Does Capitalism Have a Future? by Immanuel Wallerstein

Does Capitalism Have a Future? Reviews

• 
  David M

  In this slim volume, five highly distinguished sociologists assemble to discuss prospects for the end of capitalism:
  
  Wallerstein - the godfather of world systems theory. There does seem to be every reason to think we're riding the end of a Kondratieff wave, as well as a period of transition in which the US will no longer be able to play the same hegemonic role it had before.
  
  On the whole I find Wallerstein's politics very congenial, but I do wonder if he's a bit overconfident in predicting a coming global confrontation between the elites and the people. Of course I would love for such a thing to be true. It just seems to me a lot of work has to be done before the current chaotic state of the world even becomes legible as such.
  
  Randall Collins -predicts that technological progress, chiefly Artificial Intelligence, will lead to mass unemployment before the end of the century. Here I'm extremely skeptical, perhaps in part because I live in the bay area. Seeing the culture of tech entrepreneurship up close and personal, I don't think there's any reason to believe we live in an age of innovation. Start a moving company on your iPhone and it counts as 'innovation' when in fact... it's a fucking moving company, bro.
  
  For the past half century or so people have been making claims about the imminence of AI overtaking humanity. I can see no reason why this is more likely to come true in the next fifty years. Other sorts of catastrophes seem much more likely to happen first.
  
  
  Michael Mann - seems to think capitalism itself is an overrated concept. Thinks that if capitalism comes to an end it will not be due to any inherent contradictions to the process of capital accumulation, but rather such endogenous factors as nuclear war or ecological catastrophe, which would mean the end of human civilization as a whole.
  
  My own feeling is that while nuclear war is possible and ecological catastrophe probable, neither is likely to hit like an asteroid or alien space invasion. Rather, each will come be mapped onto and enmeshed in the conditions of the preexisting social order, particularly the extreme inequality and stratification that is the product of our capitalist civilization.
  
  Georgi Derluguian -a Russian gentleman with a really fantastic essay on the downfall of the Soviet system. Grappling with the legacy of the Soviet Union is a difficult task. While some on both the left and right talk of the danger of forgetting the crimes of really existing communism, it seems to me the greater problem is how we ought to remember its many significant accomplishments while still maintaining a radically different vision of socialism.
  
  In any case, the main application of Derluguian's essay to today is that however capitalism might end, it won't be much like the end of communism. For all the significance of the US as - faltering - global hegemon, capitalism is not identifiable with a single state in the way that communism was.
  
  Craig Calhoun - shies away bold predictions. His essay is mostly a review of the history of neoliberalism, the financialization of the economy, roots of the Great Recessions, and prospects for transition and recovery.
  ...
  
  This book provided the initial impetus for Wolfgang Streeck's monumental
  How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System. There Streeck respectfully reviews his colleagues, yet his own answer is a decisive improvement over theirs. While he agrees we are in a period of epochal transition, he can see no reason to agree with Wallerstein's apparently a priori optimism. Streeck provides at once the most plausible and the gloomiest account of capitalism collapsing from the weight of its own entropy.
• 
  Otto Lehto

  In this book, a self-titled quintet of sociologists, revolving around the "world systems" thinker Immanuel Wallerstein, analyses the current crises of capitalism and its future prospects.
  
  Is capitalism coming to an end? Nobody seems to know. But everybody pretends to have an answer - or at least used to, not that long ago. It used to be commonplace to hold the socialist (dialectical) view that capitalism was a historical epoch waiting to be undone by the forces of historical necessity. Wallerstein and Collins present a more sophisticated but no less anachronistic Marxian view of this thesis. The three other authors in the work complement their approach - sometimes to the point of superfluity - but also occasionally (although a bit timidly to my taste!) challenge the historical determinism of Wallerstein and company, embedded in their grand systems theorizing. The book thus offers a range of views: it oscillates between coldly analytical pessimism, on one hand, and a slightly more optimistic vision of capitalism's near future, on the other hand.
  
