Product Description

"Be prepared for a mind-opening experience."
-The Christian Century

"Highly readable; excellent for students. . . . A tonic and eye-opener for anyone who wants a politics that works."
-Jane Mansbridge, Adams Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

"America Beyond Capitalism comes at a critical time in our history-when we all know our system isn't working but we are not sure what can be done about it. This book takes us outside the confines of orthodox thinking, imagines a new way of living together, and then brings that vision back into reality with a set of eminently practical ideas that promise a truly democratic society."
-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"Succeeds brilliantly in taking the Jeffersonian spirit into the last bastion of privilege in America, offering workable solutions for making the American economy one that is truly of, by, and for the people."
-Jeremy Rifkin, author of The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream

"The kind of careful, well-researched, and practical alternative progressives have been seeking. And it's more-visionary, hopeful, even inspirational. I highly recommend it."
-Juliet Schor, author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need

"A compelling and convincing story of the future."
-William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195386 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Scheduled for publication on the 75th anniversary of the Black Thursday stock market crash, this closely argued treatise from University of Maryland political economist Alperovitz (The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb) claims we are in the midst of another deep economic, social and political crisis. Capitalism, democracy, equality and liberty have disappeared from the United States, he says. Corporations and rich people control the wealth and government; their power destroys liberty and the entrepreneurial freedom necessary for capitalism. Traditional reforms are inadequate. Progressive taxation and social programs only redistribute income; we need to redistribute wealth. Easier voter registration and campaign finances miss the point; federal power must be reallocated to regional governments and local citizens’ associations whose scale makes participatory democracy possible. We need shorter work weeks, stronger labor unions, worker-owned or directed firms, less debt and more respect for the environment. The first six chapters could have been written in the 1970s. The statistics and quotes are current, but there is no discussion of recent global experience with many of the ideas. The remainder of the book combines these ideas into what the author calls "21st century populism" working toward a "Pluralist Commonwealth." The book’s strength lies in its integration of diverse populist issues into a coherent agenda rooted in deep American values from the Declaration of Independence.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Alperovitz, an academic and political economist, calls on Democrats to "change the system," believing many Americans are searching for new policies as we face large deficits; unemployment; terrorism; and loss of belief in equality, liberty, and democracy. In his view, our unresponsive government, growing inequality, corruption, sprawl, and rising personal debt are reflections of a creative free market system that is no longer completely free or totally creative. Examining the extraordinary income and wealth controlled by elites and major corporations, he suggests that the future requires the development of a more community-centered, democratic market system. The author offers four fundamental suggestions to address current problems, including developing new institutions that hold wealth on behalf of small and large public groups (community-centered enterprises and worker-owned firms), and a regional rather than continental political system to appropriately represent a rapidly growing American population. His well-framed insight will appeal to a more liberal segment of library patrons during this presidential election year. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
We can all imagine a future where there’s more to the American way than our current no-holds-barred capitalism, but will that future ever arrive?

In his new book, Gar Alperovitz, the renowned scholar of politics, economics, and history, predicts that we’ve reached a major turning point in history. America Beyond Capitalism argues that the first decade of the twenty-first century--challenged by growing economic inequality, the devaluing of civil liberties, and a government unresponsive to the people--is already producing conditions that will force the United States to undergo historic changes.

There have been five major political realignments in American history, from before the Progressive Era to beyond the New Deal. All have occurred in the face of the argument that major change was impossible. America Beyond Capitalism shows that increasing numbers of citizens are also quietly beginning to take meaningful local and national action that can ultimately give explosive force to a new approach.

The fall of communism and the painful ramifications of a globalized market free-for-all have left many yearning for a realistic alternative. Alperovitz makes clear that capitalism and socialism are academic ideas that have never existed in their purest forms anywhere. Our nameless current system, which is a haphazard one, mostly controlled by the largest corporations, is not the only one possible.

If we look closely, America Beyond Capitalism suggests, the basic outlines of an achievable and community-sustaining vision are quietly taking shape--a vision that offers far better market-based ways to use our vast wealth to realize equality, democracy, and liberty.

The rapid changes of the early 1960s, a time of explosive ferment and new ideas, seemed to come out of nowhere. So, too, did the modern conservative revolution--which once was seen as a marginal political project. Fundamental change, Alperovitz suggests, is the rule, not the exception, in history, including in our own time, here and now.

Eloquently reasoned, passionately argued, and grounded in a wealth of irrefutable facts and data, America Beyond Capitalism offers anyone who wants to take part in this momentous enterprise a new way to think about--and then get to work to help build--a new future.

