Customer Reviews

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism

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As I was reading The Relentless Revolution I struggled a little thinking how best to characterize its purpose and content. On the surface it is as advertised, a history of capitalism. It covers several centuries globally, though with the Western emphasis inherent in the subject, and touches on most of the topics one would expect in a standard survey of modern economic history. However, it is not quite suitable for a college-level introductory text, because it is a little too personal, too up-front with the author's own convictions and interests. On the other hand, only occasionally does it penetrate deeply enough and present sufficiently sustained arguments to constitute much more than an introduction.

The most telling way to encapsulate the book, I concluded, is that it represents Joyce Appleby's attempt through historical reflection to sort out her own attitudes about capitalism. Since Appleby is a distinguished scholar, a past president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, one would expect her ruminations to be of some interest, and they often are, although not relentlessly so.

Most parts of Appleby's story have been told many times before: European exploration and commercial expansion, the advance in agricultural productivity, industrialization, the ascent of corporations and big business, the tribulations of depression, post World War II prosperity, the rise of Asian economies, the challenges and opportunities of contemporary globalization, and so on, right up to our most recent near meltdown. Where Appleby adds value, I believe, is through certain of her thematic insights, especially those rooted in topical ground where she herself has contributed to the primary research.

Appleby rightly treats capitalism as a cultural phenomenon, not simply some "system" that is driven by inexorable laws. There is no single development formula, she believes; history shows that capitalism must follow its own path in each society. She organizes much of her material around Joseph Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction." The most striking feature of capitalism, she says, is change.

Men and women do not innately desire change and, if anything, tend to resist it. Thus the take-off of capitalism required, in part, a shift in the orientation of human motivations. Appleby has previously focused on seventeenth-century economic thought, and here she underscores the importance of that period in Britain, in particular, as the idea began to take hold that stimulating wants could contribute to prosperity. For the first time emulation, love of luxury, and vanity began to look positive, and this transformation helped boost consumption and create markets.

I found Appleby to be quite good on these particular points. Yet through much of the book I was frustrated by debatable claims that she raised but did not develop, by unsupported generalizations, or by the superficiality of the discussion. Then, just as I was ready to lose patience, I would stumble across either a plausible provocative assertion or some striking fact that would re-capture my interest.

Overall, Appleby's assessment of capitalism's strengths and weaknesses seems fair and balanced. While she demonstrates how capitalism has brought prosperity, she also stresses how it has constantly upset the status quo and created social problems. She remains confident that societies can learn from history and continue to adjust.

If you want a solid historical survey of the history of capitalism from someone who has no ideological axes to grind, this will fit the bill. In fact, because so many books written about capitalism are written either by principled debunkers or impassioned boosters, it is important to read multiple accounts. The notion that capitalism has a history is for some a radical claim. Some libertarians insist on the primacy of capitalism in a way that would suggest that capitalism is a natural, primordial economic system to such a degree that it is pretty much inevitable. Appleby, on the other hand, sees the development of capitalism as a highly contingent, event, something that might not have happened had not the right cultural preconditions existed (such as advances in agriculture that made it possible for a large number of the populace to leave farms for factories.

Appleby is primarily a historian who has focused on the 18th and early 19th centuries, so it is not a surprise that these are some of the most interested chapters in the book. The 19th century chapters were also quite good, but I felt that the book became a bit free ranging in the final chapters. The topics discussed were valid and important, but the connections between these chapters were not always clear.

One think I liked about Appleby's book is that she made it clear both what she sees as capitalisms undeniable strengths (its ability to generate large amounts of wealth, to raise the quality of life for many, and provide recreation time for many workers) and its lamentable and hopefully correctable weaknesses (its tendency towards exploitation such as with slavery or sweatshops, the way it creates vast economic inequality, and its failure to spread the wealth to everyone, even though there is an adequate supply of food and other resources to do so). As a historian rather than an ideologue, she is able to take a more sober and balanced look at the history of the economic system than most. While I recommend that one reason several books on the subject, this is definitely one of the books that I recommend.

