Modern market capitalism used to be heralded as the best way to run an economic system, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was said that it promoted rapid growth and encouraged invention and enterprise; it offered freedom and opportunities for all, the advantages of competition, efficient use of finances, fairness and equality.
Increasingly, capitalism as practised in the West has come under attack for its ugly aspects, including greed and cronyism, the pernicious power of financiers and the evident failure of governments to remedy the deficiencies, even in cases where governments are not colluding with the modern robber barons.
Capitalism in the West is not only deficient and diseased but is not working. That is not merely a poor pun on the high levels of unemployment in the United States and Europe but refers to grave underlying problems.
Growth is sluggish where it is not stalling. Governments are up to their ears in debt and have no room for manoeuvre: if they try to boost growth they risk capital markets turning against them; if they choose austerity to get on top of the debt they risk sending growth plummeting and unemployment soaring.
Now there is more bad news. A carefully researched article in the latest issue of what might be subtitled the journal of modern capitalism, the Harvard Business Review, concludes that one of the pillars of capitalism, the vital role of shareholders in big corporations, is also badly diseased.
