FROM THE REVIEW: "Capitalism is the 'natural reality' of the day: we live in and with its beauty and perplexities. As of now, we seem to be helpless before its gigantic leap forward and submit ourselves to its power. The rules by which we abide, the morals we keep and the very life we love to cherish all sprout up, engage, adjust, fight in and with the different manifestations of capitalism, and owe much debt to its intricate legacies. But do we know what capitalism really is? And how do we know that what we know of capitalism is accurate? This book brilliantly examines and rigorously analyses these very old questions of political economy and the theoretical attempts to define capitalism in its political, social and philosophical sense, situating them in the classical political economy of the 18th and 19th centuries."