There is growing and widespread dissatisfaction with capitalism worldwide. Economic models that dominated the post-WW2 decades \u2014 Keynesian social democracy and later neoliberal globalization \u2014 are seen as having run aground. The system today is failing to meet the basic needs of many working-class people. This crisis has fuelled both right and left populist movements. Economic nationalism, authoritarianism and inequality are resurgent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is with this background that John Cassidy explores, in a timely fashion, the critics of capitalism and the alternatives they advocate in Capitalism and its Critics \u2013 A Battle of Ideas In The Modern World. <\/em>By mapping out critiques and alternatives over the centuries, the book provides ideas against which Marxists can sharpen their own analysis of capitalism\u2019s structural flaws and the need for systemic change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy has written an engaging and novel book on capitalism and its history from the point of view of critics, well known and relatively obscure. Cassidy writes in a brisk, analytical style, honed as a journalist for over 40 years, mainly at The New Yorker magazine. He blends economic theory, historical narrative, and social critique, offering a fascinating panoramic view of capitalism\u2019s critics, from Enlightenment thinkers to modern-day economists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The book covers the last 250 years of capitalism told through the eyes of over thirty individuals, with vastly different perspectives. Adam Smith is associated with laissez-faire capitalism, while the most searing critics of the system, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Rosa Luxemburg, championed its overthrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the profiles may be, as Cassidy writes, figures as part of a long tradition of dissent. From a Marxist perspective, many of the thinkers discussed represent reformist or partial critiques of the system that fail to challenge the class foundations of capitalism and the need to change society fundamentally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy begins with noting how early capitalist development was fuelled by slave-based wealth and colonial extraction. This echoes Karl Marx\u2019s view that capitalism emerged not from peaceful trade, but through brutal \u201cprimitive accumulation\u201d. Marx wrote that capitalism\u2019s birth was marked by force, theft, and dispossession. By stripping people of land and tools, they were forced to sell their labour to survive, creating the modern working class. Concentration of capital saw wealth accumulated in the hands of a few, creating the conditions for monopoly capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n East India Company<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy shows that capitalism has taken many forms \u2013 laissez-faire, Keynesian, neoliberal, and now supposedly digital \u2013 but its core logic of profit and accumulation remains. He writes: \u201cFrom the nineteenth-century ideal of free trade and small government that was pioneered by Britain; to the autarkic capitalism of Nazi Germany; to the Keynesian managed capitalism of the post-war era; to the globalized hyper-capitalism of the late twentieth century; to the Chinese state capitalism that some observers see as the winning model for the twenty-first century \u2013 there have been many varieties of capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the opening chapter, we learn about William Bolts, a whistle-blower from the East India Company, who returned to London in 1770 to expose its brutal practices. Cassidy describes the company as a proto-multinational corporation, headquartered in London, with relevance to today\u2019s global capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The East India Company thrived on monopolies, protectionism, and slavery. Cassidy emphasizes that the slave trade was integral to mercantile capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Capital, Volume I<\/em>, Marx wrote about the violent and coercive means by which capitalism was born: \u201cIf money, according to Augier, \u2018comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,\u2019 capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bolts condemned the Company\u2019s exploitation, noting that its shareholders, mostly aristocrats and MPs, profited from a private army in India used to suppress local populations and protect their interests. The Company\u2019s costly conflicts with indigenous rulers eventually led to a bailout from Parliament, facilitated by the overlapping interests of Britain\u2019s ruling class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Cassidy notes that Adam Smith, often celebrated by capitalist advocates, was in fact a critic of mercantile capitalism. Smith was not opposed to capitalism but represented a wing of the ruling class that opposed protectionism and sought \u2018freer\u2019 markets. In The Wealth of Nations<\/em>, Smith condemned slavery, monopolies, and the East India Company, advocating instead for free trade and competitive markets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The early chapters of Capitalism and its Critics<\/em> explore the British Industrial Revolution, highlighting how artisan workers, like handloom weavers, were displaced by new technologies. The Luddite movement organised opposition to mechanized looms and knitting frames, which allowed factory owners to hire unskilled laborers at lower wages, undermining the artisans\u2019 economic security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their peaceful petitions to Parliament were ignored, as the system served an oligarchy. From 1810 to 1815, protests escalated into riots, met with brutal repression. Luddite leaders were hanged, imprisoned, or exiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are parallels to today\u2019s workers facing displacement from AI and automation. Unions and the working class must demand public, democratic control of new technologies. Under socialism, these innovations could play an important role in facilitating a democratically run, planned economy that serves society as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cooperatives and early socialists<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy highlights William Thompson as a pioneering Irish \u201cproto-socialist\u201d who developed early theories on wealth distribution and \u201chuman happiness\u201d. Thompson, an Irish landlord from Cork, devoted his life to the working class and is credited with coining the term \u201csurplus value,\u201d later used by Marx.