When systems come to be far from points of equilibrium, they reach bifurcation points, wherein multiple, as opposed to unique, solutions, to instability become possible.

The basic question that the 'new science' raises for our balance sheet is the issue of what scientific questions have not been asked for 500 years, which scientific risks have not been pursued. It raises the question of who has decided what scientific risks were worth taking, and what have been the consequences in terms of the power structures of the world.

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.

Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.

People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must.

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

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.