The New Reckoning

We are told that this is a new world, with which old theories cannot cope. But the dynamic driving the current global transformation is not as new as our pundits and politicians pretend. The global market-place of our day may have little in common with the tamed welfare capitalism of the post-war period but it is uncannily reminiscent of the untamed capitalism of 100 years ago. Keynes and Beveridge may be dead, but Marx, Malthus and Ricardo have had a new lease of life. In these timely essays, David Marquand challenges the fashionable amnesia of the 1990s and addresses the crucial questions raised by the capitalist renaissance which has followed the collapse of Communism …