Key Points

• The modern world-system has remained remark­ably stable since the sixteenth century. Its bound­aries have extended, but a three-way spatial division between core, semi-periphery, and periphery has persisted.

• This stability is accounted for in two main ways: through the emergence of an interstate system, in which states in different zones of the world economy play different roles: and the existence 'of a geoculture generated by the modern world-system and dominated by the twin ideologies of liberalism and scientism.

Crisis in the Modern World-System

Between them, these various aspects of geoculture, when combined with the political organization of the modern world-system into competing sover­eign states, account for much of its remarkable sta­bility. However, as we have already mentioned, one of the interesting aspects of Wallerstein's work is his claim that this stability is currently being undermined, and that the modern world-system is enter­ing its period of crisis. Why might this be so given the strong stabilizing pressures which have just been outlined? After all, given the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the more general crisis of confi­dence on the left of the political spectrum, is it not the case that most now accept that there is no alter­native to free-market capitalism and liberal democ­racy? And in these circumstances, does it not seem more sensible to speak of the triumph of the pre­vailing order rather than herald its immanent demise?

Wallerstein's belief that the current world-sys­tem is in serious trouble stems from several sources. For the sake of clarify we will summarize the forces undermining the stability of the system as they affect the economic, the political, and the geocultural spheres. However, the reader should bear in mind that Wallerstein and other world-system the­orists are adamant that these spheres are all inti­mately intertwined.

The Economic Sources of Crisis

The sources of economic crisis have their roots in the fundamental contradictions of capitalism already outlined in the fourth section of this chapter. Wallerstein argues that, historically speaking, one of the main routes through which the problem of recurrent depression has been overcome, has been the expansion of the world-economy. Expansion has taken two main forms. The first is the geographical expansion of the world-economy to include more of the globe, thus opening up new markets and new sources of labour and raw materi­als. The second is the intensification of capitalist-economic relations within those areas already incorporated into the world economy. This later process takes many forms, the most prominent of which are urbanization and commodification. Urbanization has forced more and more of the world population to abandon rural areas—which are often characterized by a mixture of capitalist and pre-capitalist socio-economic relations—to live in the rapidly expanding, and wholly capitalis­tic, urban areas. Commodification refers to the process whereby more and more aspects of daily life are being drawn into the orbit of the market. Both phenomena serve to extend the scope of the capi­talist world-economy.

However, Wallerstein contends that expanding the world-economy is becoming an increasingly less viable means of escaping its problems. Geographically, the world-economy has long since expanded to include the whole globe. In addition, the world has now been almost fully urbanized. Furthermore, there are now very few aspects of life which have not been thoroughly commodified. This escape route is, to all intents and purposes, closed.

Even more fundamentally, five centuries of relentless capital accumulation has led to the mas­sive degradation of the global ecology Such is the degree of degradation that many have foreseen an impending ecological catastrophe which would have disastrous implications for the world-system. However, the structure of the system militates against any serious effort to avoid such a possibility. Addressing ecological problems will be enormously costly and yet, as Wallerstein points out, no sector of the world-system is in any position to pay with­out undermining the balance of the system itself.

If it is the enterprises [that pay], it will vitiate the unend­ing accumulation of capital. And if it is achieved by reduc­ing popular welfare, this will be the last straw in the possibility of maintaining the social cohesion of the states. (1996:105)