As merchant power grew in the eighteenth century, the merchant political economy became increasingly unstable. Merchant control over banks and credit and their ability to obtain state backing for monopolistic corporations meant that non-merchant groups were increasingly pressured, leading to the Age of Revolutions, while unified markets and interconnected credit chains generated runaway competition and violent financial crises. By the 1800s, technical developments in manufacturing led to ever larger fixed capital, an unsustainable burden in unstable markets. Using textile factories in Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts and iron manufacturers in Trenton, New Jersey, the chapter shows how merchant factories, still focused on quality and dealing with crises mostly by trying to cut wages, were displaced by modern industrial capitalists working on the whole production function to cut costs and gain market shares, leading to the large, market-dominating oligopolies of today. Even a cursory analysis of today’s accounting and management methods and business practices, centered on cost and productivity issues, shows how different they are from the merchant practices of the Age of Commerce.

The conclusions argue that artificial intelligence, despite its disruptive nature, does not undermine the essential role of innovative entrepreneurship within capitalism. While AI reshapes entrepreneurial processes and competitive dynamics, the persistence of entrepreneurial space depends primarily on institutional arrangements and policy choices. Preserving a dynamic and socially valuable form of capitalism in the AI era ultimately hinges on human agency rather than on technology itself.

Chapter 1 provides a conceptual overview of innovative entrepreneurship and its role in contemporary advanced economies. Largely AI-free by design, the chapter serves as a micro-founded point of departure for the analysis developed in the rest of the book. It first revisits the role of the entrepreneur in introducing innovation, contrasting entrepreneurial activity with innovation carried out by large firms, and situates this discussion within the Schumpeterian Mark I and Mark II frameworks. The chapter then examines how institutions shape the direction and quality of entrepreneurial effort, drawing on the classic contributions of North and Baumol. The chapter subsequently outlines the main stages of the entrepreneurial process – idea identification or creation, evaluation, and exploitation – adopting the term ‘entrepreneurial idea’ rather than ‘opportunity’. Then, it focuses on the three core pillars of innovative entrepreneurial success: founders’ human capital, social capital, and access to financial capital, with particular emphasis on venture capital. While explicitly rejecting deterministic interpretations of entrepreneurial outcomes, the chapter distances itself from views that reduce entrepreneurial success to purely random processes. It argues instead that these three pillars systematically increase, on average, the likelihood that innovative start-ups survive, grow, and succeed in the market.

This brief introduction outlines the premises and fundamental questions that the book asks and then explains its structure.

The chapter addresses the relation between the Earth system and social systems centring on the concept and phenomenon of growthism. It argues that modern economic growth is the main reason why humans have become such a major force in the Earth system. It stresses the link between natural and social systems, and shows how complex and growing human society has emerged from nature. While the former remains part of the latter, these interdependencies between natural and social systems require the development of conscious and reflexive planetary control systems.

Marxism is one of the three mainstream approaches in International Relations, along with realism and liberalism. Unlike the other two, Marxism acts as a critical theory that focuses on the hierarchical structure of the international system, driven by capitalist development and expansion. Since the early twentieth century, Marxists have used the concept of imperialism to analyse this structure. The first major debate on imperialism was about the expansion of European capitalism into non-capitalist societies, which was a key issue until the 1970s. Since then, the focus has shifted to analysing imperialism in the era of neoliberal globalisation and understanding why the interstate system endures despite the capitalist drive for global unification. The international relations of the Middle East have been featured in these debates among Marxists. The chapter first explains the basic concepts of Marxism as developed by Karl Marx. It then covers classical and contemporary theories of imperialism along with recent developments in Marxist geopolitics, while situating the Middle East into these discussions. Critics often argue that Marxism tends to overlook regional dynamics and powers. To address this criticism, the chapter examines Iran as a sub-imperial, peripheral power, exploring its role in the Syrian war.

In the third chapter we describe the takeoff of commercial banking in Latin America from midcentury onwards, as witnessed by the establishment of almost 100 joint-stock banks in the more dynamic economies of the region between 1850 and 1873. The creation of banks was especially notable in cities and ports of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay, developments that have not previously been analyzed from a comparative perspective. Our text argues that the dynamics of export economies (from the early 1850s) as well as the entry of foreign direct investments (from the 1860s) generated demand for the creation of new types of financial enterprise that spurred early capitalism in Latin America. A striking feature was the growing prominence of large banks that had connections with public administrations, such as the Banco do Brasil (1853), which became a pillar of finance for the imperial government, and the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (1854), a commercial bank that operated in Argentina as a key agency for the government and for ranchers and merchants. Finally, attention is turned to the Banco Español de la Habana, which became the main financial support for the Spanish colonial administration in Cuba during the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878).

The Epilogue summarizes the obstacles encountered, as well as the advances achieved, during the emergence of banking in Latin America from independence in the early nineteenth century down to the first decade of the twentieth century. This history is described as part of a long phase of slow capitalism that, eventually, led to faster economic growth and some convergence with more advanced nations, albeit subject to diverse trajectories. The Epilogue also raises questions regarding the building of authentic banking systems from the early twentieth century onwards, as well as the establishment of central banks from the 1920s and 1930s.

This book focuses attention on the antecedents, birth and relatively late development of modern banking in Latin America. The novelty of the chapters that follow is to offer a panoramic overview of the trajectories of banks and credit markets across a significant number of nations in this extensive region over a long time period. The approach is chronological, but each chapter pays attention to a distinct theme that can allow the reader to grasp key problems that refer to the process of creation and expansion of banks in order to grasp the successes as well as the failures of different financial regimes and enterprises during successive phases from the end of the colonial regimes down to 1914. We maintain that the economic history of the nations of this vast region should not be viewed simply as a story of failure, but rather as an expression of a prolonged and sometimes unstable process of slow capitalism during what we describe as the long nineteenth century.

In this chapter, I investigate the problems of living in capitalistic societies and chart a pathway forward from a psychological perspective to overcome these problems. Economic inequality and the consequences emerging from the disproportionate political and social influence of the superrich, climate change, and neoliberal ideologies are leading problems in capitalistic societies. I argue that despite these serious problems, we should not abandon the economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty, contributed to human innovation and striving, and improved the material lives of most of humanity. Instead, to overcome the problems of capitalism, I propose we should focus on creating more ethical economic systems that reap the joys of capitalism and reduce the sorrows. I draw on the world-making approach in psychology to help document problems, create alternative possibilities, and assess their impact, to create these gentler more humane forms of capitalism in the future.

The introduction sets the stage for the study by introducing the topic, emphasizing its significance, and situating the research within the broader field of economics. It also provides an overview of the new perspectives on the relationship between capitalism and economics that the study will explore, and outlines the structure of the subsequent chapters.

The introduction begins by connecting the prevalence of apocalyptic expectations and end-of-the-world scenarios in our culture to the dystopic dominion of capitalism, offering some basic definitions to clarify the key concepts. While there seems to be no alternative to this dominion, I pose the central question of whether the church can be a site for contestation and transformation.

Drawing from the analysis of the prior argument, this chapter describes how the Marxist utopianism of Fredric Jameson plumbs a deeper reading of the political unconscious capitalist culture to illuminate how, despite the pervading sense of dominance, antagonisms remain, opening possibilities for transformation. In the end, however, his utopianism remains a politics of via negativa and, thus, unable to provide a real alternative.