  The end result is a mixed bag. There is verbosity that hides empirical shallowness, and there is a veneer of analytical jargon that barely masks an ideological commitment. The Marxian framework, even in its attenuated and updated form, is largely discredited, and for a good reason - and, reading its desperate attempts at relevance, the results continue to disappoint in a predictable way. As an attempt at a complex systems theoretical view of history, Wallerstein's paper is certainly interesting, but Michael Mann's more centrist (and economically literate) paper is more convincing. (If the book did not include the more balanced views of Mann and Calhoun, this would get 2 stars.)
  
  There is no massive range of views on display, here, despite the presence of five authors. The discussion is between Marx and Piketty - or, at most, Keynes. All the authors, agree, for example, that "neoliberalism" is a terrible thing. That the authors (especially the Marxists among them) are unable to distinguish "neoliberalism" from conservatism, or even the mere class interest of the ruling class, is not surprising, considering the pedigree of this view; but it is still lamentable, since it distorts the analysis. A fairer account of neoliberalism, as an engine of humanitarian progress(ive politics), would have made the analysis more interesting. Where are all the dissenters? (Hopefully not in the Gulag...)
  
  The authors have done their homework, and they often have a pretty good ("B-" level) grasp of the general trends of economic, social and ecological development. They pass for academics; which is good, because that's what they are. But, at the same time, the unoriginal predictions about climate change scenarios and editorial musings about the scourge of "neoliberalism" are quite boring and bland. A systems level theorist can apparently get away with knowing a little about a lot; and with showing off this knowledge like a proud peacock with embarrassingly ordinary charms. Such "second-handedness", combined with the heard-it-all-before leftist framework, makes some of the essays read like "best of" entries of uninspired Guardian editorials and The Nation diatribes.
  
  What's worse, the question of capitalism's future is not answered. The open-ended nature of predictions is disappointing if unsurprising. Very little is predicted that is not vague and/or trivial.
  
  Vagueness is understandable, considering the complexity of the forces at play in the world. But it begs the question, does "capitalism" even denote a coherent "system" that can be analysed? If we forgo the notion of historical determinism, is anything left of the notion of "THE" capitalism?
  Perhaps the sociologists are simply grasping at straws at trying to define the undefinable? However, there is one big prediction. Committing to a specific prediction of a major crisis of capitalism around the years 2030-2050 (as Wallerstein and Collins do) is, at least, one clear falsifiable hypothesis. We shall see, I guess - or not; will we be able to know "the end of capitalism" when we see it?
  
  While the "end is nigh" prophecies have proven to be quite premature, the self-evident (but oft forgotten) notion that world history goes through phases of radical transformation remains a fruitful one. All the assumptions that people hold dear are liable to be overturned in the future. History is change. It remains important to analyse the push and pull of the various forces that hold societies together - and inevitably pull them apart. The Marxian lens is a distorted and semi-falsified one, but the "world system" sociological perspective, due to its synoptic and systems-building character, has lasting merit. Their combination is necessarily cloudy - and, at the same time, unnecessarily cloudy, since there are better frameworks out there for people to seek out.
  
  Nonetheless, there is enough substance here to be worth dipping into, even as an adversary, if you care about the "big picture" view of economic and social changes. As a quintet that plays the same tune, the book is bloated and self-congratulatory, so there is no particular reason to read the WHOLE collection. I would recommend just reading Mann's and Wallerstein's contributions; and perhaps the more synoptic, embattled conclusion, where the five authors combine their voices.
  Despite its ideological blindness and occasional drops in quality - but no compensating drops in quantity - the book can provide some decent reading material, next to some better texts, for grad students learning the meaning of the words "juxtaposition", "stuffy academia" and "ideology."
• 
  Maxim

  Five eminent macro-historical sociologists write about the future of capitalism: what makes the book really valuable is that is serves as a great sample for each of the authors’ broader approach and thoughts, even if they’re not equally convincing.
  
