Krishna Bharadwaj and Sudipta Kaviraj (eels) Perspectives onCapitalism – Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter and Weber. New Delhi. SagePublications. 1989. pp.265 + Index. Price: Rs 190.00 (Hardbound) and Rs90.00 (paperbound).

As a socioeconomic world system, capitalism has undergone various historical changes from its early competitive market phase to late monopoly capitalism. In its early phase, it largely constituted a process of transition gradually emerging from the feudal mode of production, which laid heavy restrictions on the new class of rising industrialists, businessmen, and merchants. Classical economists were the ideological champions of these progressive social classes; progressive as compared to the erstwhile feudal and monarchical classes. Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism was an explanation of how capitalism as a growing socioeconomic organism evolved from the pre-capitalist feudal order and was leading towards higher socioeconomic formations. In this analysis of the capitalist economic system, Marx laid bare its internal contradictions and its crisis-ridden anarchic production, which in his view would inevitably yield place to socialism. His thesis was confirmed by the social revolutions which occurred after his death in1883. He was witness to a period of capitalism which produced misery pauperization of the working classes on a large scale, and wealth and prosperity for a tiny but powerful class of capitalists of various categories.