Miguel Afonso Caetano

"Refreshingly, Trevor Jackson’s new book detailing the history of capitalism, The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World, is surprisingly slim, comprising less than 250 pages of text. Jackson, an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley, has attempted to provide a synthetic work that translates the recent findings of academic economists into a readable historical narrative for nonexperts. His judicious treatment of controversies in economic history is a highlight.

Jackson seeks to explain how capitalism became the globally dominant economic force by the end of the long nineteenth century. He argues that capitalism’s domination was not intentionally worked out by anyone in advance but rather was the unforeseen result of a series of decisions over the course of centuries by economic actors pursuing their own particular interests. Its proliferation has brought not only rising living standards but also great suffering and environmental catastrophe in train. Even if these are not particularly original observations, they are fundamental components of any competent history of capitalism.

Unlike many who cast a critical eye on capitalism, Jackson does not write as a Marxist or, really, an adherent of any other readily identifiable ideological lineage. He does recognize that his narrative is broadly compatible with both Marxist and more mainstream traditions in economic history. The only perspective Jackson clearly distances himself from — and rightly so — is the Adam Smith–inspired position that capitalism is a logical expression of human nature"

https://jacobin.com/2026/05/review-jackson-economic-history-capitalism

#Capitalism #EconomicHistory #PoliticalEeconomy

We Need to Understand What Makes Capitalism Special

Capitalism is a distinctive mode of economic organization, one that emerged relatively recently in human history. What distinguishes it, a new history argues, is not a reliance on coercion or colonialism but the way it subjects everyone to market dictates.

May 10 at 11:57amWeb
Show threadMiguel Afonso CaetanoMay 10

Unlike some writing about capitalism today, Jackson is not an adherent of the “new history of capitalism” (NHOC) approach associated with scholars such as Sven Beckert, Walter Johnson, and Edward Baptist. He peppers his book with various criticisms of NHOC, arguing that its infamous resistance to defining what capitalism is has hindered the ability of scholars to accumulate knowledge about an agreed-upon subject. Moreover, the expansion of capitalism to encompass potentially all things at all times has made it harder to demarcate a precapitalist history or imagine a postcapitalist future.

Jackson devotes several pages to pinning down a definition of capitalism. Although he begins rather in the manner of a standard economist by stating that capitalism is an economic system constituted by markets in the factors of production — namely, land, labor, and capital — he ultimately locates capitalism’s specificity in market dependence: “The basic feature of capitalism is that . . . today nearly everyone is dependent on markets in order to live.”

Show threadMiguel Afonso CaetanoMay 10

"Jackson’s tone is usually evenhanded and technical, but he loses this staid demeanor when explaining the stakes of grappling with capitalism. “The world I live in will be destroyed within my lifetime,” he writes. “The question of what kind of world will follow it is entirely a question of whether we all manage to kill capitalism or it kills us first.” The insatiable machine’s rapid degradation of Earth’s ecosystems seems to be Jackson’s main motivation in urging us to drastically change course and try to construct a new kind of economic system.

The situation, while dire, is not hopeless, Jackson thinks. He urges engagement with history in order for people to collectively realize that their common interests point to a confrontation with capital. “The struggle of people against capital is . . . immortal,” he writes, and “community, solidarity, and meaning begin with the recognition of a shared condition and shared struggle.” "