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Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes - Page 3

All Quotes Capitalism Economy Exploitation Progress Racism Reality
Finally, states have monopolized, or sought to monopolize, armed force.

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

Immanuel Wallerstein
States, Force, Armed Forces
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.55, Verso

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.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Men, Long, World
Immanuel Wallerstein (1979). “The Capitalist World-Economy”, p.15, Cambridge University Press

The employment rates are in very bad shape. We vastly underestimate the unemployment

Immanuel Wallerstein
Unemployment, Shapes, Underestimate

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.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Availability, Missing, Historical

It was the French Revolution that served as the catalyst of this renovation. Its impact was to make the concept of popular sovereignty the new moral justification for the political system of historical capitalism.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Impact, Political, Historical
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.148, Verso

As a matter of law the states recognized no constraints on their legislative scope other than those that were self-imposed. Even where particular state constitutions paid ideological lip service to constraints deriving from religious or natural law doctrines, they reserved to some constitutionally-defined body or person the right to interpret these doctrines.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Religious, Self, Law
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.51, Verso

So much were employers of wage-labor unenthusiastic about proletarianization that, in addition to fostering the gender age division of labor, they also encouraged, in their employment patters and through their influence in the political arena, recognition of defined ethnic groups, seeking to link them to specific allocated roles in the labor-force, with different levels of real remuneration for their work. Ethnicity created a cultural crust which consolidated the patterns of semi-proletarian household structures.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Real, Ethnicity, Division Of Labor

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.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Moving, Two, Practice

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