by Sam Chian
Immanuel Wallerstein, a towering figure in twentieth-century social science, is best known for his groundbreaking analysis of the history of capitalism in The Modern World-System series (1974, 1980, 1989, 2011). However, before his engagement with African studies and the development of his world-systems analysis, Wallerstein’s intellectual journey was shaped by a rich mix of political activism, exposure to leftist intellectual currents, and émigré intellectuals within the American academic milieu. Tracing the intellectual influences on Wallerstein during his teenage and early adult years is challenging due to the absence of his writings from that period and the scarcity of secondary sources. The most detailed accounts of his early intellectual development are G. P. Williams’s Contesting the Global Order (2020), Craig Calhoun’s “Immanuel Wallerstein and the Genesis of World-Systems Analysis” (2023), and Walter Goldfrank’s “Paradigm Regained?” (2000). However, none of these studies delve into this early period of Wallerstein’s life in detail. Rather, these sources quickly shift over to his engagement with the African continent found in his doctoral and post-doctoral scholarship. In this think-piece, I draw from a collection of late reflections and interviews conducted with Wallerstein in order to relocate and unearth those insights from his early, formative years (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016; GUS, 2016; TV UNAM, 2019; Wallerstein & Lemert, 2012/2016; Williams, 2013). In doing so, this brief sketch explores the beginning stages of Wallerstein’s career, prior to his involvement with the African continent in the latter half of the 1950s, focusing on his political evolution and his engagement with key intellectual figures within U.S. social science and the early New Left, such as C. Wright Mills, Karl Polanyi, and the Frankfurt School.[i] Ultimately, this piece sheds light on the earliest factors that contributed to his later rejection of mainstream social science, laying the groundwork for the development of his world-systems perspective.
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein was born in 1930 in New York City to Polish Jewish immigrants who had left the Weimar Republic in 1923, after the hyperinflation crisis. Growing up in the Bronx, he developed a deep attachment to New York, a city he would later call the “capital of the world-economy” due to its “location at the very heart of power” (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, p. 5; TV UNAM, 2019, 5:39). His early years were shaped by the terrible rise of Hitler, a frequent topic of discussion at home, as his parents were actively involved in helping refugees escape Nazi Germany (GUS, 2016, 0:28). Wallerstein’s upbringing shares strong parallels with that of other contemporary scholar-activists, such as Noam Chomsky, who, just two years his junior, also grew up in a context shaped by émigré Jewish heritage and the rise of fascism.
Politically active from a young age, Wallerstein developed a strong interest in global affairs and briefly considered a career in journalism while in high school (TV UNAM, 2019, 6:39). At the same time, he participated in various political organizations, including Students for Wallace, a group supporting former Vice President Henry A. Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign (GUS, 2016, 1:22). Although Henry Wallace did not personally identify as a socialist, his Progressive Party included many communists and fellow travelers and even received an endorsement from the Communist Party USA (Culver & Hyde, 2000, p. 452). Formed in 1948 in response to the escalating Cold War tensions, the party positioned itself as a left-wing alternative to both the Democrats and Republicans, advocating for a more peaceful U.S. foreign policy and collaboration with the Soviet Union. Economists Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, along with literary critic F. O. Matthiessen, following the campaign’s defeat in 1948, founded Monthly Review in 1949 (Foster, 2004). While Monthly Review did not initially influence Wallerstein directly, it later became the leading U.S. intellectual hub for the kind of Global South-centered Marxism that he would eventually embrace.
During the late 1940s to early 1950s, while an undergraduate at Columbia University, Wallerstein grappled with how to position himself between the Social Democrats and the Communists (Wallerstein, 2000, p. xv). He shared the Social Democrats’ critique of Stalinism but also found merit in the Communists’ critique of Social Democracy—particularly its concessions to Western nationalism, weak opposition to capitalist inequality, and limited commitment to anti-racism. In New York during this period, two notable social democratic parties existed besides the Progressive Party: the Liberal Party and the American Labor Party (ALP). However, neither of these parties resonated with Wallerstein. Instead, as an undergraduate at Columbia, he became involved with the American Veterans Committee (AVC), which he described as the most vibrant and dynamic political organization on campus (Wallerstein & Lemert, 2012/2016, p. 112). Although he was not a veteran, Wallerstein regularly attended AVC meetings due to the lively debates and political discussions. The AVC was sharply divided into three factions: one aligned with the ALP, another linked to the Liberal Party, and a centrist group that sought to reconcile the two by advocating for a middle-ground approach. Wallerstein was most sympathetic to this centrist faction.
