Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Jason W. Moore. Verso. 2025.

A decade after its first publication in 2015, Capitalism in the Web of Life still offers one of the most powerful frameworks for rethinking the relation between capitalism, ecology, and history. It conducts a world-historical investigation of how bundles of human and extra-human natures shape subsequent phases of capitalist development.

From Cartesian dualism to a world ecology

One of the main claims in this 305-page book is that we need to abandon the usual division between “Society” and “Nature”, established at the dawn of modernity (especially with the work of René Descartes)thus structuring much of contemporary, mechanistic science. In Part I of the book, Moore writes that seeing Nature as external is a fundamental condition of capital accumulation. Without the objectification of nature (including women and slaves), and its reconceptualisation as a mere stock of work/energy, centuries-long ecocide would be unthinkable. Capitalism does not act on nature as if they were separate worlds that only collide. Capitalism unfolds through nature – the creative, generative, and multi-layered relation of species and environment.” Human organisation becomes not only a producer but also a product of environmental change. This deep ontological rethinking resonated in the work of new critical thinkers, e.g. Jason Hickel or Kohei Saito (whose more accessible writing styles have enabled them to resonate with larger readerships).

This is the basis of Moore’s key concept of “world ecology” as a method to analyse nature’s relationality. This way he offers a post-Cartesian worldview of capitalism as a dialectical unity of capital accumulation, the pursuit of power, and the co-production of nature. “Capitalism is not an economic system; it is not a social system; it is a way of organizing nature” (2).

That shift in perspective is one of the book’s great strengths. Cartesian dualism, Moore writes, is driving our interpretations of historical change into a choice between social reductionism or environmental determinism. Mainstream environmentalism tends to treat nature as a stock of resources, and mainstream social theory still treats capitalism as if it were mainly about markets, classes, industry, or finance. Moore challenges both views, showing that the history of capitalism is inseparable from the remaking of forests, fields, bodies, frontiers, trade routes, energy systems, and global divisions of labour.

Capitalism and Cheap Nature

Moore’s central concept is “Cheap Nature”, which describes capitalism’s long dependence on appropriating undervalued or unpaid work/energy from humans and the rest of nature. Besides appropriation, capitalism has to capitalise (exploit) paid work/energy; but if it is to survive, the first process must unfold faster than the latter.

Capitalists do not like to pay for what they take, which is demonstrated in female unpaid housework, the oil as accumulated geological labour of Earth, and depeasantisation (pushing small-scale farmers into market labour).This preference requires them to drive the real costs of production (beyond paid proletarian work) as low as possible. Cheap Nature is the invention of a civilisation premised on dualism, comprising key inputs such as labour, raw materials, energy, and food (Moore and Patel later expanded this intuition).

To restore the flow of cheap inputs, capitalists, in conjunction with states, seek new configurations of human and extra-human natures. This is inherent to the history of capitalism

In Part II, Moore offers a historical periodisation of capitalism’s emergence, tracing how early capitalism took shape through frontier expansion, agrarian transformation, imperial power, and new forms of appropriating unpaid work/energy from the agricultural revolution of the Low Countries from the early 15th century onwards. This long historical arc gives the book much of its explanatory force. Capitalism is not an ahistorical economic process but a historically evolving configuration of human and extra-human natures.

That means nature is constitutive of capital accumulation. Capitalism’s recurring crises are tied to its dependence on new streams of cheap inputs. Once Cheap Nature becomes dear, problems emerge: the system is struggling to reproduce the conditions that made its own expansion possible. To restore the flow of cheap inputs, capitalists, in conjunction with states, seek new configurations of human and extra-human natures. This is inherent to the history of capitalism: from the enclosure of the commons in England and the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the “New World” (cheap labour), through plantation production in the colonies (cheap food) to the supply of oil from distant continents (cheap raw materials).

World-systems thinking

The book has a strong intellectual architecture. Besides Marx as clearly the central reference point, Moore is drawing on a wider tradition of historical and critical thought including world-systems analysis and the longue durée tradition associated with thinkers such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi and Andre Gunder Frank. From them comes Moore’s insistence that capitalism must be grasped historically, globally, and relationally rather than substantially. Rejecting both conventional Green thought and poststructuralist theory as well as Latourian actor-network thinking, Moore’s work is underpinned with the same question: not how does capitalism act on nature, but how does it manage to put nature to work.

These observations explain why Moore has become one of the most prominent advocates of the term “Capitalocene” against the more dominant “Anthropocene.” His point is not merely semantic. As he writes in Part III of the book, the Anthropocene discourse attributes planetary crisis to humanity in general, while Capitalocene directs attention to capital as the world-ecological relation.

The crisis of falling ecological surplus

This relation brings us closer to the key message of the book: the crisis of capitalism is a crisis of “diminishing ecological surplus”. Ecological surplus is the foundation of the capitalist civilisational regime, and its core is Cheap Nature. It is how capital prevents the mass of capital from rising too fast in relation to the mass of appropriated nature (191).

The ecological surplus – the relative contribution of unpaid work to capital accumulation – can decline for several reasons: due to class struggle; the rise of environmental movements across the world; mechanised, monoculture agriculture with its increasingly toxic inputs; and, perhaps most obviously, the depletion of energy and mineral resources. Although with geographical variations, Moore writes that from 2003 onwards we witness the simultaneous rise in prices of all four inputs – labour, food, energy, and raw materials.

Moore’s concepts are striking and illuminating, but they sometimes operate at a level of abstraction that leaves the reader craving more empirical grounding.

Though brilliant, Capitalism in the Web of Life is intensely theoretical, arguably to a fault. Moore’s concepts are striking and illuminating, but they sometimes operate at a level of abstraction that leaves the reader craving more empirical grounding. But maybe Moore’s ambition is inseparable from his book’s central tension: its power lies in its attempt to build a unified account of capitalistic environment-making through history, but consequently some earlier critiques of Cartesian dualism tend to disappear from his retrospective.

Reconstruction of value is one of the book’s major achievements, especially where it connects Marxist-feminist insights on unpaid reproductive labour with the appropriation of unpaid work and energy from extra-human natures. But the scale of the theoretical claim occasionally comes at the expense of fuller engagement with nearby interlocutors and alternative vocabularies. In a 2025 essay Moore confirmed his commitment to this level of conceptual generalisation, which gives his work coherence and polemical force.

Changing the terms of the debate

“Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself,” said Native American leader and activist Chief Seattle in the mid-19th century, illustrating the arrogance of modern science. In fact, as biologists suggest, we humans live only a few moments of evolutionary time; and we play games in which we and our mechanical toys are the main characters in an infantile fairy tale called the Anthropocene. But our civilisational model is exhausting, as global warming evidences.

Capitalism in the Web of Life has become a contemporary classic. Moore’s subsequent reflections show less a revision than a sharpening of this original wager.

In this sense, Capitalism in the Web of Life has become a contemporary classic. Moore’s subsequent reflections show less a revision than a sharpening of this original wager. But what’s demanding is rewarding: Moore offers us a powerful framework for understanding the deep roots of planetary breakdown, as well as for understanding why the future seems even bleaker. His work is (somewhat depressingly) even more relevant now, as it becomes ever clearer that capitalism’s expansion will always involve intolerable violence against the web of life we are part all part of.

This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: mustafa bilge satkın / Climate Visuals Countdown via climatevisuals.org.

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Benjamin Selwyn will speak about the book at an event hosted by LSE Department of International Development on Wednesday 18 March 2026 find details and register to attend.

Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics. Benjamin Selwyn and Christin Bernhold. Oxford University Press. 2025.

Capitalist value chains

From the onset of globalisation (around the late 1970s to the early 1980s), global production has increasingly been organised across borders. Large transnational corporations (TNCs) have emerged organising transnational production in what is frequently referred to as Global Value Chains (GVCs). A new book by Benjamin Selwyn and Christin Bernhold critiques the existing literature on GVCs, arguing that they don’t deliver on their promise of prosperity for workers and the planet.

The exploitation of human labour and expropriation of nature are both regarded as essential for capitalist accumulation

Selwyn and Bernhold’s key contribution is that they locate their analysis of transnational production within what Karl Marx referred to as the “hidden abode of production”. Thus, instead of GVCs, they coin the term “Capitalist Value Chains” (CVCs), defined as “historically specific configurations of [international] capitalist class relations that contribute to heightened exploitation of labour and appropriation of nature by capital” (6). Their analysis is based on a detailed understanding of Marxist political economy and the way exploitation is increased through a combination of absolute and relative surplus extraction within CVCs (24). “Under capitalism,” they write, “economic growth is driven forward by capital’s insatiable and never-ending demand for profit rather than for human or environmental need” (230). By this logic, the exploitation of human labour and expropriation of nature are both regarded as essential for capitalist accumulation.

