While at the start of systemic economic transformations in Eastern Europe, both indigenous reformers and Western observers tended to interpret the events as a rationally conceived and executed replacement of an economic system of inferior performance by another one whose superiority was proven,...

World system theory, founded and developed by Immanuel Wallerstein, continues Marx's original vision of modern economy as a zero-sum game based on exploitation. Ignoring convincing criticism of Marx's economics, Wallerstein broadens spatial confines of the applicability of Marxist economics to...