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Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization Picture Quote #1
What is surprising is that their ideological opponents, the Marxists - the anti-liberals, the representatives of the oppressed working classes - believed in progress with at least as much passion as the liberals Picture Quote #1
One by one, these governments came undone, and were forced into IMF tutelage (and national illegitimacy) by the careening oil prices, the debt imbroglio, and falling terms of trade. The last of these governments to fall were the Communist regimes of eastern Europe, which have now gone the way of other Third World countries. The second in the cascade of bifurcations is thus symbolized by 1989 Picture Quote #1
It was the French Revolution that served as the catalyst of this renovation. Its impact was to make the concept of popular sovereignty the new moral justification for the political system of historical capitalism Picture Quote #1
That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything Picture Quote #1
We can tentatively credit capitalist civilization with a positive, if very geographically uneven, record in the struggle against disease Picture Quote #1
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Capitalism is first and foremost a historical social system Picture Quote #1
Uncertainty is wondrous, and.. certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death Picture Quote #1
People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must Picture Quote #1
Finally, states have monopolized, or sought to monopolize, armed force Picture Quote #1
Are there still other possibilities? Of course there are. What is important to recognize is that all three historical options are really there, and the choice will depend on our collective world behavior over the next fifty years. Whichever option is chosen, it will not be the end of history, but in a real sense its beginning. The human social world is still very young in cosmological time. In 2050 or 2100, when we look back at capitalist civilization, what will we think? Picture Quote #1
A second variety concentrated on presumed major transformations of the capitalist system as of some recent point in time, in which the whole earlier point of time served as a mythologized foil against which to treat the empirical reality of the present Picture Quote #1
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An individual or a group of individuals might of course decide at any time that they would like to invest capital with the objective of acquiring still more capital. But, before a certain moment in historical time, it had never been easy for such individuals to do this successfully Picture Quote #1
To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically Picture Quote #1
What could me more plausible than a line of reasoning which argues that the explanation of the origin of a system was to achieve an end that has in fact been achieved? Picture Quote #1
The concept that one ought to restrict one’s political involvement to one’s own state was deeply antithetical to those who were pursuing the accumulation of capital for its own sake Picture Quote #1
Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies Picture Quote #1
The primary ideology that operated to create, socialize, and reproduce them was not the ideology of racism. It was that of universalism Picture Quote #1
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This is a steady, ceaseless process, impossible to contain as long as the economy driven by the endless accumulation of capital. The system may prolong its life by slowing down some of the activities which are wearing it out, but death always looms somewhere on the horizon Picture Quote #1
When systems come to be far from points of equilibrium, they reach bifurcation points, wherein multiple, as opposed to unique, solutions, to instability become possible Picture Quote #1
This argument has been codified in the twentieth century as meritocracy, in which those on top in the process of capitalist accumulation have merited their position Picture Quote #1
For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world’s population who are not the recipients of privilege, the world they know is almost certainly worse than any their earlier counterparts knew. It is likely they are worse off materially, despite the technological changes. In substantive as opposed to formal terms, they are more, not less, subject to arbitrary constraints, since the central mechanisms are more pervasive and more efficient. And they bear the brunt of the various kinds of psychic malaise, as well as of the destructiveness of civil wars Picture Quote #1
It seems to me the only pertinent question is: cui bono? It is clear that the size of the privileged strata as a percentage of the whole has grown significantly under historical capitalism. And for these people, the world they know is better on the whole than any their earlier counterparts knew Picture Quote #1
What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world’s population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority Picture Quote #1
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To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak Picture Quote #1
It is not surprising that liberals believed in progress. The idea of progress justified the entire transition from feudalism to capitalism. It legitimated the breaking of the remaining opposition to the commodification of everything, and it tended to wipe away all the negatives of capitalism on the grounds that the benefits outweighed, by far, the harm Picture Quote #1
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Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) What is surprising is that their ideological opponents, the Marxists - the anti-liberals, the representatives of the oppressed working classes - believed in progress with at least as much passion as the liberals.  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) One by one, these governments came undone, and were forced into IMF tutelage (and national illegitimacy) by the careening oil prices, the debt imbroglio, and falling terms of trade. The last of these governments to fall were the Communist regimes of eastern Europe, which have now gone the way of other Third World countries. The second in the cascade of bifurcations is thus symbolized by 1989  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) It was the French Revolution that served as the catalyst of this renovation. Its impact was to make the concept of popular sovereignty the new moral justification for the political system of historical capitalism  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) We can tentatively credit capitalist civilization with a positive, if very geographically uneven, record in the struggle against disease  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) Capitalism is first and foremost a historical social system  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) Uncertainty is wondrous, and.. certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) Finally, states have monopolized, or sought to monopolize, armed force  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) Are there still other possibilities? Of course there are. What is important to recognize is that all three historical options are really there, and the choice will depend on our collective world behavior over the next fifty years. Whichever option is chosen, it will not be the end of history, but in a real sense its beginning. The human social world is still very young in cosmological time. In 2050 or 2100, when we look back at capitalist civilization, what will we think?  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) A second variety concentrated on presumed major transformations of the capitalist system as of some recent point in time, in which the whole earlier point of time served as a mythologized foil against which to treat the empirical reality of the present  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) An individual or a group of individuals might of course decide at any time that they would like to invest capital with the objective of acquiring still more capital. But, before a certain moment in historical time, it had never been easy for such individuals to do this successfully  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) What could me more plausible than a line of reasoning which argues that the explanation of the origin of a system was to achieve an end that has in fact been achieved?  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) The concept that one ought to restrict one’s political involvement to one’s own state was deeply antithetical to those who were pursuing the accumulation of capital for its own sake  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) The primary ideology that operated to create, socialize, and reproduce them was not the ideology of racism. It was that of universalism  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) This is a steady, ceaseless process, impossible to contain as long as the economy driven by the endless accumulation of capital. The system may prolong its life by slowing down some of the activities which are wearing it out, but death always looms somewhere on the horizon  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) When systems come to be far from points of equilibrium, they reach bifurcation points, wherein multiple, as opposed to unique, solutions, to instability become possible  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) This argument has been codified in the twentieth century as meritocracy, in which those on top in the process of capitalist accumulation have merited their position  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world’s population who are not the recipients of privilege, the world they know is almost certainly worse than any their earlier counterparts knew. It is likely they are worse off materially, despite the technological changes. In substantive as opposed to formal terms, they are more, not less, subject to arbitrary constraints, since the central mechanisms are more pervasive and more efficient. And they bear the brunt of the various kinds of psychic malaise, as well as of the destructiveness of civil wars  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) It seems to me the only pertinent question is: cui bono? It is clear that the size of the privileged strata as a percentage of the whole has grown significantly under historical capitalism. And for these people, the world they know is better on the whole than any their earlier counterparts knew  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world’s population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes) It is not surprising that liberals believed in progress. The idea of progress justified the entire transition from feudalism to capitalism. It legitimated the breaking of the remaining opposition to the commodification of everything, and it tended to wipe away all the negatives of capitalism on the grounds that the benefits outweighed, by far, the harm  (Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes)