Page 61 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Politics in a Small World 47

community ” was synonymous with “ nation ” in the Westphalian order
of discrete, sovereign states. It seems that globalization may now offer
concrete possibilities of re - imagining political community beyond the

nation for the first time in history. The sociological study of what prevents
the realization of global political community also, therefore, becomes

significant for the first time now too.

2.1 Explaining Globalization

Accounts of globalization are closely linked to questions of the novelty
of contemporary society. The “ facts ” of globalization are less disputed
by political sociologists – though different accounts give different weight
to those “ facts ” – than the question of whether we are now entering a
qualitatively different era from what we might think of as “ the past of

modernity. ” If there are sufficient continuities with this past, then in
principle the classical sociological theories developed in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries can be quite easily adapted to understand
forms of political action today. If not, then completely new tools for
sociological analysis are needed.

Globalization a s a c onsequence of c apitalism
The most traditional sociological approach to globalization is that of the
Marxists. Although, as we have seen, neo - Marxists have been very much
concerned with the form and functions of the nation - state, the Marxist
view of the essence of capitalism as a mode of commodity production
based on the exploitative relationship between capital and labor does
not require that it should be thought of as synonymous with a society
organized as a territorially bounded nation. On the contrary, as a system
which requires the maximum appropriation of surplus value, and which
is characterized by class struggle, it is inherent in the logic of capitalism
that it will seek out new sites of exploitation. Capitalism depends on the
relentless search for low wages, cheap resources, and the creation of new
markets for the goods it produces. The original premises of Marxist
theory apparently need little alteration, then, to enable it to deal with the
phenomena of globalization since, on this understanding, capitalism has
inherent tendencies toward expansion beyond the societies in which it was
initially developed.
The most highly developed application of Marxist theory in these terms
is the world systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. According to