For serious activists only

We are swamped these days with brave new radical writing which – given the populist mood in so much of the world – seems to have an element of whistling in the wind about it.

My purpose in both the last post and this one is to take a step back and to try to identify what I might call the “perennial progressive” books – whose analysis remains fresh over time and whose programmes for where we should place our energies are credible.

Too many books are strong on the dismantling of the present and weak on the description of what should come next.

Restakis and Wainwright (in the table below) are good examples of a focus on a positive vision….as are Bregman, Cumbers, Dorling, Gibson-Graham, Olin Wright and even the Labour Party…

I have a little book on my shelves Utopia or Bust – a guide to the present crisis by Benjamin Kunkel (2014) which you can also flick by clicking the title…At one level it is superb – a nice 20 page introduction to profiles of 6 leftist writers and a 7 page Guide to Further Reading.

For me an ideal structure….we need more of this. But I’m let down by his choice of the individuals for profiling – three of them are fine (David Harvey who was one of the first to diagnose Neoliberalism; Robert Brenner and David Graeber) but the other half are cultural theorists (Jameson, Zizek and someone called Boris Groys). OK the book's author is actually a novelist and is turned on by that sort of stuff - but I have to say I was tricked by his sub-title  

Today I am looking at books written after the crash. A couple of years ago I did an annotated list of the key  titles of the past decade - there were 50 of them - trying to make sense of the new economic world in which we find ourselves. 

But this is not an updating – although several new titles are in the table….this is a prioritising – in other words a short-listing of the essential books anyone seriously interested in making sense of our contemporary world needs, in my opinion, to dip into 

I have selected 20 individuals for very short profiling – although clicking the title will often give you the entire book.
There are far fewer Americans in this list and more Europeans….I’m not sure what that says….

AFTER THE CRASH (names are in alphabetical order)

Name	Title of relevant book	What they bring to the table
Arrighi, Giovanni	Adam Smith in Beijing – lineages of the 21st Century (2007)	All activists need to take the trouble to read at least one serious overview of the global political economy. Gilpin’s “Global Political Economy” is clear but a bit outdated; and Panich and Gindin’s “The Making of Global Capitalism” also very clear but too oriented to the American Empire
Blyth, Mark	Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea; (2013)	Blyth is a political economist who trained as a political scientist and uses his understanding of early political scientists to blow the case for austerity apart.
Bregman, Rutger	Utopia for Realists – and how we can get there; (2016 Eng)	Journalist whose little book has got a high profile. It certainly is written very well but is very light and focuses mainly on universal income and the short working week. Example of great marketing
Collier, Paul	The Future of Capitalism – facing new anxieties;(2018)	Development economist whose book I found so interesting I devoted 5 posts to it
Cumbers, Andrew	Renewing Public Ownership – making space for a democratic economy (2014)	Political economist makes the case – rarely heard in 2014 – for “the people” owning natural monopolies and other assets
Davey, Brian	Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis (2015)	Davey trained as an economist but has moved on to community work and here treats the economic discipline as a set of religious beliefs which need to be demystified and questioned.
Dorling, Danny	A Better Politics – how government can make us happier (2016)	A geographer who can both use statistics and write very well tells some home truths. His Injustice – why social inequality persists (2010) was the best treatment I had read since Tawney
Gibson-Graham	Take Back the Economy – an ethical guide for transforming our communities (2013)	Economist and feminist. In some ways, an update of Douthwaite (1996) - although not quite so well written
Kennedy, Paul	Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures (2017)	A sociologist’s treatment which earns high points by stating in the very first sentence that it has “stood on the shoulders of so many giants that he is dizzy” and then proves the point by having an extensive bibliography with lots of hyperlinks…It can be read in full here
Korten, David	The Great Turning – from empire to earth community (2006)	The latest in the grand old man of activism’s series of books not only critiquing our economic system but setting out a more sensible path
Labour Party (UK)	Alternative Models of Ownership (2017)	A discussion document from the Shadow Cabinet during the 2017 election campaign
Laloux, Frederic	Reinventing Organisations; (2014)	A rare book by an organisational consultant which places the cooperative company (in its various guises) in the wider context of organ types. A must for the activist - can be downloaded in full from the link
Mander, Jerry	The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System (2012)	Highly readable but strangely neglected analysis from the great American journalist and ecologist – who also wrote “Four Arguments for getting rid of Television”!
Mason, Paul	Post Capitalism – a guide to our Future (2015)	Mason is a high-profile journalist bursting with ideas and this is a well-written which does justice to both history and the implications of the new high-tech world
Mazucatto, Mariana	“The Entrepreneurial State – debunking private v public sector myths” (2013)	A long-overdue reminder of the key role played by state investment
Mintzberg, Henry	Rebalancing Society; (2014)	The Canadian management guru who was warning in 2000 of capitalist excess and then had the courage to produce this pamphlet.
Mulgan, Geoff	The Locust and the Bee – predators and creators in Capitalism’s Future (2013)	This should be an important book but is written at too high a level of generality … no entries in the index for “cooperatives” or “ownership” and no mention of Jeff Gates’ “The Ownership Solution” of 1998 despite a credit Gates gave Mulgan in his “The Ownership Solution”
Olin-Wright, Erik	Envisioning Real Utopias (2009)	One leftist made some withering suggestions that Wright operated too long in an academic sociological bubble and should have mixed more with other disciplines and perspectives… His university keeps a full range of his papers accessible here – and they are a treasure trove for the researcher.
Parker, Martin, Fournier V P Reedy	The Dictionary of Alternatives; utopianism and organisation (2007)	A fascinating collection of entries illustrating the richness of thinking about alternative futures – past and present
Restakis, John	Humanising the Economy – cooperatives in the age of capital (2010)	Written by an activist with a degree in religion! This is one of the most persuasive books about the essential contribution the cooperative spirit can make not only to our economic life but its quality. Useful summary here
Srnicek and Williams	Inventing the Future – Postcapitalism and a world without work (2015)	Sociologists who favour the “accelerationist” strategy

