And so it begins.And so it begins.

A journey of a thousand steps, etc.

Given that I just showed how narrowly focused (some?) of my reading is (#1416088) and because Undisc and Scoresby made me do it (#1401462), I'm embarking on a serious quest: Reading 1,100 probably quite intellectually hostile pages about a topic I care about, possibly mishandled by a credentialed dude with an entirely inappropriate intellectual scope. Sven Beckert is a Harvard historian who has spent his career writing about global trade in history and exploitation ^[1]

Initial reflections: The jacket cover, front and back, are AMAZING. I'll have this book for the art alone. Also: This book is huge. Like, seriously thick and heavy. With bible-sized pages, it clocks in at 1,325 pages — though the last ~250 pages are notes, a bibliography, acknowledgements and an index.

Oddly enough, it smells like one of the giant Harry Potter books, probs Goblet of Fire (same printer? Memory playing tricks with me?).

First sentences reveal a bit of what I suspect we shall see a lot going forward:

We live in a world created by capitalism ^[2] (p. ix)

...that kind of passive voice, capitalism-a-force-of-its-own, like "evil" or "oxidation" is wholly inappropriate. At best, it's a description of certain economic affairs — not a living entity with purpose or will or indeed ability to create anything. Humans created the modern world; some oddly named force didn't.

The ceaseless accumulation of capital forges the cities we inhabit, determines the way we work, allows an extraordinarily large number of people to engage in unprecedented levels of consumption, influences our politics, and shapes the landscape around us. (p. ix)

"accumulation" (of capital) is one of these terms that instantly indicate to you that the speaker is an asshat. It's just not a serious way of describing or thinking about markets/finance/trade/humans arranging their economic affairs. Nobody "accumulates" shit à la Scrooge McDuck, sitting on (hoarding?!) treasure. "Influences our politics" is also a revealing error (why is it that the "politics" is our but the force itself is an outside, passive-voice entity?).

Two sentences in, and I'm already weary!

From the few pages in the Preface, which lays out the topic and adequately poses some intriguing questions, I get the sense that we'll have this motte-and-bailey type switch between what is and what isn't capitalism — a lot.

Beckert is, rightly, fascinated by how differently we live than any other time or place in human history — down to the minuscule things like cooking our own food or outsourcing our mating opportunities to a subscription app ("...would have been unimaginable for most of human history"). Yes, agreed, and why/how that's capitalism and not information-overload + tech + wealth/productivity I'm dying to know. You shove Tinder and smartphones and the internet into medieval England and you bet your ass those peasants are swiping (after they've hung you for sorcery and witchcraft, obvs.)

Trading in stocks, or making your living from that, or saving for retirement in stocks would have been unimaginable but moreso: sacrilegious. Yup. And so would women's rights, (welfare) states the size of planets, or fiat money (equally unclear what they have to do with "capitalism").

Capitalism has a "ubiquitous presence" (p. xi), most of us consider it "natural" and take it for granted. Sure, maybe: Again, definition and delineation. While I agree that markets, trade, and work all have something tangential to do with private property and profit-and-loss system enabled by large-scale production for the masses (insert Mises) using capital goods, I don't think the decision to watch the Icelandic handball game just now had anything to do with capitalism — or that I walked my neighbor's dog in the afternoon, or that I called my mother to see how she's doing wrt a family health crisis. Sure, you can chalk these things up to have some sort of relation to capital-infested markets:

• brand marketing for various firms (banks, airlines, food producers, salmon factories—sorry, Iceland!—on the players' jerseys;
• I drank tea, made far away, in cups I didn't make, using electricity I don't understand, on a machine I couldn't recreate;
• The phone and the electricity and the internet access and the software allowing me to speak to my mother 2,000 kilometers away (also an unnatural state of humanity's world).

At some level, these considerations just boil down to modernity or, put differently, technology. So, is the fact that we have such abundance + diversity of incredible gadgets somehow connected to "capital-ism"? My inkling is to say no; I suspect Beckert emphatically says yes.

Beckert proceeds to remark on how ancient capitalism is in some places (Florence or Cairo) while for most people, in most places, even a few generations ago (parents+grandparents) might have resorted to some non-market production of e.g., food or clothing. You can see the bait-and-switch techniques evolving; sometimes ordinary human economic affairs is capitalism, sometimes it's not. In that gap, mark my words, we are going to jump around — a lot!

How did we get from a world in which the logic of capital was limited to only a few spaces to one in which it determines almost everything? How did we ever give such superpowers to something created by but also external to use?" (p. xii)

Here we go. Newsflash: there is no "logic of capital," which, being a dead inanimate thing doesn't have logic (or will, or agency, or ability to impose anything on anyone).

Tl;dr = I can really feel the flashbacks to my university seminarsTl;dr = I can really feel the flashbacks to my university seminars

...and yes, my tutors and professors luuuuved me. I'm sure you can tell why.

Beckert promises us a journey of a thousand years of capitalism, how we got here and where we might go next. That I'm on board with (and the table of contents look GREAT!)

PRACTICALITIES

• No promises on timelines — I might take 6 months, I might quit halfway (or next week), and cadence depends on how and when I feel like reading.
• Some chapters, being 70+ pages, will probably be split across posts—Siggy and Undisc will be sick of me spamming their territories with capitalism chatter.
• Interesting conversations or spin-off remarks in the comment section may have to turn into posts of their own; I'm not sure what's the best way to do these comprehensive, in-depth, temporally sequestered book clubs.

Peace out. I'm very excited about this!

1. His previous book, Empire of Cotton famously argued that cotton+slavery made the modern world, and that Britain couldn't have launched an industrial revolution if it wasn't for those two — yes, it's precisely that nutty and yes that's precisely why the intelligentsia/university crowd loves him. ↩

2. Next page we get: "The capitalist revolution has imprinted itself on your way of thinking about the world too: When you hear or read about economic affairs in the news, you learn about 'the economy' as an active subject that did something or needs us to do something." Again with the passive force doing something onto us... but at least he's correct (but for the mistaken reasons) to ridicule this idea about the economy or what some of "its" prophets might think it needs. ↩