Capitalism
The Story Behind the Word
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Narrated by:
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Liam Gerrard
About this listen
What exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what's at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it? In Capitalism, Michael Sonenscher examines the history behind the concept and pieces together the range of subjects bound up with the word. Sonenscher shows that many of our received ideas fail to pick up the work that the idea of capitalism is doing for us, without us even realizing it.
"Capitalism" was first coined in France in the early nineteenth century. It began as a fusion of two distinct sets of ideas. The first involved thinking about public debt and war finance. The second involved thinking about the division of labor. Sonenscher shows that thinking about the first has changed radically over time. Funding welfare has been added to funding warfare, bringing many new questions in its wake. Thinking about the second set of ideas has offered far less room for maneuver. The division of labor is still the division of labor and the debates and discussions that it once generated have now been largely forgotten. By exploring what lay behind the earlier distinction before it collapsed and was eroded by the passage of time, Sonenscher shows why the present range of received ideas limits our political options and the types of reform we might wish for.
©2022 Princeton University Press (P)2022 Ascent AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer - democratic practices were present in many places at many other times. David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished - and when and why they declined - can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future.
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Informative
- By Frank on 12-22-20
By: David Stastavage
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The Idea of America
- Reflections on the Birth of the United States
- By: Gordon S Wood
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history
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Sophisticated analyses
- By Roger on 01-25-12
By: Gordon S Wood
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The Great Degeneration
- How Institutions Decay and Economies Die
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Paul Slack
- Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author and world-renowned historian Niall Ferguson has won widespread acclaim for thought-provoking works such as Civilization and High Financier. The Great Degeneration tackles nothing less than the decline of Western civilization. Ferguson posits that slowing growth, outrageous debt, and antisocial behavior are contributing to the erosion of the West’s once rock-solid foundations. Ferguson excavates the causes and shows how heroic leadership and radical reform are needed to right the course.
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Superb as always!
- By Ivanhoe on 08-28-17
By: Niall Ferguson
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On Anarchism
- By: Noam Chomsky, Nathan Schneider - introduction
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.
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Hit and Miss
- By Jacob King on 06-18-14
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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Ill Fares the Land
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In Ill Fares The Land, Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment. Judt masterfully crystallizes what we've all been feeling into a way to think our way into, and thus out of, our great collective dis-ease about the current state of things.
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Blah, Blah, Blah.
- By Michael on 07-15-10
By: Tony Judt
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How Much is Enough?
- Money and the Good Life
- By: Edward Skidelsky
- Narrated by: Clay Teunis
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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What constitutes the good life? What is the true value of money? Why do we work such long hours merely to acquire greater wealth? These are some of the questions that many asked themselves when the financial system crashed in 2008. This book tackles such questions head-on.The authors begin with the great economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1930 Keynes predicted that, within a century, per capita income would steadily rise, people’s basic needs would be met, and no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week.
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Not what I expected at all!
- By Chi on 05-22-23
By: Edward Skidelsky
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When China Rules the World
- The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order
- By: Martin Jacques
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood.
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Lucid explanation of global economic trends
- By David Blake on 01-04-10
By: Martin Jacques
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Capitalism
- The Unknown Ideal
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This was the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constituted a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presented her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.
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Ashame this is not taught in our
- By Karen on 08-18-07
By: Ayn Rand
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Fascism: The Career of a Concept
- By: Paul Gottfried
- Narrated by: Kevin Moriarty
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it mean to label someone a fascist? Today, it is equated with denouncing him or her as a Nazi. But as intellectual historian Paul E. Gottfried writes in this provocative yet even-handed study, the term's meaning has evolved over the years. Gottfried examines the semantic twists and turns the term has endured since the 1930s and traces the word's polemical function within the context of present ideological struggles.
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Refreshing scholarly treatment of a widely misused concept
- By Minister of the Posterior on 01-15-24
By: Paul Gottfried
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The Austrian School of Economics
- A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, & Institutions
- By: Eugen Maria Schulak, Herbert Unterköfler
- Narrated by: Paul Strikwerda
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The Austrian School is in the news as never before. It is discussed on business pages, in academic journals, and in speeches by public figures. At long last, there is a brilliant and engaging guide to the history, ideas, and institutions of the Austrian School of economics. It is written by two Austrian intellectuals who have gone to the sources themselves to provide a completely new look at the tradition and what it means for the future.
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Good book about Austrian Economics and it's histor
- By Kyle and Dawn Christerson on 04-30-19
By: Eugen Maria Schulak, and others