Fred L. Block Boeken

In Capitalism, leading economic sociologist Fred L. Block explains how U.S. politics got caught in a loop that alternates between center-left Democrats and increasingly extreme-right Republicans. Block argues that to exit this cycle of raised hopes followed by dashed dreams, we must challenge the idea that we live in a society that operates according to its own inner laws. Compellingly written and full of examples of the consequences of our absence of political imagination, Capitalism guides us through the reality that market societies are complex institutional hybrids and that, periodically, we must consider (despite our own fears) replacing our existing economic system to restore economic vitality.

What is it about free-market ideas that gives them staying power in the face of such failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and financial crises? The Power of Market Fundamentalism extends economist Karl Polanyi's work to explain why these dangerous utopian ideas have become the dominant economic ideology of our time.