Quotessence
Home / Authors / Immanuel Wallerstein
Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

Sociologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllCapitalismWorldHistoricalCapitalistHas BeensStatesAccumulationProcessSocialEconomyRealCivilizationFirstsForceTermWayWorld EconomyYearsMayPopulation

Famous Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

“Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.”

MenWorldWayLongRealizingEconomyObjectsEssentialsCapitalismProfitProductionsFeaturesCapitalistNew WaysMaximumProfitableMarginsWorld EconomyProfit Margin
Book:The Capitalist World-Economy
Create image

“What can be done? Well, the governments of the world can undertake what amounts to a vast clean-up campaign and a vast campaign of organic renewal. The problem is the cost of an effective operation, which is enormous, and thus must be paid by someone via some form of taxes.”

WorldWellsDoneProblemGovernmentFormAmountCostTaxesPaidCleanEnvironmentalCampaignsEnormousOperationsPollutionRenewal
Book:The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World
Create image

“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.”

WorldHas BeensSaidIdeasRealTurnsWishModernSeriousMassCapitalismIdealsHaving FunModern WorldThrustMarxistOpiates
Book:Capistalist Civilisation
Create image

“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.”

WorldYearsMeanLittlesSelfMightTodayLibertyProgressThousandCapitalismYears AgoOppositesLet MeRegardHistoricalPaintThousand YearsEvidentWorld TodayFraternityRegression
Book:Capistalist Civilisation
Create image

“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).”

WorldHas BeensReasonSocialClassEconomyGrowingMiddleHavensTenHappeningsPercentCapitalismHistoricalPopulationReason WhyAnalysisDramaticMiddle ClassGapsFifteenCurvesConsumedSurplusSocial ScienceWorld EconomyCadre
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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.”

WorldMayChristReligiousOne DayCapitalismHistoricalCurrentsMythologySocialismCommunismContrastUtopiaMessiahEschatology
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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.”

WorldHas BeensHandsRunningTermPercentCapitalismMajorityThreatBottomPopulationProductionsProductivityMediumsRemarkableExpansionDistributionShort TermFood Production
Book:Capistalist Civilisation
Create image

“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.”

PeopleWorldLongWarStatesWholeHandsSeemsModernMiddleParticularCivilizationAchievementEvidenceCapitalismImpactHistoricalIllIraqEastCompareBombsPhenomenonCapitalistMiddle EastTechnologicalModern WorldHiroshimaModern TimesGulf WarKuwaitDestructiveness
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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.”

WorldYearsHas BeensTermIssuesRiskBalanceCapitalismConsequenceDecidedRaisesStructureSheetsPursuedBalance Sheets
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
Create image

“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
Create image

“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.”

PeopleKnowsWorldWholeSeemsClearCapitalismHistoricalSizePrivilegedPercentagesCounterpartsPertinentPertinent Questions
Book:Capistalist Civilisation
Create image

“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.”

KnowsWorldWellsKindWarEndsTermSubjectsBearsPercentCapitalismPrivilegePopulationVariousDespiteCivil WarMechanismEfficientFormalTechnologicalPsychicsArbitrarySpectrumConstraintsCounterpartsMalaiseDestructivenessTechnological Change
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