#immanuel wallerstein

[jacobwren]

"On the face of it, far from being a ‘natural’ system, as some apologists have tried to argue, historical capitalism is a patently absurd one. One accumulates capital in order to accumulate more capital. Capitalists are like white mice on a treadmill, running ever faster in order to run still faster. In the process, no doubt, some people live well, but others live miserably; and how well, and for how long, do those who live well live? The more I have reflected upon it the more absurd it has seemed to me." - Immanuel Wallerstein

[titusandronicusonice]

The use of "imperial force undermines the hegemonic power economically and politically, and is widely perceived as a sign not of strength but of weakness, first externally then internally.

Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: an Introduction (2004)

[protoslacker]

Wallerstein’s final reflection is as much a challenge as it is a lament: “What those who will be alive in the future can do is to struggle with themselves so this change may be a real one.” The struggle is not only external—against the systems of power that perpetuate exploitation and inequality—but also internal: to rediscover the language, frameworks, and concepts that allow us to articulate a shared vision of transformation. Without this, the risk is not merely stagnation but regression into an increasingly fragmented and incoherent politics, where the forces of reaction consolidate power while the rest of us fight over symbolic scraps.

William Shoki in Africa Is a Country. On Safari

On our year-end publishing break, we reflect on how 2024’s contradictions reveal a fractured world grappling with inequality, digital activism, and the blurred lines between action and spectacle.

Shoki is the ediotr of Africa Is a Country. He links to Immanuel Wallerstein's last commentary published before his death in 2019, "This is the end; this is the beginning".

[weil-weil-lautre]

Immanuel Wallerstein - Dilemmas of the Global Left

[howieabel]

“One could cut by several-hundred-million Western workers and still make the system profitable. But if one cut by several billion Third World workers, there would have been nothing left for further capital accumulation." - Immanuel Wallerstein. “Response: Declining States, Declining Rights?”

[comradeocean]

[...] English archives indicate that in the Middle Ages, a working day in agriculture in fact meant “from sunrise to noon.” See Slicher van Bath, Agrarian History, p. 183. In fact Ester Boserup derives from this fact the conclusion that a significant aspect of modern agricultural development is “a gradual lengthening of working hours in agriculture.” The Conditions of Economic Growth (Chicago, Illinois: Aldine, 1965), 53.

-- The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and The Origins of the European World-Economy In the Sixteenth Century, Immanuel Wallerstein

[ozgurhayalim]

    Immanuel Wallerstein hayatını kaybetti.Sosyal bilimler alanında farklı ve kendine özgü  olarak dünya ekonomisini biçimlendirmeye çalıştı. En basit olarak Kapitalist düzenin devletleri eninde sonunda bir çembere alacağını biliyordu ama kendisi sol görüşlüydü ve sınıf mücadelesinin önemini vurgulardı. Çok önemli teorisyen... Üniversitedeki sosyolog bir hocam sayesinde makalelerini arşınlamıştık.. Tez zamanında çok faydası olacak...

[econsociology]

RIP Immanuel Wallerstein — “This is the end; this is the beginning” . A towering intellectual, pathbreaking and inspiring thinker, and preeminent sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein passed away.  

“The world might go down further by-paths. Or it may not. I have indicated in the past that I thought the crucial struggle was a class struggle, using class in a very broadly defined sense. What those who will be alive in the future can do is to struggle with themselves so this change may be a real one. I still think that and therefore I think there is a 50-50 chance that we’ll make it to transformatory change, but only 50-50.”