Moving Beyond Capitalism

The book speaks to the widespread quest for concrete alternative ways forward 'beyond capitalism' in the face of the prevailing corporatocracy and a capitalist system in crisis. It examines a number of institutions and practices now being built in the nooks and crannies of present societies and that point beyond capitalism toward a more equal, participatory, and democratic society – institutions such as cooperatives, public banks, the commons, economic democracy. This seminal collection of critical studies draws on academic and activist voices from the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina, and from a variety of theoretical-political perspectives – Marxism, anarchism, feminism, and Zapatismo.

Disobedience : doctor workers unite! / Howard Waitzkin -- Becoming employees : the deprofessionalization and emerging social class position of health professionals / Matt Anderson -- The degradation of medical labor and the meaning of quality in health care / Gordon Schiff and Sarah Winch -- The political economy of health reform / David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler -- The transformation of the medical industrial complex : financialization, the corporate sector, and monopoly capital / Matt Anderson and Robb Burlage -- The pharmaceutical industry in the context of contemporary capitalism / Joel Lexchin -- Obamacare : the neoliberal model comes home to roost in the United States, if we let it / Howard Waitzkin and Ida Hellander -- Austerity and health / Adam Gaffney and Carles Muntaner -- Imperialism's health component / Howard Waitzkin and Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar -- U.S. philanthrocapitalism and the global health agenda : the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, past and present / Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Judith Richter -- Resisting the imperial order and building an alternative future in medicine and public health / Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar and Howard Waitzkin -- The failure of Obamacare and a revision of the single payer proposal after a quarter century of struggle / Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler -- Overcoming pathological normalcy : mental health challenges in the coming transformation / Carl Ratner -- Confronting the social and environmental determinants of health / Carles Muntaner and Rob Wallace -- Conclusion : moving beyond capitalism for our health / Adam Gaffney and Howard Waitzkin

Answering the question of how to get from A to B, capitalism to post-capitalism, is a task that we "audaciously" need to pursue now. This pamphlet is one among several others, intended to clarify our struggle 1) to bring down capitalism; and 2) to create a path toward eco-socialism. Those of us oppressed by capitalism engage in some peculiar forms of actions and inactions. In our actions, we take part in struggles to improve key problems generated by capitalism without confronting capitalism. In other words, our actions confront effects rather than causes. In addition to our contradictory actions, our inactions involve consent. We consent by not challenging or even trying to change our simple economic behaviors that perpetuate the capitalist economic system. As a result, we ordinary people continue to serve as the main financiers of the capitalist system. Why do oppressed people consent to their oppression? Repression usually is not enough, as Gramsci observed while imprisoned by Italian fascism. "Hegemonic" ideas explain and justify the oppressive circumstances of our lives. Rinky-dink revolution involves actions and inactions that are easy, safe, mundane, unglamorous, and feasible within every person's life. The history of revolutions shows that the activists who bring them about number much fewer than countries' entire populations. The estimate of 7 to 11 million people required to achieve revolutionary transformation in the United States comes from a simple calculation, which may be off, but probably not way off. "We" who struggle against capitalism have become much more diverse and numerous than the protagonists envisioned by Marx and Engels. "They" who fight to preserve capitalism make up a tiny minority of the world's population. Revolutionary strategy requires clarifying what specific characteristics of capitalism are oppressive and have to go, as opposed to what characteristics of social and economic organization are not oppressive and can stay. What post-capitalist society looks like has become much clearer. Rinky-dink revolution includes withholding consent to processes that capitalism needs to maintain itself and grow, plus several creatively constructive and destructive efforts in which millions of people, but still a minority of the population, participate. The transition to post-capitalism is already happening throughout the world in the creative construction of communal organizations that govern themselves and that act to assure the survival and well-being of their participants. Moving beyond the capitalist state, including the welfare state as part of the capitalist state, entails moving beyond the state itself. The solidarity economy first of all finds ways to create cheap, small-scale, cooperative, pleasant, and comfortable housing units that require very little money, with collaborative solutions to exploitative rent, debt, taxes, and insurance. Second, communal organizations solve the food problem through local production and distribution of nutritious food, achieving independence from capitalist agriculture.

Disobedience : doctor workers unite! / Howard Waitzkin -- Becoming employees : the deprofessionalization and emerging social class position of health professionals / Matt Anderson -- The degradation of medical labor and the meaning of quality in health care / Gordon Schiff and Sarah Winch -- The political economy of health reform / David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler -- The transformation of the medical industrial complex : financialization, the corporate sector, and monopoly capital / Matt Anderson and Robb Burlage -- The pharmaceutical industry in the context of contemporary capitalism / Joel Lexchin -- Obamacare : the neoliberal model comes home to roost in the United States, if we let it / Howard Waitzkin and Ida Hellander -- Austerity and health / Adam Gaffney and Carles Muntaner -- Imperialism's health component / Howard Waitzkin and Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar -- U.S. philanthrocapitalism and the global health agenda : the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, past and present / Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Judith Richter -- Resisting the imperial order and building an alternative future in medicine and public health / Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar and Howard Waitzkin -- The failure of Obamacare and a revision of the single payer proposal after a quarter century of struggle / Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler -- Overcoming pathological normalcy : mental health challenges in the coming transformation / Carl Ratner -- Confronting the social and environmental determinants of health / Carles Muntaner and Rob Wallace -- Conclusion : moving beyond capitalism for our health / Adam Gaffney and Howard Waitzkin

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

Harshly exploited migrant labour plays a fundamental role in the political economy of contemporary capitalism. The abstract and utopian theorising of many liberals and leftists on the migration question often ignores or downplays patterns of displacement and brutal class dynamics, which divide and weaken working people while empowering the ruling class. In this important new book, Hannah Cross provides a sober analysis of the class antagonisms of migration in the context of the nation, social democracy, and the racialized ordering of the world. Bringing Marxist methodology and strategy to a careful analysis of existing emancipatory movements, she sets out the programmes and approaches that are needed to promote global worker solidarity and create a future in which cheap labour is no longer a mainstay of wealthy economies. This focus on the labouring classes allows her to identify some important new directions for migration in a world beyond capitalism, exploitation and injustice. This book will be essential reading for students, scholars and general readers interested in the politics and political economy of migration in a world unhelpfully caught between racist authoritarian capitalism and the wishful-thinking of contemporary left-liberalism.

Crack Capitalism, argues that radical change can only come about through the creation, expansion and multiplication of weak points, or "cracks" in the capitalist system. John Holloway's previous book, Change the World Without Taking Power, sparked a world-wide debate among activists about the most effective methods of resisting capitalism. Now Holloway rejects the idea of a disconnected plurality of struggles and finds a unifying contradiction -- the opposition between the time we spend working as part of the system and our excess "doing" where we revolt and refuse to be subsumed. Clearly and accessibly presented in the form of 33 theses, Crack Capitalism is set to reopen the debate among radical scholars and activists seeking to break capitalism.

Sometime in your business life you've looked up from the task or person in front of you, paused before your head explodes, and thought to yourself, "There's got to be a better way!" This book offers you that better way. Whether you're in school preparing for the world of work or have experienced multiple careers, whether you make decisions that affect others or are affected by others' decisions as their employee or customer, whether you're part of a multinational corporation or a small business or a ministry or a government, this book shows how you're affected by plantation economics. It then shows you the more profitable--beneficial--viewing, thinking, and living of capitalism through the framework of Partnership Economics. Better Capitalism adds value across the full landscape of capitalism and the bridged worlds of business and faith. Ready for that better way? Read on to unleash a more profitable and ethical capitalism.