CAPITALISM, ALONE

An Economist Book of the YearA Financial Times Book of the YearA Foreign Affairs Best Book of the YearA Prospect Best Book of the YearA ProMarket Book of the YearAn Omidyar Network 8 Storytellers Informing How We ve been Reimagining Capitalism Selection Brilliant Poses all the important questions about our future Gordon Brown A scholar of inequality warns that while capitalism may have seen off rival economic systems the survival of liberal democracies is anything but assured The EconomistWe are all capitalists now For the first time in human history the world is dominated by one economic system At some level capitalism has triumphed because it works it delivers prosperity and gratifies our desire for autonomy But this comes at a moral price pushing us to treat material success as the ultimate goal and offers no guarantee of stability While Western liberal capitalism creaks under the strains of inequality and excess some are flaunting the virtues of political capitalism exemplified by China which may be more efficient but is also vulnerable to corruption and social unrest One of the outstanding economists of his generation Branko Milanovic mines the data to tell his ambitious and compelling story Capitalism gets a lot wrong he argues but also mu