Geopolitics and Geoculture

This study will critically discuss Immanuel Wallerstein's Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-system (1991). The study will argue that Wallerstein is right in his analysis of the world of the future. The author says that the future is uncertain, but we have opportunities to make choices which will make that world a better place for human beings. Wallerstein is writing for readers in the West, so he speaks to their fears and hopes. He says that the changes happening in the capitalist world are the most important changes happening today. These changes are deep and permanent and will lead to the end of capitalism. Wallerstein says that capitalism is "bifurcating" (14-15), and he defines bifurcation as "the appearance of a new solution of the equations for some critical value" (234). Wallerstein does not pretend to know what this "new solution" to the world's problems is, and neither does he even say that it will be disaster or prosperity. He warns, first, that "the decline of the West, the decline of the American empire, the decline of capitalism" (Wallerstein, 1991, p. 237) are happening, whether we like it or not. Then he says that these declines

are not occasions for cultural pessimism. But they are equally not occasions for cultural optimism. They offer the possibility . . . of creating a new and better historical system, provided we judge well (with care, with imagination, with courage) (Wallerstein, 1991, p. 237).

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verall, but he is most optimistic when he writes about socialism. Capitalism is failing, he says, and communism has already failed. He wants something in between the two---a democratic socialism. In fact, he even sees the possibility of a utopia: I do not believe . . . that utopianism is at an end. Quite the contrary. Perhaps it is only now that we can invent utopian utopias. The construction of socialism in this world, if it is to occur, is still before us---as an option, but scarcely as a certainty (Wallerstein, 1991, p. 96). Wallerstein criticizes the socialist-oriented Brandt Report, but only because it is dishonest about the relationship of the rich and poor nations. Wallerstein concludes that "The only program for survival is the creation of a socialist world order" (Wallerstein, 1991, p. 103). The major point of Wallerstein's book, and his argument for socialism, is that capitalism and nationalism are failing, and that if the world-system of the future succeeds it will have to create an economy and a culture which will bring people together rather than divide them by ideologies and nationalities. Wallerstein's work seems even more insightful when we compare it to other works on the world of the future. In The Third

Category: Economics - G