Source: Bigstock

Quite so. Have they found this strong man in Donald Trump? Many surely believe they have. He tells them they have been cheated, that America has been cheated, and that he can put things right. The fact that he hasn”€™t been a professional politician is part of his appeal.

Is capitalism in crisis, yet again? In a sense, yes. But it’s not a crisis brought on by its failure. It’s the consequence of its success. Capitalism has given birth to the global economy, and, for those who have been left behind in its homelands, whose wages have been held down to make the business they work in competitive, or whose jobs have simply disappeared, never to return, globalization is a monster.

Moreover, the appetite of this destructive monster, this spawn of capitalism, has not been satisfied. More jobs are going to disappear, thanks to the intellectual vitality of the capitalist system, with its zest for innovation. Technological developments have been killing old jobs since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution at least. Among the first to go were the handloom weavers. In an angry riposte, led (reputedly) by a boy call Ned Ludd, they smashed up the machines that were taking their work away. The violence may have been satisfying, but it was pointless. Luddites fighting against the march of progress always lose. Science and innovation march on; the next set of jobs to go will be white-collar clerical ones, obsolete thanks to the miracles of computer science”€”and it would be futile to start smashing the computers.

So here we have the paradox of capitalism’s global triumph. Globalization, fostered by finance capitalism, makes the world richer, but in the old rich countries of the West an awful lot of people find that they are poorer than their parents were, and see no possibility of catching up with them. There are big winners”€”very rich big winners”€”and huge numbers of people who see themselves as losers and believe they are stuck in the doldrums, trapped in a world they don”€™t understand and have started to resent and fear. No wonder they are rejecting the political elites they think have failed them; no wonder they see the attraction of a siege economy; keep migrants out, repatriate jobs, put up tariff barriers.

If you should find yourself in London’s Highgate Cemetery and hear a rumbling subterranean chuckle, it will be Karl Marx laughing in the grave as he guesses he may be proved right after all with the crisis of capitalism entering its final phase. But it’s likely that the old boy will be proved wrong again. Capitalism will adapt to changed circumstances, and will continue to create wealth. The world will continue to get richer, but it won”€™t necessarily get pleasanter. The inequality gap will get wider and wider. People may vote for those who reflect, or seem to reflect, their concerns”€”for Trump or Sanders in the U.S.A., for Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn or UKIP’s Nigel Farage in the U.K., for Marine Le Pen and the Front National in France, for Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain. They may get some small satisfactions. Nevertheless, global capitalism will march on, creative and destructive in like measure. The rich will get richer. The very poor in developing countries will get richer. And in the democracies of the West, an awful lot of people will have to be running very fast not to fall further and further behind.