< I noticed that the work of Gunder Frank is featured on the PEN-L archives page, and i read a few samples wherein he counters wallerstein with the idea that the world-system is 5000 years old, not 500 years.
I was wondering -- would anyone on the list be willing to give me a short summary on how he defines exploitation through the different periods of imperialism in the past 5000 -- i.e., is the exploitation practiced by the Roman ruling elite the same as the exploitation practiced by our own capitalists? If not, how does it differ? Or, instead of a summary, some direction toward where i can locate such information for myself? thanks so much nancy > - Guillermo Algaze traces back the world system to more than 3000 BC, several centuries before Sargon: "The Uruk World System", Chicago University Press, 1993, and some papers at http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/arch/ There were manufactures in Uruk, devoted to exports against raw materials from the periphery (flint, obsidien, stone, then metals and timber). Uruk World System was expanded up to the sources of Tiger and Euphrate. It shows the historical constant of the expanding trade of all world systems: an asymmetric exchange of goods that are reproducible on the spot, against materials that are not reproducible and must be purchased or conquired farer and farer. Here accumulation, there empoverishment, and always the Luxemburgist relationship accumulation/expansion. RK
