Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas

An anthology of long-read book reviews by one of the European left's foremost political economists.

From the acclaimed author of How Will Capitalism End? comes an omnibus of critical engagements with leading economists and thinkers. Critical Encounters draws on Wolfgang Streeck's inimitable writing for the London Review of Books and New Left Review, among other outlets, and includes pieces originally published in the German press, translated into English for the first time. It opens with a survey of three of the world's major economies - the US, France, Germany - and two contrasting historical eras, factory capitalism and financialization. A middle section considers the hollowing out of Western democracies, with a review of Yanis Varoufakis's memoirs of the Eurozone crisis.

Streeck then delves into the world of ideas, discussing the interests underpinning European monetary union as they impinge on Perry Anderson's The H-Word and Jürgen Habermas's The Lure of Technocracy. Finally he zooms out to compare his home discipline of sociology against natural history, giving a remarkable and non-deterministic reading of Charles Darwin.

In the Introduction, Streeck reflects on the art (or craft) of book reviewing and the continuing merits of the book form.