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).