Hellerian Capitalism I: Characteristics and Conditions
Nicholas Roerich 'Everest' 1938 Why theorise capitalism? As Mallory said of Mount Everest, “because it’s there”. Today begins a new series titled The Economic Sociology of Capitalism (2003) which will draw on my wealth of useful material from adventuresome years as an academic when I trespassed creatively across disciplinary boundaries and wrote continuously but refused either to publish or to perish. Below is the first of several extracts I plan to post from an unpublished chapter called Capitalism that I sent to Peter Dougherty at Princeton in October 2003. I think it is good enough to offer here more or less verbatim. Peter wrote to say he liked it and encouraged me to send more chapters, which I could not do until October 2006. Life intervened, as it does even during Everest climbs. ______________ Chapter 4: Capitalism by Michael Heller (2003) Introduction and section 1: Definitional Characterisations “Progress toward capitalism ...