In Chapter 7, I discuss the latest crisis of capitalism and Amartya Sen’s journey to rescue capitalism from the capitalists. I begin by discussing the increasing vulnerability of capitalist societies at the end of the twentieth century due to the deregulatory environment encouraged by the Chicago School. I use Karl Polanyi’s double-movement theory to explain the rise of the Chicago School and its assault on the “relationship capitalism” that had evolved in the postwar period. While the new “investor capitalism” was successful at unleashing the power of the market, it also increased the vulnerability of capitalist societies to opportunistic self-interest. This increased vulnerability was fully realized in the 2007–08 mortgage-backed security crisis that nearly collapsed the global financial system. After describing the near collapse of the global financial system, I discuss the implications of the collapse for the neoclassical theory out of Chicago. This leads to a discussion of Amartya Sen’s journey from India to the West to rescue capitalism from the capitalists. This discussion introduces the role of the East in the development of capitalism and its future promise. I conclude by discussing Sen’s critique of capitalism based on Adam Smith’s original moral foundation.

In Chapter 4, I address humanism as a moral foundation for capitalism by discussing the lives and writings of Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes. The narrowing of political economy by nineteenth-century classical economists was challenged on two fronts. Some economists fought to maintain a broad social and moral perspective, but some economists turned the narrowing theory of classical economists into a stinging rebuke of capitalism itself. I begin by discussing the rising influence of humanism in the twentieth century. Next, I discuss the Hungarian-Austrian political economist Karl Polanyi and his critique of capitalism based on humanism. Although he was initially attracted to Marx’s moral critique, Polanyi eventually rejected Marxism on similar grounds as Tawney. In his search for a moral foundation for capitalism, Polanyi rediscovered the moral theory behind Adam Smith’s writings. I then discuss the British political economist John Maynard Keynes. Similar to Polanyi, Keynes rejected the narrow utilitarianism of both Marx and the classical economists in forming his moral foundation for capitalism based on responsibility and duty. This sets up a discussion of humanism as a moral foundation for capitalism based on Polanyi’s and Keynes’s seminal works.