(Transaction Publishers) This book is an analytical history of how and why Western intellectuals have trumpeted contempt for capitalists and capitalism for the past 150 years. Kahan shows that dislike for the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, industry, and commerce have been a prominent trait of leading Western writers and artists, who have composed novels, plays, and manifestos condemning the economic system in which they live. Arguing that the rejection of capitalism unites 19th-century radical intellectuals, 20th-century communists and fascists, and 21st-century anti-globalization protestors, he asserts that intellectuals are a permanently alienated elite in capitalist societies. Kahan is an adjunct professor at the American Business School of Paris. His many books include Alexis de Tocqueville, Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage, and Aristocratic Liberalism : The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville.
