Immanuel Wallerstein

“La science sociale di XIXe siecle nous a legue un terrible heritage, l'idee que els processus se divisent en trois champs separes:…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

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

— Immanuel Wallerstein

A second variety concentrated on presumed major transformations of the capitalist system as of some recent point in time, in which the…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

I am suggesting that there is, and always has been, a rather high correlation between ethnicity and occupation/economic role throughout the various…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

The concept that one ought to restrict one's political involvement to one's own state was deeply antithetical to those who were pursuing…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

One by one, these governments came undone, and were forced into IMF tutelage (and national illegitimacy) by the careening oil prices, the…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

Wars between states and people seem to have existed under all historical systems for as long as we have some recorded evidence.…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

We seem to be in the midst of a process of cascading bifurcations that may last some 50 more years. We can…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

Scientific culture created a framework within which individual mobility was possible without threatening hierarchical work-force allocation. On the contrary, meritocracy reinforced hierarchy.…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

It is not surprising that liberals believed in progress. The idea of progress justified the entire transition from feudalism to capitalism. It…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

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

— Immanuel Wallerstein

What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

Finally, states have monopolized, or sought to monopolize, armed force.

— Immanuel Wallerstein

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

— Immanuel Wallerstein

The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

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

— Immanuel Wallerstein

For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world's population who are not the recipients of…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

When systems come to be far from points of equilibrium, they reach bifurcation points, wherein multiple, as opposed to unique, solutions, to…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

So much were employers of wage-labor unenthusiastic about proletarianization that, in addition to fostering the gender age division of labor, they also…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

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

— Immanuel Wallerstein

But even in the absence of direct interference by those who had the power to interfere, the process was usually aborted by…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

The mode of reconciling the promise of ever-increasing reward for the cadres and the demands of the working classes for a quid…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

It is, let me say, at the very least by no means self-evident that there is more liberty, equality, and fraternity in…

— Immanuel Wallerstein