Kapitalismus: Geschichte einer Weltrevolution

by Sven Beckert, Helmut Dierlamm (Translator), Werner Roller (Translator)

Kaum ein Phänomen hat die Menschheitsgeschichte der letzten Jahrhunderte so geprägt wie der Kapitalismus – wie wir leben und arbeiten, wie wir über uns und andere denken, wie wir uns politisch organisieren. Der Historiker Sven Beckert erzählt in diesem monumentalen Werk die Geschichte dieses Wirtschaftssystems über die größtmögliche Dimension von Raum und Zeit hinweg. Statt den Kapitalismus, wie lange üblich, als europäisches Exportprodukt zu betrachten, erfasst er ihn in seiner internationalen Vernetzung. Arabische Kaufleute, indische Weber und versklavte Afrikaner auf karibischen Zuckerplantagen sind in seiner Darstellung ebenso zentral wie Amsterdamer Finanziers oder Stahlindustrielle im Saarland.

Beckert hat eine Globalgeschichte des Kapitalismus für das 21. Jahrhundert vorgelegt, sein Interesse gilt neben dem enormen Wachstum, den die kapitalistische Revolution ermöglicht hat, auch den Schattenseiten unseres Imperialismus und Kolonialismus, globale Ungleichheit und Ausbeutung, die Zerstörung unserer Lebensgrundlagen im Zeitalter der Klimakrise. Doch bilanziert Sven Beckert nicht lediglich die Soll- und Habenrechnungen des Kapitalismus, sondern entwirft ein Gesamtbild seiner Geschichte, das uns auch erlaubt, unsere Zukunft neu zu denken.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, Politics, Finance, Business, World History

1102 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 25, 2025

About the author

The Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, Sven Beckert is co-chair of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard and co-chair of the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History. Professor Beckert researches and teaches the history of the United States in the 19th century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political, and transnational dimensions. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, among others.

Reviews

[Marks54]

In my day job, I have spent lots of time discussing firms, their strategies, how they compete with each other, and how they are affected by governments, such as through regulation and antitrust. I have read a lot about capitalism, beginning back when Alfred Chandler was publishing his massive tomes on large industrial firms. So I did not approach Sven Beckert’s new global history of capitalism lightly but rather with high expectations. I first encountered Professor Beckert’s ‘Empire of Cotton’ a few years back and was dazzled by how much a single book could change my view of a topic.

This magnificent and long (1300 pages) book exceeded my expectations and was well worth the effort. I tried to read carefully but found myself amazed at the sheer volume of material, insights, value, and whatever that came out in this book. It is easy to talk about the need for rereadings, but I feel for the students - graduate or undergraduate - who will be called upon to master this book in a class. I also suspect that more than a few dissertations in economic or business history in the next few years are going to have components that challenge or expand upon Becker’s treatments in this book.

The account in the book begins in Aden in 1150. It could have begun earlier and in other places. Much of the book focuses on the heyday of capitalism as being within the past 500 years. This is fitting. Capitalism refers to a number of related ideas/events that popped in a variety of locations at different times and in different conditions. These events started to take hold and persist and the limited nature of the capitalist world became less limited as capitalism as a system took shape and grew. Academics as a rules tend to break up big topics into smaller ones that can be intensively studied. That is part of why so much is written about economics in particular countries at particular times. While that may be promotive of finished dissertations and published papers, it sometimes is not conducive to the effective telling of big stories.

Indeed, Professor Becker’s position in this book is that Capitalism is such a huge shapeshifting topic that its story needs to be told on a global stage over an extended period of time. After finishing the book I have to agree. Towards the end, Becker even makes allusions to Capitalism as the most effective of world religions.

I have no spoilers to offer. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and heartily recommend it, especially if one can spare the time.

[Captain Absurd]

This fascinating book leaves the reader with hope (at least in my case). We learn what the likely end of capitalism might look like. At one point, the author says that a system based on the power of capital is like an artificial intelligence algorithm that has broken free from our collective control to wreak havoc and inequality across the planet. I think this is a timely, interesting, and compelling comparison.

[Gerhard]

'Capitalism is an ongoing process; we live within it. We do not have the privilege of hindsight to trace a bygone economic order and dissect its weaknesses and strengths. And because capitalism is not cyclical, we cannot directly extrapolate its future from its past.'

Look, at this point, I just want to emigrate to China. Stable government, employment, quality of life. No violence. No opinions. Potentially spotty internet. Weird food. Can't win them all!

And yes, most South Africans are shopping on Temu / Shein. Amazon Prime's recent launch here is a Columbus Move. Meh. Zero interest in our market. America is increasingly irrelevant globally.

[Jung]

"Capitalism: A Global History" by Sven Beckert presents a sweeping account of how capitalism developed over centuries to become the dominant economic system shaping modern life. Although capitalism feels natural and unavoidable today, Beckert shows that it is neither timeless nor inevitable. Instead, it emerged gradually through a complex history involving trade, political power, violence, and social transformation. The book traces capitalism’s evolution across more than a thousand years, revealing how merchant networks, colonial expansion, industrialization, and global markets combined to create a system that now influences nearly every aspect of daily life. By exploring this history across continents, the book encourages readers to see capitalism not as a permanent condition but as a human-made structure that has changed repeatedly over time and could change again in the future.

One of the central insights of the book is that capitalism represents a major break from earlier forms of economic organization. For most of human history, economic life was structured around subsistence farming, local exchange, and social obligations rather than the pursuit of endless profit. In many societies, buying goods cheaply and selling them at higher prices was viewed with suspicion or even moral disapproval. Historical examples reveal how unfamiliar capitalist practices once seemed. Over time, however, a new system developed in which land, labor, and resources could be bought and sold, and wealth was continually reinvested to produce more wealth. This constant expansion and accumulation of capital became the defining feature of capitalism. Importantly, Beckert emphasizes that capitalism was never simply about free markets. It always depended on powerful states that established rules, protected property, and often used force to make economic expansion possible.

The story begins with early merchant networks that appeared centuries before capitalism fully took shape. By the twelfth century, traders were already linking distant regions through long-distance commerce. Merchants in cities such as Aden, Cairo, and Guangzhou developed financial practices that allowed them to conduct complex transactions across vast distances. They created credit systems, accounting methods, and partnerships that spread risk and enabled trade to flourish even when goods traveled thousands of miles. These merchants were pioneers of a new economic logic in which money could be used to generate more money through exchange. However, their activities were still limited by the broader structure of society. Most people continued to live in rural communities, producing goods primarily for their own survival rather than for markets.

Merchant activity also faced significant resistance from religious authorities and political elites. In many cultures, profit-making was seen as morally questionable. Religious traditions often condemned practices like charging interest, while scholars and rulers frequently regarded merchants as socially inferior. Political leaders also had little incentive to support commercial expansion when their wealth came primarily from taxing agricultural production. As a result, early merchants remained small players within economies dominated by landowners and peasants. For centuries, commerce expanded gradually but did not fundamentally transform the structure of global economic life.

A major turning point occurred between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, when merchants and political authorities formed powerful alliances that allowed capitalism to expand dramatically. During this period, European states faced financial and political challenges that encouraged them to support commercial ventures. In return, merchants relied on governments to provide legal protection, military power, and access to new territories. This partnership helped connect distant trading hubs into a single global network. Ports across Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas became linked through increasingly complex systems of exchange. The movement of silver, textiles, spices, and other commodities tied together economies that had once operated independently. These connections laid the foundation for a global capitalist system in which events in one region could influence economic conditions across the world.

However, the rise of this global system was far from peaceful. Colonial expansion and military force played a central role in establishing new trading networks. European powers often used violence to dominate key commercial centers and control valuable resources. Chartered companies such as the Dutch East India Company operated with their own armies and administrative structures, blurring the boundary between government authority and private enterprise. The pursuit of profit frequently went hand in hand with conquest, monopoly, and exploitation. As a result, capitalism’s early expansion reshaped the world through both economic innovation and destructive conflict.

Slavery became one of the most significant foundations of this emerging system. Beginning in the seventeenth century, merchants and investors increasingly directed their wealth into large-scale agricultural production tied to global markets. Plantation economies in the Americas relied heavily on enslaved labor to produce commodities such as sugar, cotton, and tobacco. These goods were exported across the Atlantic and sold in European markets, generating enormous profits that fueled further investment. The products of slave plantations created demand for manufactured goods, tools, and supplies, linking industrial production in Europe with forced labor in the Americas. By the late eighteenth century, the Atlantic economy based on slavery had become a crucial component of capitalist development.

Industrialization transformed capitalism even more dramatically. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, new technologies and production methods allowed goods to be manufactured on a much larger scale. Factories concentrated workers in single locations, where machines powered by fossil fuels dramatically increased productivity. At the same time, large numbers of people entered wage labor, working for employers rather than producing goods independently. This shift reorganized society in profound ways. Cities expanded rapidly as industrial workers migrated from rural areas in search of employment. Economic growth accelerated, but the new system also created harsh conditions for many laborers, including long hours, low wages, and dangerous workplaces.

