There was no Baby in this Bathwater: A Reply to the Critics
In response to Bandelj, Hung, and Streeck, I make three basic points. First, while the initial article focused on definitions of capitalism as a system, the critics prefer to see capitalism as a spirit or a tendency that emphasizes the unlimited pursuit of profit. While we are in agreement that such a tendency is destructive, it is confusing to define capitalism this way when most others are using the term to describe a system that they see as coherent. Second, some of the critics question whether efforts to reign in the capitalist impulse can be successful for very long. I argue that the breakdown of restraints in the post-World War II period can be traced to the end of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates in 1973. This policy shift was neither inevitable nor the result of political agency by financial or corporate interests. Third, the concept of capitalism fails to illuminate key fault lines in contemporary political economies such as the divide between finance and production or between giant firms and small- and medium-sized enterprises.