Identifies ten potential dangers to the global market system, providing examples of companies that are thriving and describing how a businesses must develop corporate strategies that are innovative and strenghten institutions at community, national, and international levels.

The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism’s future is far from assured. The global financial meltdown of 2008 nearly produced a great depression. Economies in Europe are still teetering. Income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism—these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity. How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics turn to government. In Capitalism at Risk, Harvard Business School professors Joseph Bower, Herman Leonard, and Lynn Paine argue that while governments must play a role, businesses should take the lead. For enterprising companies—whether large multinationals, established regional players, or small start-ups—the current threats to market capitalism present important opportunities. Capitalism at Risk draws on discussions with business leaders around the world to identify ten potential disruptors of the global market system. Presenting examples of companies already making a difference, the authors explain how business must serve both as innovator and activist—developing corporate strategies that effect change at the community, national, and international levels. Filled with rich insights, Capitalism at Risk presents a compelling and constructive vision for the future of market capitalism.

Q. Who should take the lead in fixing market capitalism? A. Business—not government alone. The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. Pandemics, income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism, the misuse of social media, and cyberattacks—these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity that we see dominating the headlines every day. How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics turn to government. In their groundbreaking book, Capitalism at Risk, Harvard Business School professors Joseph Bower, Herman Leonard, and Lynn Paine argue that while robust governments must play a role, leadership by business is essential. For enterprising companies—whether large multinationals, established regional players, or small startups—the current threats to market capitalism present important opportunities. In this updated and expanded edition of Capitalism at Risk, Bower, Leonard, and Paine set forth a renewed and more urgent call to action. With three additional chapters and a new preface, the authors explain how the eleven original disruptors of the global market system clash with the digital age, and they provide lessons on how to take action. Presenting examples of companies already making a difference, Bower, Leonard, and Paine show how business must serve both as innovator and activist—developing corporate strategies that effect change at the community, national, and international levels. Filled with rich insights, this new edition of Capitalism at Risk presents a compelling and constructive vision for the future of market capitalism.

Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system. Amid the nineteenth-century's waning faith in God's providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortuneis one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, the prominent theorist Georgi Derleugian has gathered together a quintet of eminent macrosociologists to assess whether the capitalist system can survive.

A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead. “A monumental achievement, sure to become a classic.”—Zachary D. Carter, author of The Price of Peace In this ambitious single-volume history of the United States, economic historian Jonathan Levy reveals how capitalism in America has evolved through four distinct ages and how the country’s economic evolution is inseparable from the nature of American life itself. The Age of Commerce spans the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War, and the Age of Capital traces the lasting impact of the industrial revolution. The volatility of the Age of Capital ultimately led to the Great Depression, which sparked the Age of Control, during which the government took on a more active role in the economy, and finally, in the Age of Chaos, deregulation and the growth of the finance industry created a booming economy for some but also striking inequalities and a lack of oversight that led directly to the crash of 2008. In Ages of American Capitalism, Levy proves that capitalism in the United States has never been just one thing. Instead, it has morphed through the country’s history—and it’s likely changing again right now. “A stunning accomplishment . . . an indispensable guide to understanding American history—and what’s happening in today’s economy.”—Christian Science Monitor “The best one-volume history of American capitalism.”—Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton