Timothy Shenk: The title of your book—Capitalism: The Future of an Illusion—is clearly meant to provoke an argument. Why do you think capitalism is “an illusion”?
Fred Block: The premise of the book is that linguistic larceny plays a big role in politics. Between 1890 and 1914, reformist intellectuals in the U.S. and England redefined liberalism from economic liberalism to political liberalism to justify expanding state action to constrain market forces. Free-market thinkers protested against the redefinition, but they were ineffective and the move put them at a huge disadvantage for many decades. Ultimately, many of the Mont Pelerin types relabeled themselves as neoliberals. But they got their revenge by stealing the word capitalism from the left and redefining it as a coherent and unified system that cannot be modified without a huge loss in economic output. It is that view of capitalism that I am calling an illusion.

