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In Capitalism, leading economic sociologist Fred L. Block explains how U.S. politics got caught in a loop that alternates between center-left Democrats and increasingly extreme-right Republicans. Block argues that to exit this cycle of raised hopes followed by dashed dreams, we must challenge the idea that we live in a society that operates according to its own inner laws. Compellingly written and full of examples of the consequences of our absence of political imagination, Capitalism guides us through the reality that market societies are complex institutional hybrids and that, periodically, we must consider (despite our own fears) replacing our existing economic system to restore economic vitality.

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Fred L. Blockis Research Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis, and a leading economic sociologist. He has served on the Board of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy since 1989.

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