The "Evils" of Capitalism

Capitalism’s critics cling to a mythic past, but the record shows the factory age ignited rising living standards, broader opportunity, and the modern prosperity we now take for granted.

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by Roger Kimball
March 28, 2026

“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble as the things we do know that ain’t so.”

— Mark Twain (attributed)

What’s the one thing everyone knows about capitalism? Why, that it started out as a mean, nasty tool of greedy industrialists, of course. “The Industrial Revolution,” we all learned, was a terrible Moloch that devoured children, put profits before people, and, though it made great fortunes (or, perhaps, partly because it made great fortunes), was a wicked development. The Industrial Revolution, we’ve all been taught, was the original sin of capitalism, necessary, perhaps, to prime the engine of economic progress, but lamentable nevertheless.

Ask anyone: the Industrial Revolution is a stigma that no amount of societal amelioration can remove. The “factory system,” an integral part of the Industrial Revolution, was an urban nightmare, a Dickensian melod…