Capitalism and Its Critics

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 and Industrial Revolution to the digital revolution. But here John Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, adopts a bold new approach: he tells the story through the eyes of the system’s critics. From the English Luddites who rebelled against early factory automation to communists in Germany and Russia in the early twentieth century, 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, Polanyi―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.