Capitalism and its critics: A history from the Industrial Revolution to AI.JohnCassidy, (Allen Lane,2025. Pp. 624. ISBN 9780241457009. Hbk £25).

This is a pivotal time for global capitalism and thus a perfect moment for John Cassidy's new book, Capitalism and Its Critics.The marriage between democracy and capitalism is coming undone with the rise of right-wing authoritarian populism and the attacks on liberal democracy.The growth of prosperity has slowed, and populists across the world have exploited widespread feelings amongst voters that capitalism and globalization are failing to deliver the expected results, thus reopening up the big basic questions about capitalism, as well as about economic systems generally.Rather than a traditional history of capitalism or the rise and fall of neoliberalism, Cassidy's book is an ambitious 250-year history of capitalism, from the early days of the Industrial Revolution to the economic upheaval that may be wrought by artificial intelligence (AI), told through the eyes of 28 of its most important and interesting critics, from some who sought to replace capitalism entirely and proposed non-capitalist models of structuring economic life to others who pushed for maintaining its core whilst remaking its rules.Cassidy includes some of the obvious choices -Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Piketty, for instance -but also lesser-known yet incredibly thought-provoking writers, such as Thomas Carlyle, a cultural and moral critic of capitalism who insisted on hierarchies and strongmen; Joan Robinson, a Keynesian who worked on distribution, allocation, and the concept of exploitation; Flora Tristan, a French-Peruvian socialist and feminist known for her ground-breaking work advocating for women's rights and in the formation of workers' unions; and J.C. Kumarappa, an Indian economist and a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi who was a pioneer of rural economic development theories.Each of them gets a chapter describing their (often fascinating) personal background and explaining their critiques within their historical context.These critics all share profound differences; however, they also converge on several common complaints regarding the pathologies and contradictions of capitalism: 'exploitation, monopoly, imperialism and instability' (p.300).Cassidy does a wonderful job of illuminating the evolution of the capitalist system, tracing the historical roots of capitalism's discontent as well as the attempts to come up with workable alternatives to it.The overarching theme of the book is the tension between those who push for necessary reforms of capitalism and those who view it as a system wrought with contradictions,