This book argues that a lack in perception of the progressive aspects of capitalism has resulted in policy measures that have frequently been defeated. It brings out the importance of capitalism as the promise of being able to attain socialism. Based on modern economics of a post-Keynesian nature, it rejects mechanistic Marxism and the civilisational process of cultural turn thinking.

The book is a comprehensive analysis of the origins of capitalism, its contradictions, the dynamics of non-capitalist societies and the challenges of globalisation (including theories of imperialism).