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The Origin of Capitalism
- A Longer View
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's Summary
How did the dynamic economic system we know as capitalism develop among the peasants and lords of feudal Europe?
In The Origin of Capitalism, a now-classic work of history, Ellen Meiksins Wood offers a clear and accessible introduction to the theories and debates concerning the birth of capitalism, imperialism, and the modern nation state. Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.
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What listeners say about The Origin of Capitalism
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jake Fahey
- 10-22-21
incredibly dence.
it's an academic book that relise heavily on the reader knowing many concepts about the topic. The main problem is that I do know the vocabulary and terminology but the unbearably, unapologetically repetitive nature of the text makes me hate myself that I do know them because it all sounds so pompous.
lastly, there is no story. there is only the author's dry, algebraic sentences used to disprove other theories with out petty bad when the narrator sounds as bored as ido. It's too bad because it is a topic I realy want to know about, but I'm not looking to get my PhD in it.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story

- E N Cuentro
- 06-21-21
A polemic rather than a historical account
I was hoping for a historical account of capitalism's emergence, or at least enough information to be able to make up my own mind. In fact, this is an argument in favour of an interpretation of capitalism rise rooted in the English agrarian economy from the 16th to 18th centuries, one apparently drawn substantively from the historical work of Robert Brenner. It argues against non-Marxist accounts rooted in commerce, and Marxist accounts centring the urban bourgeoisie or the role of colonialism.
The first of three parts is fairly dry and skippable, summarising contending theoretical viewpoints, but without enough detail to make them come to life. The third part ends with an argument connecting capitalism to post modernism, and the conclusion inveighs against so-called "market socialism". Both feel out of place, and more a product of things the author wanted to say about contemporary politics than anything else.
In between, the argument is developed well, albeit without the factual context and detail to make me really feel like I grasp the subject as a whole. The argument is that what is distinctive about capitalism is innovation in the direct process of mass commodity production, motivated by the desire to maximise profit in a competitive market, and drawing on "free" wage labour. Other candidates for the position of first capitalist economy, particularly the Dutch Republic, are considered and rejected for reasons that seem sound given the definition at work. There are some interesting discussions on the relation to each of political ideas (Locke, Petty), colonialism, and the emergence of the modern state.
Overall, it is pretty interesting, albeit light on detail. I was left wanting to know more, so perhaps it works well as an opinionated introduction.
The performance isn't amazing, a bit flat and sometimes loses the rhythm of the sentence, but fine if you're willing to concentrate a bit.
2 people found this helpful
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- By: Deirdre N. McCloskey
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 23 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in an audiobook that can only be described as a monumental project and a life's work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, and a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism.
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An Important Follow Up for Anyone Reading Ayn Rand
- By Benzion N. Chinn on 04-24-18
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Socialism
- An Economic and Sociological Analysis
- By: Ludwig von Mises
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 24 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Published in 1922 during those dark and dreary years of socialism’s near-complete triumph, Socialism stunned the socialist world. Mises has given us a profoundly important treatise that assaults socialism in all its guises, a work that discusses every major aspect of socialism and leaves no stone unturned. A few of the numerous topics discussed include the success of socialist ideas; life under socialism: art and literature, science and journalism; economic calculation under socialism; the ideal of equality; and Marx’s theory of monopolies.
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Unconvincing
- By bookscdsdvdsandcoolstuff on 01-03-15
By: Ludwig von Mises
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Why Marx Was Right
- 2nd Edition
- By: Terry Eagleton
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking 10 of the most common objections to Marxism - that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on - he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are.
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A Brilliant Narrator
- By Stephen on 08-11-18
By: Terry Eagleton
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The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
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a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- By henryj on 02-21-20
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Escape from Rome
- The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity
- By: Walter Scheidel
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 21 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world?
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Very interesting book, terrible narration
- By Matt Griffin on 12-03-19
By: Walter Scheidel
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Out of Italy
- Two Centuries of World Domination and Demise
- By: Fernand Braudel, Siân Reynolds - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fifteenth century, even before the city states of the Apennine Peninsula began to coalesce into what would become, several centuries later, a nation, "Italy" exerted enormous influence over all of Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. Viewing the Italy (the many Italies?) of that time through the lens of today allows us to gather a fragmented, multi-faceted, and seemingly contradictory history into a single unifying narrative that speaks to our current reality as much as it does to a specific historical period. This is what the French historian Fernand Braudel achieves here.
By: Fernand Braudel, and others
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Planet of Slums
- By: Mike Davis
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory. Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt?
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A little dated ring when was originally published
- By Terence A. Dodge on 07-05-22
By: Mike Davis
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The Age of Extremes
- 1914-1991
- By: Eric Hobsbawm
- Narrated by: Hugh Kermode
- Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In the short century between 1914 and 1991, the world has been convulsed by two global wars that swept away millions of lives and entire systems of government. Communism became a messianic faith and then collapsed ignominiously. Peasants became city dwellers, housewives became workers - and, increasingly leaders. Populations became literate even as new technologies threatened to make print obsolete. And the driving forces of history swung from Europe to its former colonies.
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Gain without Pain
- By Broken Luck on 07-25-21
By: Eric Hobsbawm
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Globalists
- The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
- By: Quinn Slobodian
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, author Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.
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Tracing Neoliberalism to Its European Origins
- By Will Szal on 06-25-19
By: Quinn Slobodian
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A People's Guide to Capitalism
- An Introduction to Marxist Economics
- By: Hadas Thier
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Economists regularly promote Capitalism as the greatest system ever to grace the planet. With the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the market to the "experts." Despite the efforts of these mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to question why this system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory.
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Loved the clarity!
- By Jacob Fisher on 12-11-22
By: Hadas Thier
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Capitalism and Slavery
- Third Edition
- By: Eric Williams
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development.
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Excellent Historical Reading for the Caribbean
- By Trinirastawoman on 06-01-22