Karl Marx was coy about what lay on the other side of capitalism. Communism, in his phrase, amounted to ‘the real movement which abolishes the present state of things’. As a guide to the organisation of society, the pugnacious phrase left something to be desired – literally. Though he appreciated capitalism as an essential stage in the progress of humanity, Marx nevertheless treated its supersession as both a historical necessity and a moral desideratum. The very status of the person as a person is at stake. Under capitalism, we are damaged and incomplete, alienated from our labour and deprived of the means to realise our true potential.

Where Marx approached capitalism through a philosophy of history, Michael Sonenscher prefers the techniques of intellectual history. Among the lessons learned from Sonenscher’s dense and provocative ‘story behind the word’ is the fact that Marx never used it. The object of his mature analysis was capital, not capitalism. Used in French debates in the 1830s, the word ‘capitalism’ would acquire a more general resonance with Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. But the force of Weber’s usage nevertheless depended on Marx’s example. What, then, were the bases of Marx’s thinking?