A Fortune best nonfiction book of 2023
“Slobodian has done us a great service, identifying a phenomenon that needs unmasking…Crack-up capitalism, for all its spread and the enthusiasm of its advocates, is ultimately a blind alley.”
—The Guardian
“Ranging from Liechtenstein to Somalia, and from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, Quinn Slobodian's Crack-Up Capitalism exposes how zones of exception promise capitalism an escape from the confines of the modern state and the constraints of democracy. Revelatory reading. A worthy successor to Slobodian’s brilliant Globalists.”
—Adam Tooze, author of Crashed
“In Crack-Up Capitalism, Quinn Slobodian takes us on a wild ride through the fenced-in compounds and failed states of today’s capitalist world, and invites us to imagine a future where the rich have privatized safety, turned working people into a disposable servant class, and bought entire countries outright. This sharp and wickedly entertaining book is a necessary field guide to the LARPers, bloggers, and grifters of the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist world, a warning that they are closer to fulfilling their fantasies than we might think, and a clarion call for collective action to preserve—and greatly expand—democracy as we know it.”
—Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won’t Love You Back
“Revelatory. In this head-spinner of a book, Quinn Slobodian shows how zones, islands, micronations, gated communities, and cyber realms are remaking our planet. The capitalist future they portend isn’t a borderless utopia but a jurisdictional shatter belt, where democracy is a distant dream.”
—Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire
“Quinn Slobodian’s eye-catching case studies warn against the powerful movement seeking a radical capitalist future…The story is told over the course of 11 lively and engaging chapters…[a] unique and highly entertaining collection of case studies of the logic of capitalist Exit.”
—Financial Times
“So many debates about contemporary capitalism get bogged down in false dichotomies: markets versus states, empires versus nations, global economy versus local sovereignty. With a bracing argument and a brisk style, Quinn Slobodian cuts through those thickets, disclosing some 5,400 interconnected zones, across the world, of capitalism without democracy. From London to Hong Kong, Singapore to South Africa, the governors of these zones haven't done away with cops or rules, bureaucrats or borders. They've dispensed with elections and popular control. They’ve created a feudalism of the future. Thank God we have Slobodian to think our way through it.”
—Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind
“An instant political classic. Quinn Slobodian has produced an extraordinary book, showing how capitalists have been punching holes in national governance to enrich themselves and marginalize democratic self-determination. Filled with characters too strange for fiction and written with engaging brio, Crack-Up Capitalism confirms Slobodian’s reputation as our leading historian of neoliberalism.”
—Samuel Moyn, author of Humane
“A fascinating and important book, which brings to the surface some of the deepest political undercurrents of our times. Crack-Up Capitalism is an exemplary use of history to illuminate the present, forcing us to reassess what we thought we knew about the contemporary world.”
— Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears and Red Pill
“Slobodian has written a fascinating account of the sheer hubris of the market radicals who have sought to free capitalism from democracy first by transforming the world’s political geography and now by abandoning the material world. He tells this important story with verve and considerable insight.”
—Helen Thompson, author of Disorder
“With each new book, Quinn Slobodian adds extraordinary new detail to his ongoing account of 21st-century political and economic arrangements. Crack-up Capitalism is concerned with the ‘zones’ of global space: the micro-divisions and gradations from which the real atomic force of our system derives. It’s very convincing: get ready to throw out all previous maps.”
—Rana Dasgupta, author of Capital
“Brilliant. A vital contribution to the ‘whither democracy’ debate.”
—Wendy Brown, author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism
“Compelling…Quinn Slobodian’s vivid description of zones shows us why our political system can no longer be said to be democratic…Slobodian wakes us up to democracy’s underthrow: decentralization is a strategy for its unraveling, not its salvation.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“After reading historian Quinn Slobodian’s new book, you are not likely to think about capitalism the same way…Crack-Up Capitalism is 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.”
—Jacobin
01/09/2023
The world’s special economic zones embody a right-wing dream of free markets seceding from governments and voters, according to this penetrating treatise. Wellesley history professor Slobodian (Globalists) surveys subnational jurisdictions with exceptionally business-friendly policies like low taxes, weak regulations, lax labor laws, and openness to foreign investment. They include Hong Kong, the hyper-capitalist enclave that inspired the special economic zones that transformed China; London’s Canary Wharf real estate project, with its subsidized skyscrapers; the principality of Liechtenstein, the world’s quaintest tax haven; and the pseudo-independent South African Bantustan of Ciskei, which posed as a decentralized export center but relied on South African subsidies and the violent repression of labor activists by South African security forces. The author also spotlights libertarian settlement proposals that never materialized, including venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan’s scheme of “cloud cities” populated by shareholders, which Slobodian calls “a world of terms and conditions instead of rights and responsibilities.” Throughout, Slobodian delivers harsh critiques of economist Milton Friedman, Silicon Valley anarcho-capitalists, and other theorists who envision, he argues, a world of fragmented micro-polities run by corporations and private contracts rather than democratic governments with the power to tax, spend, and regulate. Elegantly written and incisively argued, it’s a convincing takedown of neoliberalism run amok. (Apr.)
2022-12-20
A review of libertarian threats to democracy and a debunking of the myth that nation-states govern the world.
In this richly documented exposé, Slobodian, professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley and author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Rise of Neoliberalism, describes the thinking behind attempts to create pockets of unfettered capitalism that turn citizens into consumers and governments into afterthoughts. Free market radicals, writes the author, long for “an agile, relentlessly mobile fortress for capital, protected from the grasping hands of the populace seeking a more equitable present and future.” This utopia is to be achieved using “zones of exception” where taxes are minimal, if not wholly eliminated, government regulations have been eviscerated, labor laws are nonexistent, and investors can conceal their assets. These duty-free districts, charter cities, innovation hubs, gated communities, enterprise zones, and tax havens currently number over 5,400 around the world, and more than 1,000 have appeared in the past decade. “Capitalism works by punching holes in the nation-state,” writes Slobodian, so that the “the lineaments of a future society without a state [can] come into definition.” The author draws on the ideas of such “neoliberal luminaries” as Milton Friedman, Paul Romer, and Balaji Srinivasan, noting their fascination with the political fragmentation of the Middle Ages and the capital-friendly confines of Hong Kong, Singapore, Liechtenstein, and Dubai. Slobodian also explains how their ideas have intersected with development corporations in London; the gated community of Sea Ranch in California, whose planner called it “a kibbutz without the socialism”; the opportunities posed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union; and the cryptocurrency fantasies of tech libertarians. Behind many of these anarcho-capitalists’ most revered examples, however, are tightly organized authoritarian regimes, as opposed to government’s absence. This, though, is simply another reason to reject democracy.
An insightful piercing of the veil of nation-states to reveal capitalism’s frightening, anti-democratic tendencies.