Exploiting workers and the environment

Selwyn and Bernhold’s second major contribution is their focus on the plight of workers. In an impressive range of empirical examples throughout the volume, they demonstrate how working people are losing out in CVCs. Key here is their notion of immiserating growth regimes, where corporations profit because “workers do not earn sufficient wages in a normal working day to sustain their and their family’s social reproduction costs” (134). Rather than enabling development, CVCs cause widespread poverty, the authors maintain. Importantly, they go beyond the World Bank’s international poverty line and in line with the Asia Floor Wage to focus on a living wage, which also includes, for example, access to health services and education in addition to a minimum wage (135).

Third, Selwyn and Bernhold excel at highlighting the causal dynamics underpinning relentless environmental destruction due to the expansion of capitalism through CVCs: “CVC hyper-specialization entails an increase in production, transportation, and energy use – accelerating climate breakdown and mass environmental ruin” (206). Savings due to new technologies will only increase investment and accumulation due to capitalist competition, resulting in yet further environmental destruction, they argue. By revealing this process, Selwyn and Bernhold successfully debunk the myth that an expansion of CVCs would help to address the ecological crisis (218).

Capitalism’s ever-larger crises

As impressive conceptually and empirically this volume is, it does have some arguable shortcomings. First, CVCs have driven the transnationalisation of production, which in turn has underpinned the emergence of transnational capital as leading class fraction at the global level. And yet, the authors portray TNCs such as Apple or Microsoft simply as US capital, being increasingly challenged by Chinese CVCs, i.e. Chinese capital. Thus, the authors risk falling into a state-centric trap in their analysis of transnational capital, conflating particular class fractions with specific states. Yes, states such as the US, Japan and China have facilitated the transnationalisation of ‘their’ large corporations (89, 111). The strategic considerations of these TNCs have, however, outgrown their initial home country setting.

Second, the authors overlook the structuring conditions of the capitalist social relations of production, especially the way capitalism is prone to crises. Together, their rather state-centric approach to CVCs, as well as their choice to disregard capitalism’s tendency towards crisis have significant implications for their understanding of geopolitics. Capital is presented as all-powerful and almost completely dominant at the very moment when increasing geo-political conflicts tear at its very structure. The Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli-US attack on Iran and the numerous tariff wars incited by the US are all signs of a global capitalism steeped in crisis. The book was completed in 2024, but some of these developments were already apparent then.  

A heightened level of state intervention underpins the current, volatile global geo-political environment, characterised by trade wars and military conflicts.

William Robinson’s analysis of global capitalism’s crisis provides an explanatory corrective here. Robinson illustrates well how, against the background of a declining rate of profit, global capitalism has become engulfed in a crisis of overaccumulation. As companies increasingly struggle to find profitable investment opportunities for their record profits, he points out that “since 1980, uninvested corporate cash holdings have ballooned to 10 per cent of GDP in the United States, 22 per cent in Western Europe, 34 per cent in South Korea, and 47 per cent in Japan”.

Increasing state intervention

As it is the role of states as nodal points in the global political economy to ensure the continuation of capitalist accumulation, more and more governments around the world are intervening into the economy not only trying to ensure the fortunes of “their” particular capitalist class fractions, as Selwyn and Bernhold may argue, but even more importantly to attract investment by transnational capital. In other words, when analysing the internal relations between global capitalism and international geopolitics, we have to focus on the way and the degree to which the interests of transnational capital have become internalised within various state forms. Even the US has to work hard to ensure capital investment and to date it is doubtful to what extent it will be successful at securing some reshoring of manufacturing by corporations such as Apple. Ultimately, it is this heightened level of state intervention which underpins the current, volatile global geo-political environment, characterised by trade wars and military conflicts.

A must-read for everyone interested in how the latest phase of capitalism is pushing humanity and the planet towards the brink.

The authors’ argument that “China has evolved from the workshop of CVCs, via technological innovation, to become a challenger to increasing numbers of US high-tech CVC firms” (112) is also debatable. By contrast, Sam King argues that it is especially the “grip over the high-end of the labour process” – in particular over microchips – that the United States is now wielding against China in the “trade war,’” which indicates China’s continuing subordinate position. Moreover, capitalism’s internal contradictions and related crisis tendency have affected China too, reflected in ballooning banking assets looking for profitable investment opportunities, out of control household and corporate debt levels and “a slowdown in growth rates; and social polarization.” China’s Belt and Road initiative is also a vehicle of creating profitable investment opportunities to counter its own crisis of overaccumulation. Ultimately, only the future can tell whether China will be able to catch up or not.

These criticisms should not, however, be read as dismissing the huge contributions of this book for illuminating the ways CVCs work to the detriment of workers and the environment. The book is a must-read for everyone interested in how the latest phase of capitalism is pushing humanity and the planet towards the brink.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Rasto SK on Shutterstock.

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Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire. Carl Rhodes. Bristol University Press. 2025. The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich. Evan Osnos. Simon & Schuster. 2025.

We have a billionaire problem. The release of the latest tranche of the Epstein Files in late January 2026 has shaken the world. Though the depraved nature of Epstein’s sexual exploitation of girls and young women was already well known, the disturbing details and vastness of the network of people involved in these crimes, whose wealth and power insulated them from consequences and criminal charges, is difficult to digest. Epstein used his vast personal fortune to bend democracy, and he is rightly reviled for actions that United Nations’ experts suggest may amount to crimes against humanity.

There is a risk that the power concentrated in Epstein’s hands will be seen as dangerous only because he and those who sought his favour were depraved […] deflect[ing] from the reality that accumulating such extreme wealth and power is, in and of itself, dangerous

There is a risk, however, that the power concentrated in Epstein’s hands will be seen as dangerous only because he and those who sought his favour were depraved. Such a framing deflects from the reality that accumulating that level of wealth and power is, in and of itself, dangerous to democracy. It fundamentally erodes decision-making by and for the people. Against this backdrop, two timely, well-written books examine the lives of today’s very rich, the myths that surround them, and the power they wield. If Epstein’s crimes are rightly condemned, both authors remind us that political outrage and mobilisation is necessary to challenge the real billionaire problem: their outsized influence in every aspect of life.

Debunking myths about billionaires 

In Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire Carl Rhodes, the Dean of the University of Technology Sydney’s Business School, argues that there is widespread respect, even awe for the wealthy (50), while the poor are scorned for failing to “dream hard enough” (51). In today’s culture, Rhodes argues that four major myths about the billionaire dominate, each of which must be challenged as part of a broader political project to limit wealth inequalities and strive for a more equal world.

First, he critiques the closely allied celebrations of the “heroic” and self-made billionaire that claims inequalities are earned through the hard work of the talented few. Inherited wealth, he observes, enables the rich to take chances and so become even richer. In 2019, Forbes magazine celebrated Kylie Jenner as “the youngest self-made billionaire” (91), for her business, Kylie Cosmetics. Characteristically, she is, in fact, the daughter of very wealthy parents, made world-famous and then rich through a reality television serial. There is a “glass floor” (101) ensuring that the children of the very rich, like Jenner, “have a safety net of returning to relative material comfort should their entrepreneurial ventures fail” (59). President Trump is another example of the supposedly heroic, meritorious billionaire; he claims he built his businesses using a “small loan” of $1 million from his father. Of course, most parents cannot lend their children such sums. Moreover, the actual value of the loan of was closer to $61 million (48).

Today’s wealthy do not earn money from what they do but what they own

Most wealthy people today are not rich because of wages or a salary compensating them for their talent and work. They do not “earn” their wealth through their labours, as most of us do, but through shareholder investment in their successful enterprises. As the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk has only a $56 000 (US dollars) salary, but, as Rhodes explains, he has an “insanely high net worth […] a result of the appreciating value of his company on the stock market” (64). Combined with billions in government subsidies and corporate tax avoidance, the reality is that today’s wealthy “do not earn money from what they do but what they own” (66).

Tax evasion and political influence 

Next, Rhodes takes aim at another myth: that of the generous billionaire. There are, he recognises, billionaires who donate significant fortunes to various causes. Among them, Yves Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor sportswear and equipment company, Patagonia, stands out: he donates 100 per cent of profits to non-profit organisations he created to support ecological causes. If admirable, this means that tackling urgent public issues, like climate change, depends increasingly upon the idiosyncratic personal priorities of the very rich. Moreover, Rhodes points out that many billionaires are made through paying much less tax than most working people. In 2007 and 2011 “[Amazon owner Jeff] Bezos paid no federal income taxes at all – zero dollars. Ditto for Musk in 2019.” Generosity, in short, depends upon accumulating wealth by avoiding taxation. This gives philanthropic capitalists significant personal power to decide what public problems will be solved, through their “generosity”, acting as a substitute for democratic decisions about public expenditures.

