The financial meltdown of 2008 had at least one silver lining: Amid the foreclosures and antibank protests, stock in Karl Marx rose sharply. The past year or two have seen a miniboom in books demonstrating why despite Communism’s failure, Marx remains indispensable for understanding the shortcomings of capitalism. One cannot help wondering whether this revivalism has not been overdone. After all, the hurried reminders issued lately about capitalism’s intrinsic instability were basically a consequence of our having bought into the complacent idiocies of what passes for contemporary mainstream