Immanuel Wallerstein Was Born in 1930. He

Immanuel Wallerstein was born in 1930. he received his BA from Columbia in 1951, his MA in 1954 and his PhD is 1959. He has also received honorary doctoral degrees from place like the university of Paris, The National University in Mexico, and the University of Brussels, just to name a few. He has been published extensively and since 1976, has been a Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University (SUNY), and the Director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economics, Historical Systems, and Civilizations.

His dissertation title was "Road to independence, Ghana and the Ivory Coast." His early interests lied in the strugglers in Africa for independence, however, a look at his published work shows that his focus gradually widened to include social justice worldwide. Utopistics is a short book, only about 90 pages. However, in that short period, he lays out what has happened, what is happening now, and a vision for the future with regards to the movement for worldwide social justice.

Although Wallerstein does not seem to hold much hope for a more socially and environmentally just society, there are plenty of reasons to believe that such a world is possible. The view may look bleak inside the United States, but labor movements, women's movements, and justice movements are taking hold all over the globe. The book is short and it only contains three chapters.

The first chapter is titled, " The Failures of the Dreams, or Paradise Lost? This opening chapter starts the book out with a brief recounting of the capitalist-world system over the past 500 years leading up to the present age. Wallerstein's point in this chapter is very simple. For 500 years, capitalism has ruled the world. It has beaten down every single movement against it and has resulted in the most inegalitarian society in the history of the world.

There are large numbers of very rich who are richer than even the richest few could be before this system was set into motion. Conversely, there are more poor people, who have less than any poor person had previous to this system setting in. Wallerstein has a point, although under the feudal system, most people did not really own anything, most were able to have the basic necessities of life,. Under the capitalist system, many people can not even afford that.

not to say there were no beggars 550 years ago, of course that is all false, the point is that even the poor of yesteryear had more than the poor do today. The second chapter is titled, "The Difficult Transition, or Hell on Earth?" In this chapter, Wallerstein demonstrates that the world in a crisis stage. The current system cannot be sustained much longer, either socially or economically.

Wallerstein claims that the system is collapsing, and during this collapse, we will see more extensive war and violence over the next 50 years, what Wallerstein calls the period of transition to "something else." The wars, therefore, are really only just beginning, Wallerstein believes that this transitions will be a bloody one, that there will be no smooth transition as those in power fight to remain in power, that the old system will go down kicking and screaming.

Chapter three is called, "A Substantively Rational World, or Can Paradise Be Regained?' In this chapter, Wallerstein tries to show what his "preferred future" would look like. Instead of being upbeat and optimistic, trying to show how this preferred future should be obtained, he goes on about how this "preferred future" will probably not be attained and how a world worse than the present will emerge from the ashes of the transition.

In short, Wallerstein caps off his book by being thoroughly unconstructive, instead of showing people how to achieve the preferred future, he almost hangs his head in defeat. In the book, Wallerstein does offer some proposals for a different social system. The term Utopistics is used because Wallerstein wants us all to remember that he is not proposing a Utopia. It is a realistic vision of what the world could look like with a little.