Ralph Pettmans" book, Understanding International Political Economy: with readings for the fatigued, seeks to explain what international political economy is and what it should mean to the everyday person. The collection of cases within the book, present different views of capitalism in varying periods of time. Although these examples occur in different regions/countries/times, they have the same basic outcome. The characters in the stories, whether they are based upon real life experience or are purely fictional, each go through a set of extenuating circumstances which in turn affect how they see a capitalist economy. Based upon the cases in the book, I believe that capitalist system is viewed as both a benefit to society, but it also takes on a dual role and plays a necessary evil in that contributes to a partial downfall of some aspects of the society also. The downfall of Capitalism is that creates a greater separation between owners (the haves) and workers (the have-nots). I say this because the examples that come later in this paper clearly show that ones eagerness to participate in a capitalist system, is then turned around and rethought after they have profited from their activities. For all the good capitalism has done for the world, I also believe that this (the book) proves that capitalism, or the capitalist way of thought only sets out to turn a profit at the hands and effort of others (i.e. laborers) and it seeks to corrupt society. There are a number of readings from the book which would make excellent examples of my argument, but I have decided to talk about only 2 of them. The ones that I have choose to use are David Lodge's (1980) "My First Job" and Cynthia Enloe's (1990) "Women in the Banana Republics" .
David Lodge's "My first job", is a perfect example of how increased profits incite greed from an owners perspective. David Lodge himself admits to taking the low paying job of selling newspapers and magazines in Waterloo Station, "just to fill in a few weeks between getting his A-scores and going of to University.