The spread of industrial capitalism intensified global connections as well. Factories required vast quantities of raw materials, which were sourced from plantations and mines around the world. For example, cotton grown by enslaved workers in the United States supplied textile mills in Europe, illustrating how industrial production remained deeply linked to systems of exploitation. As capitalism expanded, it created new social classes, including powerful industrial capitalists and a growing working class. These changes sparked debates and resistance movements that challenged the inequalities produced by the new economic order.

During the nineteenth century, widespread rebellions and social movements forced capitalism to adapt. Workers organized strikes and political campaigns demanding better wages, improved working conditions, and greater political representation. Former slaves and colonized peoples also resisted systems that attempted to control their labor after formal slavery ended. These struggles led to the creation of new economic arrangements and government policies. States began to play a more active role in managing economies by regulating industries, building infrastructure, and sometimes providing social welfare programs. Although capitalism continued to expand, it evolved into different forms across various regions.

The twentieth century brought some of capitalism’s greatest crises and transformations. After the devastation of World War I and the global economic collapse of the Great Depression, governments experimented with new approaches to stabilize economies. Some countries developed welfare systems and labor protections, while others turned to authoritarian regimes that aligned closely with industrial interests. Following World War II, many nations adopted policies that combined economic growth with social programs designed to reduce inequality. At the same time, decolonization created dozens of new independent states that sought to build their own national economies. These countries often relied on strong government involvement to promote industrial development and compete in global markets.

Another major shift occurred in the late twentieth century with the rise of neoliberal policies. Beginning in the 1970s, many governments reduced regulations, privatized public industries, and weakened labor unions in an effort to promote market competition and economic efficiency. These policies helped accelerate globalization as manufacturing moved to regions with lower labor costs and fewer restrictions. New economic centers emerged in parts of Asia, while traditional industrial regions in Europe and North America experienced significant decline. This transformation increased global production but also contributed to rising inequality and financial instability.

In conclusion, "Capitalism: A Global History" by Sven Beckert reveals that capitalism is the product of a long and complex historical process rather than a natural or inevitable system. From early merchant networks to colonial expansion, from slavery and industrialization to modern globalization, the development of capitalism has been shaped by political power, social conflict, and human decisions. The system has repeatedly adapted to crises, reinventing itself in response to economic challenges and political pressures. Understanding this history shows that capitalism has never been fixed or unchanging. Instead, it has continually evolved as societies struggled to balance economic growth with social justice. By recognizing that capitalism was constructed through historical choices, the book suggests that future generations also have the power to reshape it in new ways.

[Lena]

While the length of this book can be daunting, Beckert's 900-year overview of how capitalism grew from its merchant origins and evolved to encompass nearly every facet of life is much more accessible than its length would suggest.

This book could just as easily be called "A Global History," since it makes laser clear just how deeply capitalism has woven itself into the world we live in. Beckert makes a solid case that capitalism has shaped our world in ways that are hard to see when looked at from a strictly short term or local view. Rereading about key historical events from the perspective of how capitalism influenced or created those events is eye-opening.

Despite capitalism's success in creating an unimaginably high standard of living for many of the world's inhabitants, it is difficult to celebrate its success given how extensive exploitation - whether of workers or the natural world - is woven into capitalism's DNA. A period he refers to as capitalism's "Golden Age," during which the balance of power between capital owners and workers was such that rising tides benefited more than just a small handful of elites, still relied on the unpaid labor of women in the home along with the underpaid labor of insecure workers and the exploitation of natural resources from the global south.

I found his overview of the changes wrought by the collapse of the USSR, the rise of China and the spread of neoliberal ideas particularly helpful in understanding the challenges that the world is currently facing. Beckert offers no solution to those challenges, but there are many lessons to be learned from the extensive history he supplies in this book.

[Miguel]

an inessential overview

Well, one can't accuse Beckert of not trying to be verbose - a 42 hour mainly historical overview that offers merely anodyne observations. I heard a podcast where he emphasized state capacity yet he doesn't really elaborate on that very much in the book. While I'm sympathetic to most of the views conveyed here, the neoliberal boogeyman looms a bit too large and in the end the author fumbles around for alternatives without coming up with any. For long reads I would much more look to Levy's "Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States" (while it doesn't cover every nook and cranny in the world and you won't get to read a longish passage on the introduction of the typewriter to India, it covers the history of capitalism much better - I'm sure there are many others further back I have yet to read).

[Charlie]

Henry Louis Gates Jr. hailed Sven Beckert's Capitalism: A Global History as "certain to become a canonical work of history" and I can think of no better way to introduce my sentiments than that: this book is canonical. He gets right down to the brass tax of the book pretty quickly, articulating a clear set of questions that he answers in over 1000 pages afterwards: "How did the capitalist revolution begin? How did a form of economic life that was such a breakaway from previous history spread around the world and into more spheres of life? How did we move from a society in which markets were embedded in social relations to one in which social relations are embedded in markets? By what mechanism has capitalism evolved and changed over time? And where are we in its history today?". If those aren't your questions, this probably isn't the book for you; Thankfully though, they apply to a number of disciplines and inquiries.

It is impossible to tell the story of capitalism without Europe. Not because of a superiority of application or conception, but on the basis of the sheer volume of violent dispossession and enslavement used to create a hierarchy upon which Europe claimed the top spot for itself. Beckert says the quiet part rather loud: Europe was capitalism's market-focused engine whose motto became marketization or bust. Unfortunately we are living in the "busted" remains. Industries in British, Portuguese, French, and Dutch colonies are the economies affected by the remains, where they did not have the same opportunity as Europe, to develop industries on their own terms. Beckert writes about their present commodities as a reflection of past development that refused anything other than what served European interests and barons thereof. Would textiles, coal, diamonds, coffee, sugar, rum, gas, and other cornerstone industries be a GDP priority or dominate a country's trade if "Western"/Global North countries did not foist them upon colonized subjects? The West owes everything it has to the uneven way the world was developed under capitalism through enslavement, largely of Black and Brown people, and subsequent plantation logics intermingled with Fordist and Taylorist productivity and efficiency narratives that still dominate today's wage labours. I learned that the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana (CAPL) mortgaged enslaved people to securitize them and that "in 1828, the British merchant bank Baring Brothers bought $1.67 million of CAPL bonds to resell on European securities markets" (p.391). In other words, despite countries outlawing slavery, the generational wealth of aristocratic families across colonizing countries was consolidated through mortgaging enslaved people in the United States. Beckert reviews far more history than this and with greater detail than I could summarize here. I could not ignore the centrality of slavery to modern capitalism and the wealth that allows one to participate in politics which shapes policies and social relations for even more generations. It will be impossible to read this book and misunderstand what someone means when they say that the world as we know it was built by enslaved people in the United States. It will be equally impossible to read this book and wonder how reparations are a subject of debate rather than a de facto step to repairing historical harms (not something Beckert talks about as such, but there is ample research to demonstrate exploitation that in my opinion, necessitates reparations).

Capitalism departs from similar authoritative delineations by emphasizing that it is an object of human creation; Over and over again for the cheap seats in the back. Beckert writes a historical introduction to capitalism and an accordant prologue to the uneven development that characterizes globalization narratives today. Additionally, he shows (with an admittedly enviable discursive ease), the mechanisms of capitalism that, in other treatments I've read, were never as clear as in his book. Readers will understand the necessity of the state and how the notion of the wealthiest 1% is not a new economic production, but a feature of capitalism that was present in the 1600s through to the 1800s. Capitalism cannot survive if not suctioned to the state vis-a-vis policies and politics protecting the structural interests and subsequent financial interests of its arbiters that allow it to live another day. The only surprise was how relevant this history was to describing where we are in 2026, where the next few decades will likely replicate disordered social relations strewn through emergent means of production (enshittification, and technofeudalism, anyone?) like badly rolled dice across the gameboard of human history. As we try to belch away the remains of capitalist indigestion in social relations, Beckert offers compelling reason to believe that there will likely be uprisings and protests similar to the ones capitalism wrought upon shifts from pastoral to cosmopolitan landscapes. In short, despite the protests characterizing the past decade, we probably "ain't seen nothing yet". It was a relief in a way, to understand that the dumpster fire vibe of the world today isn't new, nor does it make anyone special for sussing it out. The book is an indispensable volume for everyone, but it is especially illuminating and ideological momentum building for those with left-leaning political sentiments. Some folks on the right or those inclined towards capitalism's privileges may argue that it sifts through history, though I would argue that the book excavated it with an unparalleled depth of research.