  The strongest contribution is the one from Michael Mann, who, based on his theory of the four sources of social power (ideological, economic, military, political), convincingly refutes the idea of fixed cycles in the economy and also paints a picture of a more resilient capitalism than Wallenstein or Collins do. The weakest part is probably the one by Collins, predicting a middle class jobs crisis based on technological replacement - a scenario any economist will reject as close to impossible. The article from Derluguian is the odd one out, retracing the collapse of communism, but a welcome addition to contrast the diverging fates and giving an interesting example of a large scale breakdown.
  
  The biggest fault of the book might be that most authors, with the exception of Mann, likely underestimate the resiliency of market economies (whether called “capitalism” or not), which have survived even in authoritarian and state-socialist regimes, eg in informal niches. So whatever the future of capitalism, at least this is very unlikely: an end to markets.
• 
  Andrei Albu

  The five authors present multiple possible pathways by which capitalism may reach its end. They also provide context on how it came to be.
  
  Wallerstein takes the long view, going back half a millennium, when capitalism reared its head in Western Europe. The state had an important role to play in creating and maintaining the capital differential (quasi-monopolies) necessary to the extraction of profit. As capitalism came to dominate the world there were plenty of opportunities for investors to make profit. But as emerging markets reach maturity, labor demands better conditions, natural resources are exhausted and military power reaches its limits in a multi-polar order, investors see diminishing returns. Wallerstein thinks this crisis of accumulation, that recurs cyclically and began in the 70s, will only worsen, and bring about the systems terminal crisis.
  
  Collins expounds on the dangers of technological displacement through automation of labor. He makes the case that we shouldn't complicate the issue with multi-causal analyses - automation is able to bring capitalism down by itself. In the past two hundred years or so, a great deal of manufacturing jobs, the backbone of the modern industrial economy, were replaced by machinery. The service sector is about to suffer the same fate. The loss of good quality middle-class jobs is outpacing the gain, and this gap is only widening. In the past, capitalism had several routes of coping with massive job loss: technological innovation, opening international markets, financialization, government spending and educational credential inflation. These routes are largely exhausted now. Capitalism will enter irreversible decline once structural unemployment reaches 50% to 70%, which the author estimates might happen in the next few decades.
  
  Mann is reluctant in using overarching narratives of capitalism or imperialism. He rejects that the two great economic depressions were the result of a natural law of capitalism, emphasizing instead multiple highly specific causes. He is skeptical that the profit rate will fall so much or that employment will not cope with job loss. He sees as possible a low-growth future capitalism, where the now global middle-class, that emerged from the sweat-shops of yesteryear, is able to provide the necessary demand to sustain a dynamic economy. He considers structural unemployment as more of a Western problem. Yet he also envisions a more pessimistic route, where job loss creates a chronically unemployed large underclass, set apart from the more educated and prosperous workforce, in turn set apart from a narrow super-wealthy elite. He investigates whether more sudden and painful changes of phase are possible: mainly through nuclear war and climate change.
  
  Derluguian recounts the Soviet Unions history. The Tsarist empire rested on the wholesale exploitation of the peasantry. Two military defeats (1905 & 1917) brought about the mutiny of the army and police forces. In turn, the peasants revolted, the state collapsed and the Bolsheviks were swept into power. They were a small group of educated, urban people with limited support outside of the big towns. Their isolated position and the haphazard way they came to power engendered ruthlessness. They embarked on a tremendous project of modernization and industrialization. The state they created was defined, until its fall in 1991, by a conflict between the old guard (the nomenklatura) and the new guard (the liberal intelligentsia). When dissolution came, the institutional arrangement, one not conducive to a solution agreed upon by all, produced a catastrophic collapse.
  