Wallerstein’s wide-ranging political and intellectual interests soon led him to a career-making interest in sociology (TV UNAM, 2019, 7:38). The discipline’s openness, he argued, stemmed from sociology’s expansive boundaries, which made it difficult to exclude any subject from its scope. Wallerstein would go on to earn all his academic degrees in sociology and consistently held academic positions in the same field, culminating in his tenure as president of the International Sociological Association from 1994 to 1998.
In 1951, after earning his B.A. from Columbia University, Wallerstein was drafted to serve in the Korean War. A year earlier, the war’s outbreak had led Wallace to sever ties with the Progressive Party due to his support for U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, I.F. Stone, a former Wallace supporter, published a scathing critique of U.S. motives in Korea—the first major release by the newly founded Monthly Review Press (Stone, 1952). Wallerstein’s future mentor, C. Wright Mills, would also condemn U.S. involvement in Korea in The Power Elite (1956). Upon completing his military service in 1953, Wallerstein returned to Columbia University to pursue his master’s degree, focusing his thesis on McCarthyism. He undertook the project under the supervision of Herbert Hyman, a key figure in political sociology and a close collaborator of Paul Lazarsfeld (Lemert, 2012/2016, p. 156). Influenced by C. Wright Mills’ distinction between ‘sophisticated conservatives’ and the ‘practical right’ in The New Men of Power (1948), Wallerstein argued that McCarthyism primarily targeted the practical right rather than being solely concerned with Communists (Wallerstein, 2000, p. xvi).[ii] Completed in 1954, a year after Senator Joseph McCarthy’s dramatic downfall, the thesis was well received and reinforced Wallerstein’s early identification as a political sociologist (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, pp. 1-2).
In The New Men of Power, his first book, Mills argued that the American labor movement had transitioned from a traditionally adversarial stance to a more cooperative role within the framework of American capitalism. Though this assessment appeared bleak, the book retained a measure of optimism, especially in contrast to Mills’ later works, White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956). The optimism in The New Men of Power stemmed from the expectation of an economic downturn in the U.S., which Mills believed could offer an opportunity for leftist movements to push for democratic planning and greater worker control, within his broader “slump-war-boom cycle” (Mills, 1948, p. 247). However, in 1948, the U.S. was on the brink of a period of unprecedented economic expansion, postponing any such slump for decades. These years, often regarded as the “golden years” of twentieth-century capitalism, were later described by C. Wright Mills as the “Great American Celebration,” and marked the era of global American hegemony, as identified by Wallerstein (Baran, 1962/1973, p. 35; Hobsbawm, 1994).
Wallerstein’s early political stance aligned closely with Mills,’ positioning himself “toward the left of the social-democratic left” (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, p. 16). However, they differed in their assessment of the Wallace campaign. Unlike many left-wing intellectuals of his time, Mills opposed Wallace, arguing that his campaign undermined “genuine leftward tendencies of labor in America” (Mills, 1948, p. 200). Mills criticized the Progressive Party, suggesting it could be a Communist front rather than a true labor party (Mills, 1948, p. 202). He believed the Communist Party USA obstructed the creation of the “new party of labor” he envisioned. At the same time, Mills was critical of social democracy and New Deal liberals, advocating for a form of “classic socialism,” though he did not clearly define this term (Mills, 1948, p. 251).
Mills and Wallerstein shared a similar trajectory in their evolving engagement with Marxism, though at different paces. For Wallerstein, this process unfolded over more than a decade, whereas Mills’ development was abruptly cut short by his early death in 1962. Initially ambivalent toward Marxism, Mills gradually gravitated toward it, a shift evident by the time he wrote The Sociological Imagination. In this work, he frequently referenced Marx and spoke favorably of his original ideas and those of later Marxists. A particularly striking example appears in the book’s final chapter, where Mills characterizes the “essence” of sociological imagination as being “the combination of ideas that no one expected were combinable — say, a mess of ideas from German philosophy and British economics.” This was a clear nod to Marx (Mills, 1959/2000, p. 211). Mills’ views on the third world also took on a more radical tone, a change reflected in his book Listen, Yankee (1960), which was based on his experiences in post-revolutionary Cuba. Written shortly before the U.S.-led Bay of Pigs Invasion, Mills stated in the book that he did not worry about the Cuban revolution, he worried with it (Santos & Prashad, 2022, p. 4).
