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The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. By joyce appleby. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010. 494 pp. $29.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).
The rise and history of capitalism has been one of the most contested and examined subjects in scholarship. This is hardly surprising since the system of capitalism-pervasive, ever evolving, and adapting to diverse contexts-has provided a framework for economic life around the world for several centuries while also shaping politics, social relations, cultures, and natural environments. Yet, there is much disagreement among historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and economists as to when, where, and how capitalism emerged as a coherent system, the stages it went through, its impact on societies, and even how it should be defined. Some of the most seminal European social theorists, among them Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Max Weber, examined capitalism and its consequences, drawing different conclusions. Smith extolled free markets and the invisible hand of the marketplace, Marx offered a materialist conception of capitalism as a mode of production that exploited workers, while Weber embedded capitalism in a cultural context (including Protestantism). A few decades ago leading historians of Europe, especially of Britain, avidly debated the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a conversation that has been somewhat overshadowed in recent years as some scholars questioned the concept of feudalism for understanding medieval European society. For modern Europe and North America, scholars have examined the capitalists and their enterprises, workers and their experiences, and the interface between political and economic power. Meanwhile other observers have pondered the presumed nondevelopment of capitalism in premodern Asian societies, especially China, as well as the connection between capitalism and globalization. These debates should be of keen interest to world historians.
Joyce Appleby, a distinguished historian of the United States and Britain, has now offered her survey of the rise of capitalism in The Relentless Revolution, a high-profile book evidently aimed at a popular audience that will undoubtedly go on to many class reading lists and book club recommendations. Appleby makes her own views clear throughout, but they are views that will and should provoke debate; some critics may reject them as inadequately researched. Although describing herself as "a left-leaning liberal with strong, if sometimes contradictory, libertarian leanings" (p. 15), she is generally...