Richard Douthwaite is an economist, journalist and author of several books including The Growth Illusion, Short Circuit and The Ecology of Money. He co- founded The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability in Feasta in 1998. The word feasta (pronounced fasta) means “in the future” and is taken from an old Irish poem. Feasta sees itself as a collective thinking process about that future.The financial crisis that has blighted the world' ...
"Geoff Mann is a new breed of monkey-wrencher. He knows that contemporary capitalism has a perverse habit of dismantling itself and gives us a toolkit to build a new, more socially just edifice."—Andy Merrifield, Magical Marxism "Insightful and incisive, thoughtful and thorough, filled with new avenues for thinking about resistence. Pass this one by at your own peril."—Matt Hern, Common Ground in a Liquid City To im ...
Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) was one of the most influential English economists of his time. Known as one of the founders of neoclassical economics, Marshall desired to improve the mathematical rigor of economics and transform it into a more scientific profession. Although he took economics to a more mathematically meticulous level, he did not want mathematics to overshadow economics. Marshall began his significant work, the «Principles of Econom ...
Perhaps one of the most infamous works of the modern world, «Capital» is the German treatise on political economy by Karl Marx that critically analyzes capitalism. First published in 1867 as the beginning of an ambitious but unfinished six-volume series, this work extensively attempts to expose and explain the capitalist mode of production and the class struggles embedded within it. «Capital» was written while Marx was exiled in England, and man ...
The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, «The Wealth of Nations» is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words. Smith details his argument in the following five books: Book I. Of the Causes of Improvement in the productive Power of Labour, Book II. Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock Introduc ...
First published in 1850, “The Law” is the best known work of 19th century economist Frederic Bastiat, a prominent member of the French Liberal School. A forerunner to the Austrian School of Economics, the French Liberal School was a major proponent of the laissez-faire capitalistic system. Bastiat advocated for unregulated free markets and against protectionism. At the heart of Bastiat’s philosophy was an opposition against the redistribution of ...
Despite the remarkable achievements of free markets—their rapid spread around the world and success at generating economic growth—they tend to elicit anxiety. Creative destruction and destabilizing change provoke feelings of powerlessness in the face of circumstances that portend inevitable catastrophe. Thus, from the beginning, capitalism has been particularly stimulative for the growth of critics and doomsayers. While early ...
