{"id":245865,"date":"2026-04-01T00:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T00:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/245865\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T00:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T00:07:07","slug":"what-does-late-stage-capitalism-really-mean-uc-berkeley-professor-chronicles-an-apocalyptic-history-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/245865\/","title":{"rendered":"What does \u2018late-stage capitalism\u2019 really mean? UC Berkeley professor chronicles an \u2018apocalyptic\u2019 history"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Asked if his new book on the history of capitalism is hopeful,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/history.berkeley.edu\/people\/faculty\/current\/trevor-jackson\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trevor Jackson<\/a>\u00a0outright laughs. The UC Berkeley history professor has spent his career documenting the rise of the economic system that orders the lives of most people on the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The resulting book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wwnorton.com\/books\/9781324106876\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World<\/a>,\u00a0is rife with tales of precipitous inequality, bloodshed and environmental destruction, which Jackson shows are all inextricably linked to the pursuit of profit. But despite capitalism\u2019s flaws, he writes on Page 1, \u201cThere is no credible alternative system on the horizon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Insatiable Machine\u00a0is not wholly fatalistic. By detailing the many steps that led to capitalism, Jackson aims to illustrate that \u201cmuch more radical change is thinkable and possible than we realize,\u201d he said. Again and again, he underscores that capitalism\u2019s rise was not an inevitable or even intentional outcome. The book also highlights the 16-fold improvement in quality of life that capitalism unlocked, like increased lifespans, widespread electricity and modern consumer culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked if his new book on the history of capitalism is hopeful,\u00a0Trevor Jackson\u00a0outright laughs. The UC Berkeley history&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-245865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}