Despair springs eternal

The literary emissions of the left are hardly ever enjoyable, but they can be instructive. Last year Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century became one of the biggest-selling political books of the year. Like a thousand-page Soviet report on tractor production, it hardly seemed intended to be read. The point of its success was that it could be said to ‘prove’ the left’s argument. They could then hit their opponents over the head with it and move to the next stage. Last year they questioned some premises of capitalism and now Paul Mason, the economics editor of Channel 4 News (and Spectator diarist), is here to say that capitalism is in fact over.

The central argument of his new book Postcapitalism is that ‘neoliberalism’ — which he characterises as an entity designed to destroy the working class and the welfare state — has reached the limits of its capacity to adapt. In gathering evidence for his argument, the reporter travels from Moldova to America by way of Greece. And if anybody feels concern about his central claim, then they can take comfort in his certainty that whatever comes next will be fairer and more just. If anybody thinks they have read all that before, it is because they have. For decades.

At least since the 19th century, whole libraries have grown up making the claim that capitalism has had its day. Most of these works have been written in a spirit of hopefulness that has come to nothing. And not just because they are so grudging about the fact that capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other financial system in history. Nor just because they remain deaf to the beautiful irony that capitalism remains the only financial system in history so benevolent that it makes even its most feverish critics rich.

The unspoken source of the problems — and the cause of the prolific book production — is that if capitalism is such a dreadful system, why has it kept trumping all their alternatives? A whole left-wing literature of consolation and self-reassurance has tried to speak to this conundrum.