commercial and asset transactions as well as industrial products like silk. Sharecropping, a form of labor control popular in rural areas, could be used to carry out these activities. The Western Hemisphere and Eastern Europe became the periphery. They shipped precious metals and raw materials to the core. Slavery and other forms of forced labor could be used as a method of labor control for the production of raw materials and the mining of precious metals.
In this way, regional specialization produced a structural hierarchy in which certain regions were deemed to be most "appropriate" for particular industrial and agricultural activity and the ensuing forms of labor control. The hierarchy between the core, periphery, and semi-periphery regions was maintained, and each region played a specific role within the modern world-system. The core states, for example, did not rely on any interest group within the region for their survival because they had strong state apparatuses and military might. The state apparatus supported the bourgeoisie by safeguarding their financial interests and granting them monopolies over production and manufacturing, which allowed them to withstand losses and maintain their economic dependence on the periphery. Not only were the semi-peripheral areas significant trading partners for the core, but they also contributed to preserving the unequal hierarchical structure of the contemporary world-system. They achieved this by deflecting any group political pressure directed at them from groups in the periphery regions. These three areas or structural positions had become crucial to the capitalist global economy by the middle of the seventeenth century.
This system's ability to extract surplus from the global economy as a whole, i.e. e. the periphery and semi-periphery to the center. As was previously mentioned, the states in the core region aided the bourgeoisie's commercial interests on the global market by using their economic and military might to impose their interests over those of the weaker regions and compel them to trade in an unequal exchange system. Therefore, according to Wallerstein (2000), understanding the modern world system required a study of the global economy as a whole rather than just the capitalist exchanges that took place within nation-states. Wallerstein has made an effort to demonstrate that the modern world system, which is a capitalist world system, is not a recent development but has existed for a significant amount of time prior to that.
The political stability of the modern world-system has been sustained over the centuries due to three factors
Three things contributed to the modern world-system's political stability over the centuries:
(i) the concentration of military power in the hands of the core;
(ii) the ruling classes' "ideological commitment to the system"; and
(iii) the division of the modern world-system into a large periphery and a "smaller" semi-periphery.
(i) the concentration of military power in the hands of the core;
(ii) the ruling classes' "ideological commitment to the system"; and
(iii) the division of the modern world-system into a large periphery and a "smaller" semi-periphery.
The last point, which explained how the semi-periphery's role was not just economic but also political, was, in Wallerstein's opinion (2000), the most crucial aspect pertinent to the survival of the modern world-system. The semi-periphery also took advantage of the periphery, while the core took advantage of both the semi-periphery and the periphery. This prevented the core from encountering a "unified opposition" from the vast majority that was in the periphery, as some of that tension was diverted by the exploitation carried out by the semi-periphery.
The ruling classes in all three of these regions of this structure saw in the survival of this system a chance for their own survival. That is to say, they shared the ruling classes' "shared ideology," which Wallerstein (2000) called the "myths" of the modern world-system. The ruled classes had no sense of allegiance to the ideology. They nevertheless were a part of this system and carried out their duties in accordance with the regional differences in labor control and mode of production.
Since the modern world-system is a historical structure, just like its forerunner, the feudal system, it cannot endure indefinitely. From the middle of the eighteenth century (1733–1817), according to Wallerstein (2000), the modern world-system included regions that were far from the European core in addition to Europe and the Americas. Turkey, Russia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa were among them. By the end of the Second World War, more remote regions of the globe had also been incorporated into the modern world-system, which had begun to take shape in the "later half of the nineteenth century" as an integrated geographical unit. Due to the world's fusion into a single system, i.e. e. In every region of the world, the global economy had led to the commoditization of both labor and goods.
The system did experience its share of crises, some of which could have endedanger its very existence. One set of crises was what Wallerstein (2000) referred to as the "cyclical crises," which took place when a recession followed an extended period of sustained growth. An additional wave of growth followed the recession. Social unrests brought on by financial unrest may endanger the system's very viability. Additionally, when there was a change in hegemonic power, tensions might also develop. This took place as regions that were not initially part of the core developed economically, militarily, and technologically. As a result, the Netherlands, the UK, and France were the three hegemonic powers at the start of the modern world system in the sixteenth century, but by the middle of the nineteenth century, the UK had assumed that role, and by the end of the Second World War, it was the United States, which it still is today. A variety of crises within the core, however, have the potential to impact hegemonic status and result in a shift in the top dog in the world.
Socialism has been the biggest threat to the capitalist world-system, according to Wallerstein (2000). In addition to enabling the formation of political entities that "challenge the capitalist world-economy," socialism has caused the core regions to move in the direction of a more just and equitable wealth distribution in the global economy. ). "Transitions" are changes that follow in the world-system and a transition to a different system that the contemporary world-system cannot stop.
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