So much were employers of wage-labor unenthusiastic about proletarianization that, in addition to fostering the gender age division of labor, they also encouraged, in their employment patters and through their influence in the political arena, recognition of defined ethnic groups, seeking to link them to specific allocated roles in the labor-force, with different levels of real remuneration for their work. Ethnicity created a cultural crust which consolidated the patterns of semi-proletarian household structures.
Immanuel WallersteinWhen systems come to be far from points of equilibrium, they reach bifurcation points, wherein multiple, as opposed to unique, solutions, to instability become possible.
Immanuel WallersteinPeople resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must.
Immanuel WallersteinThe mode of reconciling the promise of ever-increasing reward for the cadres and the demands of the working classes for a quid pro quo for their loyalty to the state was to offer the latter a small piece of the pie.
Immanuel WallersteinBut even in the absence of direct interference by those who had the power to interfere, the process was usually aborted by the non-availability of one of more elements of the process - the accumulated stock in a money form, the labor-power to be utilized by the producer, the network of distributors, the consumers who were purchasers. One or more elements were missing because, in previous historical social systems, one or more of these elements was not commodified or was insufficiently commodified.
Immanuel Wallerstein