In the introduction (which, if you only read one chapter of this book, I would recommend it be that one) Beckert writes that "We are not just subjects of capitalism; we are its architects". It is the enduring gift of this book for readers. His book is a necessary reminder that capitalism is a concept different from that of a singular economy. By writing such a richly detailed history he shows readers that as the rivers of time ebb, crest, and flow, capitalism is neither the river or the boat. It's just a steep riverbank we've stopped at in the long arc of human history. In other words, he breathes a little more life into the imaginary of alternatives with this incredible work. Where the meme-friendly sentiment of overthrowing capitalism gets tossed around as a joke, Beckert writes a quiet hope into the numbing effect of modernity. Disentanglement from the "God trick" of the history of capitalism is, I think, one of the best features of the book. Despite what devout capitalists tell you as they place their faith in the altars of production and accumulation, in the beginning there was not capitalism. And there was light before capitalism or its beneficiaries declared it be on.

To read Sven Beckert's book will no doubt be a significant investment of your time. At 1087 pages of book, and about 200 pages of endnotes, it is what Gen Z might call "thicc". For those seeking a comprehensive and truly global history of capitalism, it is worth every minute of your attention. Capitalism will be the definitive volume on its titular subject for at least a decade and perhaps an era, eclipsing the efforts of his genre forebears. Where Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations advocating for an ideological capitalism, Capitalism provides a substantial history of its implementation and logic sufficient to give readers grist for the critical thinking mill that asks whether there is no better alternative. It is a good thing I enjoy endurance sports because reading this book was the ultramarathon of book geekery. I would highly recommend this book!

[Quinn Guillermo]

This book is undeniably well-researched and well-written. However, for a work that purports to be a balanced history of capitalism, the author's Marxist philosophical approach—as evidenced by his overall conclusions and use of Marxist phrasing such as "political economy," "proletariat," and "bourgeoisie"—impedes his objectivity.

​Specifically, the author insists early in the book that capitalism should not be understood as simply “good” or “bad,” but rather as a “world-shaping power.” In practice, however, nearly every chapter bends toward the conclusion that capitalism is fundamentally exploitative, coercive, and morally corrosive. The recurring theme is that capitalism’s defining characteristic is “ceaseless accumulation,” a phrase Beckert borrows directly from Marxist traditions of analysis. The system, in his telling, is less a mechanism for innovation and prosperity than a global machine of domination built on slavery, colonialism, violence, and commodification.

​It is true that no one could realistically deny the atrocities connected to early capitalist expansion. Beckert is correct to emphasize the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade, the exploitation of colonial labor, and the ruthless extraction of wealth from conquered peoples. His discussions of “war capitalism” and plantation economies are often among the strongest sections of the book. Capitalism, in its early forms, frequently operated alongside imperial conquest and horrific human suffering; a fair-minded defense of capitalism must acknowledge that reality plainly and honestly.

​However, Beckert devotes immense energy to documenting capitalism’s crimes while giving comparatively little attention to the unprecedented prosperity capitalist systems eventually produced. This ideological imbalance becomes especially noticeable in Beckert’s treatment of modern state-directed economies, particularly China. Beckert praises the role of the state in shaping and directing markets and emphasizes capitalism as something “structured by the state.” Yet, he gives surprisingly limited moral attention to the catastrophic human rights records of communist and authoritarian regimes.
​This creates an obvious contradiction. Beckert harshly condemns capitalist societies for exploitation and coercion while appearing far more restrained when discussing systems that produced political repression, censorship, forced labor, mass famine, and state terror on an enormous scale. Modern China’s economic rise is difficult to separate from market liberalization, private enterprise, and integration into global capitalism; yet, Beckert’s framing often shifts credit toward state management rather than market reform itself.

​The hypocrisy becomes especially glaring because many of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century occurred under regimes explicitly hostile to capitalism. The Soviet Union, Maoist China, and the Khmer Rouge oversaw systems of repression and death on a staggering scale. Yet, Beckert’s framework tends to portray state coercion tied to markets as uniquely sinister while treating coercion under socialist or communist systems as secondary or contextual.

​The bottom line is that if you lean toward a Marxist view of history, you will most likely find this book right up your alley. But, if you are like me and looking for a balanced philosophical approach to the history of capitalism, I think you will be left wanting to hear the other side of the argument.

[David C Ward]

A monumental, and very readable survey, basically covering the world’s economy from around 1000 to today. It’s especially good at showing how in the shift from merchant to industrial capitalism slavery/coerced labor was absolutely essential as well as state intervention through what Beckert calls “war capitalism.” It turns out that imperialism wasn’t the highest stage of capitalism (R Luxembourg) but the essential first stage, especially for the Northern European countries. The transitional period gives the lie to the dominant ideological justification, created by the successful, that economic and social success was a result of the “freedom” of individual talent and ambition. What to do about the continued power of that argument (Thatcher, Reagan, the Wall Street Journal) is the question.
I’ll lower the rating to 4.9 because Beckert has the academic’s habit, born of lecturing, of repeating or recapitulating his arguments; and I don’t need to see the term “nodes of capitalism” for a while.

[Gabriel Williams]

*3.5 VERY sweeping obvs. Interesting how early it begins (starting in 12th century rather than 16th) and the first third is probs the most interesting bit. When it gets to the 19th century it’s kinda just everything u already know and kinda the same can be said for a lot of the 20th and its chapter on neoliberalism. Still really good tho particularly the first bit!

[History Today]

‘How did we get from a world in which the logic of capital was narrowly limited to only a few spaces to one in which it determines almost everything?’ This question drives Sven Beckert’s ambitious history of capitalism, a book which makes a bold argument: that the rise of capitalism was not inevitable and that capitalists alone could not have achieved it. ‘They needed allies’, Beckert writes: ‘the state’.

Scholars have spilled too much ink over precisely when and where capitalism began, although Britain during the Industrial Revolution is a leading contender. Beckert’s view is that it is impossible to know for sure. Capitalism was ‘born global’ and emerged ‘not in any one place but in the connections between various places’. We can detect its earliest pulsations in the trading activities of medieval Islamic empires, the Indian Ocean world, Song China, and parts of Western Europe. Capitalist societies emerged in places where merchants could capture political power. They encountered stiff resistance in India, the Ottoman Empire, and China but had a freer hand in parts of Europe. Yet it was in some of the most unexpected locales – socially fragile and unencumbered by strong feudal or religious institutions – that capitalists could refashion the world after their image. Such places included 16th-century Potosí, the silver city high in the Andean altiplano, the sugar-rich plantations of Barbados, and the Bajío plateau in Mexico.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Dinyar Patel is Associate Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai.

[Ced Ric]

Hat seine Zeit gedauert den Brecher fertig zu bekommen aber hat sich auf jeden Fall gelohnt! Extrem gut recherchiert und sehr gut aufgebaut. Schon von Anfang an zeigt Beckert, dass es bei der Entstehung des Kapitalismus nicht um die Überwindung des Staates ging. Es war und ist ein Projekt modernisierender, expansionistischer Gruppen aus vielen Staaten auf der ganzen Welt. Der Kapitalismus ist damit, entgegen eurozentrischer Erzählungen, kein Produkt der westlichen Staaten. Sie sind lediglich die größten Profiteure.

[Dave]

Holy buckets.

What a book.

[Frank]

