Keith Hart's magisterial, eclectic essay “The Rise and Fall of National Capitalism” takes on a dizzying array of topics, from the nature of money to the concept of the nation to the tension between “shareholder value” and “corporate social responsibility” to the mutual admiration society of celebrities, economists, politicians, and journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The essay must be read as part of Hart's project over the past few years of synthesizing his past work and conveying through multiple publications, venues, and media his universalist, humanist view, which is above all against parochialism in all its forms (including the disciplinary parochialism of economic anthropology and anthropology more broadly) to meet the exigencies of the current moment—a moment centuries in the making.

He has approached this task in several ways, recently and emblematically in the publication of his book Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes (Hart, 2022), which he described at the launch at the London School of Economics as an attempt to realize the poles of individual and society as a dynamic yet integrated whole (Hart, 2023).

Hart's universalist vision, and his Gramscian blend of “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will,”¹ takes form in this essay of an account of ways in which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, the nation-state as an ideological and institutional form has acted as a more or less functioning stage manager for a particular phase of capitalism that Hart terms “national capitalism.” This phase, through a bewildering series of forces, but perhaps especially changing technologies and politics surrounding money and its particular currency forms, is now drawing to a close, with no clear sense of what is to come.

What is to come is not yet completely clear, in Hart's view, partly because, as he says in the second paragraph, “folk models lag behind world history in the making” and partly because most people are trapped within narrow understandings of their identity, circumstances, interests, desires, sectors, academic and nonacademic fields and disciplines, and so on. The essay is diagnostic: it seeks to provide a heuristic, temporal frame to unite and make sense of disparate happenings and phenomena. It is also hortatory: “Humanity,” says Hart, “is sleepwalking into what could be a terminal disaster,” and this essay is meant to be an alarm clock.

There are many paths to follow in this essay; I will focus on just three: temporal choices, materials and money, and what kinds of politics is called for in response.

基思·哈特 (Keith Hart) 的权威、折衷主义文章《国家资本主义的兴衰》探讨了一系列令人眼花缭乱的主题，从货币的本质到国家概念，到“股东价值”和“企业社会责任”之间的紧张关系，再到“国家资本主义”的发展。达沃斯世界经济论坛上的名人、经济学家、政治家和记者相互钦佩的协会。

这篇文章必须作为哈特过去几年项目的一部分来阅读，该项目综合了他过去的作品，并通过多种出版物、场所和媒体传达了他的普遍主义、人文主义观点，这种观点首先反对一切形式的狭隘主义（包括学科主义）。经济人类学和更广泛的人类学的狭隘主义）来满足当前时刻的迫切需要——一个几个世纪以来正在形成的时刻。

他以多种方式完成了这项任务，最近，他出版了自己的著作《世界中的自我：连接生命的极端》（Hart，  2022），他在伦敦经济学院的发布会上将这本书描述为实现这一目标的尝试。个人和社会的两极作为一个动态而完整的整体（Hart，  2023）。

哈特的普遍主义愿景，以及他的葛兰西式的“理智上的悲观主义和意志上的乐观主义”的融合，¹在这篇文章中形成，描述了自十九世纪中叶以来民族国家作为一种意识形态的方式。制度形式或多或少充当了资本主义特定阶段（哈特称之为“民族资本主义”）的舞台管理者。这一阶段，经历了一系列令人眼花缭乱的力量，但也许尤其是围绕货币及其特定货币形式的技术和政治的变化，现在已接近尾声，但对即将发生的事情还没有明确的认识。

在哈特看来，即将发生的事情尚不完全清楚，部分原因是，正如他在第二段中所说，“民间模式在形成过程中落后于世界历史”，部分原因是大多数人都陷入了对其身份的狭隘理解之中，环境、兴趣、愿望、部门、学术和非学术领域和学科等等。这篇文章是诊断性的：它试图提供一个启发式的时间框架来统一和理解不同的事件和现象。这也是劝诫性的：“人类，”哈特说，“正在梦游，走向一场可能是绝症的灾难”，这篇文章的目的是作为一个闹钟。

这篇文章有很多路径可以走；我将只关注三个：暂时的选择、材料和金钱，以及需要什么样的政治来回应。