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thompson critiqued industrial capitalism: \u201cHow comes it\u2026 that a nation abounding more than any other in the rude materials of wealth\u2026 should still pine in privation?\u201d And in answering his own question, Thompson wrote: \u201cThe rigid dividing line between propertyless \u2018producers\u2019 of wealth\u2026 and the property-owning elite of \u2018capitalists\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy notes Thompson\u2019s role in the cooperative movement, alongside Robert Owen, who founded a cooperative community at Lanark in Scotland. Owen\u2019s fame often overshadows Thompson\u2019s role, but his contributions were grounded in utilitarian ethics and early socialist thought. Thompson critiqued Owen\u2019s reliance on elite patronage, warning it could undermine genuine worker and cooperative community autonomy. He developed detailed plans for cooperative societies based on equal participation, including proposals for cooperative education and governance structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marx and Engels, though critical of what they termed the \u2018utopian socialism\u2019, argued that cooperative labor\u2014or \u201cassociated labor\u201d\u2014could represent a higher form of social organization, but only if it replaced the exploitative structures of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his Inaugural Address to the International Working Men\u2019s Association (1864), Marx wrote: \u201cLike slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind and a joyous heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marx and Engels saw that cooperatives, while valuable, could not transform society on their own, as they were dominated by the capitalist market economy and prone to adaptation to it. They needed to be part of a broader revolutionary movement to abolish class divisions and democratise the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy draws a thread from early socialist and cooperative thinkers to J.C. Kumarappa, a 1930s Indian economist who championed \u201cGandhian economics\u201d\u2014a vision of self-sufficient village life, minimal consumption, and well being over material wealth. His ideas were later eclipsed by Indian prime minister Nehru\u2019s industrialisation policy, which was influenced by a Stalinist-style model but did not break decisively with capitalism and semi feudalism in India . Subsequent neoliberal policies under successive governments in India have deepened inequality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy also highlights Thompson\u2019s collaboration with Anna Wheeler, an upper-class Irish progressive. They co-authored Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery<\/em> (1825). This collaborative feminist and early socialist critique responded to liberal bourgeois economist James Mill\u2019s dismissal of women\u2019s political rights. The book argued that liberal rhetoric masked female subjugation, marriage under capitalism was civil slavery, and gender equality was crucial for a just society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this vein, Cassidy also discusses Flora Tristan, a Franco-Peruvian feminist who linked women\u2019s rights with labour struggles. And sometimes unwaged labour takes a different form. Cassidy writes that domestic work \u201ctypically has been unpaid and carried out by women\u201d. The profit system \u201ccouldn\u2019t operate\u201d, without this huge army of free labour, Cassidy notes, in discussing the Italian-American immigrant activist Silvia Federici.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marx and Engels<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy\u2019s analysis covers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels\u2019 economic writings, including the Communist Manifesto<\/em>. The book covers Marx\u2019s ideas on economy regarding the exploitation of workers, profit-driven accumulation, wealth concentration, economic crises, alienation, and historical change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy explains Marx\u2019s view that history is driven by material conditions and class struggle. Marx saw capitalism as a stage in historical development, marked by the conflict between the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) and the proletariat (workers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marx argued that labour is the source of all value. Cassidy highlights Marx\u2019s concept of surplus value, that is, the idea that the capitalists profit by paying workers less than the value they produce. Cassidy declares this essential part of Marx\u2019s theory \u201ccan\u2019t be entirely dismissed\u201d, which is at least an improvement on many contemporary bourgeois economists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy emphasizes Marx\u2019s insight into capitalism\u2019s internal contradictions. The profit system generates immense wealth but concentrates it in the hands of a few people. It increases productivity but leads to alienation and inequality. Capitalism is dynamic and innovative but prone to crises and instability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy also presents aspects of Marx\u2019s psychological and social critique of capitalism, including his ideas on \u2018alienation\u2019: under capitalism workers are alienated from the products of their labour, the process of production, and their own human potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in one-sided and determinist fashion, Cassidy argues that Marx believed that capitalism would eventually collapse under the weight of its contradictions, paving the way for socialism and eventually communism, a classless, stateless society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To his credit, Cassidy takes Marxism seriously, presenting its relevance to modern economic issues. However, his view of Marx as a prophetic analyst who had a determinist view of history neglects Marx and Engel\u2019s emphasis on class struggle and collective action as essential factors to realising social transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A significant American critic of capitalism in the 19th century was Thorstein Veblen, who, in his book The Theory of Business Enterprise<\/em>, condemned the so-called robber barons of his time. Veblen defended small producers and artisans who genuinely created goods, contrasting them with what he termed the \u201cpecuniary class\u201d\u2014a layer of parasitic financiers and speculators. Cassidy notes that Veblen was one of the earliest critics of Wall Street, whose activities he saw as divorced from productive labour. These ideas, Cassidy contends, find a modern echo in the criticism of the extreme financialisation of today\u2019s global economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imperialism and its critics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy examines John A. Hobson\u2019s critique of imperialism, which linked it to finance capital. Hobson\u2019s ideas influenced figures like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, with Lenin drawing heavily from his work in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.<\/em> Hobson argued that advanced capitalist economies sought foreign investment due to overproduction and surplus capital, leading to the 19th-century \u201cScramble for Africa\u201d and imperialist partitioning of continents as the major economic powers competed for colonies and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy devotes a chapter to Rosa Luxemburg\u2019s theories of imperialism, outlining her argument that capitalism\u2019s expansion depends on the continual incorporation of non-capitalist regions. In her 1913 book The Accumulation of Capital,<\/em> Luxemburg argued that capitalism could not sustain itself within a purely capitalist system. She claimed that capitalist accumulation requires non-capitalist markets, i.e. capitalism needs to constantly expand into pre-capitalist regions (colonies, peasant economies, etc.) to sell its surplus goods and realise profit because the working class could not consume all the goods produced in the more developed capitalist countries. For Luxemburg, imperialism was therefore driven by the need to find external markets beyond capitalism itself. She predicted that once these non-capitalist areas were exhausted, capitalism would enter an unavoidable and catastrophic crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lenin and Trotsky both greatly admired Luxemburg but critiqued her economic explanation for imperialism. Lenin rejected the idea that capitalism necessarily required non-capitalist markets to survive. Imperialism was a stage of capitalism characterized by monopoly, finance capital, and the export of capital, not merely a response to underconsumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trotsky echoed these criticisms, adding that Luxemburg\u2019s theory was too rigid and not fully taking into account the internal contradictions of capitalism, including capitalism\u2019s uneven development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite their theoretical differences, the three great Marxists\u2019 approaches converged, in practice, amidst early 20th-century events like the inter-imperialist First World War, which helped give birth to workers\u2019 revolutions. While all led revolutionary struggles, the lack of a cohesive party in Germany, unlike the Bolsheviks in Russia, played a key part in the German revolution\u2019s failure. Luxembourg and the other outstanding leader of the German revolution, Karl Liebknecht, were brutally murdered by the forces of reaction in Berlin in 1919.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capitalism\u2019s \u2018long waves\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another Marxist economist whom Leon Trotsky took issue with was Nikolai Kondratiev. Cassidy expresses agreement with aspects of Kondratiev who advanced what later became known as the theory of long waves. Kondratiev proposed that capitalism develops through extended cycles of expansion and contraction lasting roughly 50 to 60 years. These long waves, Kondratiev argued, were largely driven by technological innovation, which stimulated a period of growth and investment before eventually giving way to stagnation and crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trotsky was critical of Kondratiev\u2019s interpretation, particularly the implication that these cycles were an objective, self-correcting feature of capitalism. He argued instead that capitalist development is shaped by social and political factors, and economic, above all by class struggle and the actions of the working class. For Trotsky, the rise and fall of capitalism could not be explained solely by technological or economic rhythms, but by the intervention of class struggles and the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Trotsky\u2019s polemic against Kondratiev, Cassidy remarks: \u201cIn a long 1923 letter to the editors of a socialist academic journal, [Trotsky] described Kondratiev\u2019s theory that long cycles existed and evolved with the same \u2018rigidly lawful rhythm\u2019 as minor cycles as \u2018an obviously false generalization from a formal analogy.