In The Global Left: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Immanuel Wallerstein takes stock of the practices of the left, historically in the time of its great ideals and today in the midst of the global crisis of capitalism. He underlines the urgency of seeing the emergence of a global and united left that can pave the way out of the centuries-old domination of capital, considering antisystemic movements, dilemmas of the left in relation to the structural crisis of the modern world-system, and tactics and strategies for political action. The book includes new essays by Étienne Balibar, James K. Galbraith, Johan Galtung, Nilüfer Göle, Pablo González Casanova, and Michel Wieviorka in conversation with Wallerstein’s core ideas.
Foreword by Michel Wieviorka
Part I: The Global Left: Past, Present, and Future
Immanuel Wallerstein
1. Capitalism and Antisystemic Movements: 1789-1968
2. Structural Crisis of the Modern World-System: Dilemmas of the Left
3. Bifurcation and Collective Choice: Tactics of the Transition
Part II: Appreciations / Critiques
4. Bifurcation in the "end" of capitalism
Étienne Balibar
5. The Left: Its Immediate Future
Pablo González Casanova6. The Global Left: A Comment
James K. Galbraith
7. Immanuel Wallerstein on the Global Left and Right
Johan Galtung
8. The Global and the Left: Possible Encounters?
Nilüfer Gole
9. The Hypothesis of Decline
Michel Wieviorka
10. Response to Appreciations/Critiques
Immanuel Wallerstein
Biography
Immanuel Wallerstein was Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Yale University from 2000 until his death in 2019. From 1976 to 1999, he was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY), where he was also a founder and director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. From 1975 until his death, he was Senior Research Scholar at the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris, and intermittently served as Directeur d'études associé at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He held positions at many universities worldwide throughout his career and was awarded 15 honorary degrees. Wallerstein served as President of the International Sociological Association from 1994 to 1998 and received the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association in 2003. In 2014, the International Sociological Association awarded him the first ever Award for Excellence in Research and Practice. During the 1990s, he chaired the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, whose object was to indicate a direction for social scientific inquiry for the next 50 years. His books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, include the world-renowned four-volume study, The Modern World-System, and, cowritten with Étienne Balibar, Race, Nation, Class. He is considered to this day one of the most influential sociologists of his era.
