In History Departments, It’s Up With Capitalism

[steve2470]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/education/in-history-departments-its-up-with-capitalism.html?src=me&ref=general



A specter is haunting university history departments: the specter of capitalism.

After decades of “history from below,” focusing on women, minorities and other marginalized people seizing their destiny, a new generation of scholars is increasingly turning to what, strangely, risked becoming the most marginalized group of all: the bosses, bankers and brokers who run the economy.

Even before the financial crisis, courses in “the history of capitalism” — as the new discipline bills itself — began proliferating on campuses, along with dissertations on once deeply unsexy topics like insurance, banking and regulation. The events of 2008 and their long aftermath have given urgency to the scholarly realization that it really is the economy, stupid.

The financial meltdown also created a serious market opportunity. Columbia University Press recently introduced a new “Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism” book series (“This is not your father’s business history,” the proposal promised), and other top university presses have been snapping up dissertations on 19th-century insurance and early-20th-century stock speculation, with trade publishers and op-ed editors following close behind.

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. People have been doing histories of capitalism for a hundred fucking years

Like we've never heard of Werner Sombart or Maurice Dobb or Immanuel Wallerstein or hundreds of others.

The new movement is hagiographies of capitalism, which is precisely what we should expect from the contemporary academy.

[rmax]

2. WOW are they out of touch. Capitalism dates back at least 6,000 year, probably more.

The idea of making money at the expense of all else is pretty much a human given. It was particularly prominent in ancient Egypt, Rome, China, Japan, Russia, and throughout the European invasion of the Native American territories now known as "The American Continents".

Nothing has changed except for the mechanisms for the oligarchy to absorb wealth at the expense of all of the rest of us. It's the same thing, just a new era. Don't get your hopes up for it to change now.