Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

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• Uncertainty is wondrous, and.. certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Real, Would Be, Moral

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1999). “The End of the World as We Know it: Social Science for the Twenty-first Century”, p.4, U of Minnesota Press

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• The world system is coming to the structural crisis

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  World, Crisis

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• The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Imagination, Together, World

  Immanuel Wallerstein (2011). “The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, With a New Prologue”, p.357, Univ of California Press

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• 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

  Party, Order, Years

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• 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

  War, Psychics, Technological Change

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• People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  People, Exploitation

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• 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

  Real, Thinking, Years

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• Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Civilization, Historical, Capitalism

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.47, Verso

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• The first and probably most fundamental aspect of this crisis is that we are now close to the commodification of everything. That is, historical capitalism is in crisis precisely because, in pursuing the endless accumulation of capital, it is beginning to approximate that state of being Adam Smith asserted was 'natural' to man but which has never historically existed. The 'propensity [of humanity] to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' has entered into domains and zones previously untouched, and the pressure to expand commodification is relatively unchecked.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Men, Humanity, Historical

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• Communism is Utopia, that is nowhere. It is the avatar of all our religious eschatologies: the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Christ, nirvana. It is not a historical prospect, but a current mythology. Socialism, by contrast, is a realizable historical system which may one day be instituted in the world.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Religious, Historical, One Day

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• It is, let me say, at the very least by no means self-evident that there is more liberty, equality, and fraternity in the world today than there was one thousand years ago. One might arguably suggest that the opposite is true. I seek to paint no idyll of the worlds before historical capitalism. They were worlds of little liberty, little equality, and little fraternity. The only question is whether historical capitalism represented progress in these regards, or regression.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Mean, Self, Years

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.100, Verso

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• Truth as a cultural ideal has functioned as an opiate, perhaps the only serious opiate of the modern world. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Raymond Aron retorted that Marxist ideas were in turn the opiate of the intellectuals. There is perspicacity in both these polemical thrusts. But is perspicacity truth? I wish to suggest that perhaps truth has been the real opiate, of both the masses and the intellectuals.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Real, Ideas, Having Fun

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.81, Verso

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• Capitalism is first and foremost a historical social system.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Historical, Firsts, Social

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.13, Verso

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• That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Historical, Development, May

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.16, Verso

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• We must distinguish between the kind of structural transformation that would leave in place (even increase) the realities of the exploitation of labor, and one that would undo this kind of exploitation or at least radically reduce it

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Reality, Transformation, Kind

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.106, Verso

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• The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Rights, World Religions, Language

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• 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

  Reality, Two, Civilization

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• I am suggesting that there is, and always has been, a rather high correlation between ethnicity and occupation/economic role throughout the various time-space zones of historical capitalism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Ethnicity, Space, Historical

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.77, Verso

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• The second reason why we haven't observed the growing gap is that our historical and social science analyses have concentrated on what has been happening within the 'middle classes' - that is, to that ten to fifteen percent of the population of the world-economy who consumed more surplus than they themselves produced. Within this sector there really has been a relatively dramatic flattening of the curve between the very top (less than one percent of the total population) and the truly 'middle' segments, or cadres (the rest of the ten to fifteen percent).

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Curves, Class, Historical

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• We can tentatively credit capitalist civilization with a positive, if very geographically uneven, record in the struggle against disease.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Struggle, Civilization, Credit

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.120, Verso

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• 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

  Unique, Bifurcation, Equilibrium

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• It is historically the case that virtually every new zone incorporated into the world-economy established levels of real remuneration which were at the bottom of the world-system's hierarchy of wage-levels.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Real, World, Levels

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.39, Verso

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• 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

  Lines, Facts, Arguing

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.41, Verso

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• The basic question that the 'new science' raises for our balance sheet is the issue of what scientific questions have not been asked for 500 years, which scientific risks have not been pursued. It raises the question of who has decided what scientific risks were worth taking, and what have been the consequences in terms of the power structures of the world.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Issues, Years, Risk

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• 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

  Ideas, Progress, Transition

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.97, Verso

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