The Prospect Podcast Sven Beckert: How capitalism made the world
Mar 25, 2026
Sven Beckert, Harvard history professor and author of Capitalism: A Global History, explores capitalism as a man-made system shaped by trade, coercion, and politics. He traces global origins beyond Europe. He discusses labor mobilization, child labor, AI’s risks to work, rising authoritarian tendencies, and whether alternative economic logics are possible.
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Capitalism Defined As An Investment Logic
- Capitalism is an economic logic where privately owned capital is invested to produce more capital.
- Sven Beckert emphasizes this logic as historically specific, emergent, and radically different from pre-capitalist orders like feudal tribute and coercion.
Aden Merchants Show Early Capitalist Practices
- Merchant communities like Aden around 1100 displayed recognizable capitalist practices centuries before industrial Europe.
- Beckert recounts letters from Aden merchants to show early commercial logics that were modern yet marginal to wider subsistence and feudal economies.
Capitalism Was Born As A Global System
- Capitalism was born global and must be studied from a worldwide perspective rather than as a purely European invention.
- Beckert traces links across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, showing how global commodity chains and institutions shaped capitalist development.