\u2019 Whereas short cycles were generated by the internal dynamics of the capitalist economy, Trotsky wrote, the long-term evolution of the system was largely determined by \u2018external conditions,\u2019 such as colonialist land grabs, conflicts between the imperialist nations, and political insurrections. \u2018The acquisition by capitalism of new countries and continents,\u2019 Trotsky wrote, \u2018the discovery of new natural resources, and, in the wake of these, such major facts of \u2018superstructural\u2019 order as wars and revolutions, determine the character and replacement of ascending, stagnating, or declining epochs of capitalist development.\u2019 Any effort to supplant this broad historical approach with \u2018the methods of formalism,\u2019 as Kondratiev had done, amounted to \u2018splitting empty abstractions, \u2018 Trotsky\u2019s letter went on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, in his discussion of Kondratiev, Cassidy appears to conflate Bolshevism with Stalinism. He acknowledges that Kondratiev was able to develop and expound his ideas freely in Russia during the early years of the Bolshevik government. But in describing the later Stalinist purging of Kondratiev, Cassidy combines the Stalinist terror with the early workers\u2019 state, treating them as if they were part of a single, unbroken regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From a left-reformist viewpoint, Cassidy fails to grasp the fundamental difference between Bolshevism and Stalinism, the latter emerging as a reactionary, chauvinist, bureaucratic response to the Russian Revolution\u2019s isolation. This reaction found ideological expression in the erroneous and non-Marxist \u201csocialism in one country\u201d theory, which Trotsky and the Left Opposition opposed. Stalinism drowned workers\u2019 democracy and freedom of expression in mass purges and executions. Understanding 1920s-30s Soviet economic debates requires differentiating the early Soviet Union from Stalinist degeneration, which suppressed workers\u2019 democracy and genuine debate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keynesian policies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy highlights John Maynard Keynes, an Edwardian liberal, who believed state intervention could counter capitalism\u2019s instability. His vision of regulated capitalism, marked by public spending and deficit financing, shaped the post-Second World War era in Western Europe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After WW2, capitalism entered a rare period of sustained growth. The economic upswing was not a triumph of the system, but a temporary recovery driven by war destruction, US aid, and expanded global markets. The devastation had cleared outdated capital, allowing reinvestment and modernisation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reformists in the labour movement mistook this for long-term stability, but capitalism\u2019s contradictions and crisis, alongside inequality, and class struggle, would inevitably return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy notes that capitalism has needed significant state intervention to survive crises like the Great Depression, the 2008 crash, and COVID-19. For Marxists this underscores the argument that the \u201cfree market\u201d is a myth, and the state\u2019s role is to stabilise capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keynes\u2019s critics, including Joan Robinson, who favoured socialist planning, are covered by Cassidy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While Keynes promoted government spending for market stability, Marxists argue this merely delays capitalism\u2019s inherent contradictions, leading to inflation, falling profits, and class conflict. Government spending, reliant on capitalist profits and taxation, cannot resolve systemic issues. The stagflation and industrial unrest of the late 1960s and 1970s were evidence that Keynesian policies only masked capitalism\u2019s structural flaws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keynesian policies cannot eliminate capitalism\u2019s boom-bust cycle. Public spending and deficit financing, as advocated by Keynesian economists in the post WW2 decades, were temporary and partial fixes, not solutions to capitalism\u2019s fundamental problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are capitalism and democracy compatible?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The final third of the book deals with the rise and fall of neoliberalism. Cassidy references Karl Polanyi, a social theorist rather than an economist, who began his career as an economic journalist. Polanyi lived in \u2018Red Vienna\u2019 during the 1920s, before he was forced in 1933 to flee Austria then under \u2018Austro-fascist\u2019 rule and eventually settled in the United States, where he wrote The Great Transformation<\/em>, a book that became well known in its time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Polanyi raised the fundamental question of whether capitalism and democracy are compatible in the long run. Cassidy notes that, in the post-WW2 period, this issue seemed to fade into the background. However, the end of Keynesianism and the contradictions produced by decades of neoliberalism and hyper-globalisation have led to extreme inequality and austerity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From a Marxist perspective, an absence of a strong socialist opposition and weakened trade unions in many countries, has created fertile ground for figures such as Donald Trump and other right-wing populist politicians to exploit the common misery of austerity, stagnant wages, a housing crisis and collapsing public services and infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Globalisation has deepened inequality, enriched a small elite while leaving billions in poverty or economic insecurity. Many traditional industrial and manufacturing jobs in the advanced capitalist countries have been outsourced, while workers in the neo-colonial nations have been subjected to low wages and poor conditions. Globalisation has made the world economy more vulnerable to crises, as seen in the 2008 financial crash and the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The environment has also suffered greatly under deregulated global capitalism, with climate change and ecological destruction accelerating. Cassidy includes in his portraits ecological critics of capitalism, like Georgescu-Roegen, who challenge the ideology of endless growth under capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marxists agree that capitalism\u2019s drive for accumulation is incompatible with ecological sustainability, and add that only a planned, socialist economy can address the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As living standards stagnated or declined, nationalist and right-wing populism has grown, leading to the coming to power of reactionary figures like Donald Trump in the US, and assaults on democratic rights and even on bourgeois institutions, like universities, by populist right-wing governments. In many ways, Polanyi\u2019s ideas have resurfaced. Yet, from a Marxist standpoint, there is nothing fundamentally new in his analysis of capitalism and democracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marx and Engels believed that in capitalist society, the state\u2014including its formally democratic institutions\u2014ultimately serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. Even in the most democratic republics, they argued, the economic power of capital dominates political life. Elections, parliaments, and constitutions may give the appearance of popular rule, but real power lies with those who control the means of production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In The Communist Manifesto<\/em> (1848), they wrote: \u201cThe executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marx and Engels believed the working class could achieve democratic gains via mass struggle, but these would always be vulnerable, especially during economic crises. For instance, the current right-wing Labour government in Britain is suppressing Gaza protests and plans further repressive laws, which history shows will also be used against the workers\u2019 movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cChicago Boys\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n General Pinochet\u2019s brutal overthrow of Salvador Allende\u2019s socialist government in Chile in 1973 allowed the country to become a testing ground for neoliberalism, Cassidy writes. The \u201cChicago Boys,\u201d students of Arnold Harberger and Milton Friedman, both discussed in Cassidy\u2019s book, advised Pinochet on \u201cshock treatment,\u201d implementing deregulation, privatisation, and dismantling workers\u2019 rights in Chile. This served as a model for Thatcher and Reagan\u2019s 1980s campaigns against organised labor, for privatisation, and for rolling back working-class gains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These chapters of Cassidy\u2019s book are informative, though they necessarily limit discussion of the political and social forces involved, given that his focus is primarily economic. The deeper lessons of the Chilean experience\u2014and the defeat of Salvador Allende\u2019s Popular Unity (Unidad Popular) government \u2014must therefore be sought elsewhere. Chile: How and Why the Revolution Was Crushed, <\/em>by Tony Saunois, secretary of the Committee for a Workers\u2019 International, examines the revolutionary process in Chile from 1970 to 1973. He argues that while the Chilean working class displayed immense courage and revolutionary energy, the leadership of the movement failed to take the decisive steps necessary to overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy explores the link between slavery and capitalism through the views of Caribbean intellectuals C.L.R. James and Eric Williams. James, who was a Trotskyist for a period, detailed the Haitian Revolution against French rule in The Black Jacobins<\/em>, highlighting imperial exploitation, revolutionary fervor, and complex class dynamics within the independence movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery<\/em> (1944), argued that profits from the Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery fueled British industrial capitalism. He also showed how newly independent African and Caribbean nations, post-decolonisation, remained dependent on powerful capitalist states like Britain, the US, and France, limiting their \u2018independence\u2019 due to scarce capital and subordinate global economic positions. From 1962, as Trinidad and Tobago\u2019s first Prime Minister, Williams sought a \u201cmiddle way\u201d between the Soviet Union and Western capitalist systems but grew pessimistic about genuine development for new independent states within capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Permanent revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is unfortunate that Cassidy overlooks Trotsky\u2019s theory of permanent revolution, which is crucial for understanding neo-colonial revolutionary movements. Trotsky argued that in such nations, the weak bourgeoisie could not achieve democratic reform, national unification, or industrialisation in the manner historically of the emerging capitalists in advanced capitalist nations, leaving them economically tied to imperial powers even after independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The incredible economic growth of China in recent decades could not have happened without the consequences of the revolution. China\u2019s economic growth was rooted in its post-1949 planned economy, not capitalism. Nationalisation and land reform enabled rapid development, but bureaucratic control stifled efficiency and crushed workers\u2019 democracy. Pro-capitalist \u2018reforms\u2019 in the 1980s introduced market elements that revived capitalist contradictions like inequality and exploitation. China\u2019s form of state capitalism today has seen huge growth and development but also worsening inequalities and low wages and unemployment and worsening workplace exploitation for many millions. Only democratic workers\u2019 control and management of society can unlock China\u2019s full potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book concludes with a review of the ideas of current economist thinkers, like Joseph Stiglitz and Dani Rodrik, who criticized globalisation and financialisation, advocating for more \u2018inclusive\u2019 and regulated economic systems. Cassidy also examines the arguments of Thomas Piketty, author of a best-selling work on inequality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Piketty argues that the post-war economic boom and reformist policies led to a significant decline in inequality, a trend that continued until around 1979, when the rise of Thatcher and Reagan marked a shift in economic policy. Since then, inequality has largely returned to levels similar to those seen before 1914.