The way in which these two practices contain each other is that it has always been possible to use the one against the other: to use racism-sexism to prevent universalism from moving too far in the direction of egalitarianism; to use universalism to prevent racism-sexism from moving too far in the direction of a caste system that would inhibit the work force mobility so necessary for the capitalist accumulation process.

That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything.

To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak.

It is historically the case that virtually every new zone incorporated into the world-economy established levels of real remuneration which were at the bottom of the world-system's hierarchy of wage-levels.

This argument has been codified in the twentieth century as meritocracy, in which those on top in the process of capitalist accumulation have merited their position.

If we return to the two faces of individualism - individualism as the spur of energy, initiative, and imagination; and individualism as the limitless struggle of all against all - it can be seen how the two practices emerge from and limit the extend of the disequilibrating impact of the contradiction involved in the geocultural agenda.

I rather wish to rest my case on material considerations, not those of the social future but those of the actual historical period of the capitalist world-economy.