Streeck Wolfgang	How will Capitalism End? (2016)	a collection of this German sociologist’s key articles, many from New Left Review. Superbly written but weak on future of work and environment
Tirole, Jean	Economics for the Common Good (2017 Eng)	Nobel prize winner 2014..French Economist. This is political economy as it should be practised – taking the themes of interest to us all and reasoning seriously with us about them.
Varoufakis, Yanis	The Global Minotaur -America, the true origins of the financial crisis and the future of the western economy	A brilliant and highly readable account of how the financial crash came. For a summary see https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-global-minotaur.html

I will try in future posts to draw all of this together and perhaps even make some suggestions.... 

Part V - Thinking Beyond Capitalism

Sadly, my blogspot host (in all other respects so generous) doesn’t give the option of uploading pdf files – which I need for my diagram with hyperlinks. And the photographs I am allowed are technically unable to contain hyperlinks.

I therefore have to ask those readers who want to know more about the illustrative names at the perimeter of the diagram which graces this post to click here for an interactive version of my amended version of Beyond Capitalism

The normal caveats prevail – namely that I owe the basic structure of 6 dimensions and 15 boxes to  the Commons in Transition people; that the simplified text and indicative names are my personal responsibility; and that I am well aware of the limitations of these last two…..

Having said that, let me offer an initial commentary on some aspects of the six dimensions

1. The POLITICS Dimension (Democracy and the Commons)

As representative democracy has eroded in recent decades, direct democracy has attracted increasing attention – eg referenda, citizens’ juries, participatory budgeting or random selection of electoral positions. There is no obvious name to offer – although John Keane’s huge book on The Life and Death of Democracy is one of the best resources.

Paul Hirst advanced the idea of “associative democracy” until his sad death in 2003. This drew on the thinking of figures such as GDH Cole…

As the internet has developed, so has the principle of “The Commons” of which Elinor Ostrom and Michael Bauwen are key figures…..

