Sven Beckert’s History of Capitalism Is Too Light on Theory
Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History ranges impressively over time and space, from medieval Yemen to modern-day Cambodia. But we need a clearer political economy of capitalism to make sense of the material that he provides us with.
The illustration of capitalism from all parts of the world is undoubtedly a strength of Sven Beckert’s new book. (Daily Collegian / Flickr) (Daily Collegian / Flickr)
Joseph Schumpeter famously summarized the achievement of capitalism in his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, with the following remark: “Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for a steadily decreasing amount of effort.”
On seeing Sven Beckert’s doorstop of a book — approximately a quarter of a million words longer than Schumpeter’s terse summary — an obvious question throws itself at the potential reader: What more does Professor Beckert have to explain?
The book’s subtitle gives an immediate answer. Whereas Schumpeter was offering a statement about the state that capitalism had reached in America and Europe by the time of World War II, Beckert offers a “global history” that starts a millennium ago in Yemen and ends in Cambodia.
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