Sven Beckert argumentiert in seinem umfangreichen, einen Zeitraum von mehr als 1000 Jahren umfassenden Buch gegen die verbreitete Auffassung, „Kapitalismus“ sei quasi naturwüchsig und beruhe auf natürlichen Grundeigenschaften des Menschen. Stattdessen zeigt er detailliert und schonungslos, wie sehr die Durchsetzung der langsam aufkommenden Marktbeziehungen gegen die jahrtausendealte Subsistenzwirtschaft vor allem auf dem Lande von Anfang an mit Gewalt, Vertreibung der Bauern von ihren Ländereien und im Laufe der Zeit immer mehr mit staatlichen Eingriffen in die überkommenen Rechte der Menschen verbunden war. Entgegen der täglichen Propaganda in Medien und Wissenschaft ist Kapitalismus nicht gleichbedeutend mit Freiheit oder Demokratie, sondern hat Schuldknechtschaft, Sklaverei, Zwangsarbeit, Lohnsklaverei und also auf jeden Fall die Unterwerfung von Individuen unter das Ausbeutungsprinzip nicht nur der (Lohn-)Arbeit zur unabdingbaren Voraussetzung. Damit war und ist dieses Wirtschaftssystem auf Ungleichheit gebaut und angewiesen. Als Konkurrenzgesellschaft sowohl horizontal „unter Geiern“ als auch vertikal zwischen „Oben“ und „Unten“ schafft er auch keinen Frieden, sondern basiert auf Unterwerfung der Natur und der Menschen in einem Maße, das immer wieder zum Aufbegehren und zu Aufständen führte, die blutig niederzuschlagen zum Alltagsgeschäft frühmoderner und heutiger Staatsapparate gehört. Insofern das System nicht lokal entsteht, also nicht wirklich national zu fassen ist, und sich Kapitalnetzwerke je nach Bedarf mit unterschiedlichen Staaten, Staatsformen und politisch-geografischen Gegebenheiten arrangiert haben und weiter arrangieren können, führt das regelmäßig sowohl zu Phasen relativer Stabilität durch weltweite Interessenüberschneidungen (Wirtschaftswachstum) als auch zu nationalen „Einhegungen“ durch Zölle etc. in Zeiten der Krise. Im Kampf um natürliche wie menschliche Ressourcen kommt es zu Kriegen, später zu Weltkriegen, die keineswegs Betriebsunfälle sind, sondern nur die Logik profitoptimierter Aneignung auf Kosten anderer auf eine zwischenstaatliche Ebene heben. (Die „Logik des Krieges“ liegt „in der Grammatik des Handels.“ – 1060)
Das alles breitet Beckert in schier unendlichem Detailreichtum, unaufgeregt und ohne ideologische oder auch nur theoretische Vorannahmen in einer Weise vor dem Leser aus, dass diesem die Wesenszüge dessen, was gemeinhin unter „Kapitalismus“ verstanden wird, unabweisbar vor Augen geführt werden. In der Quintessenz entsteht ein mosaikartig zusammengesetztes, äußerst kritisches Bild einer noch im Sinne von Schumpeters „kreativer Zerstörung“ gewaltförmigen Gesellschaftsordnung, deren Dynamik freilich auch im Sinne von Marx und Engels als „revolutionär“, mithin als ständig und immer wieder neu alle überkommenen Verhältnisse auflösend verstanden wird. Zusammen mit „Das Kapital“ von Marx/ Engels und Pikettys „Das Kapital im 21. Jahrhundert“ ist Beckerts „Kapitalismus“ damit nichts weniger als der dritte Klassiker einer umfassenden und historisch fundierten Kapitalismuskritik.
Diese Kritik ergibt sich aus den historischen Befunden. Nachdem der Autor zunächst die Herausbildung und weltweite Vernetzung von Handelskapital skizziert, begründet er damit das Entstehen von „Inseln des Kapitals“ in Handelsstädten aller Kontinente. „Der Kapitalismus ist heute so erstaunlich und wortwörtlich global, dass wir endlich die Fehler in den Geschichten erkennen können, die seit 200 Jahren über ihn erzählt werden. Da er heute global ist, kann man seine Vergangenheit unmöglich aus einer rein nationalen oder nordatlantischen Perspektive verstehen.“ (1030). „Inseln des Kapitals“ meint aber auch das zeitgleiche Aufkommen von Produktion (Schiffe, Schiffszubehör, Porzellan, Textilprodukte usw.) für den Verkauf und den Export, also für lokale „Märkte“ in anderen solchen „Inseln“ (zumeist Städten). Besonders interessant ist hier, dass Beckert die Händlerschicht der Inka und Maya in seine Studie mit einbezieht und im vorkolonialen Lateinamerika zu anderen Weltgegenden analoge Entwicklungen aufzeigt. Das hatte ich so woanders noch nicht gelesen.
Der notwendige Schutz der Handelsrouten zu Land (Seidenstraße z.B.) oder vor Piraterie auf dem Meer führte schon früh zu Versuchen, Handelsinteressen mit staatlichen Interessen zu verbinden. Gezeigt wird, warum das – anders als in Asien – besonders in Europa erfolgreich war. Hier waren die mittelalterlichen Staatsformen verglichen mit den ausgedehnten und gefestigten Herrschaftsgebieten in Indien oder China vergleichsweise instabil und schwach und die vielen Kriege führten dazu, dass die Herrscher zunehmend auf Kriegs- und zum Zwecke der Machtdarstellung auch auf Luxusgüter sowie später auf Kapital angewiesen waren, wie das nur Kaufleute wie die Fugger oder Welser, andernorts Gesellschaften wie die niederländischen (VOC) bzw. englischen (EIC) Ostindien-Kompanien zur Verfügung stellen konnten. Über Privilegien und später direktes militärisches Eingreifen zugunsten „ihrer“ Kaufleute wächst die Verquickung von Kapital mit staatlicher Macht kontinuierlich, eine Besonderheit, der spätestens ab dem 19. Jahrhundert niemand auf einem anderen Kontinent etwas entgegenzusetzen hatte.
Faszinierend in diesem Zusammenhang ist der gut begründete und Wallersteins Postulat vom Übergewicht des Zentrums über die Peripherie erweiternde und teilweise korrigierende Befund vom Ausgang des neuen Wirtschaftssystems in den Peripherien (besonders den karibischen oder Pazifik-Inseln wie in den beiden Amerika). Dort entstehen moderne Arbeitsformen der Massenproduktion wie die Plantagenwirtschaft (Zucker, Kaffee, Baumwolle) sowie neue Formen der Gewinnung und Disziplinierung von Arbeitskräften (Sklaverei, Schuldknechtschaft), die dann auf die Zentren zurückwirken. Diese entwickeln sich langsam vom Wohnsitz der Konsumenten zu ständig sich erweiternden Produktionsstandorten für die in Übersee benötigten Maschinen bzw. für Fertigprodukte aus den gelieferten Rohstoffen. Das erzwingt Marktbeziehungen, die vorher in den Kolonien entstanden und erprobt worden waren. Während im alten Europa überkommene Ständeordnungen und feudal verfestigte Landbesitz- und Machtformen kapitalistische Veränderungen erschwerten, konnten die Kolonisatoren in den eroberten Gebieten vergleichsweise ungehindert tabula rasa machen und rücksichtslos zur Ausbeutung von Menschen- und Naturmaterial übergehen. Natürlich waren Genozide oder Versklavung, aber auch die Aneignung indigenen Wissens über Rohstoffvorkommen (Silber, Gold) und den Pflanzenanbau etc. dafür die Voraussetzung. Wenn aber eine Insel vom Zuckerrohrexport lebt und alle Flächen dazu genutzt werden, müssen Lebensmittel importiert und bezahlt/ gekauft werden. So entstehen Märkte, die auf den europäischen Dörfern, wo die Familien alles Benötigte selbst herstellten und nur begrenzt Austausch stattfand, zunächst als Fremdkörper von einem anderen Planeten erscheinen mussten. Es bedurfte der Einhegungen von Allmende-Land sowie der „Freisetzung“ höriger Bauern (also ihrer Vertreibung) zum Zwecke der Erweiterung von Schafzucht-Flächen zur Wolle-Gewinnung, um den von Marx postulierten „doppelt freien Lohnarbeiter“ zu schaffen, der nun seinerseits für Geld arbeiten und das zum Leben notwendig auf einem Markt für Geld einkaufen musste. Der „Markt“ steht also nicht am Anfang des Kapitalismus, sondern ist sein Resultat; er ist auch nicht „frei“, sondern wird vom Angebot dominiert. Nachfragemärkte sind das letzte Stadium in einer entwickelten Konsumgesellschaft, die erst nach 1945 entsteht. Sie sind ebenfalls nicht „frei“, sondern werden seit Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts zunehmend durch Monopole beherrscht, die Preisbildung nach anderen Kriterien als denen von Angebot und Nachfrage betreiben können und durchsetzen.
Anhand solcher Befunde, die von statistischem Material zur Sklavenwirtschaft, zum Proletarierelend, aber auch zu Reichtum, Machtentfaltung und Gewalt in Überfülle gedeckt sind, lässt sich die gegenwärtige Wirtschafts-, ja, manche meinen sogar „Wissenschaft“ als das überführen, was sie ist: Eine Produzentin von platten Ideologien, deren Algorithmen einen wissenschaftlichen Anstrich vorgaukeln, der anhand aller empirischen Daten über ihre permanent falschen Voraussagen und unzutreffenden Ausgangsannahmen geradezu lächerlich wirkmächtig ist. Damit ist auf ein unbestreitbares Verdienst von Beckerts Buch hingewiesen: Es räumt ganz nebenbei mit vielen Standard-Dummheiten auf, die täglich in den Zeitungen stehen oder in Nachrichten kolportiert werden.
Andere Einzelbefunde, die sich aus dem Dargestellten ableiten lassen und Zusammenhänge erhellen, die sonst nur als Schlagworte herumgeistern, betreffen z.B. die Rolle der bürgerlichen Familie (nicht die der Familie allgemein) als konstitutiv für die Gesellschaftsform „Kapitalismus“. Insofern Fernhandel auf Vertrauen basieren mussten, schufen die einflussreichen Familien ganze Netzwerke von Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen, die einerseits die Abwicklung von Geschäften erleichterten, andererseits aber auch der Akkumulation von Kapital durch Heirat dienten. Das Modell der „assortativen Paarung“ (B. Milanovič) ist heute mitnichten überholt; nach wie vor spielen Geldheiraten für den Ausbau von Vermögen und die Absicherung von Machtpositionen eine herausragende Rolle im (öffentlich meist verschwiegenen) gesellschaftlichen Leben der Reichen und Schönen. (Vgl. 1035) Insofern die Pflege der familiären wie gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen Sache der Frauen war und ist, zeigt sich hier ein anderswo unterbelichteter Aspekt der Rolle der (bürgerlichen) Frau, die seit dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert einen Salon zu führen, sich dabei um Geschäftspartner zu bemühen und nach geeigneten Heiratskandidat/innen Ausschau zu halten hatte.
Was sollte man noch herausheben? Für mich überraschend widmet sich der Autor der Rolle der Schreibmaschine in Indien nach der Unabhängigkeit, die sowohl als Symbol für die notwendige Bürokratisierung von Produktionsabläufen im Fordismus/ Taylorismus vorgestellt wird, aber auch als Symbol für die zunächst erfolgreiche planwirtschaftlich organisierte postkoloniale Industrialisierung steht. Sie ist zugleich ein Beispiel für die zunächst auf „Importsubstitution“ gerichteten Bemühungen beim abgeschotteten Aufbau eigener Industrien, die mit dem sich beschleunigenden wissenschaftlich-technischen Fortschritt und der wachsenden Kapitalintensität eigener Entwicklungen an ihre Grenzen gelangen. Mit Hilfe internationaler Finanzinstrumente wie Weltbank oder IWF werden die jungen Volkswirtschaften dann erneut in neokoloniale Abhängigkeiten gebracht, wobei nationale Eliten und vor allem rohstoffextrahierende Industrien nun als scheinbar gleichgestellt, real aber unter Preisdiktat in das globale Handelsnetzwerk eingebunden werden.
Insofern das alles organisiert und planungstechnisch durchdacht werden musste, „Kapitalismus“ ist mitnichten ein naturwüchsiger Prozess der „unsichtbaren Hand“, sondern bedarf handelnder und sich ihrer Ziele bewusster Akteure, widmet sich Beckert der Rolle von Verschwörungen, die u.a. in der Mont-Pellerin-Gesellschaft oder heute dem WWF entwickelt wurden und werden und die ihren Ausdruck im Aufbau bzw. dem Funktionswandel internationaler und auf Durchsetzung „westlicher“ Interessen gerichteter Organisationen wie der Freihandelsorganisation GATT, dem IWF oder der Weltbank usw. (979) fanden. Hier wurden die Strategien vorgedacht, die später als „Neoliberalismus“ bekannt werden und die auf die Abschaffung sozialer Ausgleichsmechanismen gerichtet sind, wie sie das Kapital nach seiner moralischen Desavouierung 1945 hinnehmen musste. Auch hier zeigt sich, wie eng wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Denken, staatliche Macht und Gewalt miteinander verzahnt sind. Während irgendwelche Spinner von Rothschild und dem Weltzionismus plappern, zeigte der 1973 mit Hilfe der CIA planmäßig inszenierte Putsch in Chile mit zigtausenden Toten und Exilierten ganz unverblümt, wie so was abläuft. Beckert weist anhand statistischer Daten nach, wie schnell sich mit der Durchsetzung von Wirtschaftsauffassungen der „Chicago-Boys“ die Durchschnittseinkommen lohnabhängiger Chilenen halbierten und wie spiegelbildlich der Reichtum von Wenigen wuchs. Nebenbei präsentiert er Dokumente der amerikanischen Botschaft, aus denen hervorgeht, wie unsicher man zunächst auf diese „Fortschritte“ reagierte und wie groß die Befürchtungen waren, dass die Zerschlagung der Gewerkschaften inklusive des Mordes an ihren führenden Mitgliedern neue staatsgefährdende Unruhen nach sich ziehen würden. Das ist nicht passiert, zu groß war der Druck der Repressionsorgane auf das Volk. Aber das Modell hat Schule gemacht- erst in Großbritannien, dann in den USA und Europa und heute gut sichtbar in Argentinien und anderen lateinamerikanischen Staaten.
Der ganze Wahnsinn dieses mittlerweile heiß laufenden Systems, auch die Finanzkrise von 2008-10 spielt eine Rolle, wird deutlich, wenn man bedenkt, was es für die Welt bedeutet, dass allein von 1990 bis 2008 eine Steigerung des Produktionsvolumens von 60 Billionen Dollar zu verzeichnen war. Dahinter verbergen sich nicht nur neue Fabriken in Indonesien oder Bangladesch inklusive ihrer Billiglöhnerstrukturen, sondern auch eine das alles erst ermöglichende gigantische Steigerung der Naturausplünderung, die dem Kapitalismus von Anbeginn eigen war, jetzt aber seinem Finale entgegen geht. Nach dem Crash infolge der Subprime-Krise in den USA haben Staaten weltweit die privaten Banken mit 1,45 Billionen Dollar gestützt. (1018) Ein weiteres Beispiel dafür, wie abhängig, aber diese Abhängigkeit wohlweislich aufwändig verschleiernd, das System der Privatwirtschaft von staatlichen Eingriffen/ staatlicher Regulierung (zu ihren Gunsten) ist.
Gut, das Ganze kann hier nicht erschöpfend wiedergegeben werden. Zu besprechen ist eigentlich auch wenig, da Beckert einsichtig argumentiert und die Last der Beweise jeden Kommentar erübrigt. Zu kritisieren gibt es ebenfalls wenig. Allenfalls stören gelegentlich ein paar Redundanzen, die wohl der vom Autor vermuteten Begriffsstutzigkeit vor allem seiner amerikanischen Leserschaft zuzuschreiben sind, der er seine Thesen offensichtlich gegen jeden intellektuellen Widerstand eihämmern will. Was mir als ergänzungsbedürftig auffiel sind lediglich zwei Dinge: Angesichts der weit über die Kontinente hinweg ausgreifenden Untersuchung wundert es ein wenig, wie unterbelichtet Osteuropa (bis auf die polnische Weizenproduktion ganz allgemein) bleibt. Das mag an dem erst späten Anschluss an die kapitalistische Entwicklung, vor allem aber an der dürftigen Faktenlage und dem Fehlen einschlägiger Studien gelegen haben. Warum Beckert jedoch darauf verzichtet, die Auswirkungen des Aufkommens kontinentaleuropäischer Zuckerproduktion auf den Weltmarkt zu beschreiben, wundert mich, da er doch mit Blick auf die Karibik deren Rolle exponiert hervorgehoben hat. (Man sieht danach klarer, dass hier kein Luxusgut angebaut und verarbeitet wurde, sondern dass es um billige Kalorien für das chronisch unterernährte Volk ging. Auch Tee und Kaffee waren wegen ihrer aufputschenden Wirkung für die Aufrechterhaltung der 12- bis 16-stüdigen Arbeitstage unerlässlich.) Aber was will das angesichts der sonstigen Überfülle an Fakten und Material besagen? Es hätte an dem grundsätzlichen Befund nichts geändert.
Insgesamt ist der Text bei alledem gut lesbar, übersichtlich strukturiert und damit auch (oder gerade?) für wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Laien mühelos nachvollziehbar. Das Buch sei daher jedem zur Lektüre empfohlen, der endlich wissen will, in welcher Gesellschaft er oder sie lebt und woher all die Brüche und Krisen kommen, die uns seit einiger Zeit wieder beschäftigen. Ein bisschen Sitzfleisch muss man für die über 1000 Seiten allerdings mitbringen. Allein, es lohnt sich unbedingt!

