The current financial and economic crisis has once again placed the dangers of capitalism at the forefront of our collective consciousness. The left, which until relatively recently had seemed adrift across much of the Western world, lacking in coherent and convincing responses to globalization and neoliberalism, appears once again poised for a comeback, as citizens yearn for stability and security in difficult times. That the left’s fortunes should ebb and flow with capitalism’s is nothing new. Indeed, capitalism is both the reason for and the bane of the modern left; the left’s origins and fate have always been inextricably intertwined with capitalism’s. There is much, therefore, that the left can learn from its past about how to approach the problems of the present.

The Backstory
The emergence of capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to unprecedented economic growth and personal freedom, but it also brought dramatic inequality, social di...

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