Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the world’s greatest social theorists has left this ‘world system’ with a message – the solutions to the ills of capitalism won’t be found in one country. He has been the defender of the rights of the Global South all these years.
Wallerstein has been a great inspiration for many generations of scholars who worked in diverse fields of social sciences.
Wallerstein’s demise came in an unexpected series of losses. We lost Samir Amin last year, followed by Robert Cox. Gunder Frank and Giovanni Arrighi died a few years ago. In fact, almost all of the first generation scholars of world’s system school left this world. This is at a crucial time when the world system itself is undergoing an unprecedented crisis, about which Wallerstein wrote extensively. His last 500th Commentary, ended with this note:
“It is the future that is more important and more interesting, but also inherently unknowable. Because of the structural crisis of the modern-world system, it is possible, possible but not absolutely certain, that a transformatory use of a 1968 complex will be achieved by someone or some group. It will probably take much time and will continue on past the point of the end of commentaries. What form this new activity will take is hard to predict.
So, the world might go down further by-paths. Or it may not. I have indicated in the past that I thought the crucial struggle was a class struggle, using class in a very broadly defined sense. What those who will be alive in the future can do is to struggle with themselves so this change may be a real one. I still think that and therefore I think there is a 50-50 chance that we’ll make it to transformatory change, but only 50-50.”
We feel really sad to look at the world system without Wallerstein at a crucial juncture in history.