Factually accurate, good on the basics, but really nothing new whatsoever. Most exasperating was the failure to control the hurdle above which materials became suitable for the book. In other words, she doesn't know how much a reader might know. So she writes for Martians in many places - explaining what's obvious to every human being. And then she lopes off into the jungle with Stanley and Livingston which has nothing to do with capitalism.

Niall Ferguson should be your first stop on this subject, unless you are getting your arms around the basics.

She writes well, and probably is the sort of teacher one might have wished to have had...

A superb book. Even though I have been interested in economics, political and social systems, etc. since college, this book opened up some new perspectives for me for understanding these things as they really are and as they have evolved. It should be on the reading list of anyone interested in political and economic debates.

This book takes the position that the scientific-seeming laws of economics are the product of historically specific circumstances, and focuses on explaining those circumstances. As another review suggested, one should read this book in conjunction with other "big history" books -- for example by Kenneth Pomeranz, David Landes, William McNeill, Jared Diamond, Gregory Clark.

Appleby thinks that capitalism emerged when people started to see themselves as calculating economic agents, more so than as occupiers of hereditary positions -- more specifically, when this view started to become dominant in society. This happened in seventeenth-century England, and her account of this period is the highlight of the book. She explains why neither the rise of skilled artisans in Italian city-states, nor the explorations of Spain and Portugal, nor yet the Industrial Revolution, really correspond to this shift. The trading wealth of the Dutch almost counts, but Appleby argues that England, unlike the Netherlands, had the natural resources, means to agricultural modernization, and active public sphere of opinion to make the first transition to capitalism proper. She emphasizes that economic risk-taking requires enough of an agricultural surplus to assure that risk-takers won't starve if something goes wrong, and England got there first.

I found that the book became increasingly haphazard and unfocused as it reached the 20th century; I would suggest reading up to the rise of Germany and the US in the 19th century, then switching over to Jeffry Frieden's book on global capitalism (appreciatively cited by Appleby).

The names of Jean Monnet and Steve Wozniak are misspelled, and there are a disturbing number of citations to non-scholarly websites, interspersed with citations to scholarly sources.

Professor Appleby is a distinguished historian at UCLA, a specialist in the evolution of capitalism and an expert on British economic tracts of the 17th century. She defines capitalism (p. 25) as private investment for profit, and her thesis is that it was created by British thinkers of the 17th century rather than rooted in human nature as Karl Marx and Adam Smith believed. She shows how 17th century capitalism was nurtured by a peculiarly British ecology of privatised common lands, a more unified internal market, limitation of the powers of the Monarch, later marriage, a more joined-up legal system, and publishing freedom. `I have been most influenced by Weber', she says, noting that the inventor of the Puritan Ethic questioned the theories of Marx and Smith because they `gave attitudes to men and women that they couldn't possibly have had before capitalist practices arrived', and asked `how the values, habits, and modes of reasoning that were essential to progressive economic advance ever rooted themselves in the soil of premodern Europe'. She fails to note, though, that Marx and Smith had found these values rooted in an older garden, having studied what was available from the archaeological record and from anthropology. Appleby frequently uses `traditional society' to refer to the historical era immediately preceding capitalism, silently excluding the period before the Neolithic agricultural revolution. It may be an apt term considering the overwhelming importance of tradition in that era but her choice shows that human evolution is not a part of this picture. Appleby approvingly quotes Weber's out of hand dismissal of Smith's `natural propensity to truck and barter' (p. 18), which Smith had based on the analogy of a pre-agricultural specialist arrow-maker, the ancestor of his more famous pin factory.