2. The ECONOMY (or Finance??) Dimension

actually reads to me more like the International Finance Regime – with a concession made to the importance of local banking but the normal economic world of production and other services missing. The North Dakota State Bank is one example of the wider concept of local banking. David Graeber; Thomas Pikety; Joseph Stiglitz; and Yanis Varoufakis are just a few of the most important writers on the issue of debt and capital

3. The WORK/ECONOMY Dimension

It is here I have my most fundamental questions about the classification – since the original diagram gives only one phrase (“enterprise- social and responsible”) for what is arguably the engine of the economy AND places this in the “Work” box – rather than the “economy” one….Robert Owen;  Mondragon; and Ronald Douthwaite are examples of those who have inspired global cooperative endeavours which account for far more jobs than people realize – about a quarter of jobs globally. With the appropriate tax regimes, that could be much more…

Even so, privately-owned companies have a critical role – as recognized by Paul Hawken in Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution and Peter Barnes in Capitalism 3.0
CASSE (advocating the “steady state economy”) should be transferred to this box……

The original diagram also failed to mention robotisation which has been the subject of much discussion recently such as here and here. Martin Ford is probably the key writer at the moment on the issue – perhaps also Jeremy Rifkin

4. The 4^th Dimension

Here again, I’m uncomfortable with the designation originally given to this box – “consumption/production”. It seems to me to cover at the moment the field of self-sufficiency (??) as propounded by people such as John Michael Greer and Dmitry Orlov – the latter in his Reinventing Collapse; the Soviet Experience and American Prospects – or the Resilience magazine

5. The CONSCIENCE Dimension

Robert Quinn’s Change the World is, for my money, the most persuasive tract – despite its off-putting (and very American) sub-title “how ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary results”. And, despite the cynicism he has attracted, Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is actually a very worthwhile read….If these are too “exhortatory” for readers, you may want to look at Character Strengths and Virtues by Martin Seligman

Danah Zohar’s Spiritual Capital – wealth we can live by (2004) is an interesting critique of capitalism with a rather too superficial approach to its amelioration. The Ethical Economy – rebuilding value after the crisis; A Arvidsson and N Peitersen (2013) covers the ground better - and is summarized here and critiqued here.

A fascinating and totally neglected book is Questions of Business Life by Richard Higginson (2002) which is what a cleric produced from his work at an ecumenical centre for business people….

6. The CITIZENS Dimension

The internet attracts great hopes – and fears. On balance, people are persuaded of its net benefits to democracy – although the high hopes of various “springs” and movements have been bitterly disappointed. Writers such as Paul Hawken and Paul Kingsnorth have written powerfully about these experiences…

Yochai Benkler is a new name for me. A legal scholar, he has written profusely about the limits and potential of the open source technology which leads us back to platform democracy and cooperatives….

Sketches of a new world? - part IV of the series

My recent posts won’t have made a great deal of sense to those who have come to the blog for the first time (you can actually read each year’s posts as an E-book – by going to appropriate line of the list in "new material" the right-hand corner of the blog).

Even my regular readers, however, would probably find a recap useful….

I’m writing a text entitled “Dispatches to the Next Generation” which, in confessional mode, tries to make sense of the mess which my generation has made of things……

I am, of course, well aware that thousands of books have been written about the global crisis - but almost all have one simple defect – they attribute blame to other people.

I start, instead, from the spirit which infused a 1978 book called “The Seventh Enemy” (by R Higgins) which listed 6 global enemies- then seen as “the food crisis”; the “population explosion”; scarcity; environmental degradation; nuclear threat; and scientific technology. The seventh enemy was….ourselves….our moral blindness and political inertia…Another such rare book is Danny Dorling’s hugely underrated Injustice (2011) which identified 5 “social evils” – elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair – and explores the myths which sustain them. Unusually, the argument is that we are all guilty of these evils and of sustaining these myths......

There is a further problem about the literature about the global crisis – which is that a lot of it identifies the problem as the financial bubble which exploded ten years ago and fails to do justice to other issues and to the other voices which were issuing strong warnings from the 1970s……It’s only in the past year that people have been realizing that this crisis is deeper and goes back longer…..

