‘Capitalism and Its Critics' Review: Enemies of the Market Mindset
If capitalism had been overthrown as quickly as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had at first expected, John Cassidy's sprawling 'Capitalism and Its Critics' would have been shorter and easier to write, if not to sell. But, resilient, protean, abused and occasionally bailed-out, capitalism is still with us, and so are its critics, the latest in a line so long that Mr. Cassidy, who was setting out to tell capitalism's story (or much of it) through their eyes, was spoiled for choice. Capitalism always provides consumers, and readers, with plenty of what they are looking for.
Mr. Cassidy, a writer for the New Yorker, chose wisely and widely, selecting reformers as well as revolutionaries, the renowned and the not so well-known, among them 'lesser-known figures who made interesting contributions.' The last might include Anna Wheeler (ca. 1780-1848), an upper-crust Anglo-Irishwoman who took on the economic system and the oppression of her sex. She was, wrote Benjamin Disraeli, 'very clever but awfully revolutionary.' Her grandson became the viceroy of British India.
Some were picked because they captured 'an entire epoch.' Thus Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), known for coining the term 'conspicuous consumption' in 1899, is paired with the Gilded Age of Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and the rest. The fate of the Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev (1892-1938), however, neatly symbolizes the arrival of an iron age. A supporter of the successful policy under which the struggling young Soviet state allowed a partial return to a market economy, he queried both the wisdom of collectivization and the inevitability of capitalism's collapse (he was duly imprisoned and shot).
Despite the book's length, its author does not claim that it is a comprehensive account. It is 'a history,' not 'the history,' and it comes with a slant. Mr. Cassidy is on the left, as are the majority of those he has recruited to help tell capitalism's tale. This wouldn't be the book I would recommend for someone searching for a single introductory account of capitalism's ascendance and the qualities that have ensured its survival. But for those who want to dig more deeply, regardless of their ideological orientation, 'Capitalism and Its Critics' offers an intriguing, if skewed, perspective, and benefits from a skillful explanation of complex ideas in clear, often lively prose.
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