nder capitalism,” John Kenneth Galbraith once quipped, “man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.” For a left-wing economist such as Galbraith, this was about as close as one might get to exalting capitalism — damning by faint praise. But in The Capitalist Manifesto, a lively, closely argued polemic by the Swedish historian Johan Norberg, we find a much more vigorous and persuasive defense of the most successful economic system the world has ever seen, a mechanism for sowing widespread abundance and lifting billions out of penury.
