Download or read book Four Futures written by Peter Frase and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism and extermininsm might actually entail. Could the current rise of the real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender's Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there's no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of "likes," wouldn't rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies are already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.
Download or read book Postcapitalism written by Paul Mason and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally published in 2015 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Great Britain"--Title page verso.
Download or read book Design after Capitalism written by Matthew Wizinsky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How design can transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism: a framework, theoretical grounding, and practical principles. The designed things, experiences, and symbols that we use to perceive, understand, and perform our everyday lives are much more than just props. They directly shape how we live. In Design after Capitalism, Matthew Wizinsky argues that the world of industrial capitalism that gave birth to modern design has been dramatically transformed. Design today needs to reorient itself toward deliberate transitions of everyday politics, social relations, and economies. Looking at design through the lens of political economy, Wizinsky calls for the field to transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism—to combine design entrepreneurship with social empowerment in order to facilitate new ways of producing those things, symbols, and experiences that make up everyday life. After analyzing the parallel histories of capitalism and design, Wizinsky offers some historical examples of anticapitalist, noncapitalist, and postcapitalist models of design practice. These range from the British Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century to contemporary practices of growing furniture or biotextiles and automated forms of production. Drawing on insights from sociology, philosophy, economics, political science, history, environmental and sustainability studies, and critical theory—fields not usually seen as central to design—he lays out core principles for postcapitalist design; offers strategies for applying these principles to the three layers of project, practice, and discipline; and provides a set of practical guidelines for designers to use as a starting point. The work of postcapitalist design can start today, Wizinsky says—with the next project.
Download or read book Inventing the Future written by Nick Srnicek and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new manifesto offers a “clear and compelling vision of a postcapitalist society” and shows how left-wing politics can be rebuilt for the 21st century (Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism) Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite. Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms. This new edition includes a new chapter where they respond to their various critics.
Download or read book Postcapitalist Desire written by Mark Fisher and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of transcripts from Mark Fisher's final series of lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London, in late 2016. Edited with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun, this collection of lecture notes and transcriptions reveals acclaimed writer and blogger Mark Fisher in his element -- the classroom -- outlining a project that Fisher's death left so bittersweetly unfinished. Beginning with that most fundamental of questions -- "Do we really want what we say we want?" -- Fisher explores the relationship between desire and capitalism, and wonders what new forms of desire we might still excavate from the past, present, and future. From the emergence and failure of the counterculture in the 1970s to the continued development of his left-accelerationist line of thinking, this volume charts a tragically interrupted course for thinking about the raising of a new kind of consciousness, and the cultural and political implications of doing so. For Fisher, this process of consciousness raising was always, fundamentally, psychedelic -- just not in the way that we might think...
Download or read book A Postcapitalist Politics written by J. K. Gibson-Graham and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there life after capitalism? In this creatively argued follow-up to their book The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), J. K. Gibson-Graham offer already existing alternatives to a global capitalist order and outline strategies for building alternative economies. A Postcapitalist Politics reveals a prolific landscape of economic diversity—one that is not exclusively or predominantly capitalist—and examines the challenges and successes of alternative economic interventions. Gibson-Graham bring together political economy, feminist poststructuralism, and economic activism to foreground the ethical decisions, as opposed to structural imperatives, that construct economic “development” pathways. Marshalling empirical evidence from local economic projects and action research in the United States, Australia, and Asia, they produce a distinctive political imaginary with three intersecting moments: a politics of language, of the subject, and of collective action. In the face of an almost universal sense of surrender to capitalist globalization, this book demonstrates that postcapitalist subjects, economies, and communities can be fostered. The authors describe a politics of possibility that can build different economies in place and over space. They urge us to confront the forces that stand in the way of economic experimentation and to explore different ways of moving from theory to action. J. K. Gibson-Graham is the pen name of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, feminist economic geographers who work, respectively, at the Australian National University in Canberra and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Download or read book The Future of Capitalism written by Paul Collier and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Gates's Five Books for Summer Reading 2019 From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it. Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of the United States and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts—economic, social and cultural—with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervor of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself—and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Future is Degrowth written by Matthias Schmelzer and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We need to break free from the capitalist economy. Degrowth gives us the tools to bend its bars. Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it. Not only in society at large, but also on the left, we are held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for emancipatory Green New Deals or postcapitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all. This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. Building on a vibrant field of research, it discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy. It charts a path forward through policies that democratise the economy, “now-topias” that create free spaces for experimentation, and counter-hegemonic movements that make it possible to break with the logic of growth. Degrowth perspectives offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system. A handbook and a manifesto, The Future Is Degrowth is a must-read for all interested in charting a way beyond the current crises.
