Does Capitalism Have a Future?

By: Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, Craig Calhoun

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, a global quintet of distinguished scholars cut their way through to the question of whether our capitalist system can survive in the medium run. Despite the current gloom, conventional wisdom still assumes that there is no real alternative to capitalism. The authors argue that this generalization is a mistaken outgrowth of the optimistic nineteenth-century claim that human history ascends through stages to an enlightened equilibrium of liberal capitalism. All major historical systems have broken down in the end, and in the modern epoch several cataclysmic events-notably the French revolution, World War I, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc-came to pass when contemporary political elites failed to calculate the consequences of the processes they presumed to govern. At present, none of our governing elites and very few intellectuals can fathom a systemic collapse in the coming decades. While the book's contributors arrive at different conclusions, they are in constant dialogue with one another, and they construct a relatively seamless-if open-ended-whole.

Written by five of world's most respected scholars of global historical trends, this ambitious book asks the most important of questions: Are we on the cusp of a radical world historical shift?

©2013 Oxford University Press (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Poor narration audio

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Only if they are really interested in the subject

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

The subject I find interesting. Change the word story for subject in non-fiction books.

How could the performance have been better?

Someone removed the hi-mid and higher frequencies in the narrators voice, which leaves the recording sounding muffled.

I don't care for the narrator's style either. Hi prosody sounds stuffy.