Foretelling the End of Capitalism moves briskly across a century and a half of intellectual history, from Marx and John Stuart Mill in the mid-19th century (when the term “capitalism” entered the lexicon) to the aftermath of the 2008 crash. The intervening cast of thinkers is large, if almost entirely European and American: Max Weber and Rosa Luxemburg in the beginning of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter in the middle, Daniel Bell and Francis Fukuyama more recently, along with dozens of others. Boldizzoni’s subtitle, Intellectual Misadventures Since Karl Marx, indicates his generally low opinion of their collective efforts, and the last part of the book ventures a general account of how they went wrong.
Extract from 'End Notes: The long history of forecasting capitalism’s demise' by Daniel Luban, thenation.com, 26 January 2021