WHAT WILL AN INTEGRATED SOCIALIST WORLD LOOK LIKE? 
Brief comments on Warren Wagar 's art icl e : " Toward a Praxis 
of a World Int eg ration" 

Maria A. Pozas 
Sociology Depa r tment 
Th e Jo hns Hopkin s Un iv ers i ty 
Baltimore, MD 2 1 2 1 8 USA 

Copyright 1996 by Maria A. Pozas . 

v. 6/ 10/96 

World integration under a sing l e state is foreseen by 
world-system theo ri sts as the only means to save the wo rld 
from destruct i on and chaos. The e x ha ustion of capitalism 
wi ll l ead , in thei r view , to the subst i tut i on of the current 
system o f c o mpet i ng s ov ere ig n states by a democratic, 
l i beral and soc i al i st conunonwealth. I n his article Warren 
Wagar discusses who will l ead this transit i on , and 
i nd ir ect l y s ugg ests that a world system party similar to 
that of h i s nove l A Short History of the Fu ture (1992) may 
be the most feasib l e way to guarantee the socialist 
character of the new wor l d state . 

In A Short Hi story of the Future the party was 

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initiated i n an Amer i can un i vers i ty, i n other words it 
or igin ated in the academ ic rea l m, suggest ing that world - system 
thinkers co ul d contr i b u te i n the b uil d i ng of th e 
world par ty . He defends t h e un i versal i ty of the v alu es of 
the "L eft Enlightenment " and consider s that "wh eneve r local 
cultures diverge from i ts va l ues ... we must assert, and 
persuade o t hers to assert, the pr i or i ty of democratic 
soc i al i sm" (Wagar, 1995 : 5) . 

The objec t of polit i cs, unli ke that of the academy, is 
a very prac t ical one : t o take state power, o r , a t least, t o 
accumulate enough power to mod i fy the e st abli shed o rd e r in 
t he desired direction . This goa l can be reached by violent 
means , using economic power, man i pu l at i on and cor r up ti on, or 
via a democratic route . Wa gar proposes to follow the 
democratic way . Th e construct i on of a wor l d party that 
ensures t he tr iumph of democracy, f reedom and socialism 
requires joining fo rces and mobiliz i ng people' s will a r ound 
a new pro j ect for soc iety . If the party's program genuinely 
re flec ts t he peoples ' in terests , needs and concerns, the 
party will h ave ad heren ts a nd supporters . 

I ca n imagin e Marx and his colleagues, little mor e 
t han one hund red years back, infused by the same conce r n, 
motiva ted by t he sa me ideal s and t he sa me re s i sta nce t o 
accept that we l iv e in the be st of poss ible worlds . But, 
unl i ke our mod er n academics, Marx was f ree of the 



disench a n t ment of the l ast one hundred ye a rs : the unlimited 
a b ili t y of c a p i t ali sm to a d a pt a nd r ep r oduce i tse l f , the 
i nc r e a s i ng d i sma ntl i ng o f the welfa r e state , the growing gap 
be t ween p oor a nd ri ch coun tri es and , ove r a ll, the fa il ure 
of the soc iali st expe ri ment i n Easte r n Eu r ope . In Marx's 
t i me , i t wa s st i ll poss i ble t o bel i eve that the logic of 
s o c i ety ' s ev o lut io n wo uld n a tu r ally le a d t o a socialist 

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wor l d . I do n ot kno w what Marx wo u l d th ink if he could see 
the re al c o urse of h i s po li t i ca l pr o ject , but I understand 
th a t the wor l d needs a new project of soc i ety, a political 
project that gives direction to the a ct io ns of the major i ty, 
who are overwhel med by abuses a n d the co n ce n tration of 
econom i c and po li t i ca l power . 

In this sense , the c oncer n that has motivated the 
wor l d - syste m group to tra n sce n d the narrow limi t s of t he 
ac a demy and to start thinking in pol i t i cal t erms see ms very 
po si t i ve . The format i on of a wor l d party , howe v er, looks at 
f i rst s ig ht premature , perhaps as premature as in its time 
was the Soc i a li st I nternat i ona l. And i t i s no t the 
d i screpant in terests of the n ew soc i a l movemen t s o r cul t u r al 
differences that in my opinion make this projec t appear 
unrea li st i c . After a ll , the cap i ta li st i deology has p r oved 
to have an extraord i nary capacity to penetra t e t he mos t 
divergent cultures and to un i fy the most d i sparate 
interests . Even i f i t cou l d be argued that capi t alism 
permeated a ll cu l tures by us i ng force and mili t a r y powe r , 
the socialist states also had this resource and s t ill 
declined . 

The p r ob l em i s the l ack of a feas i b l e al ter na t i ve 
model of society, one that is able to solve t he fundamenta l 
contradictions that l ed to the fa il ure of socialism in 
Eastern Europe and to the draw i ng back of the welfare state 
in Europe, Canada and the u . s . 

