Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
The Relentless
Revolution: A History of Capitalism
by Joyce Appleby, Norton, 2010
Reviewed by John Ramsbottom
At a moment when the "Occupy" movement
decries the economic order as we know it, the promise of this book
for the general reader is appealing but elusive. Appleby begins
with the historian's perennial challenge-simply to "make you
curious about a system that is all too familiar"-and goes on to
trace the evolution of capitalist practices worldwide since the
17th century. Quoting authorities as disparate as Edmund Burke and
Gordon Gekko, she argues that innovation, not mere profit-seeking,
is the central feature of capitalism. A specialist in
Anglo-America, she devotes nearly a third of the book to the period
before 1800-factories appear on p. 152-when the intellectual and
social implications of this new form of production took hold in the
West. Capitalism educated ordinary people to accept the
"impertinent dynamic of 'more'"; at the same time, capitalists as a
class acquired the power to control labor. After this point, the
book inevitably becomes a sort of global history-what isn't related
to capitalism?-and loses focus. Appleby brings the story right down
to the financial crisis of 2008, and although she laments the
failure of regulation in this instance, she attributes the weakness
of government in the face of financial 'innovation' to the human
tendency to miss warning signs. Having identified intractable
poverty and a deteriorating environment as the legacy of
capitalism, she remains oddly optimistic about the ability of
societies to "modify and monitor their economies in pursuit of
shared goals." Historians too are only human.
- John Ramsbottom is a Visiting Professor in the Global and
Historical Studies Program at Butler University.