Capital idea

A history of capitalism seen through the lens of its critics, highlighting the sticking points that lead to social crises.

- BY DANYL MCLAUCHLAN

In the late 18th century the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith described a new form of social order spreading across Great Britain. He called it commercial society and declared it superior to the pastoral and agricultural economies of the past. Those old systems were ruled by landed aristocrats and priests; this new system was ruled by the market. Once a square in the centre of town where people haggled for goods, markets were expanding to encompass the entire public sphere. Instead of being born or raised into fixed social roles, people would function as merchants, buying and selling goods and labour, rising or falling in status according to their economic fortunes. Smith predicted that this novel social order would be an engine of innovation and opulence, liberating people from the tyranny of poverty, and he has been proved right beyond his wildest dreams. Commercial society – renamed capitalism during the 19th century – has transformed the world. The global middle-classes of the 21st century – some 3.5 billion people – lead longer, healthier and more luxurious lives than the kings and emperors of the feudal era.

And yet, ever since the emergence of capitalism, its many critics – religious, secular, intellectual, revolutionary, liberal, socialist, radical and conservative – have denounced it as evil. New Yorker journalist John Cassidy has compiled them into a grand ensemble of anti-capitalist thought. By arranging them in chronological order, he’s created a fascinating history of free-market economics as seen by its most astute and prescient foes.