104

losicall competence function as caste differences' assigning-different

ääí d;;tili"J i" individuats. ln these circumstances' it is notlorms orconfer one function

hich still occuPy a very imPortant

'foreign' or'regional' accent'

' or, conversely' ostentatiousto a Par-

ticular population and spontaneousl a specific

i.*üv ä"ãr" and a treråitary dispo ethnicitv

i, "rró

,rtJtt.ialization of language and the verbalization of race'

It is not an irrelevani ,n.it"ra either from the immediate political

of the develoPment of the nation

social relations - that a Par-e dominant, since it leads to

Problem of integration . and

ridical order and nationalizing

institutions.reThe French'revolutionary nation

symbol of language in its own

political unity closely to linguisti

it¡te to the coercive rePressionirIt a double rePression:

o tives' and that of the

difference between free ''White' m slaves' The linguistic

axo

l^,the

ideology until, at the end of the nineteenth century' colonization on the

oo. ttio¿, ,oi "n

intensification o: n of labour and the

,egr"gutión of m ethnic origin on the

other, led to the lhe ce" It

was, bY contrast' de erican

"JrLtär ideology, which represente erican

;;;Ë.t tne äiting-pot äf a .new race, but also as a hierarchical

ããnt'Uinutioo of the diÉåent ethnic contributions, at the cost of diffict¡\sian immigration and the social

and reinforced bY the economic

no sense imPose any necessary

RACE. NATION, CLASS THE NATION FORM IO5

transfer to the 'community' level functions and symbols of the nation-state - will orientate itseß. predominantly towards the institution of a'European co-lingualism' (and if so, adopting which language) or pre-dominantly in the direction of the idealization of ,euiopáí Aemo-graphic identity' conceived mainly in opposition to the .southern

imaginary of 'his' or 'her' people the means to leave it, in order tocommunicate with the individuals of other peoples with which he or sheshares the same interests and, to some extent, the same future.

Notes

I' seeGérardNoiriel,Lccreusctfronçais.Histoircdel'immigrationxlx,-xx,siècles,Editions du Seuil, Paris 198{t.

5. From this the'orthodox' Marxis theofficial doctrine init made it possiblg l'"i_ ^_

6, Eugen rJVe CA1976.

_ ], Cérr.-d Noiriel, Lozgw¡ Immigrës ct prolétaires, Igg0-Igg0, pUF, paris l9g4;Lc Crcwct françab,

8. For some fi¡¡ther ¡ema¡_ks on this same point, sce my study, ,propositions sur ra

gitoyer,r¡_e1é', in C. Wihtot de rÃrenden, ed., Lì Cìrcyennrli eoníj-non-å"ìäüõiãlöParis 1988.

_ - 9' on a{ these points, the work of Kanrorowicz is crearly of crucial sigrûcance: secMourir pour la patric ¿t autrcs texl,e\ PUF, paris 1985.

ackwell' Oxford 1983) and Benedict

983)' whose analyses are as opposeo

ss this Point'-nîcÃit'- o*"i sur le colingualisme des

tween racismthese notionsconced in the

State ldeological Apparatuses" Lcnin and

"?,Ïli:tl?] l;-sr' Robert Hurrev' Ailen

n: willacceptg $,ith

RACB, NATION' CLASS

Labour-Force Formation in theHousehold Structures and

Capitalist World-Economy

6

Households make up one of the key institutional structures of thecapitalist world-economy. It is always an error to analyse social insti-tutions transhistorically, as though they constituted a genus of whicheach historical system produced a variant or species. Rather, themultiple institutional structures of a given historical system (a) are infundamental ways unique to that system, and (b) are part of an inter-related Jetof institutions that constitute the operational structures of thesystem.

The historical system in this case is the capitalist world-economy as asingle evolving historical entity. The households located in that systemcan most fruitfully be understood by analysing how they fit into the setof institutions of that system rather than by comparing them to hypo-thetically parallel institutions (often bearing the same nominal designation) in other historical systems. Indeed, one can reasonably doubtwhether there was anything'parallel to our 'household' in previoussystems (but the same could be said of such institutional concepts as'state' or 'class'). The use of such terms'as 'households' transhistoricallyis at best an analogy.

Rather than compare putative sets of characteristics of possiblyparallel institutions, let us rather pose the problem from inside theongoing capitalist world-economy. The endless accumulation of capitalis the defining characteristic and raison d'être of this system. Over time,this endless accumulation pushes towards the commodification of every-thing, the absolute increase of world production, and a complex andsophisticated social division of labour. The objective of accumulation

t07

Immanuel Wallerstein