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Pathology of the Capitalist Spirit: An Essay on Greed, Loss, and Hope
Pathology of the Capitalist Spirit is about capital and about the economic system that bears its name. In this book, Levine argues that our pursuit of ever-more wealth in the form of capital expresses our dissatisfaction with the world we live in, with what we have and what we don't have. Capital embodies our hope for something different. Because capital embodies this hope, it has become desire's object. In his study of capitalism, Levine explores the meaning of capital as a social reality connected to fundamental human aspirations. The link between capital and the pursuit of a hoped-for state is especially important in light of the stubborn insistence on the part of its critics that capitalism exists to serve the material interests of those whose vocation is to own capital. This misunderstanding ignores what is essential about capital, which is its link not to interests but to hope, especially the hope that by accumulating capital the individual can achieve an attachment to the good. It is this hope that blocks tolerance of any notion that there is something unfair in the capitalist's acquisition of wealth and that fairness can be achieved through its redistribution to others. It is also this hope that animates the capitalist system as a whole. And in that sense, this hope is the spirit of capitalism. To develop this theme, Levine calls on the ideas and writings of major theorists involved with understanding modernity and Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Joseph Schumpeter.
108 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
13 people want to read
About the author
David Levine
6 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
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August 23, 2025
All Levine books are really 5 stars because a world class mind produces them. There is always subtlety, clarity, and many creative twists -- as would expect of a genius of his caliber. Nevertheless, we can assess his work according to his own standards. The book falls short of full dialectics (elsewhere I have dubbed this a kind of forgetting captured by the phrase "dialectical dementia"). Near the end, Levine produces a series of “musts” that remind me of policy papers and of undergraduate essays when authors have run out of ideas and resort to exclamatory demands. These demands are not, to me, eminent to the argument and reveal a quiet desperation. I will get to that.
The book has two goals. First, Levine continues a project that he started in chapter 2 of his Wealth and Freedom: An Introduction to Political Economy, where he answers the question of why we might need wealth. Two reasons for needing wealth are more straightforward: for protection against Nature, and, for individuation -- a kind of development of the self via materials and commodities – cameras for photography, paints for painters, pen and paper for writers. The third element he dubs "esteem." Wealth can be used to build quantitative esteem based on the amount of wealth an individual owns. This characteristic relies on hierarchy and competition and is dangerous for the individual and for society in that it denies finite satisfaction. You pursue infinite wealth to the detriment of yourself, others, and everything around you. [See the film Mountainhead for a prescient depiction of the kind of destruction that the pursuit of the infinite creates.]
Levine did not take this up the destruction that occurs when we pursue “esteem” in Wealth and Freedom but he does so in this book. The goal is to show the deeper causes of this pursuit of the infinite. This he calls "greed." I will say more about this below.
The second goal is to explain our current political condition in which belief and fantasy trump facts and the objective structure of the world.
He accomplishes both goals via the following claims. All cultures possess an impulse towards greed. He is careful to broaden the meaning of greed so that it applies to more than material possession of commodities, money, and wealth. Greed refers to any motive whose goal cannot really be met because attaining the object of desire does not satisfy and therefore one wants more of it, always. We can think of it as a fixation or an addiction. Thus, we can be greedy for status, for power, for rank, for food -- probably all the so called "sins" and beyond. Levine gives a second name to this greed, the "disease of the infinite" -- what Hegel calls "bad infinity."
The arrival of capitalism does two things to this greed, this disease of the infinite. Instead of repressing it, a repression which thinkers from Aristotle to Polanyi thought necessary for a properly functioning society, capitalism instead cultivates and celebrates this greed. Historically, this liberation of greed brings forth the greatest wealth that humans have ever experienced. But capitalism also takes us towards the insight that this disease has a cure, namely, an acceptance of finitude within a wealthy society. This is capital without capitalism. So far, so good.
Levine’s second goal is to explain and have us move away from a world that relies in belief and fantasy and have us move towards a world that is more fully modern, a world of abstract logic and rationality we relate to each other as individuals and not as members of a “group.”
Group identification is really the culprit in Levine’s presentation (does dialectical analyses allow a culprit?). Such group identification is prior to modernity and something that modernity has not yet eliminated. Here too the disease of the infinite plays a role. Instead of accepting their finitude, individuals seek infinity (immortality) in groups and in nations. In essence, Levine doubles down on modernity's telos. I do not find this part of his presentation compelling.
There are hundreds of insights available in this book. I was especially enriched by his deeper connections between greed, infinitude, finitude, and the satisfaction of desire. He provides a political psychology to Marx's distinction between worlds that live by M-C-M' (infinitude) and those that live by C1-M-C2 (finitude).
Nevertheless, Levine does not recognize that the disease of the infinite (greed) is also a response to the abstractness of modernity, that perhaps modernity does not provide enough shelter for those seeking particularity in time/space/culture. Instead, he blames the desire to attack modernity on the pre-modern impulse to need a "group." While I agree with Levine on the disadvantages of group identification (e.g. fascism, acting through emotions only, resort to magical thinking) as well as on the great advantages of modernity (release from group pressure, getting to know the objective world as it, and creatively reshaping that world), he does not adequately consider the advantages of group life (the kind of love and belonging that family can provide, a gesture towards longevity, and hearing an echo of the infinite) nor the disadvantages of modernity (an orientation based on achievement, the tedium and difficulty of rational decision making, and an anomie that results from atomism).
