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Understanding Capitalism
Understanding Capitalism aims to answer the question: "Why capitalism fails us"?. It explores the different definitions of what capitalism is and is not – showing why definitions matter. It dissolves the many myths that make it hard to understand the system. Readers acquire tools needed to engage basic economic and social issues of our time by showing precisely how they depend upon the capitalist system. Then the book shows how and where we can go beyond capitalism to specific alternative systems. Doing that, we argue, can and should be part of solving today’s great issues, of making the world better than we found it.
248 pages, Hardcover
Published December 9, 2025
25 people are currently reading
442 people want to read
About the author
Richard D. Wolff
46 books865 followersRichard D. Wolff is an American economist, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology, and class analysis. He is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD. He will release three new books in 2012: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books), Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press), and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 20, 2026
There is disagreement on the quote's attribution but the idea that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism becomes more resonant as the years go by. In fact, imagining the first apocalypic outcome in the current environment is no stretch at all.
That capitalism is in crisis is surely no longer in doubt. Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008, the wheels have gradually been falling off the edifice of neoliberal capitalism, its second-to-last stage, before the final descent into fascism, which we are now entering.
This book by the prominent American Marxist economist, Professor Richard D.Wolff, is a rebuff to those who say that when it comes to capitalism 'There is no Alternative' (a reference to Margaret Thatcher's famous catchcry to her doubters in the 1980s).
According to Wolff, just as slavery gave way to feudalism, and feudalism gave way to capitalism as the grand organising principle for humanity's material world, capitalism itself will prove to be mortal. Indeed, there is a good argument it is currently in its death throes.
But Wolff in this book is more focused on defining what capitalism is and what it isn't than about prescribing an alternative economic system. It is not, he writes, defined by private property, which has aways existed. Neither is it defined by markets, which date back thousands of years.
"Defining capitalism in terms of markets - how goods and services are distributed - takes attention away from how they are produced," Woolff writes. Rather, capitalism is defined by the unequal and fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the relationship between employer and employee.
Capitalism thus is exposed as a historical system, one created to serve the interests of the powerful, not a natural law. Reflecting the classic Marxist analysis, exploitation lies at the heart of capitalism. Workers produce more value than they receive. Owners of capital appropriate that surplus
This relationship, not income level or job title, defines their respective class positions.
More importantly - and we see this happening increasingly today - the ever-increasing inequalities arising from neoliberal capitalism pervert democracy as concentrations of wealth and power under an emboldened billionaire class take over and manipulate democratic institutions.
"In capitalism, democracy is unacceptable because it threatens the unequally distributed weath of the minority with a majority vote," Wolff writes. "For capitalism's leaders, democracy is what they say, not what they do."
As to why these contradictions are starting to destroy democracy's foundations only now, another recent book by American historian Gary Gerstle ('The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order') provided a convincing explanation. The collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War removed the only alternative to capitalism, allowing neoliberalism to expand from a domestic political movement into a global, unchallenged system.
For the subsequent 30+ years since 1990, capitalism has survived by marketising every inch of our lives, increasing workforce participation (every household is now a two-income household) and supporting debt-driven consumption via the liberalisation of the financial sector.
Those trends reached their apotheosis in 2008. Ever since, neoliberal capitalism has been riding the coat-tails of authoritarians who manufacture culture wars to persuade populations that their problems (rising prices, unaffordabe housing, decaying public infrastructure) are the fault of immigrants or refugees or some other marginalised community. In the meantime, the rich get richer and are now plotting to escape our dying planet to build communities on Mars.
This leaves humanity to live with what is euphemistically referred to as the 'externalities' of capitalist production - the warming planet, dying rivers, rising sea levels, plastic pollution, and dwindling natural diversity. Trump's gangster regime is the final stage - fascism ('capitalism with the gloves off'). This is not so much an economic crisis, as a moral one, as Wolff observes.
"Those externalities undermine the efficiency claims used to justify capitalism," he writes "More importantly, enviromental costs reinforce the need to explore...the tendencies toward self-destruction built into capitalism."
"Economic systems are eventually evaluated according to how well or not they serve the society in which they exist. Modern capitalism has now accumulated around a hundred individuals in the world who together own more wealth than the bottom half of this planet's population "
Ultimately, Wolff writes we can do better than capitalism, just as long ago people decided they could do better than slavery, feudalism and the divine right of kings. The next stage may lie in the rise of worker cooperatives in building a more sustainable, equitable and democratic future.
My own feeling is something big will have to break before that happens -,most likely in the international monetary system. You are already starting to see this with Trump deliberately smashing the remaining institutions of the post WWII order, including the US dollar's reserve status. The dream of the grifters who support him is the replacement of the current system with crypto-currency, but we are already seeing what a mad fantasy that is.
