If ever you've wanted a good piece of Marxist literature that masquerades as a book "objectively" observing the facts of economics, then you've come to the right place. The book at its very outset explains that it will be examining the faults of what it calls "capitalism" through a specifically Marxist lens, which had me giddy with excitement. After all, I need a change of pace from actually objective literature.
The book is split into 3 segments: analysing the faults of "capitalism", examining the history of the same, and proposing solutions to "capitalism" in the form of worker-owned cooperative businesses. Segment 1 is fair enough in its definition of the greatest inequities and injustices plaguing the world today. Even chapter 3 in all its communist nakedness is bearable when compared to the primary problem I have with the book.
That is the blatant misrepresentation of those worried about the over-encroachment of government into private business. The book claims that those who are against government meddling in fields such as financial markets are pro-subsidy, and base their entire crusade against a strawman of their own making. Those who hold true to principle are even disregarded as a "fringe school that can't even argue against the benefits of Keynesian economics".
It's definitely a book one should read to understand the position that far-leftist sophistry finds itself in. Misrepresenting and not responding to arguments made by the Austrian school is exactly the kind of hypocritical decadence that makes me happy to see that this is the book that communists have to resort to at this point...which I'm sure they will. I think this book is definitely the seminal economics book of the decade...of the week.
8/10