Indeed, the most important element that Levine leaves out is the possibility that the return of group life and its magical thinking is a response to modernity’s stultification of the fuller human spirit. Thus, rather than double down on modernity’s abstract rationalism, which in my view would result in a response of greater magical thinking, what we might do instead is to consider how modernity and group life might both be necessary.
If we can recognize that within the irrationality of capitalism lies capital (adequate wealth for all democratically decided) than we might also consider how within the irrationality of group life there might lie the rational kernel that provides love and belonging without fascism and magical thinking. Here we accept our finitude but also our healthy desire for the infinite.
The book has two goals. First, Levine continues a project that he started in chapter 2 of his Wealth and Freedom: An Introduction to Political Economy, where he answers the question of why we might need wealth. Two reasons for needing wealth are more straightforward: for protection against Nature, and, for individuation -- a kind of development of the self via materials and commodities – cameras for photography, paints for painters, pen and paper for writers. The third element he dubs "esteem." Wealth can be used to build quantitative esteem based on the amount of wealth an individual owns. This characteristic relies on hierarchy and competition and is dangerous for the individual and for society in that it denies finite satisfaction. You pursue infinite wealth to the detriment of yourself, others, and everything around you. [See the film Mountainhead for a prescient depiction of the kind of destruction that the pursuit of the infinite creates.]
Levine did not take this up the destruction that occurs when we pursue “esteem” in Wealth and Freedom but he does so in this book. The goal is to show the deeper causes of this pursuit of the infinite. This he calls "greed." I will say more about this below.
The second goal is to explain our current political condition in which belief and fantasy trump facts and the objective structure of the world.
He accomplishes both goals via the following claims. All cultures possess an impulse towards greed. He is careful to broaden the meaning of greed so that it applies to more than material possession of commodities, money, and wealth. Greed refers to any motive whose goal cannot really be met because attaining the object of desire does not satisfy and therefore one wants more of it, always. We can think of it as a fixation or an addiction. Thus, we can be greedy for status, for power, for rank, for food -- probably all the so called "sins" and beyond. Levine gives a second name to this greed, the "disease of the infinite" -- what Hegel calls "bad infinity."
The arrival of capitalism does two things to this greed, this disease of the infinite. Instead of repressing it, a repression which thinkers from Aristotle to Polanyi thought necessary for a properly functioning society, capitalism instead cultivates and celebrates this greed. Historically, this liberation of greed brings forth the greatest wealth that humans have ever experienced. But capitalism also takes us towards the insight that this disease has a cure, namely, an acceptance of finitude within a wealthy society. This is capital without capitalism. So far, so good.
Levine’s second goal is to explain and have us move away from a world that relies in belief and fantasy and have us move towards a world that is more fully modern, a world of abstract logic and rationality we relate to each other as individuals and not as members of a “group.”
Group identification is really the culprit in Levine’s presentation (does dialectical analyses allow a culprit?). Such group identification is prior to modernity and something that modernity has not yet eliminated. Here too the disease of the infinite plays a role. Instead of accepting their finitude, individuals seek infinity (immortality) in groups and in nations. In essence, Levine doubles down on modernity's telos. I do not find this part of his presentation compelling.
There are hundreds of insights available in this book. I was especially enriched by his deeper connections between greed, infinitude, finitude, and the satisfaction of desire. He provides a political psychology to Marx's distinction between worlds that live by M-C-M' (infinitude) and those that live by C1-M-C2 (finitude).
Nevertheless, Levine does not recognize that the disease of the infinite (greed) is also a response to the abstractness of modernity, that perhaps modernity does not provide enough shelter for those seeking particularity in time/space/culture. Instead, he blames the desire to attack modernity on the pre-modern impulse to need a "group." While I agree with Levine on the disadvantages of group identification (e.g. fascism, acting through emotions only, resort to magical thinking) as well as on the great advantages of modernity (release from group pressure, getting to know the objective world as it, and creatively reshaping that world), he does not adequately consider the advantages of group life (the kind of love and belonging that family can provide, a gesture towards longevity, and hearing an echo of the infinite) nor the disadvantages of modernity (an orientation based on achievement, the tedium and difficulty of rational decision making, and an anomie that results from atomism).
Indeed, the most important element that Levine leaves out is the possibility that the return of group life and its magical thinking is a response to modernity’s stultification of the fuller human spirit. Thus, rather than double down on modernity’s abstract rationalism, which in my view would result in a response of greater magical thinking, what we might do instead is to consider how modernity and group life might both be necessary.
If we can recognize that within the irrationality of capitalism lies capital (adequate wealth for all democratically decided) than we might also consider how within the irrationality of group life there might lie the rational kernel that provides love and belonging without fascism and magical thinking. Here we accept our finitude but also our healthy desire for the infinite.
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