Review of Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert (Penguin Press, 2025)
Joseph Schumpeter famously summarized the achievement of capitalism in his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, with the following remark: “Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for a steadily decreasing amount of effort.”
On seeing Sven Beckert’s doorstep of a book — approximately a quarter of a million words longer than Schumpeter’s terse summary — an obvious question throws itself at the potential reader: What more does Professor Beckert have to explain?
The book’s subtitle gives an immediate answer. Whereas Schumpeter was offering a statement about the state that capitalism had reached in America and Europe by the time of World War II, Beckert offers a “global history” that starts a millennium ago in Yemen and ends in Cambodia.
His history consists of short, mostly descriptive essays covering incidents of capitalist activity and development since the beginnings of urban civilization. Loosely connected, the essays are grouped together in some eighteen extended chapters with sometimes cryptic titles, like “Enclosures” or “Insurgents.” These give vivid portraits of the personalities concerned and the business and political dramas in which they were involved.
The illustration of capitalism from all parts of the world is undoubtedly a strength of Beckert’s book. However, its critical weakness is that the personalities and dramas are not integrated with a clear political economy of capitalism.
In the absence of such a conceptual framework, Beckert’s book makes huge demands on its reader. Even the most ardent reader is unlikely to read these 1,100 pages in one sitting. His narratives span Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and jump back and forth between time periods.
Sven Beckert…
Auteur: Jan Toporowski
