“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.” FormSocialProcessMissingElementsCapitalismLaborDirectHistoricalAbsenceProducersConsumersInterfereInterferenceAvailabilitySocial SystemsDistributorsPurchasers Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
“Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies.” FirstsPersonsHas BeensGovernmentAbleProcessGroupsCapitalismOfficialsTaxationSubsidies Book:Capistalist Civilisation Source: Capistalist Civilisation
“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.” MayLongProcessEconomyImpossibleActivityCapitalismDrivenEndlessHorizonSteadySlow DownAccumulationSlowing Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
“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.” WorldFirstsHas BeensTwoDifferentRealityCultureProcessGoneVirtueCivilizationCapitalismRemainsPopulationOfficialsTwo ThingsMinoritiesAttributesCapitalistPercentagesBeing MeAscentMeritocracy Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
“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.” Has BeensProcessCenturyPositionCapitalismArgumentCapitalistTwentieth CenturyAccumulationMeritocracy Book:Capistalist Civilisation Source: Capistalist Civilisation
“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
“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
