Foretelling the End of Capitalism provides a sweeping intellectual history of political economy, focusing on myriad attempts to prophesize the end of capitalism—made by supporters and detractors alike—that are as old as capitalism itself. But Francesco Boldizzoni’s ambitions do not stop at documenting the twists and turns of thought trying to keep pace with social transformations, and even (in many cases) struggling to bend them toward emancipatory ends. In fact, the author wagers that the history of failed prophecies of the impending collapse of capitalism can teach us about capitalism itself, including how and why it manages to survive each successive crisis. The lessons learned from this study, Boldizzoni claims, show that any contemporary attempt to “‘overthrow the system’ is lost from the start” and risks “delegitimizing the reformist politics that are needed” (p. 4). However, although the intellectual history is deep and engaging, the broader conclusions that Boldizzoni draws from it are questionable.

The book consists of an introduction, which lays out its central argument and provides an overview of the remainder of the book, followed by six chapters. Each of the first four chapters focuses on a broadly defined period and its key thinkers and debates: from the first use of the word “capitalism” in the middle of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, from the eve of World War I to the close of War World II, the postwar period up until the end of 1970s, and the 1980s to the present. The fifth chapter is more conceptual in orientation: it seeks to understand why so many prophecies of the end of capitalism have failed. Finally, chapter 6 introduces Boldizzoni’s account of the persistence of capitalism, which then motivates his plea for a reformist politics that aims for the “renewal” of social democracy (p. 276).

Boldizzoni declares that the “book is aimed at a general readership,” particularly those with an interest in “social justice” (p. 6). Indeed, a clear strength of the book is its accessibly written narrative of the evolution of political economic thought from Marx to the present day. In itself, this makes for rewarding reading, as Boldizzoni skillfully weaves together the analyses of dozens of thinkers while placing them into the broader socioeconomic context of their times. It is also worth emphasizing that Boldizzoni does not focus exclusively on Marxist and other radical thinkers but also devotes significant attention to the writings of John Stuart Mill, Max Weber, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, Daniel Bell, and a cast of other lesser-known figures who each identified tendencies in capitalism that pointed to the limits of its further growth, if not its eventual demise. In this sense, the first four chapters of the book serve as an excellent primer on political economy, because Boldizzoni provides succinct summaries of the positions developed by these thinkers and the relations between them. Chapter 4 is particularly compelling in its discussion of the Third Way project, which emerged at a time when “capitalism was asserting itself as the only viable system” (p. 169) and sought to combine not socialism and capitalism but neoliberalism and social democracy.

Perhaps inevitably for a work of such vast scope, however, the book is sometimes lacking in analysis of the individual thinkers: where Boldizzoni does critique a given argument, space dictates that the engagement remains brief. To some readers, this may appear as a strength, however, because it means that the discussion of each thinker remains largely neutral and descriptive, without the author imposing his views onto theirs. Moreover, it should be recalled that what motivates Boldizzoni’s discussion of so many thinkers is the attempt to discern the cause of capitalism’s persistence from their failed predictions about its demise. Given this, a detailed critique of each argument would be redundant, because what really matters to Boldizzoni is that “these prophecies never came true” (p. 5).

Yet this raises the broader question of how (or when) to determine whether prophecies about the end of capitalism have (not) come true. For example, Boldizzoni notes that “Marx did not offer actual dates” for the abolition of private property, although he “did provide a precise indication of the sequence of necessary preconditions” (p. 40). At what point in time can we say that Marx’s general prediction about the overcoming of capitalism has been either falsified or verified? Similarly, Boldizzoni acknowledges that Herbert Marcuse “harbored no illusions about a rapid victory” of the New Left in his Counterrevolution and Revolt, ending that book instead with the vague claim that “‘the final crisis of capitalism’ may take all but a century” (qtd. on p. 127). To be sure, capitalism is alive and kicking in 2020. But because Marcuse’s book was published in 1972, there still remains a half-century for this prediction to be falsified.

Chapter 5 offers an “autopsy” of the various prophecies and to that end groups them into four typologies, centered on the dynamics and causal factors that they theorize: “theories of implosion, exhaustion, convergence and cultural innovation” (p. 200). Then, on the basis of this conceptualization, Boldizzoni considers a range of factors that explain the failure of forecasts, the most important of which for his purposes concerns the “underestimation of culture as a social force” (p. 13). In the final chapter, Boldizzoni develops his argument that two cultural factors account for the persistence of capitalism in Western societies: a long history of social hierarchy/stratification (which has taken various forms from antiquity through feudalism and now in capitalism) and the more recent, modern emphasis on individualism. In contrast, societies with a history of less hierarchical social relations, such as Norway, have tended to adopt versions of capitalism closer to socialism (p. 260). Similarly, societies that “lacked an individualist social pattern, such as Russia” (p. 260) were the most viable candidates for socialist revolution, regardless of their stage of economic development.

It seems plausible that these factors at least partly account for the persistence of capitalism. But it is not clear that they prove that the goal of ending capitalism, even in the long term, rests on so many “false hopes” (p. 4). Specifically, even if individualism and hierarchy are as supportive of capitalism and as resistant to change as Boldizzoni argues, why does that make radical change so unlikely? Boldizzoni baldly states that the “highly hierarchical social structure” and “individualistic social pattern” in Britain and most of Western Europe, and even more so in the United States, make it “difficult to imagine a radical change toward socialism” (p. 261). Given the long history of social hierarchy in Western societies, it does seem unlikely to disappear quickly, if at all. However, the claim that this rules out the possibility of socialism rests on the assumption that socialism is necessarily incompatible with or resistant to any form of social stratification or inequality, an assumption that is contradicted by the principle of distribution according to contribution (in Marx’s first phase of communism) as well as by the principle of distribution according to needs (in communism’s higher phase). Similarly, to assume that individualism renders socialism unlikely ignores the importance that socialist thought and practice have placed on individual freedom and flourishing: recall Marx’s own line that the “free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all” in communism.

It is true that the forms of social hierarchy and individualism that characterize contemporary capitalist society are at odds with most views of socialism, but they might be more subject to challenge and change than Boldizzoni assumes. Anger directed at the 1%, for example, registers disapproval of the current patterns of social stratification. And to what extent do the concrete forms that individualism now takes—such as careerism and opportunity hoarding—express genuine preferences as opposed to reluctant adaptations to structural constraints? Although Boldizzoni rightly criticizes others for dichotomous thinking, he too falls into the trap: either we focus on reformist politics that avoid the false hope of a foreseeable end of capitalism, or we succumb to the naïve wishful thinking of those who believe that more radical change is possible. But why are these mutually exclusive? Here one thinks of André Gorz’s concept of nonreformist reforms, most notably used by Nancy Fraser, as a way of thinking about reformist measures that carry a more transformative potential. Ironically, giving up hope of radical social change, as Boldizzoni counsels, will help fulfill the prophecy of capitalism’s persistence.