Finally, Rhodes laments the myth of the vigilante billionaire, who will single-handedly use his business acumen to save the world, where democratic public institutions have failed. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, in 2020, “twice as many billionaires were attending as there were heads of state” (127), reflecting the power and influence of the very rich to meet and decide on global priorities After his 2025 Presidential election, Trump named thirteen billionaires (including Musk) to the top ranks of his administration (xiv), making the influence of the ultrarich nakedly visible. In lieu of genuine democratic decision-making the vigilante billionaire steps in and is celebrated for his capacity to cut through failures of bureaucracy. “Whether billionaires do good or bad,” Rhodes concludes, “everyone remains at their mercy” (75).

Superyachts and their owners 

In The Have and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich, New Yorker writer Evan Osnos explores the world of superyachts and their owners. Across nine chapters, he describes how the very wealthy spend, keep and lose their wealth. The aim is to shed light on “the true power of the world’s biggest fortunes” (xiv), amidst vast inequality, and to do so by studying “the thinking and behaviour” (xvi) of the ultrarich. To those ends, Osnos secures a rare interview with billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, traces the rise and fall of shadowy figures in the underworld of cryptocurrencies and Ponzi schemes, and investigates why monied families in Greenwich, Connecticut decide to support Trump for the Republican leadership. He details usually hidden lives, creating a “field guide to the ultrarich” (xvi), in a world in which “greed” is “celebrated” (265), and the drive for profit comes before anything else, whether climate change or social justice (188).

Those who inherit vast fortunes spend practically unlimited resources skirting legal requirements meant to divert some private wealth into public coffers, for democratic redistribution.

A superyacht reaches up to 180m in in length and cost half a billion dollars (22) or more. “In the yachting world,” Osnos recounts, “stories circulate about exotic deliveries by helicopter or seaplane: Dom Pérignon, bagels from Zabar’s, sex workers, a rare melon from the island of Hokkaido.” (9). Built for Russian oligarchs seeking to escape the law or as a diversion for “bored billionaires” (22), they are sites of excess and displays of status. If stories of luxurious consumption excite and appal, it is the ways that the wealthy exercise their influence, while detaching themselves from the fate of others, that is most shocking.

Osnos introduces us to China-born billionaire Guo Wengui, whom Osnos describes as “either an asset of the FBI or a target” (224). In 2015, Guo moves into a luxury apartment in New York City, claiming to be a dissident from the Communist regime. He soon buys a membership to Mar-a-Lago resort, better to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump, and later sponsors Steve Bannon (236) with whom he starts “an alternative-news platform” (236). During the pandemic, he spreads misinformation about COVID-19, hawks crypto-currency and, despite his own claims to be a dissenter, foments diasporic unrest against Chinese political exiles, claiming they are “fake pro-democracy activists” (238). Guo creates and shares pro-Trump messages leading up to the 2020 election, and later asserts that the election was stolen. In 2023, he is arrested for more than one billion dollars US in fraud, his role as a Chinese operative, an American intelligence asset or opportunist, still unresolved.

The lives and motivations of billionaires 

If Guo is one illustration of illicit power exercised through economic might, Zuckerberg is a more familiar member of the billionaire class. An “oddity” (88), well-known for evincing little introspection or emotion, Zuckerberg is most animated when discussing his hero, the Emperor Augustus: he hopes to secure greatness on the scale of the emperor’s “two hundred years of world peace” (92), even if this requires difficult “trade-offs” (92). Zuckerberg’s influence, if not formally imperial, is certainly outsized. As a Stanford historian of technology points out, Facebook, “is the arbiter of truth and decency for two billion people” (88) but Zuckerberg’s own trade-offs at Facebook have tragic consequences. In Myanmar, Facebook messages share and amplify virulent anti-Muslim discourse, targeting the Rohingya minority. If Zuckerberg insists that this is “terrible”, he is “frustrating and evasive” (106) in responding to Osnos’ questions about why he is not doing more to limit violence-inciting content. Although Zuckerberg eventually commits to hiring and training more Burmese speakers to moderate content, in January 2026, the World Court at the United Nations opened a case considering the charge of genocide against Myanmar. In terms of its wide-reaching influence, Osnos concludes that Zuckerberg, “succeeded, long ago, in making Facebook great. The challenge before him now is to make it good” (116).

Decisions made by billionaires are consequential for everyone on the planet, whether the ultra-wealthy invest in mining or green technologies, sports teams or the arts, the mass media or political parties, superyachts or philanthropy. 

Other chapters zone in on various billionaire figures and the power they hold, from the boom-and-bust tale of a Hollywood schemer who raises half a billion dollars in a Ponzi scheme, to the travails of a wealth manager who spectacularly falls out with the heirs to the Getty fortune, to the breathtaking hypocrisy of Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson, who attacks “elites” as if he were the beleaguered underdog, despite his inherited fortune. These stories, Osnos argues, reveal deeper truths. The warn us about the attraction of get-rich-quick schemes in a nation where attaining wealth is central to the American dream. They remind us that the line between tax optimization and tax evasion blurs, when those who inherit vast fortunes spend practically unlimited resources skirting legal requirements meant to divert some private wealth into public coffers, for democratic redistribution. Perversely, resentments over vast economic inequalities are channelled into populist attacks on amorphous “elites”, by some of the wealthiest people in the United States, in what Osnos describes as “performances of solidarity with the masses that would have impressed the Castros” (159).

Dethroning the ultra-wealthy 

In examining billionaires, Rhodes, the scholar, is more overtly pedagogical. He seeks to educate readers about the politics and policies that have led to enormous inequality and to unmask the ideologies that justify the existence of billionaires and their “enormous power” (122). Osnos, the journalist, seeks to “show not tell” allowing his interlocutors to underscore, “the true power of the world’s biggest fortunes” (xiv). Their contributions fill out the more historical, and, at times, technical descriptions and explanations made by, among others, the French economist Thomas Piketty, whose work has sought to track the growth of inequalities, over more than a century, across the globe. The picture that emerges from the two books reviewed here is one of democratic politics collapsing into plutocratic rule. What we need, politically, Osnos warns, is to tackle the real problems we face: “inequality, immobility and intolerance” (161), or we risk the end of any semblance of democratic rule and a shared, public life. Doing so is both more necessary and more challenging than ever before.

The billionaire problem we face today is not confined to Epstein. The bigger issue, as both Rhodes and Osnos emphasise, is that today’s extreme wealth means extreme, concentrated power. Decisions made by billionaires are consequential for everyone on the planet, whether the ultra-wealthy invest in mining or green technologies, sports teams or the arts, the mass media or political parties, superyachts or philanthropy. Amidst plenty, tens of millions are without adequate food, water or housing. The choices ahead are stark. We can accept continuing inequality and the myths that justify great wealth for the very few. Or we can commit to more egalitarian economic policies and a shared political life. We cannot have both.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Malik_Skets on Shutterstock.

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The Corporation in the 21^st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business is Wrong. John Kay. Profile Books. 2025 (paperback); 2024 (hardback). 

How corporations have evolved over time 

What if the prevailing wisdom on what makes a successful and durable business is entirely wrong? John Kay’s The Corporation in the 21^st Century makes exactly that claim, upending the apple cart of contemporary business strategy, and making a brilliant contribution to business economics, industrial organisation, political economy, and institutional economics in so doing. Drawing from the work of Margaret M. Blair and Lynn Stout, Kay demolishes the 40-year shareholder-value orthodoxy, by demonstrating that maximising short-term financial targets may enrich a small class of executives, but it causes a slow self-euthanasia of the corporation over decades. This ambitious book describes the emergence of a new economic institutional order, very much in the tradition of, and inspired by, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nation, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation and John K. Galbraith’s The New Industrial State. 

Although the dominant forms of “capital” used by the modern corporation have transformed, the language used to describe capital has not. In the 19th and 20th centuries, physical capital was dominant: textile mills and iron works, railways, steel mills assembly lines, etc. (59-70). But the 21st-century corporation is no longer defined by its physical capital (4), nor by the bourgeoise and proletariat class struggle. Instead, today’s dominant forms of capital are human (skills, experience, judgement of employees), social (trust, relationships, reputation), organisational (culture, routines, ways of working), and intellectual (knowledge, data, innovation) (335- 40). For example, Amazon requires warehouses, vehicles, and stocks of goods it rents rather than owns them (304). According to Kay the evolutions of the dominant forms of capital and modes of work have transformed capitalism into a post-capitalist economy, which he calls a “pluralist economy” (8; 351-3). 

