Immanuel Wallerstein
6 quotes
Biography
"And in the present we are all irremediably the products of our background, our training, our personality and social role, and the structured pressures within which we operate."
"The past can be told as it truly is, not was. For recounting the past is a social act of the present done by men of the present and affecting the social system of the present."
"The essential feature of a capitalist world-economy... is 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."
"It is simply not true that capitalism as a historical system has represented progress over the various previous historical systems that it destroyed or transformed. Even as I write this, I feel the tremour that accompanies the sense of blasphemy. I fear the wrath of the gods, for I have been moulded in the same ideological forge as all my compeers and have worshipped at the same shrines."
"The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness."
"Far from being Eurocentric, my analysis "exoticizes" Europe. Europe is historically aberrant. In some ways this was a historical accident, not entirely Europe's fault. But, in any case, it is nothing about which Europe should boast. Perhaps Europe and the world will one day be cured of this terrible malady with which Europe (and through Europe the world) has been afflicted."