The Capitalist World Economy (Studies in Modern Capitalism)

Rating:
Summary: a brilliant summary of this important theorist's best work
Review: This collection of essays published in the 1970s covers in short and accessible form some of the most important and innovative of Wallerstein's ideas. The first essay is a brilliant exposition of Wallerstein's view that the only way to understand history is to look not at individual nations but at the larger world system in which the nations exist. There is an essay on ethnicity, class and race which is probably the clearest explanation in the literature for the Marxist view that ethnicity is really determined by class. In Wallerstein's view, the notion of 'people of color' has nothing to do with physical phenotype, but everything to do with the class position within the world-system of the country that person is from. Thus 'pan-Africanism can include the white skinned Arabs of North Africa, but can exclude white skinned Afrikaaners of South Africa.'