Enemies of the Market Mindset

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If capitalism had been overthrown as quickly as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had at first expected, John Cassidy’s sprawling “Capitalism and Its Critics” would have been shorter and easier to write, if not to sell. But, resilient, protean, abused and occasionally bailed-out, capitalism is still with us, and so are its critics, the latest in a line so long that Mr. Cassidy, who was setting out to tell capitalism’s story (or much of it) through their eyes, was spoiled for choice. Capitalism always provides consumers, and readers, with plenty of what they are looking for.

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The War on Growth

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The industrial revolution is not yet canceled, but it has become “problematic.” When delegates arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, for Conference of the Parties 26, the 2021 edition of the U.N.’s climate jamboree, Britain’s then–prime minister, Boris Johnson, welcomed them with a speech in which, after some by-the-numbers apocalypticism (crops withering, locusts swarming, wildfires, cyclones, Miami underwater), he turned his attention to the industrial revolution: “It was here in Glasgow, 250 years ago, that James Watt came up with a machine that was powered by steam, that was produced by burning coal. . . . We’ve brought you to the very place where the doomsday machine began to tick.”

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