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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

  Argument, Century, Process

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.154, Verso

• 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

  Historical, Groups, Might

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.14, Verso

• 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

  Political, Sake, States

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.50, Verso

• 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

• 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

• The way in which these two practices contain each other is that it has always been possible to use the one against the other: to use racism-sexism to prevent universalism from moving too far in the direction of egalitarianism; to use universalism to prevent racism-sexism from moving too far in the direction of a caste system that would inhibit the work force mobility so necessary for the capitalist accumulation process.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Moving, Two, Practice

• But even in the absence of direct interference by those who had the power to interfere, the process was usually aborted by the non-availability of one of more elements of the process - the accumulated stock in a money form, the labor-power to be utilized by the producer, the network of distributors, the consumers who were purchasers. One or more elements were missing because, in previous historical social systems, one or more of these elements was not commodified or was insufficiently commodified.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Availability, Missing, Historical

• As a matter of law the states recognized no constraints on their legislative scope other than those that were self-imposed. Even where particular state constitutions paid ideological lip service to constraints deriving from religious or natural law doctrines, they reserved to some constitutionally-defined body or person the right to interpret these doctrines.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Religious, Self, Law

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.51, Verso

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