Transforming Capitalism — An Introduction

Abstract

Capitalism has long had a bad reputation, and not only in the former communistic countries. The public discourse on continents such as Latin America and Africa has long been very critical of Anglo-Saxon style business. What is novel, however, is that with the new millennium, the discontent with capitalism seems to have become global. Even in Anglo-Saxon cultures, the former bastions of private property, free entrepreneurship, and deregulated markets, shareholder capitalism has sparked widespread protests that unite such ideological foes as the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements. While the political left blames current shareholder capitalism for creating an unfair and inequitable society, the political right blames crony capitalism and collusion of the political and economic elites for the financial crisis and unsustainable levels of debt. In early 2014, even The Economist, a stalwart of economic liberalism and free markets, denounced current forms of capitalism on its front page and called for emerging-market Roosevelts to intervene. The global status quo, it appears, finds ever fewer defenders, and ever more detractors. It is high time, therefore, to take stock of this globalized criticism and to look for alternatives to the current economic system.