The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties - Hardcover

From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the many failures of the greatest economic system in history, and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it

Western society, once thriving, is being torn apart by deep new rifts in its social and economic fabric. It’s now populous cities versus rural counties; the highly skilled elite versus the less educated; wealthy versus developing countries. As these breaks have deepened, we’ve lost the sense of obligation to others so crucial to the rise of postwar social democracy in the first place.

These divisions are currently being addressed solely by revivalist ideologies and populist megafigures — we’re in the age of Brexit, President Donald Trump, and the return of the far right in Germany. And unless we do something now, the gap between the promises of prosperity for all that capitalism once offered and the crisis of contempt we find ourselves in will only grow wider, faster.

The Future of Capitalism is a passionate and polemical treatise that presents brilliantly original solutions for healing this economic, social, and cultural discord, with the cool head of pragmatism and policy rather than the fervor of rhetoric. Paul Collier’s workable solution is in the center: we have no time for moral or intellectual superiority on either side of the political spectrum, he argues, and no shiny new economic theory is going to save us this time.

Drawing on the wisdom of some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, Collier charts an agenda of empowerment to show us how to save capitalism from itself — eschewing the ideological baggage of the twentieth century and instead crafting practical policy grounded in communitarian ethics to address the rapid rise in inequality that will either end us or propel us into an entirely new economic age.

Paul Collier is the Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government. He is the author of The Bottom Billion, which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Prize awarded by the Council on Foreign Relations, The Plundered Planet, Exodus and Refuge (with Alexander Betts). Collier has served as Director of the Research Department of the World Bank, and consults with the German and many other governments around the world.