Capitalism Quotes - Page 31

• 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

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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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• The break from the supposedly culturally-narrow religious bases of knowledge in favor of supposedly trans-cultural scientific bases of knowledge served as the self-justification of a particularly pernicious form of cultural imperialism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Religious, Self, Favors

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• Scientific culture created a framework within which individual mobility was possible without threatening hierarchical work-force allocation. On the contrary, meritocracy reinforced hierarchy. Finally, meritocracy as an operation and scientific culture as an ideology created veils that hindered perception of the underlying operations of historical capitalism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Historical, Perception, Culture

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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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• 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

  Long, Horizon, May

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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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• 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

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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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• I rather wish to rest my case on material considerations, not those of the social future but those of the actual historical period of the capitalist world-economy.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Historical, Wish, World

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

  Rewards, Privilege, Merit

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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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• 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

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• 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

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• The very concept of universal formal education is a product (and a relatively late product) of the capitalist world-economy.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  World, Economy, Formal

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.126, 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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• 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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• 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

  Pertinent Questions, People, Historical

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.136, Verso

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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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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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