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Foretelling the End of Capitalism: Intellectual Misadventures since Karl Marx

Author	Francesco Boldizzoni
Language	English
Subject	Capitalism, Criticism of capitalism
Publisher	Harvard University Press
Publication date	2020
Media type	Print
Pages	336
ISBN	978-0674919327

Foretelling the End of Capitalism: Intellectual Misadventures since Karl Marx is a 2020 book by Italian political scientist Francesco Boldizzoni, in which the author outlines the myriad predictions of the fall of capitalism made by academics over the last 200 years.

Structure

The book is divided into six chapters:

1. Sitting on the Edge of Apocalypse: Details the earliest foretellings of capitalism's demise in the mid-nineteenth century, focusing in particular on the works of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill
2. The Interwar Revival of Prophecy: Outlines the critiques of capitalism and the predictions of its fall made during World War I, the Interwar Period, and World War II, focusing in particular on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter
3. Hopes Betrayed: Describes the predictions of capitalism's demise made in the 1970s and 1980s
4. The End of History and What Followed: Details critiques of capitalism made from 1989, the year of the publication of Francis Fukuyama's famous essay foretelling "the end of history", to the Great Recession and its early aftermath
5. Wanderings of the Predictive Mind: Analyzes the faults of the many predictions of capitalism's decline, in what the author calls an "autopsy on prophecies"
6. How Capitalism Survives: Provides the author's personal views on capitalism as an economic system

Summary

Early critiques

John Stuart Mill

Main article: John Stuart Mill

Karl Marx

Main article: Karl Marx

Reception

Though written by a social democrat, the book has been reviewed in published media exclusively by American and British conservatives supportive of free market capitalism, mostly positively.