The twenty-first century has proved highly unstable. The ongoing climate collapse, 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, and worsening income inequality have all contributed to younger people’s sense that something is fundamentally wrong with society and, consequently, a dwindling view of its political-economic structure: capitalism.

Despite generational discontent, capitalism is an adaptive and regenerative economic force, and private interests will not willingly hand over the means of production to the public. Mass organization is necessary. To that end, building collective power against capitalism requires appealing to people whose distress does not immediately call forth an anti-capitalist articulation. It’s therefore important for critics of capitalism to be armed with a comprehensive and factual perspective. We can’t just appeal to morality; we must truly understand our current system in order to chip away at the myths it relies upon to conserve itself, and to show each other that another world is possible.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom, a new book by British author and frequent Jacobin contributor Grace Blakeley, is a sophisticated and accessible polemic against capitalism. Blakeley communicates in clear terms the ways in which our economic order depends upon a veneer of democracy and competition in order to mask its real aim: the consolidation of power and resources for corporations, politicians, and ruling-class power brokers. In great detail, the book explicates how capitalism creates its own crises and prevents both individual and collective flourishing, and how a more egalitarian economic system might be achieved.