Wallerstein: The Capitalist World-Economy: Essays

I Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy: Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1979).

Ch. 1: The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis:

Wallerstein begins by exploring the phenomena of the industrial revolution. Some argued that this was the penultimate state of human development. Others, most notably Marx, argued that there were yet further states through which society must develop. Wallerstein briefly questions whether or not it is possible to skip stages, and argues that, if we are living in a world system, a world economy, than stages cannot be skipped. If they could be, then they would not be stages.

"Leaving aside the now defunct minisystems, the only kind of social system is a world-system, which we define quite simply as a u8nit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems" (5).

The author makes a distinction between world economies and world empires as global systems.

"World empires are basically redistributive in economic form" (6).

"By a series of accidents...northwest Europe was better situated in the sixteenth century to diversify its agricultural specialization and add to it certain industries...than were other parts of Europe. Northwest Europe emerged as the core area of this world-economy..." (18). "Capitalism was from the beginning an affair of the world-economy and not of nation-states" (19).

"There are today no socialist systems in the world-economy any more than there are feudal systems because there is only one world-system. It is a world-economy and it is by definition capitalist in form" (35).