Politically and Economically Synchronized Societies
Discussion
C. A. MALLMANN AND G. A. LEMARCHAND:
"The phase discontinuities that were found in our analysis of different societal histories, are due to the conquest and domination of those societies, for time periods of the order of one billow-length, by societies which have a different phase. Obviously, the conqueror brings along with him his own social entelechy and tries to impose it on the conquered society.
Examples are Egypt when conquered by Alexander the Great, and later by the Arabs; Latin America when conquered by the Spaniards; North America when conquered by Great Britain; and the Chinese when conquered by the Manchurians, etc.
The same phenomenon is observed in the timing of the economic recurrences of the societies which have established strong economic interactions among them for a long enough period of time.
As a consequence, the recurrences of all the societies which were conquered by the same conqueror will have the same timing (angular phase). These societies were called Historical Units by Julıan Marıas. We prefer to call them Politically Synchronized Societies (PSS). They have a common order parameter, the angular phase of their recurrences.
In the same way, we call Economically Synchronized Societies (ESS), those which have the same economic recurrence timing. As we well know it was Wallerstein who assumed, for the first time, that all societies of the world have the same timing of their economic recurrences, thus introducing the concept of the World Economic System.
This means that he assumes that all the societies of the world are economically synchronized. “