That the evolution of capital has transformed the mode production is debatable. From a global perspective it is not clear the importance of physical capital has diminished. G7 economies have simply exported physical capital from their shores to places like China, South Korea, Mexico, and a slew of small economies across the globe. The Smithian/Marxian class struggle is now more global than ever. Although the forms may have changed, international class struggles persist, as articulated in the massive increase in inequalities of income and wealth across all the G7 economies. 

The consumer paradox and the rise of short-term thinking 

In writing this book, Kay is motivated by a paradoxical observation: consumers love the products of big corporations but hate the producers (13-25). We love our smartphones, computers, search engines, automobiles, online shopping with fast deliver, retailers who provide cheap prices and budget airlines. But we view the corporations who sell these products and their executives as overly greedy, exploitive of their workers and suppliers, social irresponsible, often unethical, sometimes criminal, and corrosive of democratic processes by influencing politics. In the 21^st century there is massive distrust of big business, and it is widespread across the G7 countries and most developed nations across the globe. Kay attributes this to an over-focus by corporations on short-term financial goals such as profit maximisation, cost minimisation, and shareholder value (178-85; 193-201). 

The pursuit of short-term financial goals gained prominence in the 1980s and was entrenched by the 1990s

Milton Friedman’s notorious article from 1970, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase its Profits” became a paradigm expression of this short-termism. The pursuit of short-term financial goals gained prominence in the 1980s and was entrenched by the 1990s. By the 2000s, short-termism began to have adverse  consequences for society and firms themselves. Not only does it damage public trust in big business, Kay maintains; it undermines the long-term performance and survival of businesses themselves (193-201).  

The Fortune 500 annually lists the 500 biggest US firms by total revenue. Only 49 firms on the 2025 edition were also on the original 1955 list. Of these 49, they have tended to resist maximising shareholder-value. Instead, they have stayed committed to their core capacities and long-term purpose at the expense of short-term financial targets (87-92), including Bosch, Toyota, Bershire-Hathway, and Unilever. Boeing resisted short-termism until a culture shift in early 2000s generating an all-time high value for the company, with the share price reaching $400 in 2019. Then planes started falling out of the sky; so did Boeing’s stock price (236-8; 18-19). 

Financialisation and macroeconomic instability  

According to Kay, focus on short-term financial targets significantly contributes to the historical process of “financialisation”, defined by Gerald Epstein in 2005 as “the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies.” Kay maintains financialisation generates macroeconomic instability. In two earlier books, The Long and the Short of It (2009) and Other People’s Money (2015) Kay argues the financial industry has become too large, too powerful and too misdirected in its activities. Worse, the financial institutions misdirect the activity of other businesses. 

Short-term financial incentives give rise to asset bubbles and recessions, encourage excessive risk-taking, irresponsible speculation, and increase the trading of financial products that benefit financiers and bankers 

Short-term financial incentives give rise to asset bubbles and recessions, encourage excessive risk-taking, irresponsible speculation (198-9), and increase the trading of financial products that benefit financiers and bankers themselves, rather than their more traditional behaviour of supporting productive businesses, savers, and the wider economy. Kay further underscores that financialisation has given rise to the “finance curse” (243-50) whereby resources get misdirected to the oversized financial sector, reducing real growth and widening inequality.  

From shareholder ownership a stakeholder approach 

Shareholder value maximisation presumes that shareholders are the “owners” of the company. But Kay insists that shareholders do not own the company but merely own shares therein. They cannot use the corporation’s assets and have no direct control of what the firm does. The shareholder ownership myth distorts the corporate purpose. Viewing shareholders as owners encourages excessive focus on short-term share price, which has had negative consequences for employees, customers, long-term value, and for company growth, even company survival itself.  

Kay supports the “stakeholder” account of business (19-21) whereby the corporation brings together employees, managers, suppliers, investors, customers, and other community members who have no formal contract or formal transaction with the corporation. What binds these stakeholders is not contracts but invested interest in the activities of the corporation. Here, as elsewhere in the book, Kay uses a sports to illustrate how this works. He contends that superstar athletes such as footballer Lionel Messi become great, not merely through competing, but primarily through the cooperation and collective activities with teammates, coaches, trainers, supporting staff and the energy of fans (132-9). 

Long-term successful businesses are shown to be more communitarian and socially engaged […] purpose-driven social institutions whose success depends on trust, collective activities, core capacities, and long-term stewardship. 

The role of managers is to protect and balance the various stakeholders’ interests to generate trust, empathy, and fairness between them. By this logic, the most important assets are collective knowledge, collective intelligence, and collective action (101-15) including employee skills and experience, organisational routines, shared culture values and norms, and long-term relationships of trust. The corporation as a stakeholder-based social organisation is their collective activities. Collective activities are created through cooperation and trust over time and cannot be owned, traded, or replicated easily (113-5). When a sense of trust, empathy, and fairness is broken the corporation is in trouble (276-89). 

Too often the stakeholder model of corporation is seen as largely normative, i.e., it prescribes how firms ought to behave and be managed. One of the greatest strengths of Kay’s argument is the evidence-based assertion that most long-term successful businesses do behave and are managed this way. Such businesses are shown to be more communitarian and socially engaged, e.g. John Lewis Partnership, Bosch, Toyota, IKEA, Mars, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and worker-owned models like Mondragon. These corporations are purpose-driven social institutions whose success depends on trust, collective activities, core capacities, and long-term stewardship. 

The Corporation in the 21^st Century is political economy at its best, and an essential critique of the mainstreaming of short-term financial goals in business. The book is impressive for its rich business history and full of anecdotal examples of the activities of individual businesses. Most of all, Kay’s sharp institutional analysis of how businesses succeed long-term, and how they fail by following the prevailing trend of short-term shareholder returns, is brilliant and urgently needed. It will surely make the book an instant – and long-term – classic.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Understanding Political Economy: Capitalism, Democracy and Inequality. Bob Hancké, Toon Van Overbeke and Dustin Voss. Edward Elgar Publishing. 2025.

How do capitalism, democracy and inequality hold together? Bob Hancké, Toon Van Overbeke and Dustin Voss’s Understanding Political Economy: Capitalism, Democracy and Inequality unpacks the tensions between markets, political authority and social outcomes. Building on traditions ranging from classical political economy to comparative political economy and the varieties of capitalism literatures (like the work of Karl Polanyi, Adam Przeworski and Peter A. Hall and David Soskice), the authors offer a synthetic and accessible framework that links interests, ideas and institutions. What distinguishes this volume is less a single theoretical innovation than its integrative ambition. Rather than advancing a new model, the book provides readers with an analytical tool to understand why, in an increasingly interdependent world, capitalist democracies produce distinctly different welfare regimes, persistent inequality and fragile forms of cooperation. 

The book begins by situating political economy in its historical context. Economic processes, the authors argue, cannot be understood in isolation from social relations and political authority. Political economy is therefore defined by its attention to the triangular relationship between economy, society and politics as a relationship that becomes especially visible in moments of crisis. From this point, the authors explore the uneasy relationship between capitalism and democracy. Markets depend on political institutions to function, yet capitalist accumulation routinely produces inequality that undermines democratic legitimacy. Democratic systems promise political equality, but rarely deliver economic equality. Rather than treating this contradiction as a failure or anomaly, the book treats it as a defining feature of capitalist democracies, echoing Adam Przeworski’s thesis that democracy and capitalism coexist through continuous political compromise. Political economy is not about resolving tensions between markets and democracy, but rather how societies manage or mismanage them.

Interests, ideas and institutions 

The book’s core argument rests on three elements that shape political economy: interests, ideas, and institutions. Interests shape political preferences and conflicts, yet they are unevenly represented and not always transparent. Organised actors with concentrated benefits such as firms or professional groups are often better positioned to influence policy than diffuse constituencies like low-income workers. Collective action problems, organisational capacity and power asymmetries all shape whose interests are translated into outcomes. Ideas mediate how actors understand their interests and legitimate political choices. Economic paradigms such as Keynesianism or neoliberalism do not simply reflect material conditions. They provide narratives that define problems, constrain solutions and stabilise institutional arrangements. In periods of uncertainty, ideas become especially powerful, aligning actors and justifying policy shifts that might otherwise be politically costly. Institutions, in turn, structure behaviour over time. Formal rules and informal norms shape incentives, coordinate expectations and lock societies into particular development paths, as seen in Germany’s coordinated market economy where strong vocational training systems and works councils have sustain a high-skill, export-oriented growth model. Institutional arrangements differ across countries, producing models of capitalism that persist even under shared global pressures. 

The extensive bank bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis offer a clear example of how states act as market-makers, even in economies commonly described as ‘free market’.