In his last work, The Marxists, Mills openly praised the contributions of ‘plain Marxists’ in the social sciences, citing figures like Rosa Luxemburg, György Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, and Paul Sweezy (Mills, 1962, pp. 98–99). Mills also became increasingly forceful in his criticisms of liberalism, stating in his book that
[Liberalism] is much more useful as a defense of the status quo – in the rich minority of nations, and of these nations before the rest of the world – than as a creed for deliberate historical change. … To the world’s range of enormous problems, liberalism responds with its verbal fetish of ‘Freedom’ plus a shifting series of opportunistic reactions. (Mills, as cited in Foster, 1990, p. 268)
In the decades that followed, liberalism became Wallerstein’s bête noire, as he increasingly turned his attention to analyzing its rise and decline. Yet, despite Mills’ sharp critiques of liberalism, Wallerstein believed he never fully abandoned his own liberal commitments. Reflecting on Mills years later, Wallerstein offered this assessment: “Far from being a maverick, Mills incarnated, indeed virtually defined, the mainstream of the U.S. left … He stands, not as a giant with feet of clay, but as an impatient social scientist seeking ways to realize liberal ideals” (Wallerstein, 1986, pp. 465-467).
By the late 1950s, Columbia University was home to many of the era’s most prominent social scientists, including Margaret Mead, Daniel Bell, Robert K. Merton, Lionel Trilling, Richard Hofstadter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski—individuals with whom Wallersteinshared varying levels of affinity (Derluguian, 2015, p. 455; Chase-Dunn & Inoue, 2011, p. 396). Among his contemporaries was the sociologist Johan Galtung, with whom he developed a lifelong intellectual relationship, grounded in their shared concerns about underdevelopment, imperialism, and the global South. Galtung later served on his doctoral committee (Wallerstein et al., 2004, p. 1). Years later, Paul Lazarsfeld, the empirical sociologist who directed Columbia’s Bureau of Applied Social Research while Galtung worked there, would describe Wallerstein as ‘His Majesty’s loyal opposition’ (Williams, 2013, 207).
However, of all the figures at Columbia during the 1950s, the one who would leave the most lasting impression on Wallerstein was the economic historian, Karl Polanyi. While Polanyi is often recognized as a major influence on Giovanni Arrighi, another key figure in the world-systems tradition, he also played a significant role in shaping Wallerstein’s intellectual development (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, p. 5). Although Wallerstein had limited direct interaction with Polanyi, Terence Hopkins shared a much closer relationship with him. Hopkins studied under Polanyi at Columbia in the early 1950s, working closely with him until Polanyi’s early retirement in 1953 (Block, 2003, p. 305). Deeply influenced by his ideas, Hopkins likely played a key role in transmitting these insights to Wallerstein. Together, Hopkins and Wallerstein went on to develop the world-systems perspective, drawing on key aspects of Polanyi’s scholarship (Calhoun, 2023, p. 265). Central to their framework was his analysis of different forms of economic integration (Wallerstein, 2004b, p. 17).
Polanyi was not directly targeted by red-baiting in the same way as some of his contemporaries during the McCarthy era, but his work and ideas were certainly viewed with suspicion. His critiques of capitalism were seen as politically radical in Cold War America, which led to a degree of marginalization within academic circles. This ideological climate at Columbia and in the U.S. more broadly contributed to his sense of isolation and was one of the factors influencing his decision to retire in 1953 and move to Canada. Interestingly, Immanuel Wallerstein would also move to Canada years later, following the 1968 student revolt at Columbia, which similarly strained his relationship with the University (Williams, 2013, p. 207).
Wallerstein intellectual development was also, to some extent, influenced by the Frankfurt School (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, p. 4). While Max Horkheimer was at Columbia, Wallerstein had brief interactions with him, although his connection to the Frankfurt School deepened through Franz Neumann, with whom he had intended to study before Neumann’s untimely death in 1954. An even greater influence was Herbert Marcuse, whose lectures Wallerstein attended for two years, later describing him as a “magnificent professor” (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, p. 4). In contrast, Structuralism, a dominant intellectual trend at the time, did not capture Wallerstein’s interest. Although he read Claude Lévi-Strauss during his doctoral studies, he did not find Structuralist ideas to be significant influences on his own thinking.