The book at the moment has an odd structure – since it’s made up of posts triggered by my reading of the past decade…..and, as I’ve got deeper into the editing process, I’ve realized that I need to be more disciplined in the selection of key texts which have shaped “our thinking” over the past 60 years… ..And, in this, I’ve been helped by these two diagrams from the Commons in Transition people – one called the “Current Capitalism Paradigm”, the second “Beyond Capitalism”. Last week I presented an improved version of the first diagram which contained hyperlinks to authors who gave good analyses of the various problems identified about the current capitalism paradigm….and a later post gave additional detail on these important writers

Now it is time to look at some of the key texts which appeared after the crisis but once it had sunk in that this crisis was not going away.

Of course, any such list is highly arbitrary – I have tried to offer an all-too-brief justification for most of the choices. The texts are in chronological order....and UPDATED as at Feb 2020

Envisioning Real Utopias; Erik Olin-Wright (2009) It’s appropriate that this book heads the list since Olin-Wright devoted his life to trying to understand the capitalist system and how it might be tamed. His university keeps a full range of his papers accessible here – and they are a real treasure trove for the serious researcher – and activist.

How Markets Fail – the logic of economic calamities; John Cassidy (2009) Amazing that this journalist could not only give us some first thoughts on the global financial breakdown of 2008 but put this in the context of a critical analysis of mainstream economists over the past 2 centuries

The Road from Mont Pelerin – the making of the neoliberal thought collective; ed P Mirowski and D. Plehwe (2009) One of the first books to explain in detail how the thinkers who found themselves on the margins after 1945 got together and found the money to fund the hundreds of Think Tanks which created the neoliberal doctrine which now rules the world.

23 Things they didn’t tell you about capitalism; Ha Joon-Chang (2010) One of the best exposures of the myths economists would have us believe

The Enigma of Capital; David Harvey (2010) Puts the crisis in proper historical and economic context although a bit too technical for my taste.

Why the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”; Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..reviewed here

The Global Minotaur – America, the true origins of the financial crisis and the future of the world economy; Yanis Varoufakis (2011) One of the few economists on the list and one of the best on the subject….click the title and you get the entire book!!

The Strange Non-Death of NeoLiberalism; Colin Crouch (2011) The first of a wave of books to explore why, far from dying, neoliberalism became even stronger…Crouch is a political scientist but not the easiest of reads.

Injustice – why social inequality persists – David Dorling (2011) Quite excellent treatment from a prolific geographer

The Economics of Enough – how to run the economy as if the future matters; Diane Coyle (2011)

A rare book directed at the active citizen and dealing with our concerns about the environment, scale of debt, lack of trust etc She’s not a fan of the zero-growth school of thinking. Very clear writing and can be highly recommended. Perhaps lacks just a bit of zest. And economical - only 150 pages!!

Debunking Economics – the naked emperor dethroned; Steve Keen (2011) an updated version of his powerful 2001 critique. One of the best there is….

America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy; Gary Alperovitz, (2011 edition) The grand old man of the American left gives us as clear an analysis as you are likely to get (apart from Mander below) 

The Future of Work – what it means for individuals, markets, businesses and governments; David Bollier (2011) A good sound treatment by someone prominent in the P2P movement

Business as Usual – the economic crisis and the failure of capitalism; Paul Mattick (2011) A rare and very clear Marxist explanation of the financial crash

The Crises of Capitalism – a different study of political economy; Saral Sarkar (2011) Sarkar is an Indian-german academic and brings an eco-activist approach to this book.

