Online Courses
- American Capitalism – A History (Cornell University)
- Global History of Capitalism (Princeton University)
- Global Perspectives on Industrialization (Michigan Technological University)
The video slider contains the trailer for the first two courses.
Books
All you can know about a book without actually reading it: the Moral Markets bookshelf
Articles & Blogs
Hand-picked for you from around the web + original articles published just on the Moral Markets site
A New Rule Book for a New Transition
It appears that humanity’s industrial period, with all the benefits it has brought, is tilting out of stability (if there ever was one), and that a new transition, a new order, must take its place. We must, then, wonder: what will this new rule book entail? If all economics are economics of transition, then what does this transition need? What can it keep from its predecessors and what must it shed? This essay will analyze these questions as relating to three different components of the economy: the existence of a common goal, the role of labor, and the value of freedom.
Winner in the category master students of the Future Markets Consultation essay contest.
The Gospel of Capitalism is the Biggest Religion of All – Book Review
The latest book by Villanova University’s Eugene McCarraher, who teaches humanities, is a deep dive into the history of a perverted love story and a false religion — the western worship of money and markets. The author testifies against a creed that has dominated our lives since the 17th century and offers an imaginative look at what can help us break the spell. In the following essay, cultural historian Lynn Parramore discusses The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.
Forms of Capital and Moral Legitimation of Capitalism
“All the chapters converge around that claim that, without both social and cultural capital in place, business owners are handicapped, and their enterprise cannot flourish even when money is abundant. However, the case studies also suggest that, although both resource types are still and always have been important, the balance of relative importance shifted over historic time from business-friendly ideas to business-supporting communities.”
How the Welfare State Became the Neoliberal Order
“Amy C. Offner’s Sorting Out the Mixed Economy remakes a popular understanding of how today’s neoliberalism was built. Offner shows that neoliberalism, rather than having been imposed by the Washington Consensus, was in fact first developed at a local level. The book shows American entrepreneurs, trained in big government as Lilienthal was, working together with Latin American businesses, banks, and landlords. It was when these new kinds of partnerships returned to the US—when private companies, treated as public concerns and sustained by government funds, began to take shape in the “developed” world—that neoliberalism truly began.”
The Post-Capitalist Hit of the Summer
“The pandemic has reinforced that which has been undermining the foundation of capitalism since 2008: the link between profit and capital accumulation. The current crisis has revealed a post-capitalist economy in which the markets for real goods and services no longer coordinate economic decision-making”, writes Yanis Varoufakis.
Fight for Economic Equality Is as Old as America Itself
“Americans are increasingly worried about the rising tide of economic inequality, as fewer control more wealth. For the origins of these concerns, commentators usually point to the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, when a few men gained immense wealth and power in the U.S. and workers suffered extreme poverty. But fears of great wealth and the need for economic equality go back to the country’s origins.”