Customer Reviews

THE Book Progressives Have Been Waiting For.....
The year 2004 has seen a heartening upswing in progressive activity, largely in response to the abuses of the Bush Administration at home and abroad. But whichever way the election turns out, all those who care about progressive values have some difficult questions to ponder: why, in spite of our best efforts, do things seem to be getting worse, not better, on so many fronts, from environmental destruction to runaway consumerism to heightened poverty to international violence?

Gar Alperovitz has had his eye on the bigger picture for a long time, and in "America Beyond Capitalism" he shares with us a hopeful yet hard-headed vision of what a dramatically reformed political economy might look like, a political economy which could reinforce, not undermine, democratic aspirations. In the process, he encourages liberals and progressives to see beyond the obvious and depressing fact that mainstream liberalism in the U.S. is a spent political force, and recognize other promising avenues for bottom-up change, such as the emergence in the last 30 years of a slew of grassroots-based democratic econoimc alternatives.

But this book is much more than just cheerleading for progressives. It also makes a major intellectual contribution by tackling the fundamental structural issues that a healthy 21st century democracy must confront: the question of scale and the proper locus of political authority; the question of wealth inequality and who controls our vast technological inheritance; the question of time and how we might convert productivity gains into greater free time; deep-seated gender inequalities that are reinforced by our current organization of work and space; and perhaps most difficult of all, the question of how to achieve ecological sustainability. Many writers have dealt with one or two of these issues, but this is the best effort yet to discuss all of them in an integrated fashion...and to do so in a sober, politically realistic way that doesn't assume that achieving serious change will be an easy proposition or that mere exhortation is enough. I experienced reading this book as an intellectual breakthrough on many levels, and I'm sure others will as well.

Finally, it should be noted that you don't have to think of yourself as on the "left" or even as progressive to find great value in this book. Show this book to friends disillusioned by politics, to political moderates who are worried about the ability of our political system to deal with our most pressing problems, and to honest conservatives who recognize that the new corporate state threatens traditional conception of entrepreneurial liberty. Show this book to anyone willing to take a hard look at the problems and possibilities the 21st century will offer to Americans.

Ultimately, this book is an invitation to a far-reaching civic conversation about the future direction of our country. Large-scale changes in American society in the next half-century are inevitable; the only question is what form they will take. "America Beyond Capitalism" persuaded me that there is a REAL possibility in the coming generations for far more dramatic progressive change in the U.S. than most of us have been willing yet to imagine.

Amazing! Here is the architecture of "the next system"...
Boy, oh boy, do we need this book? The Left, it seems, has been in headlong retreat - politically, ideologically, and intellectually - for decades now, with the end of the postwar boom, the fall of Communism in the East and the (still unfolding) crisis of Social Democracy in the West, accompanied by a full-blown counterattack by capital. We are all familiar with the results: falling wages, the energy crisis, recession, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the "financialization" of capital, the Third World debt crunch, the decline of organized labor, cutbacks in social provision, downsizing and global restructuring, deregulation, privatization, and the sorry tale of a quarter-century's political and ideological swing to the right. What's left of the "official" Left (American liberalism, the rump of the European social democratic movements whose leaderships sold out long ago to become the craven servants of power) is - at best - still splashing away far downstream from where the real action is, seeking a way forward among the muddy puddles of 'tax-and-spend' transfer policies and modest redistribution left behind by the high tide of Keynesianism and the welfare state. The antiglobalization movement may have brought with it some renewed sense of energy and hope that "another world is possible," but often seems to lack any convincing comprehensive vision of what an alternative political-economic system might look like.

Into this valley of ashes steps Gar Alperovitz with a vital new progressive vision and a realistic politics of how to get there. Better known as a historian and author of the definitive book on the decision to use the atomic bomb, Alperovitz is also a distinguished political-economist, and this is obviously where his heart really lies. A veteran of the Civil Rights and Antiwar movements who also spent considerable time in the halls of power on Capitol Hill (nearly averting the Vietnam War single-handedly when he almost succeeded in getting his boss, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, to amend the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution!), he was a prime mover in attempts to protect rustbelt communities from the terrible effects of industrial decline through the development of viable economic alternatives. The initial fight for worker-ownership in the Steel industry was lost, but in the process Alperovitz began to ponder the lessons and to develop a more coherent and systematic alternative political-economic model for the long haul.

Alperovitz eschews the all-too-common habit of progressive writers of lapsing into a litany of complaint, though at the same time his unsparing eye ranges over the deteriorating trends with regard to liberty, wealth ownership and equality, social mobility, working time, environmental protection and democratic participation. His accounts of the growing fiscal crisis - with even the most conservative estimates showing a deteriorating fiscal environment in which the projected federal deficit for the coming decade is $5 trillion, or as much as $7.5 trillion if the surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund is set aside - and of the coming crises in retirement and health care and the "squeeze" on the middle class are devastating in their implications, both for traditional progressive strategies of 'tax-and-spend' and for the social health of the nation as a whole. Without another way forward, the U.S. in the coming decades will face a crumbling economic and social infrastructure and an even more starkly polarized society of "haves" and "have-nots," lorded over by a now even more egregious version of the "super-elites" who did so well out of the corporate hogwallow and looting spree of the 1990s.