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While making a correct prognosis, Piketty\u2019s solutions are reformist, not revolutionary; he proposes progressive taxation to reduce inequality. Marxists argue this does not challenge capitalism\u2019s exploitative foundations. And Piketty\u2019s focus on income and wealth inequality overlooks class struggle and the structural dynamics of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy concludes his panoramic work with the view that capitalism may continue to adapt rather than collapse: \u201cSo far, history has falsified [Marx\u2019s] prediction, partly because of something that few foresaw in the nineteenth century: the rise of big government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, Marx did not predict that capitalism would collapse automatically. While he identified deep contradictions within the capitalist system, such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, overproduction, and recurring crises, Marx consistently emphasised that capitalism would only be overthrown through conscious class struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Communist Manifesto <\/em>and later works, Marx and Engels argued that the working class must organise itself as a political force to challenge and ultimately replace the capitalist system. \u201cThe emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.\u201d So, while Marx foresaw capitalism\u2019s instability and potential for breakdown, he rejected fatalism. He believed that only organized revolutionary action by the working class could bring about socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding the role of \u2018big government\u2019, Marxists view state intervention as a temporary role that cannot overcome capitalism\u2019s inherent contradictions and crises or abolish exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy\u2019s cautious solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy correctly highlights capitalism\u2019s ability to reinvent itself: \u201cCapitalism has a remarkable knack for reinventing itself and adapting to historical circumstances in order to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But his conclusion is cautious and imprisoned within the capitalist market system. Cassidy writes: \u201cFixing the capitalist system\u2026 requires not only political will but also the ability to act at the right time. This often means mobilizing a political movement in the midst of a crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopes for significant and lasting reforms are misplaced. The post-WW2 era of prolonged economic upswing and reforms is over. We are in a period of bare-knuckle capitalism, akin to pre-WW1 and inter-war years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marxists fight for reforms not as ends in themselves, but as part of a strategy to transform society. We support demands like better wages, housing, or healthcare as important gains for the working class, while linking these to exposing the deeper contradictions of capitalism. Reforms won through struggle can expose the system\u2019s limits and raise class consciousness and the struggle to transform society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to build strong workers\u2019 organisations and revolutionary socialist forces to not just defend basic workers\u2019 rights today, but to also fundamentally change society, not merely tinker with a failing system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassidy\u2019s book, while a valuable historical account of capitalism\u2019s critics, avoids advocating for systemic change. He finds capitalism adaptable albeit increasingly questioned. From a Marxist perspective, this adaptability is finite. Capitalism\u2019s inherent contradictions, such as, labour versus capital, the potential of the means of production that is in the straitjacket of the profit motive and capitalist nation-state, environment versus accumulation, are intensifying. Social, economic, and political polarisation and new catastrophic wars and ecological destruction are on the order of the day under this system. History shows that societies and \u2018civilisations\u2019 can regress, breakdown and collapse. Only united working-class movements and revolutionary socialist transformation can find a lasting solution to this decaying and destructive capitalist system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite its limitations, Capitalism and Its Critics <\/em>is a panoramic, sharp, and accessible work. It provides an unrelenting exposure of capitalism\u2019s structural crises and an indictment of a system whose contradictions are hurtling humankind towards ever greater disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capitalism and Its Critics: A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World by John Cassidy, published in hardcover by Allen Lane<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is growing and widespread dissatisfaction with capitalism worldwide. Economic models that dominated the post-WW2 decades \u2014 Keynesian social democracy and later neoliberal globalization \u2014 are seen as having run aground. The system today is failing to meet the basic needs of many working-class people. This crisis has fuelled both right and left populist movements. 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(Marx, Rules of the First International (1864))<\/p>\n\n\n\n