In my view, the success of cap i ta li sm is, above all, a 
produc t of i t s capaci t y to o r gan i ze the wo rl d's econo my . 
Br audel dis t inguishes between cap i ta li sm and ma r ke t economy; 
even more, he conside r s capitalism as the anti t hesis of t he 
marke t economy because i t works aga i nst marke t 's laws 
t h r ough i t s monopoly of econom i c and i ts con tr ol o v e r 

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p o li t ical p o wer (c f . Ar righi 1994:10) . From wo rl d - syst em 
t h e o r y we hav e al s o learned that capita l i s m emer ges 
pr e cis e ly f r om t h e ma rr iage of capi t al and the s tat e 
(Br a n d el 1 9 82; Wa lle rst ein 1 9 91; Arr ighi 199 4 ) . The s tat e s 

t ha t c urren t ly rule o ver t he va st maj o ri t y of t he wor l d a r e 



theref o re c apitalist states . In other words , it does not 
matter h o w democra t ic they can be or how egalitarian so me of 
them can loo k; as s oo n as these concessions to society put 
at risk the utility marg i n of the " lords of money ," they 
will turn over " the i r states " to correct those deviations . 
Th a t is what neo l ibera l states have been doing during the 
l ast tw o decades . 

For these reasons , i t i s not poss i ble to shift the 
wo r l d fr o m capita l ism to s o cia l ism o n l y by pol iti cal means, 
i. e ., by ta k ing state power . Chase - Dunn (1989) envisions the 
emergence of the world state (or the world fede rat ion) 
before the arr i va l of socia li sm . In other words a socialis t 
wo r l d party wi ll have t o take o ver a capitalist state . It is 
necessary to so lv e first , theoretically at leas t , the 
prob l em of how the wor l d economy cou l d function without 
capita l ist accumu l ati o n . Otherwise , the s o c i alist wo rld 
party wi ll be work i ng i n the best of cases to balance the 
demands of cap i ta li sts, wh i ch i s no t a t a ll bad , b ut it will 
never be ab l e t o e l iminate their p o wer , n o r e ve n to control 
i t . Th i s i s the lesson that we learned from the socialist 
governments of Spa i n and France . 

What kind o f instituti o ns can substitute for the 
capita l ist financia l and productive systems? The East 
European socia li st countr i es subst i tuted bureaucra ts for 
capita l ists but they were not ab l e to invent an e ff icient 
alternative to organize economic life . The socialist 
exper i ment has yet to be ser i ously and coldly studied a nd 

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ana lyzed . Wor l d - system theor i sts prefer to d i scard these 
experiences by suppress i ng the term soc i a li st and by 
considering t hem cap i tal i st . The problem was, in Wagar's 
view, Sta lin ' s proc l amation of " so cia l i sm in one country . " I 
think it was more comp l ex than that . The expa nsion of 
socialism in Ea stern Europe and As i a was large enough t o 
h ave a llowed the emergence of an independ e nt world system . 
The reasons why t his did not occur ha ve yet to be explained . 
But even if these states cont i nue to be li nked to the 
cap i ta li st world economy, i nternally they eliminated the 
" capitalist top laye r " of the i r societies, to use Braudel ' s 
expres sion (198 2 ), and created a h i gh l y i nefficient 
production system (Korna i 1986) . Maybe some new relations of 
product i on e merged i n these countries but these were drowned 
by bureaucracy or by the world - re i gn i ng capitalism . 

Another problem is t he agent of transformation . As 
Waga r sa y s , c iting Wallerste in, "the bui l ding of an 
egal i tar ian democratic world order demands a 'social praxis 
socia lly arrived at '" (Wagar , 199 5 : 11) . Marx th ought that 
t h e working c l ass was be t h e transfor ming ag ent . Maybe he 
was wrong; maybe the rebellion of a s ingle class is not 
e nough . Perhaps the kind of crisis t h at Waga r describes in 
his novel i s inde ed n ecessar y. But under current conditi ans 
it i s h ard to im ag in e a group of academ i cs leading the 



process. Even if they were able to recruit enough adherents 
worl dwide to infiltrate the centers of power , as Wagar seems 
to su gg es t, this wi ll not change the lo gic of cap i talistic 
accumulation. 

In my view, the ma in strength of the ac ademy in the 
f irst wor l d is its l e gitimacy. It provides in my opinion the 
best platform to construct the kind o f "ov erarching 
consciousness of the need to confront the cap i ta li st wor l d - system" 

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whose l ack , Wagar says , affects t oday's globa l 
political culture . This i s what Marx d i d one hundred years 
ago. His i deas were present in most of the anti - system i c 
soc ial mov e ments of the century . Today we n eed a new theory , 
not only a theory that expla i ns how cap i talism works , as 
world-system theor y does, but one that ba sed on the 
knowledge accumu l ated during a ce n t ury of studies and 
economic and poli t ical experiments i s able to i mag i ne an 
alternat iv e form of o r ganizing the world economy . 

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