  Calhoun focuses on the pernicious effects of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the political and economic theory that has dominated thought in the Western core states for the last four decades. It's an ideology that purports that society is best served if private investors are granted as much lee-way as possible - basically a rehash of 19th century classical liberalism. Globalization allowed wealthy elites to undermine domestic political institutions by threatening to move business overseas. This has decreased the standard of living and severely aggravated inequality. It also contributed to a climate of anxiety and insecurity, where xenophobic and protectionist sentiments flourish. The massive shift towards finance, combined with the gutting of bank regulations, destabilized the world-economy, culminating in the 2008 global recession. The Western governments responded with austerity measures, which only deepened the crisis and fomented popular discontent. Calhoun argues that the serious challenges we are facing, such as inequality, climate change or war, are best tackled through a fundamental reform of the economy. He sees the end of capitalism less as a sharp demise and more as a protracted decline.
  
  Despite their differences, the authors agree on a number of key issues. Capitalism is facing a series of complex and interrelated pressures, both structural and contingent, that risk pushing it into terminal instability. The system hasn't developed reliable mechanisms of coping with these challenges. There has to be a serious drive toward better governance and more intense mass participation in the decades ahead, if these considerable risks are to be avoided.
  
  All in all, this is a fine book.
• 
  Morten Greve

  I agree with the basic premise of this anthology: Current capitalist society is headed for an uncertain future and there is a pressing need to examine possible future pathways for humanity.
  
  Unfortunately, on the whole, I’m not convinced by the five authors’ attempt to execute their plan.
  
  Wallerstein and Collins both write their respective contributions from an essentially Marxist perspective. Wallerstein��s analysis draws on his own World Systems approach. Far too mechanistic and simplistic for my taste - the level of contingency in macro-historical developments grossly underestimated. Collins’ chapter - dealing with technological displacement of human labour as the likely driver of a revolt against capitalism - is more concrete, and more interesting - but not bringing too much novelty to the table given the large and growing literature on this subject.
  
  Mann distances himself from all attempts to analyse world society in systems-theoretical terms. Instead, he proposes a more open analysis in terms of overlapping networks of power and interaction - ideological, political, economic and military (by the way, his brief critique of Wallerstein’s position hits the nail quite well). Thus, Mann’s analysis plays out as various probing scenarios. It is essentially journalistic rather than genuinely analytical in nature, and not wholly satisfactory. For instance, his rejection of Collins’ argument rest on the rise in overall employment in postwar era until 2007. This is unconvincing since future technological displacement will be driven by AI and machine learning - technologies that are at a very early stage today - they were more or less speculation in the decades leading up to 2007.
  
  Derluguian’s contribution focuses on the historicity of the Communist revolutionary state in Russia and elsewhere. Solid enough and at times enlightening, but the relevance of his analysis to the future of capitalist society is not obvious to me.
  
  Finally, Calhoun examines the future prospects for capitalist society. Echoing Mann, he argues against the likelihood of collapse and instead discuss various transformation and crisis scenarios. Again, an at times moderately interesting but largely journalistic analysis. At least to my mind.
  
  In my view, the biggest weakness of the book as a whole - with the partial exception of Mann and, in particular Calhoun - is that it fails to take on the unfolding, multidimensional ecological crisis beyond mere footnotes - a curious neglect given these writers’ mostly materialistic starting point. Climate change is of course the centre piece, but also top soil erosion, depletion of water resources and fish stocks, plastic pollution of the oceans, build-up of multiresistant bacteria, loss of biodiversity etc. etc.
• 
  Scriptor Ignotus

  This is a delicious little work of economic futurology by a collection of five historical sociologists. Wallerstein and Collins propose that the capitalist system is experiencing a structural crisis from which it cannot emerge, and by which it will ultimately be undone; likely within five decades or so. Some of the potential scenarios they present are frightening ones: 50% unemployment and popular unrest giving rise to fascist governments, millions of refugees crowding major cities as global warming makes coastal areas uninhabitable, etc.
  
