Gunder Frank Contributions to Public Discussions
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Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 15:07:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andre Gunder Frank franka@fiu.edu
Subject: on entropy
For those who know spanish, i can supply a ditty of mine of july vintage on COMO DISIPAR
ENTROPIA POR VIA MULTILATERAL [see on-line essays section]. The essence of it is that
''the north'' generates plenty of entropy, but by dissipating/exporting it to the
''south'' - lately especially Russia!- where it is absorbed and creates the social and
political dissolution we find there [that is wrongly attributed to some alleged
essential/ist characteristics of ''the south''and only part right attributed to direct
explitation of thre south by the north -- eg a la AGF mark 1 - ] the dissipation of the
north's and most of all of the USA's entropy to elsewhere allows the north/US to escape
also the socio-political consequenes of its entropy, that is it can ''afford democracy''
have only 2 million incarcerated but unsafe streets anyway, etc. If/when the dissipation
of entropy ceseas to be possible or possible at the recent scale, then those chickens come
alos literally home to roost - in the form of neo-fascim among others. my multiatelal
thing is to show or at least suggest how this dissipation is organied not so much on a
bilateral A>B basis, but on a multilateral one in which ones place in the game of
musical charis is more determinant than ones productive etc capacity. hence my attempt to
re-look at how the great divergern ce [pomernaz title] emerged in the 19th century is - in
its first dfraft not even introduction stage - entitled LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
thats the name of the game - and thats what Marc and I were writing about.
Now i hope that that does not sound insufficiently materialistic - no mention of oil! -
because I do want to take advantage of this moment to \rise to apoint of personal
priviledge [that's what robert's rules of order used to call it]. being - me AGF - the
only remaining historical materialist in this world [and umpteen times more than KM ever
was], I am of course not amused by the suggestion that Mark might be moreso than I. agf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ANDRE GUNDER FRANK
Senior Fellow Residence World History Center
One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University
Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall Boston, MA 02114 USA Boston, MA 02115 USA
Tel: 617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060
Fax: 617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/
e-mail:franka@fiu.edu |