[Zach Brandt]

Epic.

If you read nothing else, the epilogue alone is worth it.

[Ryan O'Malley]

Exactly what I wanted from a history of Capitalism

[Mantas]

Could have used more concise storytelling in „Part I“ (just my take: too many names and figures I won’t remember anyway that in addition disrupted the reading flow). I really had to fight through that.

Other than that a remarkable effort in shedding light on the world we live in and its origins. A must read.

[Roel Jacobs]

A history of capitalism tying in the different corners of the globe. The key takeaway is that the State has always been a necessary protector / enforcer of capitalism. The current US administration is hellbent on ensuring global dominance of their tech firms. These are the same firms whose bosses want limited regulation (only when applied to labour of course) but call on the State when needing to expand their global reach. By taking a global perspective the book also highlights the immense suffering of slaves and workers in the newly emerging industries (textile). The idea Western wealth has been built on 'free markets' is one of the biggest cons perpetrated. Only downside of this insightful tome: after >1000 pages (+300 pages of notes) you wonder if the esteemed professor could also have gotten the message across with just a little bit less detail...

[Ethan Glattfelder]

Three days into 2026 and I’ve already finished my longest book of the year (which I started a month ago). Sven Beckert’s CAPITALISM is a surprisingly readable global history of capitalism that I found compelling and absorbing. The fact that it’s global (Beckert argues that any local, national, or regional view of capitalism is woefully insufficient) can make the book feel like a series of discrete examples of whatever point Beckert is trying to make. The beginning of the book also feels somewhat vague. It wasn’t clear to me at first how Beckert defines capital or capitalism, and the metaphor « islands » of capital is overused to a ludicrous degree. The back half was engaging and flew by, the conclusion spot-on and unbelievably depressing. A great book and what an achievement!

