Source & Video: garalperovitz.com


Praise for the new edition:
This challenging work succeeds in a task that may seem almost utopian in dark times suffused by anger, hopelessness, and despair: to provide concrete and feasible ways to reverse the ominous course of the past several decades and to open the way to a vibrant democracy with a sustainable economy that can satisfy human needs, not least the need to control one’s work and life. It is an impressive achievement, that should inspire thought and constructive action.
          —Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology  

America Beyond Capitalism is one of the most important books of the decade. Alperovitz provides an exceptionally fresh and insightful perspective on the challenges that plague our economy, environment and society while providing brilliant and practical solutions that we must embrace and put to work to seize a brighter future.
          —Jeffrey Hollender, founder of Seventh Generation and co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Council 

As discontent with the economic and political status quo mounts in the wake of the “great recession”, America Beyond Capitalism is a book whose time has come. Gar Alperovitz’s expert diagnosis of the long-term structural crisis of the American economic and political system is accompanied by detailed, practical answers to the problems we face as a society. Unlike many books that reserve a few pages of a concluding chapter to offer generalized, tentative solutions, Alperovitz marshals years of research into emerging “new economy” strategies to present a comprehensive picture of practical bottom-up efforts currently underway in thousands of communities across the United States. All democratize wealth and empower communities, not corporations: worker-ownership, cooperatives, community land trusts, social enterprises, along with many supporting municipal, state and longer term federal strategies as well. America Beyond Capitalism is a call to arms, an eminently practical roadmap for laying foundations to change a faltering system that increasingly fails to sustain the great American values of equality, liberty and meaningful democracy.

Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. He is the author of numerous books, including Unjust Deserts (with Lew Daly), Making a Place For Community (with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio), Rebuilding America (with Jeff Faux) and, in connection with foreign policy, Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.