Immanuel Wallerstein's Historical Capitalism

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Historical Capitalism is Immanuel Wallerstein’s attempt to analyze Capitalism differently than any previous analyst has. In the introduction, Wallerstein elicits his discontent with the fact that capitalism has historically been written about in two ways. First, many writers explain what capitalism is and follow the explanation with a line graph tracing the development of capitalism of time over time. The second method of writing about capitalism, in the eyes of Wallerstein, is discussing the significant changes capitalism has experienced throughout history. Wallerstein wanted to stay away from these over-exploited topics and instead sought to view capitalism as a massive system with many operating parts, some of which are changing consistently, …show more content…

He describes the three consequences, which don't actually seem to be consequences, brought about by ethnicization on the global economy. The first being that the workforce would never cease to exist; that no matter what, from generation to generation, there were always going to be individuals readily available to contribute. The second being that because ethnicities are groups of people who share a particular job, remember the context, training could be done in-house as opposed to having to be implemented by the employer. The third and final being that ethnicization helped to develop and solidify economic classes and as a result, “appropriately” distribute the wealth. These developments, according to Wallerstein, serve as part of the foundation of modern …show more content…

He started with a definition and emphasized a few major developments of capitalism. Though, the perspective he has is extremely refreshing, it seemed to follow the trend he wanted to avoid. I really enjoyed reading Historical Capitalism though. Wallerstein did an excellent job of supporting every claim he made, particularly when discussing the commoditization of everything. I particularly liked reading the part where he breaks down capitalism from simply buying and selling goods into the “micro-transactions” that occur that go seemingly unnoticed. I did not enjoy the third section of the book. The way he used terms such as “ethnicity” and “racism” in unfamiliar context made the end extremely difficult to understand to focus on the bigger picture he was trying to paint. Not to say that it was not well written; it certainly was. It would have just made more sense if he just explained it

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