Links between the texts by Jeanette Winterson (chapter 2 of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?), Arnold Toynbee (The Chief Features of the Industrial Revolution), Riccardo Bellofiore (A Crisis of Capitalism) and the quotations about capitalism from Schumpeter blog.

The four texts taken into consideration are strikingly different from each other: Winterson’s novel has been written in 2011, like Riccardo Bellofiore’s article; the Schumpeter blog post is dated 2012, while Arnold Toynbee wrote his essay in 1884. The texts also regard apparently different topics: whereas Riccardo Bellofiore and the writer of Schumpeter blog focus on capitalism, people’s view of capitalism and its consequences, Toynbee analyzes the events and the direct results of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, in Jeanette Winterson’s novel, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution are analyzed together on the background of Manchester growth as the centre of the Revolution.

One of the aspects that the texts share is the strict bond between capitalism and industrial development. Joseph Schumpeter said that “The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organisational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as US Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation – if I may use that biological term – that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”, thus showing that the evolution of industries and markets into larger organizations is strictly connected to the development of capitalistic economy, which undergoes a constant renewal of its structure (a “creative destruction”). Moreover, Toynbee believes that the birth of the free market economy was the trampoline to the propagation of Economic Science (the modern capitalism). Jeanette Winterson sees Manchester as the clearest example of the connection between industrialization and capitalism: she says that looms and mills transformed the city of Manchester and the fortunes of Britain, and that “Manchester spun riches beyond anybody’s wildest dreams”, linking cotton manufacture (“spun”) and the economy (“riches”).

However, next to the development of capitalism, there was also the advent of its antithesis: Socialism. In Toynbee’s essay Socialism is said to have emerged with John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, where the capitalistic society was first accused of being an unfair one. Jeanette Winterson considers Socialism as one of the antithetical aspects regarding Manchester, where capitalistic mentality cohabited with Socialist (and later Communist) pressures to improve working conditions. In both texts Socialism and Capitalism (intended as systems of thought) are shown to be natural consequences of the Industrial Revolution, but while Capitalism is the immediate reflection of the increased wealth and the desire for more money, Socialism develops later, since it is the result of the disbelief towards a rich and happy capitalistic world for everyone. Both Winterson and Toynbee describe the degradation of the workers’ lifestyle: “[Workers] suffered from the conditions of labour under the factory system, from the rises of prices, […] from those sudden fluctuations of trade” (Toynbee); “Men and women, ill-clad, exhausted, drunken and sickly” (Winterson); they also agree this was the reason which led to the development of Trade Unions.

In A Crisis of Capitalism, since the article deals with the current crisis, the relationship Capitalism/Socialism is analyzed through a contemporary approach: since Capitalism has clearly shown all his flaws in the last few years, Socialism appears as its true alternative. However, it must be remembered that Mr. Bellofiore’s article shows a personal position, and not just a data point.

Finally, the most clear aspect which appears reading the four texts is the complex, and sometimes contradictory, nature of capitalism. The contrasting definitions from Schumpeter blog may suffice, but a lot of economists underlined this characteristic in their sentences: Schumpeter said that “Capitalism is being killed by its achievements”, like a snake that bits its tail, and Eric Hoffer affirmed that “Capitalism is at its liberating best in a non-capitalist environment”. In Winterson’s novel the multifaceted nature of capitalism materializes in the contradictions of Manchester; in Toynbee’s work capitalism is analyzed in both its good and bad consequences. Finally, Riccardo Bellofiore cannot deny that capitalism has made possible Italian, European, and worldwide growth in the last two centuries, but he believes that the exasperation of capitalistic economy has led to a final collapse, like a parabola which, after its peak, is destined to indefinitely go down.