America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy

This book is an excellent summary of the thinking of the left wing of the Democratic party. He brings forth a good collection of ways that he sees our society declining. I believe the thing he laments most is that the rich are rich. From this he goes on to saying that the standard work week in the US should be shorter, there should be universal health care, the whole litany of the issues of the far left. While many of us think that the far right wing has gone too far, the far left likewise has little appeal. Another point that bothers me is that problems I forsee being the biggest problems that the country faces, he doesn't mention at all. For instance, we are at about the peak of oil production in the world and developing countries, especially China and India have increased their demand for oil, and the total production of oil is going to go down in the next few years. Mr. Alperovitz is a Democratic Party activist. He doesn't though address what the Democratics need to do to be able to win on a national level. The old Democratic coalition of minorities, labor, women, the big Eastern political machines no longer has the pull it had. If he really wants to change things, how does he propose for the Democrats to counter the movement in our country to the South and West. Hint: When Kerry and Edwards left the campaign trail for a couple of days to go vote on a gun control measure they wrote off the South and West just to back up the left wing of their party. I give the book five stars because it so clearly illustrates the feelings of the far left. As a practical plan for the future, it wouldn't rate that high.

This author asks the right questions, difficult questions. What would a vision worth fighting for look like? What are its elements? How do we create a new vision that might mobilize people? What really makes sense if we want an equitable, sustainable democracy? It then offers some really interesting answers, based on real-world experiences. It also offers a pathway or a strategy to achieve real change. This is not just another list of wished for policy-prescriptions, nor is it utopian (except in the very best sense of the word). The author offers a powerful critique of our current situation. But then ... and I am repeating myself because I think it is soooo sorrowfully rare ... it offers a vision, an achievable, real-world vision, of how to reconstruct our political economic system as if democracy and equality really matter. If you read one "political" book this year, this should be it. It will introduce you not only to Gar Alperovitz's ideas but also to many of the most interesting experiments, critics, and thinkers from all over the political spectrum.

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 cat

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

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