Capitalism, Culture and Decline in Britain

This is an original and controversial contribution to the topical debate on Britain's alleged economic decline. Rubinstein presents a critique of the thesis, made familiar by Wiener, Sampson, Barnett and others, that Britain has failed in economic terms because of its anti-industrial and pre-modern cultural values and class system. He argues that Britain was never an industrial economy, rather a commercial and financial one whose comparative advantage always lay in that area. He examines Britain's cultural values, class system and elite structure to demonstrate that these were unusually rational and modern by comparison with the more newly industrialised powers, and that features of the class system, such as the public schools, were actually instrumental in enhancing this competitive advantage. Emphasising the importance of the City of London and addressing socialism, Keynsianism and Thatcherism, Rubinstein provides an energetic and challenging contribution to this debate.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.