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Capitalism and Its Critics

John Cassidy, 2025

Two centuries of capitalism's critics, from the Luddites and Marx to Piketty, and what their arguments reveal about inequality, globalization's backlash and the age of AI.

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29 parts, about 48 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Tells the history of capitalism through the people who attacked it, from colonial trade to rising inequality
  • Shows that capitalism is almost always in crisis or heading toward one, and why the critiques keep returning
  • Weighs each critic fairly, crediting what held up and noting where the theory oversimplified

Who it is for

  • Readers who want the big economic ideas in one story
  • Students of economics or politics who find the textbooks dry
  • People debating whether markets need fixing or replacing

What the summary covers

  1. Introduction: Capitalism Through Its Critics' Eyes2 min
  2. 1. William Bolts and the East India Company2 min
  3. 2. Adam Smith on Colonial Capitalism and Slavery2 min
  4. 3. The Logic of the Luddites2 min
  5. 4. William Thompson's Utilitarian Socialism2 min
  6. 5. Anna Wheeler and the Forgotten Half of Humanity1 min
  7. 6. Flora Tristan and the Universal Workers' Union1 min
  8. 7. Thomas Carlyle on Mammon and the Cash Nexus1 min
  9. 8. Friedrich Engels and The Communist Manifesto2 min
  10. 9. Karl Marx's Capitalist Laws of Motion2 min
  11. 10. Henry George's Moral Crusade1 min
  12. 11. Thorstein Veblen and the Captains of Industry1 min
  13. 12. John Hobson's Theory of Imperialism2 min
  14. 13. Rosa Luxemburg on Capitalism, Colonialism, and War2 min
  15. 14. Nikolai Kondratiev and the Rhythm of Long Cycles2 min
  16. 15. John Maynard Keynes's Blueprint for Managed Capitalism2 min
  17. 16. Karl Polanyi on Capitalism, Democracy, and Fascism1 min
  18. 17. Two Skeptics of Keynesianism: Paul Sweezy and Michał Kalecki2 min
  19. 18. Joan Robinson and the "Bastard Keynesians"1 min
  20. 19. J. C. Kumarappa and the Economics of Permanence1 min
  21. 20. Eric Williams on Slavery and Capitalism1 min
  22. 21. The Rise and Fall of Dependency Theory in Latin America2 min
  23. 22. Milton Friedman and the Rise of Neoliberalism2 min
  24. 23. Nicholas Georgescu Roegen and the Limits to Growth1 min
  25. 24. Silvia Federici and Wages for Housework1 min
  26. 25. Theorists of Thatcherism: Stuart Hall vs. Friedrich Hayek2 min
  27. 26. Parsing Globalization: Samir Amin, Dani Rodrik, and Joseph Stiglitz2 min
  28. 27. Thomas Piketty and Rising Inequality2 min
  29. 28. The End of Capitalism, or the Beginning?3 min

Recommended by

  • Simon JohnsonWinner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
    This is intellectual history at its best, and essential reading for anyone who wonders how the modern world wandered off course.
  • Michael SandelAuthor of The Tyranny of Merit
    John Cassidy’s Capitalism and Its Critics is an impressive history of arguments about capitalism, from the industrial age to our time.
  • Wendy CarlinProfessor of economics at University College London
    Cassidy takes the reader on a fascinating journey to find out how capitalism has transformed the world.

About the author

  • John CassidyJournalist and economic historian, staff writer at The New Yorker
    • Born 1963; British American journalist and economic historian
    • Contributor to The New York Review of Books; earlier an editor at The Sunday Times of London and deputy editor at the New York Post
    • Undergraduate at University College, Oxford; Harkness Fellow at Harvard; master's in journalism from Columbia and in economics from NYU
    • Earlier books Dot.con (the dotcom bubble) and How Markets Fail (history of economics plus the 2000s housing and credit bust)

Read it alongside

  • Pushes backFree to Choose

    John Cassidy, following Keynes, holds that an economy can stay stuck in a slump and calls the self balancing economy a flawed theory; Milton and Rose Friedman argue the Depression was a failure of government in money and that government is the major source of instability.

  • Goes deeperThe Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

    John Cassidy judges the East India Company a corporate state that exploited producers; William Dalrymple traces how its 1600 charter held the possibility of sovereignty and how Bengal revenue became corporate profit.

  • Goes deeperThe Great Divergence

    John Cassidy reports that the slave trade and commerce built on slavery were core contributors to Britain's eighteenth century development; Kenneth Pomeranz argues New World slave grown goods stood in for acreage Britain lacked, while overseas funding could have mattered but is not shown.

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