Quotessence
Home / Authors / Immanuel Wallerstein
Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

Sociologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllCapitalismWorldHistoricalCapitalistHas BeensStatesAccumulationProcessSocialEconomy

Famous Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

“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.”

IfsTwoFacesEnergyImaginationPracticeStruggleReturnInvolvedLimitsCapitalismImpactContradictionAgendasIndividualismInitiativeLimitlessSpurs
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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.”

WayTwoUseMovingForceProcessPracticeRacismCapitalismSexismCapitalistAccumulationCastesMobilityEgalitarianismCaste SystemUniversalism
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“We seem to be in the midst of a process of cascading bifurcations that may last some 50 more years. We can be sure some new historical order will emerge. We cannot be sure what that order will be. Concretely, we may symbolize the first bifurcation as the effect of the world revolution of 1968 which continued up to and including the so-called collapse of the communisms in 1989, the social bifurcation.”

WorldYearsFirstsMaySeemsLastsOrderSocialProcessEffectsRevolutionCapitalismHistoricalIncludingCommunismMidstCollapseBifurcation
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“One by one, these governments came undone, and were forced into IMF tutelage (and national illegitimacy) by the careening oil prices, the debt imbroglio, and falling terms of trade. The last of these governments to fall were the Communist regimes of eastern Europe, which have now gone the way of other Third World countries. The second in the cascade of bifurcations is thus symbolized by 1989.”

WorldWayCountryGovernmentLastsFallTermGoneCapitalismEuropeThirdsTradeDebtOilCommunistRegimesEasternUndoneThird WorldEastern EuropeThird World CountriesCascadeImfOil PriceTutelageBifurcation
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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?”

ThinkingWorldYearsHumansLooksStillsImportantRealEndsYoungChoicesThreeCoursesNextSocialPossibilityDependsCivilizationBehaviorCapitalismHistoricalChosenFiftyCollectivesCapitalist
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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.”

WorldTogetherImaginationAcceptingModernCenturyMarkErasInevitableContinuingExploitationOppressedModern WorldTwentieth CenturyRefusalClimaxAssertivenessDialecticsModern Era
Book:The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, With a New Prologue
Create image