Thus I've thought of Wallerstein a lot like Edmund Wilson thought of Trotsky: that whole sections make no sense at all unless you replace "history" and "dialectic of history" with "Providence" and "God"...
Brad DeLong ---------------------------------------
LOL! That's a laugh coming from the great singer of religious paeons to Eternal Capital and its Inexorable Progress in lifting all boats worldwide under the glorious aegis of a U.S. imperialism that can do no moral wrong.
Wallerstein comes close to understanding the character of our times, despite his philosophical preconceptions. And it won't be a "liberal" one.
Wojtek's answer was good... ------------------------------------- True, but functionalism is more often of epistemological rather than ontological origins. That is to say, it results form the writer's failure to identify material (or human) agents of change rather than a belief that such change takes place by the sheer power of system's logic (or an invisible hand, if you will).
With that in mind, destabilization of a system (or equilibrium) may not be the sufficient cause for a change, but may be a necessary one i.e. one creating an opportunity for a change to take place. ------------------------ Which of course has been Wallersteins' point since at least 1997. He even says 1) that the outcome of the present transistion is indeterminate, but 2) by its "chaotic" character even small groups can have a disproportionte effect on the outcome. Gee, he's starting to sound "leninist"... ----------------------- This, however, does not imply that it is the only necessary cause and, for that matter, that the change will take place automatically, once all necessary pre-conditions are present. Once also needs to identify the force or agent that will produce such change. If I understand Trotsky, he did identify such an agent (the working class), albeit it is debatable whether his views were true. And that is different from functionalism (or teleology in general) whose truth function cannot be empirically determined.
Wojtek ---------------------------------------- -- /**********************************************************************/ Brad Mayer
Email: bradley.mayer at sun.com /***********************************************************************/