Mine Aysen Doyran wrote:
> As a Marxist, of course, he is critical of *certain* brands of
> marxist theory-- the orthodox developmental model-- which dominates the
> sociology of development literature with varying degrees, and takes the
> *nation state* as the unit of analysis instead of the *world system*.
I'll said it from the start, aside from the first two volumes of *The
Modern World-System*, Wallerstein has written little that is of
much value. He repeatedly mistakes describing for explaining.
People like Amin, Sweezy, Frank, and Wallerstein have had the
fortune of finding a mass of admiring readers and commentators
despite the low quality of their scholarly work, just because they
published one initial great work. This is not the case with Marxists
like John Roemer, E.O. Wright and Gerry Cohen. The scholarly
output of these three has been impressive from the start, and has
never faltered. Just a few years ago Wright published *Class
Matters*, which may very well be the best work yet on class by a
Marxist, though not mentioned once in this list! - which brings me
to the cited passage above.
The "orthodox development model" does not dominate sociology of
development literature. Wallerstein may want you to think that - as
if the issue was still between WS theory and modernization theory!
- but the truth is there is a whole array of contesting theories.