The discussion continues with the political construction of markets. Rather than treating state intervention as an exception to market logic, they show that markets are always embedded in political authority. States create markets, regulate competition, manage crises and shape technological trajectories. The extensive bank bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis offer a clear example of how states act as market-makers, even in economies commonly described as “free market”. Welfare states are presented as political-economic institutions designed to manage the risks generated by market economies. By pooling risks across individuals and over time, welfare systems have historically stabilised capitalist democracies. Yet, this book shows why these arrangements are under strain. Demographic ageing, fiscal constraints, labour-market segmentation and political polarisation have weakened the coalitions that once sustained expansive welfare regimes. In Germany, for example, population ageing and the growth of dual labour markets since the Hartz reforms have eroded support for solidaristic welfare provision, as protections for labour-market insiders have increasingly diverged from those available to outsiders. The result is not only retrenchment but growing tension over who deserves protection and on what terms. 

Why do democracies tolerate economic inequality? 

The book also addressees a basic puzzle: if all citizens have an equal vote, why do democratic societies still accept high levels of economic inequality? In theory, democracy should allow the majority to demand policies that reduce gaps between rich and poor. In practice, this rarely happens as the share of income captured by the top 10 per cent has increased markedly in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The authors, then, show that inequality persists for several political reasons. Electoral systems shape whose voices are heard, as lower voter turnout and campaign finance rules often give greater influence to wealthier groups. Research by Martine Gilens and Benjamin Page (2014), for instance, shows that policy outcomes in the United States are far more responsive to affluent voters than to the median citizen. At the same time, political debates are often framed around identity issues such as nationality, moral values, culture rather than economic concerns. As a result, inequality should be understood as the outcome of political processes rather than purely market forces. Democratic institutions do not automatically turn popular preferences into redistributive policies, especially when economic conflicts are overshadowed by identity-based divisions.  

Governments often struggle to work together effectively […] agreements often settle for the weakest option that everyone can accept, rather than what is actually needed.

The final section explores the problem of cooperation. Issues such as climate change, migration, monetary policy and public health require coordination across borders. Yet governments often struggle to work together effectively, as illustrated by the uneven international responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors explain this difficulty in two ways. First, international decision-making systems are often complex and involve many actors. This makes it hard to reach solutions, even when most countries broadly agree on the goals. Second, government must negotiate at both domestic and international level. Domestic political pressures such as opposition from voters, interest groups or political parties can limit what governments are willing or able to commit to internationally. As a result, agreements often settle for the weakest option that everyone can accept, rather than what is actually needed. In short, the authors argue that cooperation can work when institutions are designed carefully. When costs and benefits are shared more fairly as well as having long-term commitment, countries are more likely to overcome barriers to cooperation.   

All in all, by foregrounding the interaction of interests, ideas and institutions, the book shows why economic outcomes cannot be understood through either the market or  politics in isolation. Capitalism operates through political choices, social power and institutional rules that shape who benefits and who bears the costs. The authors also effectively show how inequality, welfare arrangements and patterns of cooperation are the results of political processes rather than natural or inevitable outcomes. This perspective helps explain why similar economies develop in very different ways, why democratic systems often struggle to reduce inequality and why cross-border cooperation remains so difficult in an interconnected world. However, the book remains more diagnostic than prescriptive, offering a powerful framework for understanding political-economic tensions while leaving open the question of how democratic institutions might be reformed to address them.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on US Dollar Debt. Mareike Beck. Cambridge University Press. 2025.

Mareike Beck’s Extroverted Financialisation explores why German banking, frequently characterised as relatively conservative, relationship-oriented, and domestically rooted, underwent a profound transformation by adopting US-style financial practices. The question is a salient one. Although the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-9 was caused by speculative innovations tied to the US housing market, it was European banks that ultimately sat at its epicentre and bore many of its heaviest costs. Prevailing accounts of Europe’s experience of the crisis emphasise how the globalisation of finance enabled rapid contagion. Such descriptions tend to underscore the thick mesh of cross-border claims and obligations that link the balance sheets of financial institutions trading complex products, such as credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations. 

Why did Germany deepen its exposure to risk? 

Beck acknowledges the intricacies of these mechanisms but argues that a fixation on instruments and exchanges obscures the more fundamental question of motivation. Why did German banks deepen their exposure to the vulnerabilities of US finance? The book thus traces how shifts in German banking make legible the pervasive influence of US-led financialisation. 

Germany’s two largest banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, exemplify the processes that Beck terms “extroverted financialisation”, through which German banks reoriented themselves towards US finance. These two banks and their historical transformations are the subject of the latter part of the book. Earlier, the focus is on some core concepts that help the reader understand financial imperatives and the prowess of the system underpinned by the United States Dollar (USD). 

The Pfandbrief, which translates to ‘letter of pledge’ is Germany’s covered bond (a financial instrument  backed by a pool of assets) and a compelling success of the banking system for supporting long-term investment in the domestic economy by easing the mismatch between the supply of capital and the demand for credit. Pfandbriefe have been a feature of German banking for centuries, with Friedrich II using this instrument in the 18th century to finance the reconstruction of Prussia. In more recent times, Pfandbriefe have provided long-term finance for urban housing, agrarian development, and infrastructure projects. Their widespread use in Germany underscores that market-based finance is not a US innovation.  

German stability versus American strain 

The 1960s offer an instructive contrast between the relative stability of a German system and the mounting strains in US banking that enhanced the appeal of speculative and market-based practices. Post-war German banking benefited from strong household savings, steady deposit growth, and robust demand for long-term credit. US banks, by contrast, were constrained by Regulation Q, which capped deposit rates; as inflation rose and non-bank instruments became more attractive, they struggled to retain deposits. In response, they began to marketise their debt and develop instruments that could circulate on money markets: pivotal shifts that undergirded the market-based strategies that would define liquidity management.  

German banks were pushed to internationalise and soon found themselves competing directly with the expanding Eurodollar market, where US banks were already offering services to European firms. 

While large German banks operated in a competitive environment and occasionally acquired smaller institutions, they did not face the rivalries confronting US banks from an expanding array of non-bank financial actors. German banks neither competed with money-market instruments for household savings nor relied heavily on wholesale funding. This divergence helps explain why the German system remained anchored in long-term, prudently structured collateralised finance, even as the US shifted steadily toward a market-based model. 

The pivot to the US market model 

Beck notes that this German model of banking might have provided the basis for a more organic European financial architecture. Yet this proved untenable given the export orientation of the German economic miracle or Wirtschaftswunder, which relied on domestic capital accumulation alongside Marshall Plan funding. German banks were therefore pushed to internationalise and soon found themselves competing directly with the expanding Eurodollar market, where US banks were already offering services to European firms. 

Eurodollars became pivotal to financial globalisation from the 1960s onwards. Beck’s account of this trajectory is so detailed and thorough that compressing it feels wrong, but its core dynamics are as follows. Eurodollars are USD-denominated deposits held outside the United States, especially in London within US and UK merchant banks. These deposits expanded rapidly during the Cold War, driven in part by foreign investors’ concerns about potential US asset seizures, which made offshore dollar holdings an attractive means of maintaining dollar liquidity beyond the reach of domestic regulation. Freed from domestic constraints and hungry for funding, US banks turned to offshore markets for liquidity, enabling rapid expansion of their asset portfolios. They soon emerged as central intermediaries for American corporations, European exporters, and an expanding group of sovereign borrowers. 

Deutsche Bank’s and Commerzbank’s strategies 

Beck shows that Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank faced complicated choices in reorienting themselves outward by adopting US-style market-based practices. Only after overcoming deep scepticism about the ethics and risks of US financial expansion did they pursue extroverted financialisation, with each bank taking a different approach. When efforts to build Pan-European resistance to the displacement of European currencies failed, Deutsche Bank, followed by Commerzbank and eventually forty or so other German banks, accepted that resistance was futile and moved to assert themselves in the Eurodollar market by establishing a strong presence in its key hubs, Luxembourg and London. Deutsche Bank, after acquiring the British merchant bank Morgan Grenfell in 1989, initially sought to keep the two entities separate: an attempt to shield its conservative domestic operations from the more aggressive, market-oriented practices of Anglo-American finance.  

Whereas Deutsche Bank saw Europe within a broader global strategy, Commerzbank remained regionally anchored, using Eurodollar liquidity mainly to support European SMEs and making only limited incursions into US finance.

This separation ended in 1994 with the creation of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. This new entity could meet a key imperative of extroverted financialisation: a presence in US money markets, which for Deutsche facilitated a series of acquisitions of American non-bank institutions. The purchase of Banker’s Trust by Deutsche in 1998, for nearly USD 10 billion, created a formidable German mega bank which would rely on investment banking for more than half of its operating income. Commerzbank did not follow the same path as its larger rival. Whereas Deutsche Bank saw Europe within a broader global strategy, Commerzbank remained regionally anchored, using Eurodollar liquidity mainly to support European SMEs and making only limited incursions into US finance. This left it poorly positioned as global banking shifted toward US money-market funding. The watershed was its 2008 acquisition of Dresdner Bank, whose own unique strategy of extroverted financialisation had produced heavy exposure to toxic US asset-backed commercial paper. Eager to expand and unaware of the full extent of Dresdner’s troubles, Commerzbank absorbed these liabilities and, in doing so, became entangled in the very US money-market dynamics it had long avoided. 