Download or read book Does Capitalism Have a Future written by Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, the prominent theorist Georgi Derleugian has gathered together a quintet of eminent macrosociologists to assess whether the capitalist system can survive.
Download or read book The Precariat written by Guy Standing and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the new Precariat – the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero hours contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. The delivery driver who brings your packages, the uber driver who gets you to work, the security guard at the mall, the carer looking after our elderly...these are The Precariat. Guy Standing investigates this new and growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. The rise of zero hours contracts, encouraged by fat cat corporations as risk-free employment, and by silicon valley as a way of outsourcing costs and responsibility, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. At the same time, in its experience of lockdown, the western world is realizing the true value of these nurses, carers and key workers. The answer? The return of income security and meaningful work - the principles 20th century capitalism was built on. By making the fears and desires of the Precariat central to economic thinking, Standing shows how concepts like Basic Income are not just desirable but inevitable, and plots the way to a better future.
Download or read book Post Capitalist Entrepreneurship written by Boyd Cohen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-Capitalist Entrepreneurship: Startups for the 99% details the implications of the post-capitalist society on entrepreneurship around the globe, and it challenges many of our underlying assumptions about how entrepreneurs form startups and the objectives and roles, or lack thereof, of startup investors in a post-capitalist society. The author explores real emerging stories about different forms of post-capitalist entrepreneurship (PCE) with chapters dedicated to subjects such as platform cooperatives, alternative currencies (local, crypto, and time banking), and the emergence of blockchain-enabled Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). This book will help aspiring and current entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers to: Understand emerging trends in new forms of economic activity that will shape the future of entrepreneurial opportunities Discover new approaches to business modeling in the post venture-capital opportunity space Embrace Lean startup and collaborative startup approaches that can accelerate startups in these new markets Recognize new spaces and avoid being disintermediated by new forms of startups and financing Know why and how local governments should reshape entrepreneurship policy to support post-capitalist entrepreneurship for the 99%
Download or read book After Capitalism written by David Schweickart and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since first published in 2002, After Capitalism has offered students and political activists alike a coherent vision of a viable and desirable alternative to capitalism. David Schweickart calls this system Economic Democracy, a successor-system to capitalism which preserves the efficiency strengths of a market economy while extending democracy to the workplace and to the structures of investment finance. In the second edition, Schweickart recognizes that increased globalization of companies has created greater than ever interdependent economies and the debate about the desirability of entrepreneurship is escalating. The new edition includes a new preface, completely updated data, reorganized chapters, and new sections on the economic instability of capitalism, the current economic crisis, and China. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical research, Schweickart shows how and why this model is efficient, dynamic, and applicable in the world today.
Download or read book Scorched Earth written by Jonathan Crary and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected as one of LitHub's 38 Favorite Books of 2022 Finalist for the 2022 Big Other Book Award for Nonfiction In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our 'digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialization of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be instruments of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life.
Download or read book Platform Capitalism written by Nick Srnicek and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of ‘platform capitalism’. This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post-capitalist future. This book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the most powerful tech companies of our time are transforming the global economy." Also available as an audiobook.
Download or read book Fictions of Sustainability written by Boris Frankel and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a challenging and thought-provoking book, the author discusses the growing political contest between conservative and reform-orientated defenders of capitalist societies on the one side, and the policies and imagined futures advanced by green and socialist critics on the other.
Download or read book Imagined Futures written by Jens Beckert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future’s unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come. Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies—or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place. Actors pursue money, investments, innovations, and consumption only if they believe the objects obtained through market exchanges will retain value. We accept money because we believe in its future purchasing power. We accept the risk of capital investments and innovation because we expect profit. And we purchase consumer goods based on dreams of satisfaction. As Imagined Futures shows, those who ignore the role of real uncertainty and fictional expectations in market dynamics misunderstand the nature of capitalism.
Download or read book Capitalist Realism written by Mark Fisher and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-25 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system.
