Innovation Without Capitalism. How radio developed from pure science. And how Marconi, who made it real, was quite at home with Italian Fascism.
How most new inventions came from non-capitalist sources.
The Core Falsehood of Capitalist Economics. How Adam Smith simply ignored the awkward fact that real wealth exists without markets. And that markets often bring profit while destroying real material wealth.
How National Economies Really Grow. The alternative system of Friedrich List, who recognised that real economics depends on nation-states.
Being Productive and Being Profitable. The fatal flaw in Adam Smith’s arguments.
Trickle-Down Never Happened. A short study of this convenient myth.
Market Winners Rob the Rest of Us. Money is a crude way of running a complex society. Smart money depends on ‘stupid money’ to balance the books. Obviously no one starts investing with the intention of being ‘stupid money’, just as no one goes betting or gambling with the intention of enriching the bookies and casino owners. But that’s the way it works out.
The errors of New Right economics. How assertion of the ‘Rights of Money’ hurt the Middle Class, as well as ordinary workers.
Adam Smith and the New Right. How their ideas are indeed quite similar. Both assume that an elite should control society. And like his modern admirers, Smith had a way of excluding ‘off-message facts’. Pretended not to know about unfree Scottish labour in The Wealth of Nations, but had mentioned it in the public lectures the book developed from.
Mean & Average. Why New-Right economic policies have been sub-standard. Including details of growing inequality.
Replacing Capitalism by Capitalism, and other comments on the large gap between theory and reality.
How Roosevelt’s New Deal Saved the West. And what he said about parasitic finance.
Remixing the Mixed Economy. A review of Ha-Joon Chang’s 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism.
Coleridge and the end of Christian economics. How a man who was a philosopher as well as poet had a plausible alternative to the Adam Smith vision. And how he noticed the Trade Cycle, maybe the first person to do so.
Petty on Real Capitalism. Writing a much more authentic description than the later work of Adam Smith. How he anticipated the modern world much better than Smith did, including the possibility of Britain becoming a country mostly devoted to industry and commerce, with agriculture margainalised. And was in favour of tax as part of the developing economy, accepting the necessary role of the state.
Capitalism Within Culture. What we had between World War Two and the 1980s was a ‘mixed economy’. Theorists of both left and right disliked it intensely when the real world made an untidy mess across their nice clean categories. Instead of adjusting their minds and devising more realistic theories, they insisted that there was a fault in reality.
Economical With The Irish. How a noted British magazine like The Economist can feel comfortable about the vast number of avoidable Irish deaths in the mid-19th century Potato Famine.
Arkwright and the rise of the factory system. It has no single beginning, but Richard Arkwright was a major contributor to a system in which a few people controlled the work of many. He was hard-working and clever, but also a man who stole other people’s ideas. A man who turned the work of many into wealth for just himself.
What is Capitalism? Arguing that Britain is not and never has been an entirely capitalist society.
Why economics is about people, not money.
The Human Basis of Economics (sub-menu).
From two magazines, Problems and Labour Affairs., with other old articles on the website.
Long Revolution 