ABSTRACT

The structure of the world economy as a single system has come increasingly to be analyzed in terms of a core-periphery image, an image which has been linked with the discussion of "dependence." Technological dependence plus internal political pressures from the agricultural sector have a possible solution, as Marini points out. Many examples could be quoted showing that excessive striving after autarchy and extreme protectionism lead to increased external economic dependence and to the curtailment of sovereignty. Moises Ikonicoff argues that peripheral capitalist economies "operate by economic laws and growth factors are clearly different from those of the economies one might call the model of classic capitalism". One fundamental explanation is that the framework of the capitalist world system limits critically the possibilities of transformation of the reward system within it, since disparity of reward is the fundamental motivating force of the operation of the system as it is constructed.