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8. Oliver C. Cox and the Roots of World Systems Theory
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8 Oliver C. Cox and the Roots of World Systems Theory Christopher A. McAuley Although Oliver C. Cox never claimed to be a Marxist, he never denied being a socialist.' In many respects, the distinction he dre~v bet~veen Marxist and non-Marxist socialism Jras true to his own intellectual inclinations; he ~vanted the freedom to borro~v from orthodox Marxism what he found useful and to modify it when and ~vhere its insights o n unforeseen developments Jvere limited. Cox's movement to~vardand aJvay from Marxism largely follo~vedthe major political-economic developments o f the period beginning nit11 the Great Depression and continuing through the height o f the Cold Tl'ar. In that period, Cox's thinlzing o n the sources o f soci. n1'ism under~vent a profound transformation:n o longer did he expect the working classes o f the capitalist leader nations, as he called them, to inaugurate the charge, but rather that their counterparts in the former colonial world ~vould do so. This shift \\.as supported by the findings o f his three-volume foray into what is noJv known as ~vorldsystems theory: since imperialism has ahvays been a mainstay o f capitalism, the leading anticapitalists will continue to be dra~vn from the colonial or neocolonial ~vorld. Backgrouild and Political E~olution Oliver Cromwell Cox (1901-1974), the often-ignored sociologist who authored, among other ~vorks, Caste, Class, alld Race (1948) and TheFOUILdatiolls of Capitalis111(1939),\\.as born into a lo~ver-middle-class family in the then English colony o f Trinidad. Cox's place o f birth and its place in the British empire had a direct bearing o n h o ~ v he conceived o f the capitalist ~vorld economy in the 1930s and 1960s, the subject o f this essay "Uthough his father's income afforded him the pririlege o f attending primary school, Cox did not earn the grades necessary to continue o n to St. Mary's College, the top Catholic school in the island. Xfter a couple o f years o f talzing odd jobs and attending an agricultural school, Cox's father decided to send the young Cox to the United States in 1919 to join t ~ v o o f his older brothers and to improve his future prospects. 176 Christopher A. hlcAuley Cox intended to talze a la~v degree and return to Trinidad. After completing high school in Chicago, ~vhere his brothers had settled earlier, and attending CraneJunior College,Cox Jvas accepted into North~vestern cniversity ~vhere he earned a bachelor o f science in law degree in 1928.As far as we lzno~\;he intended to talze his law degree from the same institution. T h e n personal tragedy struck. In the year o f the Great Depression, Cox Jvas stricken ~vith polio. For the rest o f his life he moved nit11 the aid o f crutches.Aside from the loss o f normal mobility, dashed too were his plans to become a l a n ~ e r and to return to Trinidad.Instead, he decided to remain in this counts!; ~vhere he ~vould receive better health care, and to become an academic, a profession, he believed, that ~vouldrequire less physical movement than a legal career.To~ard this end, Cox enrolled in the economics department at the cniversity o f Chicago. His initial field o f study reflected one o f the unintended consequences o f his illness: the recognition that impersonal forces can shape a person's success or failure in larger measure than individual effort.In short, Cox Jras ridding himself o f the middle-class individualism o n ~vhich he was nursed in Trinidad, and he began loolzing to structural explanations o f socioeconomic status. O f course, it is likely that the Depression alone ~vould have forced him to re- or unthinlz what he had assumed to be "common sense" u p to that point. Although his inchoate political ideas Jvere not yet leftleaning , they were critical enough to compel him to leave the cniversity o f Chicago's economics department o n the grounds that its faculty Jvas unable to explain the causes o f the Depression." I f or why Cox thought that the study o f sociolog~ ~vould have supplied him the answers he sought, he never said. In any event, based o n the dates o f publication o f a significant portion o f the...