  Michael Mann is a bit on the fence regarding the survival of capitalism, but he posits several potential future scenarios. Derluguian gives an account of the communist experiment of the twentieth century and the reasons for its failure, and Calhoun presents a cautiously optimistic (depending on your point of view) about capitalism's ability to change and reform itself.
  
  All five of them agree, in the concluding chapter, that world capitalism is undergoing a deep structural crisis, and that this likely marks the end of the neoliberal era of state economic policy. A fun, short speculative work by five big-picture thinkers.
• 
  The American Conservative

  "The old rules—inflating another credit bubble to bail out an insolvent financial sector, increasing taxes on the remaining employed, further centralizing authority and control—are no longer working. thisarticleappears
  
  Wallerstein and his colleagues do not address another possible future, however, one that does more with less: an economic philosophy that rejects GDP as the arbiter of nation-state success and embraces the principles of the “degrowth movement”—décroissance in French—that is gaining adherents in the developed world."
  
  Charles Hugh Smith reviews:
  http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
• 
  Rares Cristea

  Am aflat cateva idei interesante de la acesti autori. Despre situatia actuala a capitalismului, dar si despre limitele acestuia. Uneori monologul devenea prea "subtire", adica prea multe cuvinte pentru a explica o idee destul de usor de inteles.
  Sunt totusi dezamagit ca acesti autori nu au putut stabili un consens asupra unei directii sau a unei solutii posibile. Incepem cu o problema si terminam cu aceeasi.
• 
  Simge Perçin

  Brilliant book for understand what is going on with the system right now and what might be happen in near future.
• 
  Arno Mosikyan

  EXCERPTS
  
  Over the next three or four decades capitalists of the world, overcrowding the global markets and hard pressed on all sides by the social and ecological costs of doing business, may find it simply impossible to make their usual investment decisions.
  
  In the last five centuries capitalism has been the cosmopolitan and explicitly hierarchical world-market economy where the elite operators, favorably located at its geographical core, were in a position to reap large and reasonably secure profits. But, Wallerstein argues, this historical situation, however dynamic, will ultimately reach its systemic limitations, as do all historical systems. In this hypothesis, capitalism would end in the frustration of capitalists themselves.
  
  Capitalism, we contend, is only a particular historical configuration of markets and state structures where private economic gain by almost any means is the paramount goal and measure of success.
  
  Immanuel Wallerstein My analysis is based on two premises: The first is that capitalism is a system, and that all systems have lives; they are never eternal.
  
  The priority of accumulating capital in order to accumulate still more capital seems to me a thoroughly irrational objective.
  
  As Braudel has shown, the truly successful capitalists have always been those who reject “specialization” in industry, commerce, or finance, preferring to be generalists who move between these processes as opportunities dictate.
  
  What is meant by hegemony in a world-economy is the ability of one state to impose a set of rules on the operation of all other states, such that there is relative order in the world-system.
  
  Of the five escape routes from capitalist crisis, continued educational inflation seems to me the most plausible.
  
  Virtually all revolutions, up to this point in history, have come not from economic crisis of capitalist markets, but from government breakdown.
  
  The future of capitalism might not be tumultuous, but boring.
  
  All nation-states measure national success by GDP growth and yet this increases environmental degradation. That means reining in political elites who believe that they can only retain power by promoting short-term growth within the period of a single electoral cycle. A low-emissions regime would certainly reduce growth in the short run, while hopefully increasing it more in the long run, given that in the long run the do-nothing “business as usual” scenario will prove disastrous for the planet and its inhabitants. But who lives in the long run? Politicians certainly don’t & nor do electorate. Moreover politicians & voters still live in the era of nation-state sovereignty where there is great resistance to any curtailment of that sovereignty by foreigners.
  
  Yet class conflict in a mature industrial society, contrary to the classical Marxist imagery, was not two-sided. It was rather played out in the triangle of Soviet corporate executives, liberal intelligentsia, and workers. Therefore the nomenklatura’s best option was to buy off the workers at the expense of the intelligentsia.
  
