Review: The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, by Martin Wolf

‘Democracy is peaceful civil war. The divisions that emerge in democratic politics may, in the wrong circumstances and with the wrong people, become sources of insurrection, civil war, or creeping authoritarianism in the name of the people.’ So says Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ chief economic commentator for almost thirty years and now perhaps one of the most respected and influential financial journalists in the world. He's an enthusiastic supporter of both capitalism and democracy and an opponent of state socialism. Surely, therefore, it must be rather easy to predict the opinions he will offer about the current state of the world in his substantial study The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism.