"a system that is a world and which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire globe. World-systems analysis argues that the units of social reality within which we operate, whose rules constrain us, are for the most part such world-systems . World-system analysis argues that there have been thus far only two varieties of world-systems: world-economies and world empires. A world-empire are large bureaucratic structures with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures. A world-economy is a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures."

“It is simply not true that capitalism as a historical system has represented progress over the various previous historical systems that it destroyed or transformed. Even as I write this, I feel the tremour that accompanies the sense of blasphemy. I fear the wrath of the gods, for I have been moulded in the same ideological forge as all my compeers and have worshipped at the same shrines.”

“The essential feature of a capitalist world-economy... is production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.”

“And in the present we are all irremediably the products of our background, our training, our personality and social role, and the structured pressures within which we operate.”

“The past can be told as it truly is, not was. For recounting the past is a social act of the present done by men of the present and affecting the social system of the present.”