Capitalism and Its Critics: A History, from the Industrial Revolution to AI

In this sweeping account, Pulitzer finalist Cassidy (How Markets Fail) profiles figures who have opposed capitalism over the past two centuries. Since “the rise of factory production,” Cassidy notes, “critics from the right as well as the left” have made moral arguments against capitalism’s “dehumanizing effect” and its “upending of... social norms.” He begins with the hardscrabble Luddites—early 19th-century English weavers who attacked the mechanical looms that had eradicated their communal way of life—and traces how they were succeeded by more genteel political organizers who advocated for socialism, a system of communal work and shared responsibilities. Cassidy offers a deft, thorough reading of Marx and his “scientific” approach, which identified the mechanics by which capitalism exploited and alienated workers. But he revels most in spotlighting figures with less well-known critiques, like “arch-conservative” Thomas Carlyle—who objected to capitalism for having replaced traditional social bonds with a “cash nexus”—and Trinidadian economist Eric Williams, who in 1942 was the first to argue that colonialism and the slave trade had created the social conditions for capitalism’s economic success. Cassidy’s masterful synthesis of history and biography serves to demonstrate that capitalism is in a permanent state of change not just because of its fundamental nature, but because of how it’s continuously being subjected to pushback. The result is a unique and invigorating view of capitalism’s history. (May)