History of Capitalist Transformation

<p><em>A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms</em> highlights how since the recent financial crises the expression ‘liberal reform’ has entered common parlance as an evocative image of austerity and economic malaise especially for the working classes and a segment of the middle class. But what exactly does ‘liberal reform’ refer to? The research analyzes the historical origins of liberal-capitalist reformism using a critical approach starting with the origins of the Industrial Revolution.</p><p>The book demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms was to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy by imposing both directly and indirectly the adoption of rules institutions attitudes and procedures amenable to economic and political interests of capitalist élites and hegemonic states – Britain first the United States later – between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. As such the reforms became an active tool used to promote social-economical-financial institutions norms and lifestyles typical of a liberal-capitalist economic order which locates some of its founding values in capital accumulation profit-seeking and social transformation.</p><p>This book will be of significant interest to readers on capitalism political economy the history of the global economy and British history.</p>