If not the monetary system as the final straw, it could be the environmental crisis as increasingly frequent extreme weather events, together with shortages of food and water, drive massive and unsustainable population movements. (Before you accuse me of hyperbole, speak to someone in the global reinsurance sector and ask them how they're feeling about things these days).
It could also be an energy crisis. With the US in denial about climate change and the powerful fossil fuel lobby urging a pedal-to-the-metal approach to digging up oil, gas and coal, God help us. It could be a major war, perhaps a nuclear war, as NATO falls apart and as Russia sparks an all-out conflagration in Europe.
Most likely, it will be a global move back toward closed borders, a growing crackdown on immigration, increasing tariff barriers and the erosion of our remaining democratic freedoms as increasingly authoritarian governments suppress dissent.
Maybe the doomsayers were right after all. After the inexorable self-destructive logic of capitalism there can be nothing....only the end of the world.
That capitalism is in crisis is surely no longer in doubt. Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008, the wheels have gradually been falling off the edifice of neoliberal capitalism, its second-to-last stage, before the final descent into fascism, which we are now entering.
This book by the prominent American Marxist economist, Professor Richard D.Wolff, is a rebuff to those who say that when it comes to capitalism 'There is no Alternative' (a reference to Margaret Thatcher's famous catchcry to her doubters in the 1980s).
According to Wolff, just as slavery gave way to feudalism, and feudalism gave way to capitalism as the grand organising principle for humanity's material world, capitalism itself will prove to be mortal. Indeed, there is a good argument it is currently in its death throes.
But Wolff in this book is more focused on defining what capitalism is and what it isn't than about prescribing an alternative economic system. It is not, he writes, defined by private property, which has aways existed. Neither is it defined by markets, which date back thousands of years.
"Defining capitalism in terms of markets - how goods and services are distributed - takes attention away from how they are produced," Woolff writes. Rather, capitalism is defined by the unequal and fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the relationship between employer and employee.
Capitalism thus is exposed as a historical system, one created to serve the interests of the powerful, not a natural law. Reflecting the classic Marxist analysis, exploitation lies at the heart of capitalism. Workers produce more value than they receive. Owners of capital appropriate that surplus
This relationship, not income level or job title, defines their respective class positions.
More importantly - and we see this happening increasingly today - the ever-increasing inequalities arising from neoliberal capitalism pervert democracy as concentrations of wealth and power under an emboldened billionaire class take over and manipulate democratic institutions.
"In capitalism, democracy is unacceptable because it threatens the unequally distributed weath of the minority with a majority vote," Wolff writes. "For capitalism's leaders, democracy is what they say, not what they do."
As to why these contradictions are starting to destroy democracy's foundations only now, another recent book by American historian Gary Gerstle ('The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order') provided a convincing explanation. The collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War removed the only alternative to capitalism, allowing neoliberalism to expand from a domestic political movement into a global, unchallenged system.
For the subsequent 30+ years since 1990, capitalism has survived by marketising every inch of our lives, increasing workforce participation (every household is now a two-income household) and supporting debt-driven consumption via the liberalisation of the financial sector.
Those trends reached their apotheosis in 2008. Ever since, neoliberal capitalism has been riding the coat-tails of authoritarians who manufacture culture wars to persuade populations that their problems (rising prices, unaffordabe housing, decaying public infrastructure) are the fault of immigrants or refugees or some other marginalised community. In the meantime, the rich get richer and are now plotting to escape our dying planet to build communities on Mars.
This leaves humanity to live with what is euphemistically referred to as the 'externalities' of capitalist production - the warming planet, dying rivers, rising sea levels, plastic pollution, and dwindling natural diversity. Trump's gangster regime is the final stage - fascism ('capitalism with the gloves off'). This is not so much an economic crisis, as a moral one, as Wolff observes.
"Those externalities undermine the efficiency claims used to justify capitalism," he writes "More importantly, enviromental costs reinforce the need to explore...the tendencies toward self-destruction built into capitalism."
"Economic systems are eventually evaluated according to how well or not they serve the society in which they exist. Modern capitalism has now accumulated around a hundred individuals in the world who together own more wealth than the bottom half of this planet's population "
Ultimately, Wolff writes we can do better than capitalism, just as long ago people decided they could do better than slavery, feudalism and the divine right of kings. The next stage may lie in the rise of worker cooperatives in building a more sustainable, equitable and democratic future.
My own feeling is something big will have to break before that happens -,most likely in the international monetary system. You are already starting to see this with Trump deliberately smashing the remaining institutions of the post WWII order, including the US dollar's reserve status. The dream of the grifters who support him is the replacement of the current system with crypto-currency, but we are already seeing what a mad fantasy that is.
If not the monetary system as the final straw, it could be the environmental crisis as increasingly frequent extreme weather events, together with shortages of food and water, drive massive and unsustainable population movements. (Before you accuse me of hyperbole, speak to someone in the global reinsurance sector and ask them how they're feeling about things these days).