The most arresting part of the book is Appleby's description of the `traditional society' that capitalist ideas undermined, a planned economy lasting for centuries if not millennia and which at the best of times teetered on the brink of famine and riot as a rigid social order controlled every aspect of resource distribution. The demotivated workforce never bothered to use the extensive public holidays for private ventures and in years of plenty idle hands were kept busy extending religious buildings; according to Appleby you can track the good harvests by the spurts in growth of cathedral towers (p. 6). She emphasises that it was not the Industrial Revolution that sounded the death knell of this period, but the little-known Agricultural Revolution (actually the second one, counting the Neolithic Revolution) whereby pioneering exploiters of enclosed (privatised) land finally established that agricultural yields could be improved beyond all measure and that the old planned economy was pointless. This demonstration, Appleby says, was publicised by a relatively free press and peacefully demolished the mindset that relied on authoritarian control. There, Appleby makes a concession to Smith - she denies (p. 78) an assertion attributed to Marx that it was primarily landlords (capitalists) who innovated, and gives equal credit to tenant farmers. How could that be unless, as Smith claimed `each man seeks to better his condition' even in the absence of capital?

Appleby shows how the revelation that `authority' had been wrong for all these years on the agricultural issue destroyed Britain's faith in authoritarianism in general. `Tradition' would never be the same again. Agricultural productivity rose so fast that the percentage of the British population engaged in farming fell from 80% in 1690 to 36% in 1800. It was this that kick-started the Industrial Revolution because the surplus labour could now be put to use in speculative industrial ventures unimagined by authority. This raises the question of how much 17th century `capitalist thinking' contributed new ideas. One could see `capitalist ideas' of that time as merely a rebuttal of traditional ideas, a sort of creative anarchy. The idea most frequently associated with early capitalism, the so-called `invisible hand of the market', a principle of optimal self-regulation attributed to Adam Smith, does not appear in Smith's work and if Google Ngrams is accurate it did not appear in any printed book until the twentieth century.

Whether or not Marx and Smith were right about human nature, and whether capitalism is a creation or a liberation, Professor Appleby has updated Max Weber's partial analysis of cultural factors to create a fascinating autopsy of the forces that held it in check in Britain for time out of mind.

I am just finishing up a course at UCLA which Professor Appleby has lectured entitled "the History of Capitalism." This was the main text for the course and I must say that her book is eye-opening. It presents world history, u.s. history and current events and ties them all together in one cohesive presentation. It will leave you with a feeling of optimism for the future as well as a better appreciation of the past. She hits on everything in this book and it is a great read! A+

I'm still plowing through this. It's not quite as enjoyable as I thought it would, especially given the interesting topic.

Very repetitive, flaccid prose, accurate but not deep.

This book needed a major rewrite to cut it by half.

No cares to read long-winded reviews which twist symphonically through a text. Therefore, I intend to keep this short and sweet.

This is a competent narrative history of Capitalism. The author is, mostly, well read in the topic but does drop the ball a few times (in this reviewers opinion).

Here are some of the areas I would disagree with (there are others)
The location of the Industrial Revolution does not belong, really, in the 18th century but in the Renaissance (where the intellectual tools were manufactured). There is an artificial nature to her discussion of Britain and she seems to be confused about when to refer to England and when to Great Britain (she a Yank...no surprise there). She tends to conflate the Scottish and English Enlightenments. Then there is the issue of Korea. The numbers are correct, when speaking of the Korean Miracle, but her analysis of women in Korea (today) is based on a New York Times article which I would disagree with (I've lived in Korea for nearly 8 years).

On the whole, however, this was a very competent history but one that was more a history of the world (mostly the West) since the 18th Century rather than a history of Capitalism...the author used Capitalism to interpret modern history and not vice-versa.

If the reader is looking for a competent history of Capitalism that eschews deep analysis (if you are looking for Herodotus rather than Thucydides) then this is the history for you. All in all, a good entry level text for understanding the contextual forces of Capitalism.

A little biased on the Keynesian side for my tastes. I'm more Austrian School and a Free-marketeer that is prepared to accept the bumpy ride than have the Nanny State tell me how to live my life. Still an adequate investigation of the issue.