![]() They also agree that while a “market economy” plays an important role in generating prosperity, a “market society” rapidly veers into disaster. With each swing of the political economic pendulum, the industrial, capitalist societies either slowed, or sped up, the advance “towards utopia” – a society in which all people, regardless of class, race, or sex, enjoy prosperity, human rights and a reasonably fair share of the society’s wealth.ĭeLong and Stoll present similar perspectives on the “Thirty Glorious Years” from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, and a similarly dim view of the widespread turn to neoliberalism since then. These three very different theorists responded to, and helped bring about, major changes in “the rules of the game within which economic life takes place”.ĭeLong uses their work to good effect in explaining how policymakers and economic elites navigated and tried to influence the changing currents of market fundamentalism, authoritarian collectivism, social democracy, the New Deal, and neoliberalism. The latter term refers to the methods by which people collectively decide how they are going to organize the rules of the game within which economic life takes place.” (page 85 emphasis in original)ĭiscussion of the political economics of the Long Twentieth Century, in my opinion, account for most of the bulk and most of the value in this book.ĭeLong weaves into his narratives frequent – but also clear and concise – explanations of the work of John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and Karl Polanyi. “There is a big difference between the economic and the political economic. On the other hand he does tell us what “political economics” means: Delong, a professor of economics at University of California Berkeley, describes “the long twentieth century” – from 1870 to 2010 – as “the first century in which the most important historical thread was what anyone would call the economic one, for it was the century that saw us end our near-universal dire material poverty.” ( Slouching Towards Utopia, page 2 emphasis mine) Unfortunately that is as close as he gets in this book to defining just what he means by “economics”. Let’s start with Slouching Towards Utopia. ![]() In my opinion Stoll casts a clearer light on the key problems we now face.Īlthough neither book explicitly addresses the prospects for future prosperity, Stoll’s concluding verdict offers a faint hope. Both make valuable contributions to an understanding of our current situation. Stoll’s slimmer volume goes back thousands of years, though the bulk of his coverage concerns the past seven centuries.īoth books are well organized and well written. Mark Stoll summarizes his book Profit as “a history of capitalism that seeks to explain both how capitalism changed the natural world and how the environment shaped capitalism.”īy far the longer of the two books, DeLong’s tome primarily concerns the years from 1870 to 2010. DeLong intends his Slouching Towards Utopia to be a “grand narrative” of what he calls “the long twentieth century”. Taken together, two new books go a long way toward answering the first of those questions.īradford J. Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, was published by Basic Books, Sept 2022 605 pages. ![]() ![]() Currently we have no plan to release Capitalism Lab on GOG.What led to the twentieth century’s rapid economic growth? And what are the prospects for that kind of growth to return? You can't invite this user because you have blocked him. You can't chat with this user because you have blocked him. You can't chat with this user due to their or your privacy settings. User since Unblock chat User blocked This user's wishlist is not public. View profile View wishlist Start conversation Invite to friends Invite to friends Accept invitation Accept invitation Pending invitation. Mrgarrettscott mrgarrettscott Sorry, data for given user is currently unavailable. ![]()
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