The cumulation of accumulation

The essay argues that the world system actually began its development five thousand years ago and capital accumulation has been the driving force of this development since its beginning. The authors define the world system by reference to a systematic network of transfer of economic surplus among regions, which links their own systems of exploitation and accumulation into an over-arching system of super-accumulation. They contend that the center/periphery/hinterland complex is the basic hierarchical ordering pattern of the world system. It can be shown that there has been continuous and cumulative accumulation in world system history, the study of which identifies better bases for system-transforming socio-political praxis.