Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.
Interpretation
The quote highlights capitalism as a system grounded in material wealth and economic factors.
Immanuel Wallerstein's quote emphasizes that historical capitalism is fundamentally a materialist civilization, indicating that its development and functions are deeply rooted in the pursuit and accumulation of material goods and economic power. This perspective invites consideration of how capitalism shapes societies and drives historical progress, often prioritizing material wealth over spiritual or ethical values.
In practice
In a discussion on economic policies, one might reference Wallerstein's quote to highlight the materialistic nature of societal development.
If we return to the two faces of individualism - individualism as the spur of energy, initiative, and imagination; and individualism as the limitless struggle of all against all - it can be seen how the two practices emerge from and limit the extend of the disequilibrating impact of the contradiction involved in the geocultural agenda.
Scientific culture created a framework within which individual mobility was possible without threatening hierarchical work-force allocation. On the contrary, meritocracy reinforced hierarchy. Finally, meritocracy as an operation and scientific culture as an ideology created veils that hindered perception of the underlying operations of historical capitalism.
The break from the supposedly culturally-narrow religious bases of knowledge in favor of supposedly trans-cultural scientific bases of knowledge served as the self-justification of a particularly pernicious form of cultural imperialism.
This is a steady, ceaseless process, impossible to contain as long as the economy driven by the endless accumulation of capital. The system may prolong its life by slowing down some of the activities which are wearing it out, but death always looms somewhere on the horizon.
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.
It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism.
I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.
Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.
I finally understood: In order to contribute to Africa, I would have to know myself better and be clearer about my goals. I would have to be ready to take Africa on its own terms, not mine, and to learn my limits and present myself not as a do-gooder with a big heart, but as someone with something to give and gain by being there. Compassion wasn't enough
Of course, any simplification runs the risk of mutilating reality; but it helps us establish perspectives.
The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.
We build a shell around it, like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function , day in, day out. Immune to othersβ pain and loss.
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