[Sarah]

4/5 stars. an arresting account of the air we breathe and the orthodoxies we come to accept (myself included, despite misgivings born of clearer eyes before I was indoctrinated). A historian looks at the social construction of a system based on self interest of the few via exploitation of land and other humans, and its shape-shifting reinvention over the past centuries. It reminds me that, just as I though the Cold War was a given, capitalism's current form -- financialized and global -- is ultimately uncertain. Every citizen should read this book. But less than 5 stars because despite its brilliance, it is simply too long (and heavy to hold) and often repetitive. Argument this breathtaking should not feel like a slog.

[Jonas]

Ein Banger, ganz viele Perspektiven auf die Entwicklung des Kapitalismus, die ich noch nie gelesen habe (Händler in Aden und China, wie Kapital aus dem Baumwollanbau mit Sklaven die Industrialisierung in Glasgow antrieb, Indigo-Bauern in Indien). Ich hab außerdem viel besser verstanden, warum Gewerkschaften so fokussiert auf Arbeitsbedingungen sind, wie ungewöhnlich Lohnarbeit ist, wie wichtig landwirtschaftliche Produktion und Macht zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten für Koalitionen mit und gegen Kapitalisten waren, warum Europa so gute Bedingungen für Kapitalisten geboten hat, überhaupt: dass es Kapitalisten vor dem Kapitalismus gab. Das Kapitel über Neoliberalismus hat mir aber fast nichts Neues gegeben, und auch der Ausblick auf die Zukunft ist etwas unoriginell.

[Gerry Dincher]

This book is excellent. It left me at a loss for words. It is clear that capitalism is well on its way to destroying life on our planet. Marginalized peoples will continue to be exploited. Our natural resources will be stripped. Our planet will burn. Musk, trump, Bezos, Putin, Xi, Slim, etc. will get rich. MAGA will applaud as the oligarchs push them into the fire. The impoverished in the Global South will suffer because we are wearing fast fashion while using our devices that require rare earth minerals. The future is seen in Disney's WALL-E for the lucky few. The rest will suffer.

[Maximilian]

An invaluable, smart, empirical and important important important book. Beckert weaves many debates into one convincing and well-argued narrative stretching centuries. Everybody should absolutely read this.
I wish this came out in the beginning of my studies, but reading it after my studies also helps synthesising and order many thoughts and bits of knowledge.
Monumental and instantly canonical.

[Benny Nicholson]

the breadth of focus cuts against theoretical depth. just when you get a picture of the political economy undergirding a time and place the locale changes. the attempts to underscore the commonalities in each fleeting glance end up repetitive. the time/place slices covered I was already a little familiar felt hollowed out by the narrative, probably meaning the whole thing rings hollow if you know a bit about each part of world history this book touches. luckily, I don't know if anyone but sven does

[fleegan]

It took me two months to read this giant, and I was never bored. It's fascinating and sad.
I will admit that I did not read the last 200 pages of end notes.

[Bill Powers]

Very good overview on the history of Capitalism and its adaptability to various global and local circumstances. I highly recomment.

[Clinton Smith]

Sven Beckert’s magisterial and detailed history takes us through the protean years of capitalism, from roughly 1200-1600, during which the links between merchants in cities such as Aden, Cairo, Baghdad, Basra, and elsewhere built trade between locations that were extremely different from each other and spread over a large geographical area. Each of the steps key to the development today’s scavenging capitalism, scanning the earth to look for opportunities to expand itself and reproduce more capital for owners looking for the new thing to own and new labor force to exploit, what Beckert terms the “de-territorialization” of capital (997), and describes further: “The entrepreneurial hero of the [neoliberal] era was not a steel baron or an automobile magnate but a portfolio investor… This fluid capital roamed the globe as insurgent capital owners searched for profitable investment opportunities” (992).

The steps to get here overlapped with one another. Summarizing these: with the start of trade, the development of fiat currencies facilitated transactions. Once these currencies existed along with the concept that people could use them to bear debt, capitalists both invested in things (plantations, or the production of the staples of trade during a particular period of time… sugar, cotton, textiles) that could be traded, and eventually owned the means of production of them outright, eliminating the vast majority of the earth’s subsistence production in exchange for creating large concerns that primarily exported goods. The speed with which capitalism interconnected markets (or, more likely, expropriated them entirely via the “war capitalism” that was the central focus of the slave trade) greatly increased with the Industrial Revolution that took place, first and more forcefully in Europe, Japan, and the United States (the fact that China has both overtaken Europe and the U.S. in traditional industrial production and overtaken them in terms of more of the current “knowledge industries” indicates that China is well-positioned to attain a period of global dominance). Finally, the ability to invest in companies has allowed capitalism to truly flourish by permitting individuals with a large initial stake to simply invest their money and not have to engage in anything related to the actual production of anything other than more capital for themselves and their class, which at this point lives in a manner that completely separates them from the rest of developed society.
The result has been enormous social and economic inequality. Beckert foregrounds this in his conclusion by noting that, while the rise of large middle classes in China and India has reduced extreme poverty worldwide, “almost half of the world’s people (46.4%) still live on $6.85 or less a day.” (1072) But, while much of this group has ties to the old subsistence mode of existence, it is likely that they are also engaged primarily in labor tied to a worldwide export market run via capitalistic means. The neoliberal project of free trade, empowering capitalism with what could almost be considered a free reign to open up its production facilities in the poorest countries of the earth while keeping most of the money for continued expansion, has both elevated many out of extreme poverty and increased inequality, while lowering the relative standards of living for the bottom half of the populations in countries like the United States and Britain while still preventing other countries from having an equal footing in capital markets. The more one takes a look at capitalism after reading this book, one thinks that Beckert’s basic take on this (that capitalism is an ongoing revolution, a concept that when executed shifts shape to fit its landscape and then overtakes the landscape; that whatever “ends capitalism” will probably at first grow within capitalism, although very little has surfaced to date; that, in the future, civilizations will wonder, “if we are still here,” why we tolerated such enormous inequality) is right. Capitalism is more like some sort of endless underground conflict that erupts often into open conflict.

The sheer detail of this book will lead people’s thoughts to different places. But, I’ll start actually with an article, written by the Salon executive editor Andrew O’Hehir, where he discusses one great unanswered question of Castro’s Cuba, which provided free healthcare and education, trained excellent doctors who went and were able to work in other countries, had a high literacy rate, etc.; namely, was the brutality of this regime, the regime that deported and executed poets and artists, that jailed dissidents and homosexual, a necessary precondition of being able to create this level of state services? Capitalism has its own parallel question: could it have existed without the phase of “war capitalism” that expropriated land and captured millions and millions of slaves? Could it have built up enough capital to move on to the next phase of the project—people earning enough on activities for which they took no part in the production of the output that they simply could devise, over decades, more arcane ways to financialize economies and generate more capital without doing anything that’s “useful” to the tangible lives lived by people? Beckert talks about the idea of “wage labor” being someone that someone sells to employers being a relatively recent thing. Wage labor is not necessary to expand capitalism, which doesn’t care how the labor is obtained, only that it is. In fact, wage labor can be extracted through coercion, namely restricting movement or having a mix of wage labor and other types. Destroying the environment necessary to survive on one’s own by leveling arable land for cities is a kind of coercion. Beckert writes of different types of coercion by noting that “while so many liberal and Marxist thinkers have depicted [wage labor] as the very essence of capitalism, some of the repressive mechanisms that characterized reconstructed countrysides moved into industry as well: Bombay millowners paid workers with much delay, forcing them into the hands of moneylenders… Japanese cotton industrialists went so far as to lock their women workers in dormitories to keep them from fleeing.” (664) Ultimately, a world where more, rather than fewer, people are enslaved or work under more severe varieties of duress/coercion could happen again, particularly in a world at war governed largely by crumbling or unrepresentative “democracies.” By extension, people who “market their brands” may function well or not in their current environment, but one could see a future where people are just coerced into whatever work the state sees necessary to perform.

Beckert notes that this is one of capitalisms great “myths” that’s taught in school, the idea that capitalism needs the wage labor structure to work and incentivize workers, and that this would allow for a minimal standard of living as workers engaged in bargaining with employers. For most of history the lower rungs of the capitalist structure lived barely subsistence existences. The slaves who were brought to Drax plantation in Barbados (a site that Beckert went to among many of the sites he describes going to while researching his book) often died within 3 years of arrival due to the cruelty and violence of their conditions. Of course, if schools taught all their students that capitalists have spent their history creating conditions for themselves that allowed them to keep well over half of all the money produced by the labor of millions of people, that wouldn’t “reproduce” capitalism very well. Other myths include the idea that capitalism depends on a certain kind of state, and that the state doesn’t interfere in the functioning of capitalism if the system is working correctly. In reality, capitalism and the state are intertwined, and Beckert convincingly shows repeatedly how state-backed militarism has been used to open up marketplaces and “force the capitalist concept” on unwilling participants. The intertwining of the state and capitalism was rooted in the state being necessary to bring the violence part to the equation when subsuming unwilling participants in the capitalist system: “… most rural cultivators, which included almost all of the world’s people, did not voluntarily part with their property, rights, and autonomies. The transformation of the countryside initially succeeded only at its most violent and vulnerable edges, where capital owners and states could use concentrated force… the level of force needed reveals how big a break this was with the past. Coercion… was also used by the state, which… deployed its military capacity to enable the penetration of urban capital into this or that countryside.” (226)

Other things I think differently about after reading this:
1. Tariffs: With my only actual lived experience with very high tariffs being my current experience of living in America, I realized I didn’t have a very good theoretical or practical awareness of what the actual purpose of tariffs may be for those who used them with targeted industries (specifically, those industries that countries want to preserve domestic production in and protect their ability to do that). In effect, I see tariffs more as protecting a domestic product that is a necessity for a particular country to retain more local production and consumption after reading the book. That’s not to say that the “weaponization” of tariffs such as what’s currently being engaged in by the United States hasn’t been engaged in in the past, and in fact is a primary feature. However, I’d argue that the United States policy related to tariffs has nothing to do with anything other than punishment for everyone, including people who live in the United States.

