ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that Immanuel Wallerstein's reluctance to apply the concepts, "core" and "periphery," to precapitalist transformations is a product of the way he views the luxury trade. The distinction between periphery and external arena rests upon the conceptual separation of essential from luxury exchanges. The chapter argues that the alternative interpretation will prepare the way for future analyses of precapitalist events within a theoretical framework consistent with Wallerstein's analysis of Russia and Poland. According to Wallerstein, the capitalist world-system differs from all previous imperiums, which he describes as world-empires. Precapitalist tribute systems at first glance give the impression that reliance upon luxury goods for the creation and maintenance of allies was indiscriminate. Textiles figure importantly in Wallerstein's account of numerous precapitalist events. The chapter proposes that thinking about a precapitalist world-system will help clarify the Western intellectual tendency to drive a wedge between necessities and luxuries; the same wedge that separates God from the Devil.
