Nothing New in the East: No New World Order

Abstract

It is as if Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt had studied carefully status quo of age of Charlemagne on 1,130th anniversary of his death [when they drew Iron Curtain across Europe].... The old Roman limes would show up on Europe's morphological map, thus presaging right from start birth of a Central within notion of West. The whole history of Hapsburg state was an attempt to balance unbalanceable while being squeezed somewhere between two extremes of Europe. The only consequent structural element in that formula ... [was] setting up by Hapsburgs of a diminished - East-Central European - copy on an imperial scale of division of labour drawn up by nascent on a larger scale.... The Hapsburgs had no chances in Western sector of economy either. So House of Hapsburg settled down to a division of labour between West (industrial) and East (agricultural) through economic structure within its own, European, political framework. Nothing New in West was title of Erich Maria Remarque's classic book at end of World War I. Nothing New in East should have been its sequel after World War II - and again, or rather still, now after 40 to 70 plus years of socialism there. Indeed, epigraphs above suggest that division of into East and West, and fact that there is a division or more than one, is about as old and nearly as invariant as Europe itself. So much for new order in Europe. However, we could say nearly as much for new order in world. It is as old as this system itself. This system has been characterized by at least following features: 1. The system itself. Contrary to Wallerstein (1974), I believe that existence and development of same system in which we live stretches back at least 5,000 years (Frank, 1990a, 1991a and b; Gills and Frank, 1990, 1992; Frank and Gills, 1992). Wallerstein emphasizes difference a hyphen (-) makes, with his construct the world-system. Unlike our nearly world(wide) system, world-system are in a of their own, which need not even be entirely worldwide. However, new world in Americas was home to some world-systems of its own before its incorporation into our (preexisting) system after 1492. 2. The process of capital accumulation as motor force of (world system) history. Wallerstein and others regard continuous capital accumulation as differentia specifica of world-system. Elsewhere I have argued that in this regard modern system is not so different and that this process of capital accumulation has played a, if not the, central role in system for several millennia (Frank, 1991b; Gills and Frank, 1990). Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein (1991a) disagree. They argue that previous world-systems were what Amin calls tributary or Wallerstein empires. In these, Amin claims that politics and ideology were in command, not economic law of value in accumulation of capital. Wallerstein seems to agree. 3. The center-periphery structure in and of (system). This structure is familiar to analysts of dependence in modern system and especially in Latin America since 1492. It includes, but is not limited to, transfer of surplus between zones of system. Frank (1967, 1969) wrote about this among others. However, I now find that this analytical category is also applicable to system before that. 4. The alternation between hegemony and rivalry. In this process, regional hegemonies and rivalries succeed previous period of hegemony. Worldsystem and international-relations literature has recently produced many good analyses of alternations between hegemonic leadership and rivalry for hegemony in system since 1492, for instance those of Wallerstein (1979), or since 1494 by Modelski (1987) and Modelski and Thompson (1988). …

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