Book Review: ‘Abundance’, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, ‘The Care Economy’, by Tim Jackson, ‘The Measure of Progress’, by Diane Coyle
Finance. Climate. Pandemic. Inflation. Housing. Geopolitics. We are nearly two decades into what has been termed a global “perma-crisis”. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist imprisoned by Mussolini, famously said that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.
If it was the 2008 global financial crisis that shattered any illusions of uninterrupted progress, we are still witnessing all manner of “morbid symptoms”: from Brexit to Trump to the rise of the far right and the apparent accommodation of revanchist Russia. Three ambitious new books take a look at what ails the political economy of liberal democracy, and how we can chart a course to a better future.
*** A version of this book review was first published in The Irish Times on 29 March 2025 ***
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