“Heretics always remain tied to the church. To break out, what you do is nail your theses on the door, turn around and develop your own framework.” Most students of Anwar Shaikh, including the coauthors of this piece, will have heard this bold statement in his classes.

As one of the most important radical economists, Shaikh has not only advanced fierce criticisms of mainstream economic theory’s dogmas but also provided his own consistent framework with which to analyze capitalism, grounded in the works of classical political economists and especially Karl Marx.

Shaikh’s 2016 book, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises, combines his radical theorizing over the course of four decades into an integrated, coherent framework. At the heart of it is his unique reconstruction of real competition from the writings of Marx and the identification of the turbulent patterns that characterize capitalism — in other words, his understanding of why capitalism is rooted in conflict rather than harmony.