Explaining Capitalism
Yanis Varoufakis book Talking to my Daughter About the Economy is out in English translation and presented in an interview with The Guardian.
The book is an rare attempt to explain to a youth how Capitalism emerged and works. Simple explanation of complex issues is an art. Look here:
At first, we were apes. Then we came down from the trees, learned to speak, and over-hunted our prey. So we were forced to invent farming. Suddenly, we had a surplus of goods, namely grain, which we kept in communal silos. Hence the need for writing, to keep track of who owed what to whom. We wrote on shells, which became money. Next, we minted coins. Markets developed. The few who were literate invented religion to justify their power. … The world changed massively in the 17th century. Global trade had made merchants rich. Feudal lords were being left behind. So they kicked the serfs off their land, and re-hired them as debtors. In other words, serfs became entrepreneurs; in practice, these new entrepreneurs were never out of debt. … Originally, the economy had been driven by what people produced. Now, it was driven by debt. “The Great Reversal makes debt the economic turbocharger.” What then followed was the modern world – the Industrial Revolution, factories, empires, great inequality.