Tariffs would look different in a world that hadn’t been steered so overtly into a free trade environment. In the current environment, the evidence is strong that many elements accompanying the free trade agenda espoused by the US and others in the second half of the 20th Century depress the standard of living for the majority of the world’s population in the absence of meaningful labor protections globally as well as globally enforced anti-monopoly laws. Beckert’s trenchant observation that the major manufacturers in the world do not actually “make” anything but subcontract the manufacture of everything to much cheaper manufacturing hubs in the world’s poorest countries to take advantage of underpaid labor and nonexistent labor laws effectively mean that workers in the world’s poorest countries have living standards below that of the poorest people in Europe, and more akin to those prevalent in the 19th Century. Thinking of Beckert’s descriptions in the epilogue of the conditions in Cambodia and how Nike subcontracts all of its manufacturing there, and there were about 630,000 contractors there vs 15,000 or so workers in the US… one great desire of tariffs would be to force companies to utilize local workforces and allow other countries to use their local “manpower”, as it were, to make things for their own country rather than export everything and have everyone work for $200 a month. I don’t see tariffs as being able to reshore these jobs without many other practices being changed, and in our interconnected world (the world capitalism built through trade and then, eventually, through violence and the coercion of labor to accumulate more capital) changing these would be extremely disruptive. On the contrary, the anti-worker climate that exists seem almost like a utopian project given the much more extensive surveillance and military suppression potential that exists globally today, but people must try, as we’re seeing them trying in Bolivia and elsewhere in the world, with the general strike being the tactic of either last or best resort.

2. AI. From an environmental standpoint, the data centers used to build this technology, which has the potential to both great harm and good, are extremely destructive. AI is (it would seem) unlikely to be able to replace all of the jobs it will erase, probably less than the “30-40% job loss apocalypse” that some are predicting… but it’s certainly conceivable it could be 15%-20%, meaning that AI would have to, in the US, create roughly 20-25 million jobs to just even out the job loss. Right now, capitalists are in the process of trying to somewhat “manage” the decline rather than instantly turn over every content-production job to the machines, especially as many white-collar industries are billed out via billable hours. I consider intellectual content production and things such as programming that fundamentally are oriented around language production to be at the forefront of the job-replacement threat (which isn’t even the primary threat from AI; the ability to implement mass surveillance or inadvertently set off some sort of ecological or geopolitical catastrophe is). From the positive potential side of the lens, AI may allow people to do the same work with less labor and less capital investment in their startup business venture/idea, thereby undermining the enormous disadvantage new market entries in all fields face with the growing monopolization of manufacturing and creative/intellectual pursuits. However, AI’s ability to boost productivity in industries that don’t require more productivity (no one needs more advertisements, more websites, more x, y, z… there are already far too many in that there’s no way a person could possibly consume all of that knowledge), means that people who opt to try and use AI as a possible way to open small businesses will have to find new ways to use it, not just use it to create things that already exist. Exciting? Not exciting? Probably depends on whether it can be used without totally wrecking the planet or the current tenuous, anti-freedom dynamics between the governed and the governments of the world.

How would we feel about AI appearing, say, if we’d taken the last 50 years implementing very extensive renewable energy projects rather than continuing to rely on fossil fuels well past the point where it was clear that they were wrecking the environment?

3. The European project, the Enlightenment, the humanities. This is a tough thing to say, but it seemed from reading Capitalism that the whole world has lived in an economic variation of the sort of “dual law system” that exists in closed totalitarian societies across all of its various “governing” incarnations, as even countries with purported democratic governance that includes a large public-welfare element (greater percentages of tax money used to create a robust “public commons” with a baseline standard of living) still often having 2 sets of laws in practice, one for the wealthy and one for the rest of us. Capitalists and the state become intertwined to such a great extent that the laws of society no longer truly apply to them in any meaningful way. Such a system existed between the European powers and the colonies; the populations they subjugated lived in lawless zones where all of their potential was extracted so capitalists could sell their wares across the globe and accrue wealth and power. Once slavery was abolished, slightly less severe conditions were created among the working classes in the industrial powerhouses of that time. But things such as debtor’s prisons, the use of force to coerce unpaid labor, the ongoing expropriation of land, and more persist as they do today. The book notes that the great imperial societies spent half the money their governments raised to wage war. Now, forward to today, where the American president submitted a budget that would have allocated a little less than 30% of the GDP to the military (not even counting things that are related to controlling the population at home… police, customs/border patrol, internal surveillance, etc.), and it’s not particularly different in the country that the world currently holds up as the exemplar of “uncontrolled capitalism.”

Capitalism attacks the mythology surrounding the “wonder” of capitalism; yes, it acknowledges, amazing increases of standard of living were created for the top half of the global population, but this came with enormous inequality that made many elements of the lives of the “bottom half” more difficult, enormous violence, etc. There are two additional questions I think it invites readers to ask:
(1) Could all of the same accomplishments have occurred within a more egalitarian social framework?
(2) Would it have been better if they occurred much more slowly within that framework? Or would it have been better if certain things, or all of it, had not occurred at all?

[Ryan]

Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert is a massive, nearly 1,100 page book that argues capitalism evolved and took root over a long period of time and would not have been possible without extensive government support, the dispossession of collective land, the exploitation of labor and natural resources and the violent repression of widespread opposition. Contrary to common perception today, capitalism is not the natural order of human society and is not based on human freedom, in fact quite the opposite.

Capitalism is a form of economic life in which owners of capital organize the production of commodities in order to accumulate more capital. It arose from a difficult and unlikely but revolutionary process and has always been international in scope and heavily dependent on government, even when governments have resisted it. Under capitalism, everything needed to accumulate more capital is available for purchase with money, and everything produced is potentially sellable on markets. Capitalism is also constantly expanding the boundaries of what is and is not subject to the logic of capitalism.

The first capitalists were merchants who invested capital to build trade networks in order to accumulate more capital. This was different from those engaged in subsistence agriculture or domestic manufacturing, as well as from those who conquered or controlled land and extracted wealth from agricultural producers. Early capitalists were concentrated in port cities in the Middle East, including the port city of Aden, in modern-day Yemen, which facilitated trade between Asia and the Mediterranean in the 11th and 12th centuries. Capitalism accelerated with the agricultural surpluses resulting from climate warming after 1000 CE and the consolidation of Islam, which improved trade ties.

Other important trade centers included Cairo and Baghdad in the Middle East, Cambay in India, and Hangzhou in China. Europe remained an economic backwater until the 12th century, when Genoa, Venice, and Florence began to serve as middlemen between the Middle East and the rest of Europe. Areas around the Gold Coast of Africa also became wealthy by connecting to trade networks extending to the Mediterranean coast.

Merchants were often seen as immoral during the first half of the second millennium and faced resistance from elites and broader society. They were frequently looked down upon even though they were often wealthy. Capitalism had difficulty becoming established both because of this resistance and because the economy was largely based on subsistence agriculture and experienced little growth.

After the plague devastated the European labor force and caused wages to rise, while the strengthening Ottoman Empire made it more expensive to obtain Asian trade goods, European feudalism entered a crisis. The costs of frequent wars and the depletion of resources added to these pressures. European states were increasingly forced to rely on merchants and support their efforts to find new markets by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to reach Asia and eventually by discovering and conquering the Americas. This process was initially led by the Iberian nations, with Italian involvement, but was later led by the Dutch, who invented the stock exchange. The British, with the Dutch, subsequently developed the first corporation and the British created the first truly central bank. Ultimately, capitalism grew because the state supported it and used military power to protect monopolies and trade.

State-sponsored capitalism first emerged as “war capitalism,” built on imperial expansion and armed trade through violent domination of labor and the vast dispossession of collective resources. It was dependent on colonialism and slavery.

As trade-based urban areas expanded and became increasingly connected, merchants invested capital in agriculture in rural areas, converting feudal, subsistence agriculture into market-based commodity production. This happened most quickly in colonial lands, where entrenched feudal elites did not exist. Communal land was increasingly converted into private land, resulting in subsistence peasants in the Old World being forced into wage labor and indentured servitude, while enslaved labor was imported into the New World. The first example of the total conversion of agriculture to market production was the sugar plantations on Barbados in the 1600s.

