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Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
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About This Book
A sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics. At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system, Capitalism and Its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from the East India Company to Apple. But here John Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, adopts a bold new he tells the story through the eyes of the system's critics. From the Haitian rebels who overthrew French colonial capitalism and the English Luddites who rebelled against early factory automation, to the Latin American dependistas , the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement, the absorbing narrative traverses the globe. It visits with familiar names―Smith, Marx, Luxemburg, Keynes, Polyani―but also focuses on many less familiar figures, including William Thompson, the Irish proto-socialist whose work influenced Marx; Flora Tristan, the French proponent of a universal labor union; John Hobson, the original theorist of imperialism; J. C. Kumarappa, the Indian exponent of Ghandian economics; Eric Williams, the Trinidadian author of a famous thesis on slavery and capitalism; Joan Robinson, the Cambridge economist and critic of the Cold War; and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the founding father of degrowth. Blending rich biography, panoramic history, and lively exploration of economic theories, Capitalism and Its Critics is true big history that illuminates the deep roots of many of the most urgent issues of our time.
Reviews
"Unexpectedly lively ..."
"If you are not of a left-wing persuasion you could hold that many ideas expressed in this book are utopian."
"An expansive history of capitalism that places less emphasis on economic abstractions like perfectly competitive markets and draws attention instead to how often capitalist systems have fallen short ..."
"He also identifies more subtlety and complexity in Marx's portrait of capitalism than most standard glosses admit ..."
"The result is a unique and invigorating view of capitalism's history."
"A marvellously lucid overview of capitalism's critics, written in good old-fashioned expository prose—if at times a touch workmanlike compared with some of his subjects, such as exhilarating stylists Marx and Carlyle ..."
"But Cassidy makes it all digestible by weaving together, in each chapter, the biography of each of his subjects with their key critique of capitalism, thus humanising otherwise dry debates about economic theory ..."
"Cassidy could not have predicted Donald Trump's particular brand of tariff inanity, but he comes uncannily close when he speculates that globalism may be on its last legs ..."
"Sounds a subtle theme in his characterization of capitalism as it has developed over the past four centuries or so: It has always relied on compulsion."
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