CAPITALISM

A sprawling history of an ever-protean economic system.

Harvard historian Beckert asks and answers a chicken-and-egg question: whether capitalists preceded capitalism, or the other way around. The answer is that there were capitalists long before there was a coordinated economic system that encompassed them, one that today kneels at the altar of “a human-created god called ‘the economy.’” Beckert’s vast book addresses this precapitalist state with a clarity that Karl Marx could only long for, ranging from ancient trading routes between Asia and Europe to a Puritan who confessed that by chasing profit (“That a man might sell as dear as he can, and buy as cheap as he can”) he was committing a grave sin. Capitalism, Beckert holds, is a “quintessentially global economic order,” dependent on external markets, resources, and labor; it is thus no surprise that modern capitalism began to take shape during the European age of exploration, with its “mutually reinforcing connections between islands of capital and the often violent transfer of resources (including human beings) from many corners of the world.” Beckert’s agile account marches through the emergence of mercantilism and the invention of double-entry bookkeeping and proceeds through plantation and wage slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism, and a managerial/bureaucratic golden age. Always evolving—and, while dependent on the state, largely indifferent to what kind of state that is, authoritarian or democratic—capitalism is now defined by the extreme inequality it produces, as well as the appalling cost to the environment in the quest for the wealth of a few. But, Beckert closes, some other capitalism is likely to arise that may well alleviate the injustice of this inequality, “confirming that it will remain undogmatic and generate ever new combinations of capital, labor, technology, state power, territorial order, and forms of political rule.”

A comprehensive and up-to-date history, essential for students of world systems.