What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed … - Immanuel Wallerstein

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The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed.

Immanuel Wallerstein

What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world's population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority.

Ascent, Attribute, Civilization, Reality, Two, Virtue

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The world system is coming to the structural crisis

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To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically.

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Uncertainty is wondrous, and. . certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death.

Certainty, Moral, Real, Wondrous, Would Be

The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.

Accept, Eras, Imagination, Mark, Profiteers, Together

For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world's population who are not the recipients of privilege, the world they know is almost certainly worse than any their earlier counterparts knew. It is likely they are worse off materially, despite the technological changes. In substantive as opposed to formal terms, they are more, not less, subject to arbitrary constraints, since the central mechanisms are more pervasive and more efficient. And they bear the brunt of the various kinds of psychic malaise, as well as of the destructiveness of civil wars.

Changes, Know, Mechanisms, Psychics, Technological Change, War