He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to. He makes a very solid case that capitalism can't really do anything else -- he doesn't just ask the reader to take this on faith (I would have hated it if that were the case).
The book does use a lot of such analysis, which can be pretty offputting if you're not used to it, but each such example is really cogent and well supported, so overall I found it a pretty phenomenal aggregation of history and very solid analysis/math for how we think about what's sustainable and what isn't.
His pattern in the book tends to be 1. strong assertion => 2. actual argument => 3. repeat assertion; I did find myself reacting to the first assertion there negatively because they often sound like overgeneralizations at first, but in each case he really did support them.
> He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to.
Not a very sound way of thinking if you care about confounding variables. Presumably there are always special exemptions when not analyzing capitalism? I.e. The material result of communist policies in the USSR (total collapse) don’t apply to communism because it wasn’t true communism? If so, then we don’t really have true capitalism either so you can’t really make any assertions about capitalism.
Totally separately and having literally nothing to do with anything else here, but since you brought it up, the USSR lost an economic war to capitalism, it didn't collapse because communism doesn't work. They spent their money lifting people out of poverty while american empire was busy extracting resources from other countries and keeping them in poverty.
Note also that I'm not defending individual policies of the soviet union.
EDIT: wanted to tack on: if in 1989 the US and western europe had collapsed and become communist, I wouldn't take that as proof -- or a particular reason at all -- that capitalism didn't work. That would be idiotic -- we were engaged in a decades-long cold war with another giant power, and lost. I may have separate arguments about capitalism, as I do now, but the collapse has nothing to do with it.
Similarly, the collapse of the soviet union has everything to do with trying to eliminate poverty WHILE staring down the barrel of the largest and most powerful empire that's ever existed.
This is historical revisionism. The soviet leaders tried to copy the success story of Deng Xiaoping's transitions from socialism to capitalism in China. The planned economy system just didn't work. The "US Empire" can't explain why by the late 1980s, the Soviet Union had 4x tractors as the United States which was totally wasteful.
If you want to complain about meaning of the economic system just think of a virtual economy simulation. Why would any human participate in such a virtual economy? No matter how much money you possess in the virtual economy it is ultimately meaningless. All the goods and factories that you own are also virtual. Why even care? Well, because we like playing the game.
The real world is exactly the same. We live because we like living. Even if you only produce the most essential products you will still run into the meaning of life problem. Sure your food production is allowing people to live but why even let them live? If they didn't exist you wouldn't have to make food for them. It's completely circular at its core. Essential needs are purely artificial just as non essential needs are purely artificial. The reality is that people are selfish (both in a good and in a bad way), they want things, especially those that don't serve any essential purpose.
They don't care about endless growth, they just care about getting the best deal possible and that's exactly what capitalism offers. Communism at its core doesn't care at all. It just cares about the essentials and nothing else.
He's a marxist, so statements like that are grounded in a historical materialist analysis -- very basically, that the material result of policies is their reality, not whatever ideals they might aspire to. He makes a very solid case that capitalism can't really do anything else -- he doesn't just ask the reader to take this on faith (I would have hated it if that were the case).
The book does use a lot of such analysis, which can be pretty offputting if you're not used to it, but each such example is really cogent and well supported, so overall I found it a pretty phenomenal aggregation of history and very solid analysis/math for how we think about what's sustainable and what isn't.
His pattern in the book tends to be 1. strong assertion => 2. actual argument => 3. repeat assertion; I did find myself reacting to the first assertion there negatively because they often sound like overgeneralizations at first, but in each case he really did support them.