Laborers resisted this transition, and there were many revolts by enslaved people and indentured servants.

To increase production, merchants invested in manufacturing, primarily paying peasants in the countryside to do work in their own homes with their own tools when they were not working on farms or performing other work for themselves. The state was heavily involved in promoting and regulating manufacturing from the beginning. It controlled labor and revolts, used military power to open overseas markets, and employed tariffs to protect domestic production.

Technological innovations in the spinning and weaving of cotton during the late 18th century, combined with wealthy merchants’ need for new places to invest capital, resulted in the expansion of textile manufacturing. Production moved into factories fixed in one place rather than remaining in individual homes. This helped spark the Industrial Revolution, as the large capital gains from textiles were invested in expanding the iron, coal, railroad, and machinery industries, which themselves grew because of industrialization. The Industrial Revolution began in Britain, which became its dominant power.

“Industrial capitalism” was distinguished by four key innovations that converged simultaneously: the relocation of manufacturing to factories, the recruitment of wage workers to staff the factories, the intensifying use of fossil fuels, and the historically unprecedented productivity increases that resulted in continual economic growth.

Women and children were initially the primary workers in factories because they could be more easily coerced into wage labor, whereas men often objected to factory work as an infringement on their independence and freedom. Workers periodically revolted against the labor controls created by the factory system, which resulted not only in greater oversight and stricter working conditions but also in lower income and less freedom. The Luddite revolt was more about resistance to these conditions and the loss of worker independence than about fear of technology itself.

Cheap manufactured goods coming from factories in Europe and the United States decimated traditional rural and individual manufacturing elsewhere in the world. Europe became dominant in world trade and used its power as a colonizer to prevent colonies from industrializing and competing with European powers in global trade.

The Industrial Revolution created a surge in demand for natural resources, which caused an intensification of agriculture and war capitalism in rural areas, accompanied by further dispossession of native lands and increased enslavement. This was particularly significant in the United States. After the slave revolt in Haiti dramatically reduced exports from the island, the cotton industry in the United States, sugar production in Cuba, and coffee production in Brazil grew rapidly, along with slavery in those lands.

The vast inequality that accompanied the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century resulted in the formation and conceptualization of class. The wealthy relocated to their own exclusive neighborhoods, attended exclusive clubs and entertainment venues and schools, and developed their own distinct cultures of dress and behavior. These institutions and practices provided a basis for collective action on behalf of their economic interests, including the forging of economic alliances between families through marriage and the preservation of wealth across generations. The wealthy looked down upon lower classes and used racial theories and other prejudices to justify their superior wealth.

Meanwhile, lower classes developed their own distinct cultures and took collective action to improve the deplorable living conditions they experienced as a result of low pay, long working hours, unhealthy housing conditions, and exposure to pollution.

In 1837, the first global economic recession hit. Boom-and-bust cycles, in which economic shocks sent shockwaves around the world, became a regular feature of the newly established capitalist system. However, the system was not named “capitalism” until the 1840s.

As the Industrial Revolution took hold during the 19th century, there were many revolts by enslaved people, wage workers, rural cultivators, and even capitalists who wanted a new political system in which they held power and the old system of hereditary elites was forced out of power.
The economic depression of 1873 was a turning point, beginning the reconstruction of capitalism from a system centered on trade, agriculture, and light manufacturing into one centered on steel, railroads, coal, electricity, and chemistry. These industries were increasingly controlled by vertically integrated monopolistic companies that exploited fossil fuels and relied on a massive expansion of wage labor. Workers subsequently embraced socialist politics and organized for reform, while the state began playing an even larger role in the economy. Europe and the United States took an ever-larger share of the world’s economic production and profits.

As more people were forced into wage labor in urban factories, consumerism increased because people were increasingly unable to rely on subsistence agriculture. This also spurred a great increase in demand for agricultural products. However, with the end of slavery, colonial capitalists had difficulty compelling people to perform wage labor in the fields. They therefore obtained workers through coercion and violence, including engineered debt servitude and other forms of forced labor, while using racist ideology to justify these practices. Meanwhile, in urban areas, workers began organizing unions and striking for better wages, shorter hours, and safer working environments.

Alarmed by the new economic power of the United States and inspired by its conquest and settlement of the western United States, European and Japanese powers expanded colonialism. They greatly expanded the role of the state in dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their land, building infrastructure to move commodities to markets, and incorporating control over natural resources into national projects intended to compete in and dominate world markets.

After World War I, there was a surge of mass social movements worldwide, including unions and strikes demanding better working conditions, as well as anti-colonial and anti-capitalist movements, including the Russian Revolution. After the onset of the Great Depression, which was seen as a failure of capitalism, the state took a more active role in directing economic activity. Governments embraced protectionism and territorial reordering to expand access to resources through the construction of imperial commodity chains and the intensification of industrial production in the homeland. Economic nationalism and the expansion of state welfare programs were used to avert revolutions.

Anti-colonial movements realized that in order to achieve political freedom and development, they also needed economic freedom. Domestic capitalists therefore worked with political leaders to implement import substitution through the use of tariffs, state-driven economic planning, and, in some cases, the nationalization of industries after achieving independence. However, these newly free governments also cracked down on labor movements.

After World War II, North America, Western Europe, and parts of Asia entered a 30-year “golden age” of rapid economic growth and productivity gains, accompanied by vastly expanded welfare-state programs resulting from the demands and power of unions. This period also included economic planning and the nationalization of key sectors. From the leadership of the United States, a rules-based international order was established through the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions. However, the subsequent rapid economic growth also resulted in an environmental crisis caused by intensive resource use, which helped spur the environmental movement.

The oil shock of 1973 contributed to stagflation in the United States and a debt crisis in the Global South. During the 1970s, corporations began moving manufacturing offshore from rich countries to poorer countries with cheaper labor and weaker regulations, bringing an end to the “golden age” in North America. The business elite simultaneously began organizing to oppose the social welfare state, union power, and regulatory restrictions.

Following the U.S. backed authoritarian coup in Chile, neoliberal economic policy spread around the world and became the dominant policy by the 1990s. Especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the gutting of union power, there was little left to oppose it. Institutions such as the IMF and World Bank forced neoliberal structural adjustment policies on developing countries. Trade and financial services experienced explosive growth during this period as multinational corporations became less tied to any individual nation.

The book ends its history with the 2008 financial crash and the Great Recession, the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It points out that the economy was ultimately rescued only through massive government interventions.

Capitalism has penetrated every part of the globe, and nearly every aspect of life is now subject to the logic of capitalism and can potentially be sold in a market. This has resulted in increased inequality, more dispossession of land, and ever-greater environmental destruction.

China has risen once again to become a dominant economic player, and capitalism has shifted toward a form of “knowledge capitalism” based less on industry and more on ideas and financial markets. Nevertheless, it remains highly dependent on state support and exploited labor.
Capitalism cannot last forever, especially in light of the apparent environmental and social crises it has created. It is facing a fundamental question: What comes next?

[Justin]

Dense with information and very well researched. If you're looking to better your understanding of capitalism, then this book is the one.

[Radiah]

I was expecting a work of history extolling the virtues of Capitalism, its origins in the West and perhaps a lecture on its future in jeopardy with the Global South now gaining wealth and influence.

Imagine my surprise when Sven Beckert went back to the 1100s to a (now little known) port called Aden, in Yemen to describe Capitalism at work in the start of the first millennium. Traders far and wide came to Aden, from the nearby Habash and Swahili Coast, from far away China, India, Southeast Asia, from nearby Arabia, Persia and Europe by ship. By land too via camel caravans from Mali, the Maghreb and the cities of Central Asia. It conjures up an image of Capitalism and free trade that is incredible.

This book is a monumental scope of work that describes the basic lifeblood of economics from the 10th century onwards, encompassing the industrialization age and the technological age as well. He describes the networks, systems and institutions that support it, the cultural norms that have been shaped by it, the rise and fall of governments by it, the motivations of traders operating within it, the relationships formed by it, the innovations that inspired (and continue to inspire) change within it and the ebb and flow of demand and supply across continents in response to the call of Capitalism. He doesn't shy away from the painful human episodes of Colonialism and Colonial slavery, which side note as a South East Asian, pained me.

Elements of capitalism are as old as mankind, with each generation building upon the lasts' knowledge and it remains a large part of the human experience, particularly now as we enter an unknown age and what innovations may arise from Capitalism and technology can both exciting and terrifying.

This book is written in such a way as to evoke such fascinating imagery and yet it is written in a rather direct manner that gets to the heart of why Capitalism has enriched lives and cause misery hand in hand in since the 1100s till now. It is entirely readable, yet packed with well-researched facts, historical images and timelines and certainly does not shy away from examining humanity's relationship with Capitalism. An impressive contribution to our understanding of the subject.