  The effort to buy cheap and sell dear long predated capitalism and likely will last long after.
  
  Capitalism generates terrific wealth, in other words, but it does it always with the byproduct of severe “illth” (to use the term coined by John Ruskin in polluted and poverty-stricken nineteenth-century England). It can continue to generate the wealth only as long as the illth is tolerated.
• 
  Neil H

  So... Capitalism or as we know it as a way of life (unless you are living in a rock or North Korea) requires us to acknowledge that acquiring private profit is a way of life. Our economic business big or small, infrastructure, familial, social and politics are built with the globalized trade in mind. Whether you pursue it with abandonment with disregard to the externalities of extreme inequalities or environmental degradations is a matter of private concern aided and abetted by the free markets networked today with nation states complicit and includes tacit and illicit activities. However, humans consolidated in urban environments for the purpose of survival making does not all make the same remunerations and this is where capitalism with its inherent structural faults precipitates.
  
  If we at a local or supranational level are not able to feel and sustain levels of sustenance, protection and security. It will provide a tipping point for action, and should this action moderate capitalism in its entirety or bring forth a multi nodal purpose of surviving depends on the severity of the crisis and its affecting revolutions. I have to put a rejoinder to this with reference to The New Despotism by John Keane; the underclass or the middle class in the modern despotic societies including mine truly (Singapore) does not see rent making a lesser virtue. But will seek to provide the spin stories of meritocracy and elevated learning as sophist announcers to provide for enhanced lifestyles. They will also unfortunately require a merit and present work based welfare provision. This is a to tie-in self accountability should you fail despite full on efforts thus absolving the government of majority blame. Surviving at the margins with the encroaching machine and artificial intelligence of uncertain futures is a stab at cosmic economic dark matters.
  
  This is an important book not lest because it doesnt pretend to know the way forward or to have authors in side step marching towards narrow possibilities. Its a work dependent on open, systemic , non end evaluation of possible scenarios including the counterfactuals thus fostering soberness.
• 
  Melinda

  Quite an interesting topic, but the delivery left me a little lack lustred. I really just couldn't get right into it - I heard the words, but didn't really take it all in. Maybe deserves a second reading the future.
• 
  David Jijelava

  Most of it is useless, although Mann and Derlugian chapters have some merits, particularly about how other chapters are useless.
• 
  Alexandra

  Przeczytałam tę książkę i dostałam 5 dodatkowych punktów na egzaminie z nauki o państwie i może dzięki temu uda mi się zdać XD
• 
  Ludmila R

  Moje nejoblíbenější sociologická kniha na téma světosystémů so far.
• 
  Lotta

  Kauppisopiskelijat saa varmasti kirjasta eniten irti (koska en oo kauppisopiskelija 2/5)
• 
  Danijel

  
  
  Str. 7- Michael Mann podpira socialdemokratično rešitev za probleme kapitalizma, a hkrati opozarja še na globje probleme, ki nastanejo zato, ker so viri multipli. Poleg kapitalizma to vključuje politiko, vojaško geopolitiko, ideologijo in mnoštvo svetovnih religij. ... Najhujša grožnja .. je ekološka kriza... Ta utegne preiti v bitko za vodo in hrano ter se končati z onesnaženjem in množičnimi migracijami, s katerimi se bo tečaja možnost totalitarizmov in celo jedrskih vojn.
  
  str. 9- med rešitvami, kako sredi ekstremnega konflikta spet vzpostaviti družbeni red, se utegne prebuditi fašizem, a tudi možnost za dosti širšo demokracijo.
  
  str. 13- stare sanje se lahko uresničijo, čeprav nas to utegne prisiliti v nove težke odločitve. Vendar pa je optimizem nujen zgodovinski pojem za mobilizacijo čustvenih energij v svetu, ki ima na izbiro strukturno divergentne možnosti. Preboji postanejo mogoči, ko mišljenje in razpravljanje o alternativah dobita zadosti podpore in javne pozornosti.
  