Against this grim canvas, however, Alperovitz paints the picture of a veritable explosion of institutional innovations at the grass-roots level in which worker-owned firms, community development corporations, land trusts, public pension funds and municipal enterprises are proliferating on the ground, accompanied by an ever-more sophisticated academic literature pointing to the way in which new principles of wealth-ownership can be used to benefit small and large publics over time. The implications of Alperovitz's argument are immense: just as capitalism itself was a sixteenth-century development of institutions that had grown up in the cracks and interstices of the old feudal order, so it is that the economic institutions and arrangements of the next economic system will, in all probability, come from late capitalist innovations.

This book, then, is an absolute gem - laying out, in broad brush-strokes (though supported on every page by a wealth of data and analysis), what might seem ludicrous if it wasn't so well-reasoned and tightly-argued: that we are beginning to approach the point where we will have the institutional and political basis for the transformation of American capitalism into a system truly capable of sustaining liberty, equality, democracy, community and environmental sustainability. Add to this the possibility of a knock-on effect that breaks the "iron triangles" of corporate and elite power behind the recent resurgence of militarism and imperialist adventurism in the United States, and we may just have the recipe for a wholesale rejuvenation and reanimation of the political Left as a force capable of - and with a programmatic agenda for - system-wide political-economic change. Much will depend on the widespread dissemination of the powerful and original ideas at the core of this careful but vastly ambitious book.

As Alperovitz himself acknowledges, his book is intended as the beginning of a serious conversation about long-term change, not the end. Where actual experiments with alternative economic institutions have been attempted on the ground, they have been closely studied and a rich academic and activist literature has built up. This is only a start. We need the equivalent of Che Guevara's "two, three, many Vietnams," a rich proliferation of real-world experiments with new economic models and institutions. We need to reanimate the idea of an alternative political economy for the twenty-first century, based on values of justice, equality, democracy, solidarity and sustainability. The capitalists and their usual pack of running dogs and apologists will no doubt scorn and resist each and every one of our attempts along the way: in return, as Alperovitz shows by the shining example of his deeply moral vision, we need only the simple determination that, whatever else may happen, they shall not impoverish our imaginations too.

A Common Sense Vision for America's Future
I just saw author Gar Alperovitz interviewed on C-Span this morning about his new book, "America Beyond Capitalism."(The program is now available on line on the site's archive section, if you didn't see it.) In these days of political obfuscation, spin, and government policies that bear little relationship to reality, Alperovitz's common sense analysis of the shortcomings of the American political-economic system, and alternative ways of organizing our country's work and wealth, is a breath of fresh air.

Progressives will find this book particularly insightful, inspiring, and thought-provoking (something we need in these dark political times). Much more than an indictment of our national ills, "America Beyond Capitalism" offers a serious vision of what America could be like if we began living up to our treasured national values of liberty, equality, and democracy. The book is based on a wealth of data and a comprehensive review of the literature (more than 70 pages of end notes for you scholars out there), but it is one of the most accessible and personal books about "politics" you will ever read, based on the author's own political involvement since the early 1960s.

The book is also filled with mind-boggling facts about our society that most of us - even those who follow the daily news and are deeply involved in politics - simply are unaware of. For example: 2/10ths of 1% of us made more money selling stocks and bonds in 1999 [the latest year available] than all other taxpayers put together; corporate taxes as a share of Federal revenues fell from 35% in 1945 to 7.4% in 2003; the country's top tax bracket fell from 91% after World War II to 35% after the Bush tax cuts; the top 5% of wealth holders in America own 70% of stocks, bonds, and private businesses. The author convincingly demonstrates that this growing concentration of wealth is continuing and escalating. The result: America's democracy is being subverted by rampant inequities. And yet neither major political party is proposing anything meaningful to address the fact that our nation is becoming what amounts to a feudal/medieval society.

The most important contribution of the book, in my view, is that the author begins to sketch out the framework for a new "system" - neither capitalist nor socialist, liberal nor conservative. (As an historian, Alperovitz notes that political-economic systems come and go; though we may think our corporate-dominated market economy is "the end of history," he argues that our era is already witnessing pressures that will force the U.S. to undergo historic system change.) To advance the creation of this new system, he offers concrete proposals for alternative ways to hold wealth that could benefit the great majority, and suggests ways that political participation could be expanded, how work could be organized so that we have more leisure, how the environment could be protected, and much more. This is a compelling book; highly recommended; a perfect catalyst for stirring debate and discussion.