Western and Soviet Views of the World-System: From Historical Ma- terialism to the Spaceship Earth.

I have recently participated in a symposium on World Patterns of Change organized jointly by Global Options (San Francisco) and the Academy of Social Sciences (Moscow). The differences between So- viet and Western scholars'views of the world-system were striking and prompted the writing of this essay. Western participants, des- pite their differences, shared common concerns centered on the economic and political characteristics of the global economy, the constraints it imposes upon all states, the similar effects of the IMF imposed opening to the free market in socialist and non- socialist societies, the dangers such effects pose for the stabi- lity of democratization processes in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and the implication of these changes for the Soviet Union. Soviet scholars, on the other hand, were mainly concerned with what they called the crisis of civilization. Civilization, they repeatedly argued, is threatened by the social and individual problems created by technological change, industrialization, and urbanization; e.g., environmental degradation, pollution, resource depletion, waste, alienation, alcoholism, a decay of both the social fabric and the human spirit. With few exceptions, they saw Marxism as a 19th century ideology inappropriate to deal with the problems the world currently confronts. They seemed to believe sociology and other Western social sciences would be more useful in helping them understand these problems, which they saw as problems affecting humanity as a whole and, as such, requiring collective efforts transcending class and national boundaries. They seemed to believe that, as we live in one world and world problems affect everyone, common concern with ecological issues, alienation and other negative effects of industrialization was sufficient to transcend the dynamics of global capitalism. Concern for the fate of the spaceship earth, which is not in itself incompatible with a historical materialist understanding of the world-system, seemed to have replaced historical materialism in their evolving socio-political thinking.