Immanuel Wallerstein

Jacob Segal jsegal at mindspring.com
Sun Sep 5 20:46:42 PDT 1999


I just returned from the American Political Science Association conference in Atlanta where Immanuel Wallerstein gave a lecture in which he argued that the world capitalist order was headed towards a crisis. This crisis would be a result of a profit squeeze resulting from the increase in the factors of production, wages, externalities, and taxation, and these increase can not be compensated for by increasing prices, due to the inelasticity of demand. Wallerstein gave complicated explanation why capital cannot avoid rise in the costs of production; the general reason was the spread of capitalism; and so capital can no longer take flight to places without unions and there are fewer places to dump waste products etc. Taxation will go up with the spread of the welfare state. Wallerstein believes that neo-liberalism is a temporary and futile attempt to forestall the crisis.

Does this mean I should get my hopes up?

Jacob Segal



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