The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism’s Future Geoff Mulgan Princeton University Press, 344pp, £19.95
“Capitalism,” writes Geoff Mulgan, “is not so much an aberration as a step on an evolutionary path, and one that contains within it some of the answers to its own contradictions.” In thinking of capitalism in this way, Mulgan voices a contemporary consensus. As advances in biology and genetics have promoted the belief that economic and political development can be understood in evolutionary terms, hundreds if not thousands of books have appeared in recent years claiming to explain the rise and development of capitalism as part of an ongoing process of social evolution. This is not the first time that the idea of evolution has been invoked in this way. Owing more to Engels than Marx, who knew too much about history to imagine that it could be understood in Darwinian terms, there has long been a Marxian tradition that sees capitalism as a stage in social evolution. The current fashion for evolutionary theories of society has much in common with this view and quite a few of those who promote these ideas – including Mulgan – were influenced by Marxian thinking at an earlier stage in their careers. full: http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2013/02/reviewed-locust-and-bee-predators-and-creators-capitalism%E2%80%99s-future-john-gray _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
