iCapitalism

Patrick McGee’s Apple in China is meant to be an analysis of how one of the top for-profit companies in the world has become ensnared, captured, and controlled by the globe’s most powerful authoritarian government. The author’s fear is that the entanglement threatens not only Apple but America, democracy, and capitalist enterprise. But he also reveals what business success means and looks like in the twenty-first century and how the old battle lines, and indeed the distinctions, between capitalism and Communism aren’t relevant anymore. The story shows how business success no longer meets the idealized standards of fair play, independence, and autonomy — if it ever did.

Capitalism has a buoyant shape-shifting history, in various incarnations: colonial, industrial, post-industrial, entrepreneurial, state, crony, late-stage, surveillance, responsible, sustainable, and the like. Its adaptability reflects the solidity of the very idea of capitalism, the belief...