False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism

In the midst of the current financial crisis, John Gray revisits his brilliant polemic against the forces of global capitalism and deregulation. Written over ten years ago, False Dawn is a remarkably prescient book, sharply criticizing the greed and unsustainable economic practices which have proved to be the seeds of a worldwide recession. In a substantial new chapter, Gray considers how the economic landscape has shifted in a decade, and asks the crucial question: where do we go from here?

Gray’s “false dawn” is an allusion to what he sees as the failures of global capitalism. He finds his evidence in the economic collapse of Asia, Russia, and Mexico, but also in the “social disintegration” of the U.S. The “breakdown” of the American family, crime and mass incarceration, and growing disparities in income can all be traced to the global free market and the unregulated growth of trade and transnational corporations. Gray is now professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, but he was also an early influence on Margaret Thatcher and a New Right polemicist. Like those of a small but vocal and growing number of conservatives in the U.S., Gray’s arguments are flavored by populism and nationalism. False Dawn was published last spring in Britain, and it stirred a flurry of criticism. Gray has not changed the text in this edition but has added a final, lengthy chapter that addresses many of the arguments that were targeted in the first. David Rouse

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