from Immanuel Wallerstein Utopistics: or, historical choices of the twenty-first century (New Press, 1998)
The heart of conservatism as a modern ideology is the conviction that the risks of conscious collective intrusion into existing social structures that have historically and slowly evolved are very high. (5)

...one can see how intelligent, caring people might conclude that in general it is best to go slowly with political change, lest things become even worse than they are presently. The problem with such honest conservatism is that it represents the position (and the interests) of those who are better off at the moment in terms of their economic and social position and in all other matters relating to the quality of life. What this position leaves for all those less well off, and especially for those really badly off, is merely a consel of patience tempered, perhaps, with some immediate charity. (6)

What revolutionary upheavals offer the populations they claim to represent and whose moral and political support they seek is a disruption of social expectations, the sudden intrusion of hope (even great hope) that all (or at least much) can really be transformed, and transformed quickly, in the direction of greater human equality and democratization. (7)

The modern world-system, which is a capitalist world-economy, has been in existence since the long sixteenth century. It was created originally only in part of the globe, primarily much of Europe and parts of the Western Hemisphere. It eventually expanded, by an internal dynamic, and gradualy incorporated other regions of the globe into its structure. The modern world-system became geographically global only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it has only been in the last half of the twentieth century that the inner corners and more remote regions of the globe have all been effectively integrated... The modern world-system was, and is, a capitalist system, that is, a system that operates on the primacy of the endless accumulation of capital via the eventual commodification of everything. (9, 10)

Most revolutionary regimes do in fact intend to change the world. They do not sell out their ideals. They discover that, as individuals and as regimes, they are constrained by the structures of the world-system to behave in certain ways and within certain parameters or else they lose all capacity to be important actors in the world-system. And so they bend their intentions to the realities, if not sooner, then later. (11-12)

The mobilization of what came to be called national liberation movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America meant that liberal ideology had to become global in application and their concessions given global content. Global liberalism took the form of the self-determination of nations (decolonization) and the project of the economic development of underdeveloped nations (a version of the global welfare state). (28)

[After "the revolution of 1968"] The dethronement of liberalism as the self-evident metalanguage of the world-system led to the disentanglement of both conservatives and radicals from liberal ideology. The world returned to a truly trimodal ideological division. The revived political right, who were sometimes labeled neoconservatives and sometimes (rather confusingly) neoliberals, stood for a very traditional social conservatism --the central sociomoral role of the church, local notables and community, and patriarchal household-- plus an extreme antiwelfarism... combined uneasily with a naive rhetoric about laissez-faire... (29)

The ideological celebration of so-called globalization is in reality the swan song of our historical system. We have entered into the crisis of this system. The loss of hope and the accompanying fear are both part of the cause and the major symptom of this crisis. (32)

The main reason that capitalism as a system has been so incredibly destructive of the biosphere is that, for the most part, the producers who profit by the destruction do not record such destruction as a cost of production but, quite the opposite, as a reduction of cost. (44)

What global liberalism had promised was reform, amelioration, and the growing narrowing of the social and economic polarization of the capitalist world-system. It has lost its magic because of the widespread realization in the last twenty years that not only has there been no narrowing of polarization, but that the story of the last one hundred twenty-five years, indeed of the last five hundred years, has been one of constant and growing polarization at a global level. (47-48)

[The next 25-50 years] will be... particularly explosive. This eruption will take at least three forms, none of which is totally new but all of which will have crossed a threshold of significance in the ongoing life of the system, and engage the centrifugal forces inherent in the structural crisis, the period of bifurcation. One element is the delegitimization of the ideology of inevitable progress that was a major pillar of world stability for at least two centuries. We shall see very strong movements --we are already seeing very strong movements-- particularly in the non-core zones... proclaim their total rejection of the fundamental premise of the capitalist world-economy, the endless accumulation of capital as a governing principle of social organization... The arguments we are now hearing reject any progressiveness whatsoever to the existing system, and therefore any modality of coming to terms intellectually with it. The large number of movements we so negligently call "fundamentalist" reflect this attitude, often clothing the argument in religiuous language... their common emphasis is antagonism tro the very concept of a secular state, so they propagate an aggravated antistatism. Such movements have no interest in helping the structures of the world-system overcome their difficulties. They constitute a force for disintegration. (58, 59)

An even greater disintegrating force is the democratization of world armaments. The whole history of armaments, for several thousand years, has been for the powerful to stay ahead by expensive innovations as soon as the weak obtain access to the previous generation of armaments... the thresholds of the ability to inflict harm have changed. A few rather antiquated atomic weapons can do incredible damage; bacteriological warfare is not technically very difficult... It will be possible for nations of intermediate strength located in the non-core zones to challenge militarily the powerful states, singly or even collectively. (60)

Finally, the greatest challenge is no doubt to be found in the least violent and least containable act, that of individual immigration from the poorer states to the richer ones. It has been going on for five hundred years, and with the improvement of transport it has been going on at an ever more rapid pace in the last fifty years. The structural reality is that the world is polarized not only economically and socially but demographically as well. The core zones absolutely need some immigration, but they do not want to admit as many as want to come... (61)

We are all familiar with the principal claims about our existing historical system. Those who argue that it represents the best of all possible worlds tend to emphasize three asserted virtues: material abundance and convenience; the existence of liberal political structures; the lengthening of the average life span. Each of these is argued by comparison with all known previous historical systems. On the other hand, the case against the merits of our existing historical system argues virtually the opposite of the same list of three. Where the advocates see material abundance and convenience, the critics see acute inequality and polarization, arguing that material abundance and convenience exist only for the few. Where the advocates see liberal political structures, the critics see the absence of significant popular participation in decision making. Where the advocates see longer life spans, the critics stress the seriously degraded quality of life. (65-66)