Beck’s work is rich, rigorous, and indispensable for readers seeking a deep understanding of how US hegemony is exercised across different domains. Extroverted Financialisation is, at its core, a story of how the dominance of the US dollar is sustained not only by the scale and liquidity of US debt but also by the global banking system’s persistent need to access US money markets to avert liquidity shortages. Although the book develops its arguments through meticulous analyses of European particularly German, banking, it is far from merely a study of Western finance. Its overarching themes speak directly to the major debates in the political economy of global finance, with relevance for the global South, where the dollar’s apex position is the foundation for an uneven international financial and monetary system. 

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India. Sanjaya Baru. Penguin Random House India. 2025.

Drivers of Indian migration 

Indians take pride in being the world’s largest democracy and the fastest growing major economy, but the realities of governance in a vastly multicultural country pose a great challenge. Several systemic weaknesses are contributing to outward migration, from India’s archaic tax regime and bureaucratic overreach to deep socio-economic inequalities and a widening trust deficit among the country’s diverse ethnic groups. And it’s not just blue-collar workers: relatively well-off Indians are emigrating in growing numbers. As a result, Indians have become the largest diaspora in the world, a trend that has accelerated in the last two decades. 

In Secession of the Successful, Sanjaya Baru, a political economist and one of India’s foremost public intellectuals, analyses different waves of Indian emigration in the past 200 years, tracing the changing socio-economic nature of each wave. The book is situated at the intersection of public policy and governance studies and adds to the existing body of literature on migration from the developing to the developed world. It comes at a time when debate over immigration and the tightening of immigration policy is raging worldwide, with no sign of abating. 

As India’s elite increasingly move overseas, by taking up residency or acquiring citizenship, they disassociate themselves from India’s future.

According to Baru, Indians have historically migrated to distant lands, but emigration in large numbers can be traced back to the early 19th century when the colonial state transported people as indentured labour. This first wave was followed by a second one in the 1960s that comprised of semi-skilled workers travelling to Gulf in search of higher wages. Baru clarifies that he prefers the term “overseas” over “diaspora” as the latter does not capture the social, economic, and regional diversity of overseas Indians (90). Referring to overseas Indians as Pravasi Bhartiya (Non-Resident Indian) is also faulty, he contends, since it fails to inspire overseas Indians to either return or invest more in the home economy, an explicit objective of the Indian government (39). 

Brain and wealth drain or “secession of the successful” 

The book is more focused on understanding the third wave of emigration, beginning in the 1970s, and the fourth wave, coinciding with the dawn of the 21st century. These two waves, comprising largely of middle-class professionals and high-net worth individuals (HNIs), is what Baru collectively refer to as “elite migration”– a term he adapts from Devesh Kapur’s work on the domestic impact of international migration from India. This group, constituting India’s social, economic and power elite, comprises the major chunk of those emigrating in the third and the fourth waves and amounts to what Baru calls the “secession of the successful”. This is because as India’s elite increasingly move overseas, by taking up residency or acquiring citizenship, they disassociate themselves from India’s future. The fourth wave is, however, distinct from the third, as the push and pull factors coalesce to the “ease of living” overseas – broadly implying better living standards and less state interference – compared to India. 

The flight of India’s elite is in turn reigniting the debate over “bran drain” in developing societies (44). Whether the emigration of Indians is something to celebrate or regret is a recurrent question the book raises. By referring to the works of economists like Dadabhai Naoroji, Jagdish Bhagwati and V.M. Dandekar, among other international economists like Harry G. Johnson, Herbert Grubel and Anthony Scott, Baru unpacks the debate of around the effects of migration from developing to developed societies. The combined effect of skilled labour migration is an international transfer of resources in the form of human capital, often referred to as the “brain drain” (49). While several top Indian officials and leaders, from Manmohan Singh to Narendra Modi, have hailed brain gain over brain drain, Baru suggests this official endorsement for emigration has accelerated and legitimised the latter (61). This loss of human capital is accompanied by a drain of wealth due to the flight of HNIs (138), both of which negatively impact the economy. Another impact of the mass emigration of India’s youth means that ageing parents are left without care. This calls for the Indian state to make policies that cater to the needs of the elderly (164). 

Religious and political implications of emigration 

Another emerging trend among the Indian diaspora is growing public assertion of religion fused with political mobilisation (196). Unlike previously, when India sought to protect the interests of its diaspora in countries with significant communities of overseas Indians, such as in Fiji, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, rising political divisions among this diverse diaspora, particularly in the West, is hurting its image and harming India’s bilateral relations with friendly countries like Canada (204). Baru gives the example of overseas Hindu Indians, showing how their political activism and religion-infused nationalism have promoted the cause of “Global Hindutva” (207). 

The irony with such ‘Globalised Indian Nationalists’ is that their religious nationalism does not translate into a desire to return home

The irony with such “Globalised Indian Nationalists” is that their religious nationalism does not translate into a desire to return home (212). In fact, most of the professionals and wealthy overseas Indians rarely return, whom Baru calls “Non-Returning Indians” (43). Moreover, concerns from host countries over their political activism and potential impacts on India’s democracy has prompted Indian diplomatic efforts to counter alleged anti-India activities (218). This has made overseas Indians, as Baru says, both a diplomatic bridge and a political challenge to be managed. 

India and rising anti-immigration policy worldwide 

Overseas Indians, until now, have reaped the benefits of liberal immigration regimes in the West, while enjoying a favourable portrayal as “good citizens” in the Gulf. But this may be imperilled as anti-immigration sentiments grow worldwide. Already, protectionist leader Donald Trump has curtailed the issuance of H-1B visas in the US, curtailing a key access route for skilled labour and qualified professionals from abroad. In a scenario of reduced opportunities in the world labour market, managing migration has become increasinlgy difficult and contentious for sender and host countries. 

The book could have been improved by incorporating a broader range of existing academic works on development and governance in India. For example, Dipankar Gupta argues in his book The Caged Phoenix (2010) that India’s phenomenal growth has not translated into development due to high levels of income and wealth inequality. Baru does cite data on economic and wealth inequality in India, but does not clearly link it with his main argument. Moreover, in in his 2019 book, India’s Power Elite, Baru situates his analysis of the changing caste and class composition of India’s elite within the existing theoretical literature on elites to build a strong argument. Secession of the Successful lacks a similarly robust and compelling theoretical framework to make its case. 

Nevertheless, the book grapples with pressing questions. It will be a valuable resource for both a general audience interested in the causes and effects of Indian emigration, and public policy officials dealing with managing migration. Overall, Secession of the Successful make a significant contribution to the understanding of the future of democracy, and debates around the ease of living in India.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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War in Syria and the Middle East: A Political and Economic History. Federico Manfredi Firmian. University of Texas Press. 2025.

Federico Manfredi Firmian’s War in Syria and the Middle East: A Political and Economic History examines the key role of ideology in the broader political trajectory of the Middle East, using the Syrian case, whose rebirth we are witnessing today. The book traces Syria’s socio-political transformations from the Ottoman period to the colonial interventionism, from the ideological divides of the Cold War to the Arab Spring, from more than a decade of civil war to the present moment. The book engages both the history and the region’s turbulent political environment as a dynamic process shaped by competing ideologies. Accordingly, Firmian examines the Syrian case not merely as a post-2011 phenomenon, but within a longue durée perspective. 

From imperial rule to Pan-Arab socialism 

In the first chapter, Firmian introduces the historical trajectory of the Ottoman encounter with European capitalism and the subsequent imperial reorganisation of the Levant. This chapter’s emphasis on imperial legacy underlines the importance of history as a vital tool to understand the current trajectory of the region, demonstrating how the European penetration of the Ottoman economy in the 19th century and the violent Anglo-French reorganisation of the Levant after WW1 set the stage for the deep-seated polarisation and long-term conflicts persisting to this day. The proceeding chapters trace the ideological landscape of the region after the end of World War Two. Firmian argues that in the wake of European imperialism, the region sought viable alternatives to global capitalism, crystallising around Pan-Arab socialism and various strands of political Islam. The chapter details Pan-Arabism’s initial ascendance, exemplified by the Ba’th Party’s rise as a revolutionary, anti-imperialist force, followed by its ultimate failure, and the centralised dictatorships and profound socioeconomic setbacks it produced. These set the stage for subsequent cycles of conflict and the rise of other competing ideologies. 

