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Franz Schurmann and the logic of world power: a reappraisal*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1985

John Girling
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Extract

A decade after publication of a major work on world politics suggests an appropriate period for reassessment. Looking back, two obvious questions emerge. How original is Franz Schurmann's analysis? And how has it stood the test of time? The last question, depending on the first, will be discussed in my conclusion. The answer to the first question, however, is still clouded in controversy, as it was from the start. (I am considering only Schumann's interpretation-of American ‘welfare imperialism’ and how it is derived; not his informative but conventional depiction of American-Soviet-Chinese policies in relation to the Vietnam war.)

Type
Notes
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 301 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1985

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References

1. Schurmann, Franz, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1966, enlarged 1968), pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

2. Ibid. pp. 29–32, 47, 50.

3. Ibid. pp. 87–93.

4. Ibid. pp. 506–18.

5. Ibid. p. 521.

6. Logic of World Power, Epilogue, p. 562.

7. In their review of Schurmann's Logic two critics assert that while the book is ‘complex, exciting and often brilliant’ the author ‘grossly oversimplifies Marxist theories of the state, and therefore fails to grasp their power, ending up in a confused polemic against a straw man of his own creation’. As for Schurmann's thesis that American imperialism is a ‘popular’ movement, this only narrows ‘the conception of imperialism to a nebulous, indeed metaphysical, force’: Blecher, Marc J. and Thompson, Thomas N., ‘Looking for Imperialism’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, viii (1976), pp. 49, 51.Google Scholar

8. Logic of World Power, p. 564. Schurmann acknowledges the influence on his thinking of Schumpeter, Joseph, Imperialism/Social Classes (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation (Boston, 1944)Google Scholar; Mommsen, Wilhelm, Max Weber und die Deutsche Politik. (Tubingen, 1959)Google Scholar; and of Richard Barnet (Institute of Policy Studies).

9. Logic of World Power, p. 562.

10. Ibid. pp. 562–3.

11. ‘The ground war in South Vietnam was the war of the containment liberals. The air war against North Vietnam was the war of the rollback right-wingers …’ Ibid. p. 439; on ‘currents springing from the realm of interests’, p. 47.

12. Ibid. pp. 8, 13, 30.

13. Ibid. pp. 33–5, 38–9.

14. Ibid. p. 129.

15. Ibid. pp. 136–8.

16. Ibid. pp. 138–9. Schurmann also gives examples of making and remaking the state from America, Soviet Russia, China and Japan : pp. 139–45.

17. Ibid. p. 16.

18. Ibid. pp. 4–5.

19. Ibid. pp. 40, 42.

20. Ibid. pp. 44, 47.

21. Ibid. pp. 48–9, 52.

22. Ibid. pp. 56–65.

23. Ibid. pp. 67–96.

24. Ibid. pp. 186–7.

25. Ibid. p. 141.

26. Ibid. pp. 189–91.

27. Ibid. p. 76.

28. Ibid. p. 138.

29. Ibid. pp. 16–17.

30. Girling, John L. S., America and the Third World: Revolution and Intervention (London and Boston, 1980).Google Scholar

31. Logic of World Power, Prologue, pp. xxvi–vii.

32. Ibid. pp. 432–3.

33. Apart from brief references to Russia: pp. xxvii, 136; and to Chinese foreign policy, pp. 376–8.