  Str. 62- ohranjati tehnološko zaostalost, da bi varovali zaposlenost, bi bilo verjetno nespodbudno in politično nevzdržno...
  
  Str. 154- fašizem in komunizem sta bili radikalni eskalaciji, ki po ju sprostile kataklizmične izkušnje prve svetovne vojne pri dveh rivalskih političnih tokovih 19. stoletja - pri nacionalizmu in socializmu. Obe sta se divje bojevali drug z drugim za množice v prebujajočih se nizkih razredih, ki so simpatizirali z obema..... obe gibanji sta svojim privržencem ponujali veliko več SAMOSPOŠTOVANJA, MOČI in obetov za strmo plezanje po lestvah partije, državne birokracije in vojske. Obe gibanji sta pretrgali s tabuji starih aristokratskih režimov in PORIVALI naprej tiste, ki sta jih opredelili kot navadne ljudi.
  
  Stran 168- z državno pomočjo so ohranili pri življenju tudi nekatera industrijska podjetja, zdaleč največ subvencij pa je bilo namenjenih financam, tam pa so šle neposredno v kapital, POVSEM MIMO KANALOV, v katerih SE USTVARJAJO DELOVNA MESTA ali daje pomoč lastnikom domov pred zaplembo.
  
  Stran 170- konstrukcija zgodbe o finančni križu izrazito nacionalnih kategorijah pa seveda krepi še drugo stran nacionalistične ideologije, vključno z naraščajočo ksenofobijo in še zlasti islamofobijo.
  
  Stran 191- čeprav se kapitalizem verjetno ne bo zlomil kar čez en teden, pa verjetno tudi ne bo večno trajal. Nič kaj moder nisi, če si zamišljaš prihodnost samo kot linearno nadaljevanje sedanjosti
  
  Stran 230- odločilni politični vektorji v prihajajočih desetletjih bodo morali biti naravnani tako, da bodo onemogočili militarizem in da bodo institucionalizirali demokratične človekove pravice po vsem svetu.
• 
  Aron

  A clear example of how post-Marxian thinkers are often more 'realist' in their conception of international social structures than even the most avid conservatives. History, according to these thinkers, is dominated by entities (be they states, organizations, or individuals) looking to enact policies that serve their personal interests best. In this way, 'systems' of behaviour come to be that shape the general landscape in which the rest of such actors must formulate their policies or strategies. The current capitalist system is just one of such landscapes and may carry with it certain presumptions that make it essentially unsustainable in the long run. This line of argument seems basically sound to me and gives rise to several interesting ideas in the course of this book. One point of criticism could be this: even though we could call the landscape individual actions collectively shape a 'system', it may not always be reasonable to start treating it like an independent entity that can only survive as a whole or collapse as a whole. If cracks start to appear, they will surely first be noticed by concrete individuals carrying out their self-interested actions (i.e. at a micro-level), rather than at a macro-level? Perhaps not in all cases, but in some they certainly will. Whether a 'system' may be able to adapt to changing circumstances will probably depend on just this question.
• 
  Dev Scott Flores

  Notwithstanding my predisposition of positive bias where world systems theory is concerned, Wallerstein and company make a great macrosociological case for the inevitable decline of capitalism overall, and moreso, the American hegemonic variety. For enhancing myopic anti-globalization perspectives, it's a must read.
• 
  Phakin

  อ่านไปแค่สามบทแ���ก แต่สนุกดี ไ���้ไอเดียอะไรหลายอย่าง โน้ตไว้แล้ว ว่าง ๆ จะมาอัพรีวิว
• 
  Theodore Kinni

  A team of sociologists evaluate capitalism and find that it is collapsing under its own weight. Unfortunately, they are much less sure about what happens next!
• 
  Paul

  Yes.
• 
  William

  An insightful read that left me with a lot to think about. Check out my full review here:
  http://www.willwrightcreates.com/blog...