Post-Cold-War power shifts 

Firmian then examines the post-Cold War context, analysing how the collapse of the Soviet Union created a vacuum that accelerated the region’s integration into the global capitalist order. He illustrates how Baʿthist regimes, notably Syria’s, abandoned socialist economics in favour of a crony, authoritarian form of capitalism, directly sowing the seeds of popular discontent. Simultaneously, the chapter traces the rise of political Islam, which positioned itself as the sole viable ideological opposition to both Western economic dominance and local despotic regimes.  

The Arab Spring was society’s profound rejection of the crony capitalism and authoritarianism that had failed to deliver on its promise of a fairer social order. Examining this in Chapter Four, Firmian draws connections between prolonged drought, resource mismanagement, and mass internal displacement, linking environmental stress to social fragmentation and the subsequent civil war in Syria. Chapter Five looks at the war itself, charting the disintegration of state authority, the rise of extremist groups, and the full internationalisation of the Syrian War. Firmian frames the proxy conflict between the US, its allies and the Russia-Iran axis as a modern iteration of the Cold War struggle between competing worldviews. The analysis is particularly astute in distinguishing between the ideological motivations of local militias and the geopolitical interests of their external backers, asserting that the battle for Syria became a contest over the future model of state governance in the region.  

The battle for Syria became a contest over the future model of state governance in the region.  

The book then moves to examining the post-major-conflict landscape: the solidification of territorial control, the tragic humanitarian crisis, and the failure of international justice. Firmian chronicles the Assad regime’s partial victory through extreme brutality and external backing primarily provided by Russia and Iran. He concludes that Syria remains “shattered” despite the cessation of major front-line fighting, citing economic collapse and the refugee crisis.  

Non-ideological factors shaping the Middle East

The book’s chapters and conclusion argue that the conflicts across the Middle East are not random events, but the predictable, tragic outcome of a two-century struggle between global capitalism and the countering ideologies that have sought to provide an alternative vision for the region. Firmian successfully synthesises the historical, economic, and political threads, demonstrating that the “shattered” states of the Levant are merely the latest arenas in this ongoing ideological and economic battle.  

The US and Russia held talks concerning the systemic risk of a sudden collapse of the Assad regime, which would result in a power vacuum utilised by extremist factions.

That said, the book’s argumentative strength could have been improved by considering some additional points. Firstly, while Firmian excels at capturing the broad ideological shift in Chapter Three, he could have more explicitly detailed non-ideological factors, such as the role of the internet and satellite media in rapidly facilitating the transnational organisation of new Islamist movements. Similarly, Chapter Four’s insightful discussion of socioeconomic stress as one of the reasons behind the Arab Spring could have been strengthened by the inclusion of statistical data such youth unemployment and Gini coefficients indicating the unequal income distribution, thereby bolstering a quantitative foundation for the pre-Arab Spring setting. Moreover, Chapter Five’s framing of the Syrian case as a modern iteration of the Cold War antagonism risks oversimplifying the conflict’s relatively ambiguous trajectory. A 2019 congress testimony by former Pentagon official Andrew Exum revealed that the US and Russia held talks concerning the systemic risk of a sudden collapse of the Assad regime, which would result in a power vacuum utilised by extremist factions. Finally, Chapter Six’s geopolitical critique could be enhanced by including more direct critiques of the structural international mechanisms that failed to address the conflict, particularly exploring the UNSC’s paralysis. Since 2011, the Council has been unable to adopt major resolutions on ceasefires, civilian protection, or accountability because Russia, often with China, has vetoed over a dozen drafts. This persistent use of the veto has blocked meaningful collective action and underscored the structural limits of the post-Cold War multilateral system. 

The limits of a narrative approach 

While Firmian’s multi-layered narrative approach is commendable, it falls somewhat short when compared with other seminal works. Raymond Hinnebusch, for example, highlights the structural resilience of the Syrian state and its adaptive authoritarianism; by contrast, Firmian tends to foreground ideology and geopolitical symbolism over institutional survival mechanisms. Similarly, Joshua Landis’ analysis of local power brokers and regional patronage networks offers a granular reading of how militias and sub-state actors shaped conflict dynamics; an area where Firmian did not delve sufficiently. Lisa Wedeen’s analysis of Ba’athist rule and political symbolism reveals how social control fuelled regime durability; Firmian captured some aspects of this symbolic dimension but often treats identity politics at an ideological level rather than as a tool of authoritarian control. Meanwhile, Fawaz Gerges situates the conflict within the failures of international diplomacy and regional rivalries, whereas Firmian tends to compress these patterns into a binary ideological frame of Cold War competition. 

The book is a valuable reference point for readers seeking to grasp not only what occurred in Syria but why the Middle East repeatedly finds itself at the intersection of ideological experiment and geopolitical confrontation.

These comparisons reveal several conceptual blind spots. Firmian intermittently underestimates the extent to which the Syrian conflict was shaped not only by ideological antagonism, but also by regime-survival logic, rentier economics, patron-client relationships, foreign sponsorship, and authoritarian survival practices. The result is an interpretive model that is rich in symbolic contrast but less attentive to the institutional, economic, and micro-political dimensions that other scholars featured as central to understanding the conflict. 

Future work would benefit from integrating ideology with the institutional, economic, and community-level mechanisms that made the Syrian state both fragile and enduring. In this sense, Firmian’s book opens the conversation rather than concluding it, offering an all-encompassing interpretive map that other scholarly works can supplement. The book is a valuable reference point for readers seeking to grasp not only what occurred in Syria but why the Middle East repeatedly finds itself at the intersection of ideological experiment and geopolitical confrontation.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Benjamin Selwyn will speak about the book at an event hosted by LSE Department of International Development on Wednesday 18 March 2026 find details and register to attend.

Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics. Benjamin Selwyn and Christin Bernhold. Oxford University Press. 2025.

“All countries stand to benefit from the increased trade and commerce spurred by the growth of GVCs.” – World Development Report 2020 

Everyone knows about upgrading. Upgrade your phone, your computer, your software – there are newer, better models or ways of doing things that you simply must have! If you’re not into consumerism, you may not care about upgrading. But if you’re interested in international development, you should.  

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are the arteries of global capitalism, through which around 70 per cent of international trade occurs.

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are the arteries of global capitalism, through which around 70 per cent of international trade occurs. GVCs are networks of production occurring in different countries where supplier firms provide lead firms (often Transnational Corporations, TNCs) with products and services. Think of your laptop or smartphone – quintessential products of GVCs.  

Upgrading in GVCs represents a key development strategy, promoted by international institutions and many academics. It refers to innovations by supplier firms, as they deliver goods and services to lead firms, to improve production, produce new products, take on new activities within a given GVC, and enter larger and more lucrative export markets. Lead firms determine production in GVCs (in the academic lexicon, they ‘govern’ their chains) – deciding upon what is produced, how, with what materials, under what conditions and even what prices suppliers receive.  

There are myriad cases of successful upgrading. Does that mean that we should adopt it as a universal development strategy? Absolutely not. Upgrading by supplier firms is possible, but it is not generalisable. The notion that upgrading is a generalisable development strategy is a classic case of the fallacy of composition. This is the assumption that what is possible, and developmentally positive, for one firm or sector can be replicated by other firms and sectors. 

How workers are exploited through GVCs 

In Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics, co-authored with Christin Bernhold, we detail and explain the deleterious developmental, environmental, and international relational impacts of GVCs. First, to upgrade, supplier firms collaborate with lead firms. They employ workers to produce goods profitably, for themselves and for lead firms. The proliferation of GVCs has been based upon the establishment of the biggest labouring class the world has ever seen. It has also been based on the proliferation of highly exploitative work. 

In GVCs, workers are effectively exploited by two firms – producing surplus value for their direct employers and for the lead firms who capture shares of that value.

Workers are exploited because they receive in wages less than the value of what they produce. That additional value is captured by their employers. This, Marx shows, is the secret of surplus value creation and capture under capitalism. Across numerous chains workers are subject to immiserating exploitation, where they receive below living wages. In GVCs, workers are effectively exploited by two firms – producing surplus value for their direct employers and for the lead firms who capture shares of that value. 

Upgrading in one place means downgrading in another 

Second, upgrading by some firms or sectors generates intense uneven development – the downgrading of other firms and sectors. In the 1990s Vietnamese coffee producers upgraded by entering the global coffee market. Their vast exports depressed coffee prices globally. According to the International Coffee Organisation, in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua, consequences included reduced farmer incomes, abandonment of farms, and widespread job losses. 

