In this revised edition of his highly readable book, Immanuel Wallerstein provides a condensation of the central ideas of his monumental study of capitalism as an integrated, historical entity: the modern world system. In developing an anatomy of capitalism over the past five centuries, Wallerstein traces those elements that have constantly changed and evolved, while giving equal attention to features of historical capitalism that have necessarily remained constant. A new essay on "capitalist civilization" furnishes a balance-sheet of the world-system in the age of neoliberalism.
Wallerstein pays particular attention to the emergence and development of a unified world market, and the concomitant international division of labour. He argues forcefully, against the current of much contemporary opinion, that capitalism has brought about an actual, not merely a relative, immiseration in the countries of the Third World. Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization is a stimulating synthesis of one of the most challenging and influential assessments of capitalism as a world-historic mode of production.