The Conspiracy is Capitalism

Furthermore, a state-backed merchant capitalism gave rise to an imperial expansion which could provide protected markets for the products of industry. Thus, India was incorporated in the empire during the 18th century and in the 19th the Lancashire cotton industry became largely dependent on the Indian market.

Merchant capitalism was not, however, as closely linked to the growth of capitalist production as these connections would lead one to suppose. It was domestic rather than overseas demand that lay behind the growth of capitalist production in 18th-century Britain.

Health warning: On no account drink only one ingredient – liable to lead to tunnel vision, arrogance and possibly brain death.

-Ingredients:
Austrian (A)
Behaviouralist (B)
Classical (C)
Developmentalist (D)
Institutionalist (I)
Keynesian (K)
Marxist (M)
Neoclassical (N)
Schumpeterian (S)

[...] On diverging views of the vitality and the viability of capitalism, take CMSI.
If you want to know why we sometimes need government intervention, take NDK.
To discover different ways of conceptualizing the individual, take NAB.
In order to learn that there is a lot more to the economy than markets, take MIB.
If you want to see how groups, especially classes, are theorized, take CMKI.
To study how technologies develop and productivities rise, take CMDS.
To understand economic systems, rather than just their components, take MDKI.
If you want to find out why corporations exist and how they work, take SIB.
If exploring how individuals and society interact is your thing, take ANIB.
For debates surrounding unemployment and recession, take CK.
For various ways of defending the free market, take CAN.

Through the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), also set up in 1947, the US and other rich countries allowed developing countries to protect and subsidize their producers more actively than the rich countries. This was a huge contrast to the days of colonialism and unequal treaties, when developing countries were forced into free trade. This was partly due to the sense of colonial guilt in countries like Britain and France, but it was mostly because of the more enlightened attitude of the then new hegemon of the global economy, the US, towards the economic development of poorer nations.

The result of this enlightened strategy was spectacular. The rich countries experienced the so-called ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’ (1950–73).

Liberalism’s [i.e. cosmopolitan capitalism] fatal hypocrisy [...] was to rejoice in the virtuous Jills and Jacks, the neighbourhood butchers, bakers and brewers, so as to defend the vile East India Companies, the Facebooks and the Amazons, which know no neighbours, have no partners, respect no moral sentiments and stop at nothing to destroy their competitors. By replacing partnerships with anonymous shareholders, we created Leviathans that end up undermining and defying all the values that liberals [...] claim to cherish. [Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present]