Capitalism, Socialism, their Alternatives and Critiques

This is an alphabetical version.  For a subjective ranked version see: Ranked: Capitalism, Socialism, their Alternatives and Critiques

Capitalism and Socialism have always been intertwined with the economic modes of production and the politics that founds it.  They have many proponents and many critics.  There are also those who critique both, even if are found to be in support of either.  There are also alternatives to both of them.  As for the basics, capitalism is means profit going more to owners of means of production.  Socialism means a society in transition to the next stage of political and economic production, with communism being the following stage.  Very quickly they became at war with capitalism usually representing private ownership, while socialism (and communism) representing government ownership.  A false dichotomy that the following list of books either highlights the benefits of their own views, critiques another, or shows a different path.  

Caveat 1: Just because a book and author support or critique a particular view, that does not mean that they accept it as is.  Some do.  Usually, those who support also show many critiques, and vice versa. 

Caveat 2: A book may primary critique a particular view, but support it over the alternatives.  

Capitalism

General

• Capitalism: A Short History by Jürgen Kocka
• Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises by Anwar Shaikh
• The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor
• A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
• Understanding Capital: Marx's Economic Theory by Duncan K. Foley

Support

• The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan
• Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
• Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World by Branko Milanović
• From Plato To NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents by David Gress
• Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, Carl J. Schramm
• The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto
• On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
• The Politics by Aristotle
• Solomon's Knot: How Law Can End the Poverty of Nations by Robert D. Cooter, Hans-Bernd Schäfer
• The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith

Critique

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
• Capital and Exploitation by John Weeks
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
• Capital, Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production by Karl Marx
• Capital, Vol. 2: The Process of Circulation of Capital by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
• Capital, Vol. 3: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
• Capitalism: A Conversation In Critical Theory by Nancy Fraser, and Rahel Jarggi
• Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital by Jason W. Moore
• Citizenship Papers by Wendell Berry
• Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph E. Stiglitz
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism's Final Crisis by John Smith
• Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts by Anwar Shaikh, E. Ahmet Tonak
• The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
• Outsourcing Economics by William S. Milberg, Deborah Winkler
• Plunder: When the Rule of Law Is Illegal by Ugo Mattei, Laura Nader
• Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
• The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz
• Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order by Noam Chomsky
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
• A Theory of Imperialism by Utsa Patnaik, Prabhat Patnaik
• Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming by McKenzie Funk

Critique | Fiction

• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Socialism

History (Neutral)

• October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville

Support

• America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy by Gar Alperovitz
• Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns
• The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato
• Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization by Robert Wade
• Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective by Ha-Joon Chang
• Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt

Critique

• The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer
• The Evolutionary Transition To Capitalism edited by Kazimierz Z. Poznański
• The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism by Friedrich A. Hayek
• The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox
• The Law by Frédéric Bastiat
• The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper
• The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means For The United States by Ross Terrill
• Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum

Critique | Fiction

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Berlin by Jason Lutes

Fiction

• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Capitalism And Socialism

General

• Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
• A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
• Korea: A History by Eugene Y. Park
• On Classical Economics by Thomas Sowell
• The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli
• The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner

Critique

• Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter
• The Clash of Economic Ideas by Lawrence H. White
• Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
• The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives by Michael Heller
• Individualism and Economic Order by Friedrich A. Hayek
• The National System Of Political Economy by Friedrich List
• The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it by Will Storr

Fiction

• The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Alternatives

• Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation by Peter B. Evans
• Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom
• From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
• The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World by Marie Favereau
• The Lessons of History by Will Durant, Ariel Durant
• Progress and Poverty by Henry George
• The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin