CartDistance and Social Peripheries:
Capital Accumulation on a Global Scale Instructor: Mirian KussumiProgram: Sociopolitical Thought, Critical PhilosophyCredit(s): 1Date: August 9, 16, 23, 30Time: 09:00-11:30 ET
DESCRIPTION: Mianstream Marxism has more or less understood the logic of commodity production as a fundamental component of industrial capitalism. However, according to some neo-Marxists, this perspective has focused primarily on the production circuit and overlooked the circulation process (commodity exchange) in the formation of surplus value. Since commodity exchange occurs between communities, once capitalism becomes a world-economy, these trading relations no longer take place between individual buyers and sellers, but rather between places—namely, states. Another fundamental trait of the capitalist circulation process is its inherent imbalance and inequality, which leads to the development of advanced national economies while others are subjected to exploitation and extractive activities. This phenomenon underpins political terms such as underdevelopment and Third-Worldism, which gained popularity in the 1990s.
Several theoretical frameworks have emerged to clarify the imbalance in trading terms. Two stand out in this context: world-systems theory, with its center-periphery axis (and semi-peripheries, as discussed in the works of Wallerstein and Arrighi), and Marxist dependency theory, which introduces the concept of unequal exchange—ideas best understood in light of the relationship between capital and state power. Some concepts are particularly useful for examining the connection between states and the capitalist system on a global scale: Karatani’s idea of the capital-nation-state trinity, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the Urstaat, and Amin’s explanation of the tributary state. This political analysis suggests that capitalism, far from being a homogeneous system, displays structural imbalances—especially from a spatial point of view. It is an asymmetric totality that began with the colonial process in the Americas, creating peripheral social formations (former colonies) in contrast to the centers of capitalism. This Seminar is intended for those interested in understanding how capitalism spreads across the globe through a logic of spatial engulfment, radically transforming the lives and cultures of communities and individuals, and establishing a material accumulation process grounded in exploitation and political disempowerment.
Session 1: Introduction / World-systems theory and the center-periphery axis
Readings: Wallerstein, Gunder Frank, Arrighi, Samir Amin
Session 2: Karatani and the Capital-Nation-State Trinity / Global capitalism as all-encompassing system, political and cultural phenomena enabling accumulation, modes of exchange
Readings: Karatani, Marx, Hegel, Benedict Anderson
Session 3: Unequal Exchange and the Axioms of Periphery / Capitalist engulfment of pre-capitalist areas, transformation of socio-economic structures and political order, tributary state, Urstaat, axioms of capitalism
Readings: Samir Amin, Deleuze and Guattari, Gunder Frank
Session 4: Peripheral Social Formations and Post-Colonial Critique / Colonial reshaping of labor systems and subsistence activities, racial and gender stratifications in the social order
Readings: Maria Mies, Veronica Bennholdt-Thomsen, Claudia von Werlhof, Quijano, Rosa Luxemburg, Fanon
IMAGE: Hedda Sterne, NY, NY no. X, 1948
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