Although Wallerstein seldom mentioned the Frankfurt School in his published works, their ideas and concerns clearly influenced his thinking—particularly their skepticism toward modernity and rationality, as well as their engagement with Freudianism. Unlike Marcuse and other Frankfurt School theorists, however, Wallerstein did not use Freudian categories in his analysis. Yet, he recognized Sigmund Freud’s impact, observing that even without adopting Freud’s exact terminology, his underlying ideas had permeated our collective assumptions (Wallerstein, 1999, pp. 229-230). What interested Wallerstein most was Freud’s “implicit challenge” to the notion of rationality, which aligned with his own critiques of modernity and liberalism.
Immanuel Wallerstein’s engagements with C. Wright Mills, the Frankfurt School, and the intellectual milieu at Columbia University offers a revealing lens into a transformative period in American social thought and the broader global intellectual landscape. Situated in the aftermath of World War II and amidst the intensifying Cold War, Wallerstein’s intellectual development reflects a moment of profound questioning and reorientation within social science. His relationship with Mills captures the tensions within American leftism, navigating between social democracy and Marxism while confronting the hypocrisies of liberalism. Similarly, his encounters with Polanyi and the Frankfurt School reveal the transatlantic transmission of critical theory, illustrating the struggles of émigré intellectuals to reconcile European Marxist traditions with the realities of American capitalist democracy. Columbia, as a hub of postwar social science, was itself a microcosm of these broader tensions—caught between the abstracted empiricism of figures like Paul Lazarsfeld and the radical critiques emerging from thinkers like Mills and Polanyi. Wallerstein’s intellectual trajectory, thus, not only traces his path to world-systems analysis but also encapsulates a global moment of ideological realignment, as scholars grappled with the contradictions of postwar prosperity, decolonization, and the rise of American hegemony.
Exactly two decades passed between Wallerstein submitting his master’s thesis in 1954 and publishing The Modern World-System in 1974. During this period, his areas of interest continued to shift, and his thinking evolved considerably. In his doctoral studies, he focused on the development of decolonizing African states through the lens of modernization theory, following the influence of his first doctoral advisor, Seymour Martin Lipset. Gradually, however, he moved away from modernization theory and toward more radical frameworks—a shift most clearly marked by his encounter with Frantz Fanon. From the early 1960s, Fanon gradually replaced C. Wright Mills as Wallerstein’s primary intellectual mentor, a shift that mirrored the broader radicalization of many members of the New Left by the end of the decade. Notably, Wallerstein contributed entries on both Mills and Fanon to the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences in 1968 (Wallerstein, 1968a; Wallerstein, 1968b). His entry on Mills, while respectful, also underscored Wallerstein’s critique of Mills’ limitations, whereas his entry on Fanon was much more enthusiastic and complimentary. This shift from Mills to Fanon represented more than a change in intellectual allegiance; it reflected Wallerstein’s growing recognition of the importance of colonialism and imperialism in shaping the modern world-system. By embracing Fanon’s critique of Western modernity, Wallerstein moved beyond the boundaries of American social thought, positioning himself within a more radical and global intellectual tradition. In doing so, he not only redefined his own theoretical trajectory but also contributed to a broader transformation in social science, paving the way for a genuinely global sociology.
[i] Max Elbaum, in his book Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, identifies C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse as the two key influences on the early American New Left (Elbaum, 2002/2006, p. 47). Before these figures gained widespread recognition, they were mentors to Wallerstein, profoundly shaping his intellectual development during this period.
[ii] At this time, Wallerstein’s 1954 M.A. thesis, titled McCarthyism and the Conservative, remains unpublished (Wallerstein, 2004a, p. 194). More than fifty years after completing it, Wallerstein continued to assert that the arguments presented in the thesis were largely valid (Aguirre Rojas, 2005/2016, p. 2).
Sam Chian teaches economics and social studies at an upper secondary school in Oslo, Norway. He holds a Master’s degree in sociology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His current projects include a forthcoming research article for Review of African Political Economy that examines Immanuel Wallerstein’s career as an Africanist.
Edited by Jacob Saliba.
Featured image: photograph of Wallerstein, Cristian Camilo Pinzón, CC-BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
