Economic Criticism

This essay reviews recent work in economic history, covering critical topics that span the history of inequality, the violence of primitive accumulation, and the Ukraine–Russia war. Following the introduction, this chapter has two sections: 1. Thomas Piketty and the Great Redistribution (1914–1980), and 2. Helen Thompson and Twenty-First Century Disorder. The conclusion considers sections 1 and 2 in the context of both Marx’s language of cyclical overaccumulation and overproduction and Alison Shonkwiler and Leigh Claire La Berge’s theoretical concept of ‘capitalist realism’.