Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes About Capitalism

Quotes about: Capitalism

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

  Impact, Political, Historical

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.148, Verso

• 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

  Reality, Transformation, Treats

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.7, Verso

• 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

• It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Racism, Historical, Details

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.78, Verso

• 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

  Passion, Class, Progress

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

• On the one hand, there has been a remarkable expansion of the total production and productivity of food production, and on the other hand an extraordinarily skewed distribution system, substituting medium-run threats for short-term threats for the majority of the world's population, particularly the 50 to 80 percent at the bottom.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Running, Hands, Majority

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.121, Verso

• The mode of reconciling the promise of ever-increasing reward for the cadres and the demands of the working classes for a quid pro quo for their loyalty to the state was to offer the latter a small piece of the pie.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Loyalty, Pie, Class

• Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Men, Long, World

  Immanuel Wallerstein (1979). “The Capitalist World-Economy”, p.15, Cambridge University Press

• Capitalism is first and foremost a historical social system.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Historical, Firsts, Social

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

• 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

• The primary ideology that operated to create, socialize, and reproduce them was not the ideology of racism. It was that of universalism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Racism, Ideology, Universalism

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.80, Verso

• Wars between states and people seem to have existed under all historical systems for as long as we have some recorded evidence. War is quite clearly not a phenomenon particular to the modern world-system. On the other hand, once again the technological achievements of capitalist civilization serve as much ill as good. One bomb in Hiroshima killed more people than whole wars in pre-modern times. Alexander the Great in his whole sweep of the Middle East could not compare in destructiveness to the impact of the Gulf War on Iraq and Kuwait.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  War, Hands, Civilization

• If we return to the two faces of individualism - individualism as the spur of energy, initiative, and imagination; and individualism as the limitless struggle of all against all - it can be seen how the two practices emerge from and limit the extend of the disequilibrating impact of the contradiction involved in the geocultural agenda.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Struggle, Impact, Practice

• What distinguishes the historical social system we are calling historical capitalism is that in this historical system capital came to be used (invested) in a very special way. It came to be used with the primary objective or intent of self-expansion. In this system, past accumulations were 'capital' only to the extend they were used to accumulate more of the same.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Past, Self, Historical

• Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Civilization, Historical, Capitalism

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

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