The core book John Cassidy's Capitalism and Its Critics: A History From The Industrial Revolution To AI provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism. Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker tells the story through the eyes of the critics from the English Luddites who rebelled against early factory automation to communists in the early twentieth century, the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement. It visits familiar names―Smith, Marx, Luxemburg, Keynes, Polanyi, Stiglitz, and Piketty-but also less familiar figures, including William Thompson, the Irish proto-socialist; Flora Tristan, the French proponent of a universal labor union; John Hobson, the original theorist of imperialism; Eric Williams, the Trinidadian author of a famous thesis on slavery and capitalism; Joan Robinson, the Cambridge economist and critic of the Cold War; and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the founding father of degrowth. Blending rich biography, panoramic history, and lively exploration of economic theories, Capitalism and Its Critics illuminates the deep roots of many of the most urgent issues of our time.
1. Introduction and Chapter 1. William Bolts and the East India Company. Chapter 2. Adam Smith on Colonial Capitalism and Slavery. Chapter 3. The Logic of the Luddites.
2. Chapter 4. William Thompson's Utilitarian Socialism. Chapter 5. Anna Wheeler and the Forgotten Half of Humanity. Chapter 6. Flora Tristan and the Universal Workers' Union. Modern Times, Director Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin Productions, 1936.
3. Chapter 7. Thomas Carlyle on Mammon and the Cash Nexus. Chapter 8. Friedrich Engles and The Communist Manifesto. Chapter 9. Karl Marx's Capitalist Laws of Motion. Reds, Director Warren Beatty, Barclays Mercantile Industrial Finance, 1981.
4. Chapter 10. Henry George's Moral Crusade. Chapter 11. Thorstein Veblen and the Captains of Industry. Chapter 12. John Hobson's Theory of Imperialism. Citizen Kane, Director Orson Wells, RKO Radio Productions, 1941.
5. Chapter 13. Rosa Luxemburg on Capitalism, Colonialism and War. Chapter 14. Nikolai Kondratiev and the Dynamics of Capitalist Development. Chapter 15. John Maynard Keynes's Blueprint for Managed Capitalism.
6. Chapter 16. Karl Polanyi's Warnings About Capitalism and Democracy. Chapter 17. Paul Sweezy and Michal Kalecki. Chapter 18. John Robinson and the "Bastard Keynesians." Blue Collar, Director Paul Schrader, Tat Communications, 1978.
7. Chapter 19. J.C. Kumarappa and the Economics of Permanence. Chapter 20. Eric Williams on Slavery and Capitalism. Chapter 21. The Rise and Fall of Dependency Theory in Latin America.
8. Chapter 22. Milton Friedman and the Rise of Neoliberalism. Chapter 23. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and the Limits of Growth. Chapter 24. Silvia Federici and Wages for Housework. Wall Street, Director Oliver Stone, 20th Century Fox, 1987.
9. Chapter 25. Stuart Hall vs. Friedrich Hayek. Chapter 26. Samir Amin, Dani Rodrik, and Joseph Stiglitz. Emily the Criminal, Director John Patton Ford, Evil Hag Productions, 2022.
10. Chapter 27. Thomas Piketty and Rising Inequality. Chapter 28. The End of Capitalism or the Beginning? What did we learn?
John Cassidy, Capitalism and Its Critics: A History From The Industrial Revolution To AI, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025.
Modern Times, Director Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin Productions, 1936.
Reds, Director Warren Beatty, Barclays Mercantile Industrial Finance, 1981.
Citizen Kane, Director Orson Wells, RKO Radio Productions, 1941.
Blue Collar, Director Paul Schrader, Tat Communications, 1978.
Wall Street, Director Oliver Stone, 20th Century Fox, 1987.
Emily the Criminal, Director John Patton Ford, Evil Hag Productions, 2022.