China’s hyper industrialisation is often touted as a successful and replicable case of upgrading. However, the flip-side of China’s industrialisation, has been the de-industrialisation and reprimarisation of countries like Brazil and Argentina. These countries increasingly depend on a narrow range of primary exports. For example, in Brazil land devoted to soy has displaced land from traditional domestic food crops such as rice and beans, and has pushed up prices. One consequence was that in 2022, 33 million Brazilians faced hunger. 

Disastrous environmental impacts of Global Value Chains 

Thirdly, upgrading into and the proliferation of GVCs has contributed directly to our planet’s environmental disaster. The geographic dispersal of production through GVCs entails more infrastructure (air and seaports, rail and road transportation, digital tech and data servers) and an enlarged world market.  

The global material footprint – the total amount of raw materials extracted to meet final consumption demands – increased by 113 per cent between 1990 and 2017.

The rising quantity of world production and trade requires more material use. The global material footprint – the total amount of raw materials extracted to meet final consumption demands – increased by 113 per cent between 1990 and 2017, from 43 to 92 billion metric tonnes. It is projected to grow to 190 billion metric tons by 2060. 

Technological development, trade and geopolitics 

Fourthly, upgrading in, and the proliferation of, GVCs are quintessentially geopolitical. In the late 1950s the US established state-funded agencies which invested and coordinated research into what would become radar, computers, integrated circuits, semiconductors and most famously, the internet. These technologies were then deployed from the 1970s onwards by US firms, and then other nationally rooted firms, to relocate production – while tightly governing these chains – to countries with cheap, highly exploitable, labour forces.  

The prime destination for this investment was China. But the Chinese state, with its unique central coordination mechanisms, used its integration into value chains to become a workshop of the world, before evolving into a challenger to US technological primacy. The response from the US – from Obama, Trump 1.0, Biden and now Trump 2.0 – has been, through tariffs and export controls, to “actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry – strangling with an intent to kill”. 

Dismantling capitalist value chains 

To reiterate, upgrading in GVCs happens a lot. But it is not a universalizable development strategy. Rather, it is based upon labour exploitation, and generates intense uneven development, environmental destruction and geopolitical conflict.  

Rather than cheering on the expansion of GVCs, those of us concerned about international development and inequality need to think beyond such structures.

So, what, really, are GVCs?  GVCs are capitalist value chains: mechanisms whereby capitalist classes extend their capacity to exploit labour and appropriate nature beyond national borders. They underpin the huge concentration of wealth, for example in Silicon Valley – based on below-living wage work in China and elsewhere. They are supported geopolitically, as mechanisms of control and surplus value extraction, and transfer across borders.  

Rather than cheering on the expansion of GVCs, those of us concerned about international development and inequality need to think beyond such structures. Supporting economic democracy and production for human need and the environment, rather than for profit, are ways we can challenge the myopic, exploitative and destructive GVCs-for-Development ideology.

Note: This post gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Organic Finance: Building a New Sustainable and Inclusive Framework from the Ground Up. Atul K. Shah. Routledge. 2025.

A vision for sustainable and socially responsible finance  

The metaphor “animal spirits” refers to the critical role of emotions, of “spontaneous optimism” over calculation, in driving the behaviour of economic agents. John Maynard Keynes introduced the term in the context of the Great Depression of 1929, contradicting the premise in neoclassical economics that rationality guides human decisions. Following Keynes, Nobel Prize-winning economists Akerlof and Shiller theorised it in developing behavioural economics and finance after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007.  

Shah’s concept of ‘Organic Finance’ aims to serve a sustainable socioeconomic future rather than an economy that promises unrealistic growth

Although the explanation of behaviour shifts from rationality in neo-classical economics to emotion in behavioural economics and finance, the agent remains the same: the selfish individual. For those of us seeking an alternative economic order, the question is: how do we replace the selfish individual in economics with a collective, socially and environmentally minded economic agency? The critical scholarly research after the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis highlighted the overlooked work of post-Keynesian macro economist Hyman Minsky who theorised the causes of financial instability in capitalism. New work, like that of Brett Christophers, Engelen et al. and Paul Langley, on the other hand, aimed to explain the crisis and the dysfunctionality of the existing financial system, rather than develop an alternative finance theory.  

How metaphors effect change 

Atul Shah’s new book Organic Finance is aware of the power of metaphors in changing theory, and delineates a list of them which could help to build a new, socially and ecologically responsible paradigm in finance. Shah uses the term “organic” to describe a financial system that connects to local economic and ecological needs at a time when “scientific” finance is failing spectacularly to serve both people and the planet. Shah’s concept of “Organic Finance” aims to serve a sustainable socioeconomic future rather than an economy that promises unrealistic growth, framed in quasi-scientific mathematical abstractions. He argues that building a globally sustainable finance will first require embracing “a taxonomy of different attitudes and beliefs about animals and nature”, and the importance of accounting for “vast diversity of finance cultures in the world” (151). 

Shah’s book is an invitation to think radically about transforming how we conceive of and practice finance, rather than merely moving around its furniture.

The key metaphors Shah uses are soil, seed, death and decay, and forests (of hope), with a chapter dedicated to each. Two further chapters, “ecosystem” and “inner growth”, integrate the key metaphors into a vision of a financial structure that serves society and the planet rather than financial elites. Shah weaves together the metaphors referencing the ecosystem of organic life in nature to argue that ethical finance is rooted in the soil of “faith, trust, relationships, community and culture” (34). It grows not into an individual forest for each society, he contends, but into forests of diverse practices of finance addressing local needs within societies. 

An alternative style for a bold message 

Arguably, the book over-relies on metaphoric language, like the “rivers nourishing mother earth, without charging a fee” (101). But Shah holds that such language helps to constitute a normative finance for nature and societies that contrasts with a purely profit-oriented model that dominates today. He purposefully adopts a subjective, passionate writing style to create a “soul” for his reasoning that goes “against the tide of positivism, empiricism and technical complexity for its own sake” (173). This approach means that the book will not appeal to everyone, even those who share its criticality of mainstream economics and finance. But the book is consciously intended for a general readership who would find the technical language of finance an obstacle. Shah’s goal is to free their reasoning to imagine an alternative financial system. For readers of an academic background, Shah’s book is an invitation to think radically about transforming how we conceive of and practice finance, rather than merely moving around its furniture. 

Shah knows the discipline well, giving weight to the book’s moralistic argument which might otherwise ring hollow. He offers practical advice on how finance should be taught in order to effect real change. He proposes teaching responsible leadership to finance students and introducing “debates and discussions with students and scholars from other departments like ecology or agriculture and forestry or theology…[to] … help break … the silos and enable students to see the wider depths and breadths of knowledge needed to tackle our environmental crises” (171). 

The challenges of “big idea” thinking 

Sometimes the passion that animates the arguments in the book leads to simplification. There are frequent instances in where the complexities in the history of capitalism and the history of money receive generalised judgements. For example, the book chooses not to explore the controversies in scholarly work on the assumed harmony in non-capitalist and faith societies. Shah gives examples both from the West and the East how religious and faith institutions historically have played significant role in the development of human knowledge. He highlights Jainism (28), a culture he knows well, as a good ethical model for social and environmental equity. But he does not problematise the social contestations and power relations that such faith-based organisations have been associated with. The book frames colonial power in economies, economics, moral values, and science as detrimental in history. But the socially oppressive local power dynamics in non-Western societies are not given due analytical and moral attention. In studying the supposedly egalitarian Bedouin society in the Middle East the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod describes the complexity of social status and rights by age, gender, wealth and genealogy. 

Any attempt to transform mainstream finance must recognise the theoretical and practical difficulties and historical contingencies in building a radically new system.

Shah sometimes presents good and bad as black and white, without the shades in between that economic history and anthropology have studied. There is a gap, for example, around how his vision of ethical finance can be democratic in practice. How would ordinary people be involved in the creation of financial institutions and their regulation? Any attempt to transform mainstream finance must recognise the theoretical and practical difficulties and historical contingencies in building a radically new system. How would the metaphors in the book be translated into specific instruments for financial decision-making? Given that the ecological emergencies are global in nature, how would a global framework stemming from diversity in cultures be established to resolve them? 

An urgently needed overhaul of the financial system

As the ecological emergencies we face globally affect daily lives more regularly through devastating heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods, this book is a timely call to re-imagine how we live. The OECD’s latest annual report on the economic impact of climate change estimates a loss of 7 to 18 per cent in global GDP by 2050 if the 2015 Paris Agreement on carbon emissions is not met. The World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates that global wildfire activity could increase from 30 to 50 per cent over current levels by 2100 because of climate change. Our existing financial system, with its blatant epistemological and ethical weaknesses, cannot facilitate the radical change required to address the climate crisis. The book contributes significantly to the existing debates on the inadequacy of mainstream finance theory and practice, providing a compelling and imaginative alternative for its ethical transformation.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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