Crack-Up Capitalism

'Gonzo brilliance ... unique and highly entertaining' Financial Times'Revelatory reading' Adam Tooze, author of Crashed'After reading Quinn Slobodian's new book, you are not likely to think about capitalism the same way' JacobinLook at a map of the world and you'll see a neat patchwork of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. From the 1990s onwards, globalization has shattered the map, leading to an explosion of new legal entities: tax havens, free ports, city-states, gated enclaves and special economic zones. These new spaces are freed from ordinary forms of regulation, taxation and mutual obligation - and with them, ultracapitalists believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether.Historian Quinn Slobodian follows the most notorious radical libertarians - from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel - around the globe as they search for the perfect home for their free market fantasy. The hunt leads from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the medieval City of London, and finally into the world's oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where capitalism and democracy can be finally uncoupled.Crack-Up Capitalism is a propulsive history of the recent past, and an alarming view of our near future.

Timely and important, eye-opening ... Slobodian has done us a great service, identifying a phenomenon that needs unmasking., Gonzo brilliance ... Unique and highly entertaining., Excellent ... A new generation of swashbuckling billionaires entertain the prospect of secession, using their money to realize fantasies of escape, whether through seasteading or spaceships., After reading historian Quinn Slobodian's new book, you are not likely to think about capitalism the same way ... great fun to read ... an important guide to the current struggle over how the ruling class rules. And Slobodian ultimately raises the question of whether there are cracks in the system, or whether the cracks are the system., An important historical corrective to the myths, fantasies and occlusions that have allowed dystopias such as Dubai to be presented as models for "the west" to learn from. Many of the men whose manifestos and dreams Slobodian surveys simply don't know what they're talking about. One wonders if they ever wanted to learn in the first place.

Quinn Slobodian is a professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley College, and the author of the award-winning Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, which has been translated into six languages. A frequent contributor to the Guardian, New Statesman, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Dissent and the Nation, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.