It could also be an energy crisis. With the US in denial about climate change and the powerful fossil fuel lobby urging a pedal-to-the-metal approach to digging up oil, gas and coal, God help us. It could be a major war, perhaps a nuclear war, as NATO falls apart and as Russia sparks an all-out conflagration in Europe.
Most likely, it will be a global move back toward closed borders, a growing crackdown on immigration, increasing tariff barriers and the erosion of our remaining democratic freedoms as increasingly authoritarian governments suppress dissent.
Maybe the doomsayers were right after all. After the inexorable self-destructive logic of capitalism there can be nothing....only the end of the world.
May 7, 2025
This book reminded me how exploitative capitalism really is and how poorly we treat each other under this guise. Capitalism is killing us, our planet, and our connection to each other. we ignore pleas for equality because we champion capitalism over fairness - and allow the few to rule the many - capitalism is not democratic. we know we can do better than capitalism. we can do better when we understand better.
March 3, 2026
Fantastic 🙌🏼
March 11, 2026
An excellent high level overview of the foundations of Capitalism and its evolution, as well as myth-busting some common defenses of capitalism. This is a great resource if you want to brush up on some broad understandings of why the system inevitably fails and helps articulate arguments against those you may want to debate.
September 1, 2025
Good read and accessible to a regular person. I like Wolff so I have a positive bias towards his ideas. His tone and writing come off great. It reads like the guy speaks and he can break stuff down for ol' you and me. The writing isn't academic nor overly verbose. Wolff has a message and ideas that he wanted to present and I believe that he did both very well.
This book isn't saying to tear down the system and to eat the rich. However, the ideas presented in this book can easily lead there. Wolff superficially explains modern day (specifically USA) style capitalism. He orients his definition of capitalism around an employer-employee relationship, but he does connect that definition to older ideas and incorporates some Marxist 101 ideas, too. This book isn't Das Kapital nor should it be. It's not trying to be that. It is also not a manifesto. Wolff points out a lot of the negative aspects of capitalism but, once again, he's not telling readers to storm the banks.
One thing that I really dug was the last chapter. It's like 10 pages long. It's simply an alternative to how workers can control the means of production. The chapter is about what comes after capitalism. A lot of leftists/socialists/communists can't exactly answer what comes after capitalism. Wolff does: worker co-ops.
This book isn't saying to tear down the system and to eat the rich. However, the ideas presented in this book can easily lead there. Wolff superficially explains modern day (specifically USA) style capitalism. He orients his definition of capitalism around an employer-employee relationship, but he does connect that definition to older ideas and incorporates some Marxist 101 ideas, too. This book isn't Das Kapital nor should it be. It's not trying to be that. It is also not a manifesto. Wolff points out a lot of the negative aspects of capitalism but, once again, he's not telling readers to storm the banks.
One thing that I really dug was the last chapter. It's like 10 pages long. It's simply an alternative to how workers can control the means of production. The chapter is about what comes after capitalism. A lot of leftists/socialists/communists can't exactly answer what comes after capitalism. Wolff does: worker co-ops.
July 27, 2025
Capitalism is an economic system which arose in 16th century England and has spread successfully around the world. It has succeeded in many ways by bringing great wealth to many people through business and investments. Can capitalism be considered as a force for social good and not only a means of generating profit? Why does capitalism so often fail to help so many? Can there be a socially responsible capitalism? Those are among the questions addressed by this small book which actually comes across as a political tract. The author is Richard D. Wolff, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who now teaches at The New School in New York City. Wolff is widely considered to be the nation’s foremost Marxian economist. This book aims to answer the question: "Why capitalism fails us"? It explores the different definitions of what capitalism is and is not. The book shows how and where we can go beyond capitalism to specific alternative systems. On substantial part, this represents the work of the nonprofit organization, Democracy at Work, which promotes the formation of labor unions and employee-owned business enterprises to advance the social and economic interests of workers. Through economic approaches like those, workers can and should be part of solving today’s great issues and of making the world better for all. Wolff discusses capitalism, monopolies, and myths surrounding the economic system. He delves into the misconception that monopolies are the root of the issues within capitalism, explaining that while addressing monopolies is important, it does not fundamentally change the employer-employee relationship at the core of capitalism. He highlights the aspirations of many to become their own bosses as a form of subconscious critique of the current system. This book can be profitably read as one of three political tracts advancing an educated understanding of Marxism, socialism, and capitalism. Highly recommended to readers wanting to gain a better understanding of the economic systems wehich control a substantial part of our daily lives.
January 13, 2026
Very critical of Capitalism and uses Marxism views to evaluate the economic system. Fun read, especially when learning how capitalism affects politics and our culture.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews