There is growing and widespread dissatisfaction with capitalism worldwide. Economic models that dominated the post-Word War Two decades — Keynesian social democracy and later neoliberal globalization — are seen as having run aground. The system today is failing to meet the basic needs of working class people. This crisis has fuelled both right and left populist movements. Economic nationalism, authoritarianism and inequality are resurgent.

It is with this background that John Cassidy explores, in a timely fashion, the critics of capitalism and the alternatives they advocate in Capitalism and its Critics – A Battle of Ideas In The Modern World. TU Senan and Niall Mulholland discuss Cassidy’s book and where his analysis differs from that of the CWI.