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Channel: Immanuel Wallerstein
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How to Fight a Class Struggle

Class struggles are eternal, but how they are fought depends on the ongoing state of the world-system in which they are located. World-systems have three temporalities. They come into existence and...

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Can Unacceptable Compromises Prevail?

Every compromise has losers. Every compromise has dissenters. Every compromise includes a betrayal. Yet no political struggle can end without a compromise. Compromises do not last forever and often...

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Unacceptable compromises: A clarification

Two of my regular readers sent me indications that I was not clear in my explanation of what I was talking about when I spoke of unacceptable compromises. I shall attempt to answer their queries and...

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Who is Winning? It All Depends When

For a worldwide struggle to capture the surplus-value there is always a choice. One can give priority to short-term gains. Or one can give priority to middle-turn gains. One cannot do both. Whoever...

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Ontological Dilemmas

Epistemology, especially statistics, is the study of how we measure things and how we know if our measurements are correct. Ontology is the study of whether the things we are measuring actually do...

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The Fire of Notre Dame Cathedral: How Tragic?

On April 15, 2019, a fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame was a tragedy for people all across the world, and particularly those in France. Everyone who ever saw it usually loved it. So this was a...

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Decisive moment! Decisive moment?

We all want to know what the future portends for us about anything important. We all tend to believe the future will be what the present is. If the polls show we shall make a certain decision, deciding...

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Again and Again!

Two leading actors in the modern world systems – Donald Trump and Theresa May of England – sound like broken records. They say the same thing each time they talk, knowing full well that their case is...

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Europe’s telephone and the politics of non-real change

U.S. superdiplomat Henry Kissinger is famously said to have asked, “Who do I call if I call Europe?” The question is repeatedly cited as a clever way to suggest pessimism about Europe as a reality. The...

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This is the end; this is the beginning

My first commentary appeared on October 1, 1998. It was published by the Fernand Braudel Center (FBC) at Binghamton University. I have produced commentaries on the first and the fifteenth of every...

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