The Global Origins of Capitalism: Power, Productivity, and the Evolution of Modern Market Societies

A centuries-spanning tour de force that speaks directly to the present, The Global Origins of Capitalism will reshape our understanding of economic history. Democratic market societies are in crisis. Social dislocation, anomie, and global ecological collapse live side-by-side with unimaginable wealth.Alongside real global improvements in health and longevity we find ourselves buffeted by a never-ending cycle of forces beyond our power or understanding.Gradually over a thousand years, and then quickly in the blink of an historical eye, capitalism has taken over human life, transforming our social relations and very consciousness.In The Global Origins of Capitalism, Yochai Benkler describes how this out-of-human-control dynamic evolved to the point where it overwhelmed all opposition, bringing with it both unimaginable prosperity and recurring patterns of inequality and social dislocation, and why all efforts to tame it have, to this point, failed.In doing so, Benkler provides a major re