Misrule of Experts? The Financial Crisis as Elite Debacle M Moran et al (2011) a rare essay which goes beyond the common explanation of the crisis as accident, conspiracy or calculative failure and frames the crisis differently as an elite political debacle

The Crisis of global capitalism – Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical and the future of political economy; ed A Pabst (2011) I wasn’t even aware of this encyclical until I came across this book recently

Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). An overdue assessment of the relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas more than a decade after his death

The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System; Jerry Mander (2012). Highly readable analysis from a great American journalist and activist. The title, for once, gives us a clear indication of what to expect - one of the clearest analysis of why the American system needs transformation. Its flaws are dissected one by one before he, rarely, gives us a 60 page indication of what should take its place - small scale, cooperative ventures.  One of the few books on the topic I would recommend. Just don't expect a good analysis of a world without work....  

Debt and Neo-Feudalism; Michael Hudson (2012) – one of a series of papers where this prominent and radical economist spells out his view of financial capitalism – which can also be found in his blog. A joint article on the rentier aspect of the crisis is here…Also have a look at this 2012 discussion - how finance capitalism leads to debt servitude

Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea; Mark Blyth (2013) A political economy treatment which surpasses and updates Varoufakis.  One of the best!

Buying Time – the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism; Wolfgang Streeck (2013) Highly readable critique from a German sociologist – called, in this long review, a “reluctant radical”

Never let a serious crisis go to waste – how neoliberalism survived the financial meltdown; Philip Mirowski (2013); too much jargon and verbosity for my taste – although it has received a lot of attention as you will see from this symposium. The author defines here the 13 commandments of neoliberalism. “The Road from Mont Pelerin” which he edited in 2009 tells a better story.

Disassembly Required – a field guide to actually existing capitalism; Geoff Mann (2013) A tantalising little book (written in simple English) which purports to offer an explanation free of the usual myths; focuses usefully on the rise of “financialisation” after the 1970s; but, ultimately, disappoints with a “cultivate one’s garden” conclusion.

Perfect Storm; Tim Morgan (2013). A good treatment by an international consultant

“The Entrepreneurial State – debunking private v public sector myths” Mariana Mazucatto  (2013) An overdue argument about the role of the state

Does Capitalism have a Future? Immanuel Wallerstein, Michael Mann, Craig Calhoun (2013)

I came across this very recently….I’m not sure if I missed much – but with such a title and set of authors, it has to be listed

The Locust and the Bee – predators and creators in Capitalism’s Future; G Mulgan (2013) This should be an important book but is written at such a level of generality that I gave up at about p100. For a text supposedly about the potential “good” side of capitalism, it’s significant that there are no entries in the index for “cooperatives” or “ownership” and no mention of Jeff Gates’ “The Ownership Solution” of 1998 despite a credit Gates gave Mulgan…

New Spirits of capitalism? Crises, justifications and dynamics; ed Paul du Gay, Glenn Morgan (2013). A collection of papers from organizational and management theorists who analyse the 1999 book by French theorists.

End of capitalism? Michael Mann (2013) Substantial academic essay from a historical sociologist –and good summary of what the author contributed to the previous book

Take Back the Economy – an ethical guide for transforming our communities; J Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy (2013) Very readable localist approach (see also Douthwaite)

Democratic Wealth (2014) – being a little E-book of Cambridge and Oxford University bloggers’ takes on the crisis

Rebalancing Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center; Henry Mintzberg (2014) who is my favourite management guru – for the bluntness of his writing…In a famous 2000 HBR article he warned that 1989 and other socio-economic changes were creating a dangerous imbalance.

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; David Harvey (2014). Book can be downloaded – anything from this Marxist geographer is worthy of note

Civic Capitalism (2014) a short paper from the interesting SPERI unit at Sheffield University

Renewing Public Ownership – making space for a democratic economy; Andrew Cumbers (2014) reviewed here

Crisis without End - the unravelling of western prosperity: Andrew Gamble (2014). A political scientist who has analysed neo-liberalism since the 1970s (google the phrase and you will be able to download a very helpful analysis he did as long ago as 1979!)

The Limits of Neo Liberalism – authority, sovereignty and the logic of competition ; William Davies (2014). A well-written and thoughtful sociological analysis which can be read in full at the link

The future of work; Jacob Morgan (2014). A useful overview – if a bit too American in its spirit! The link gives the entire book

Reinventing Organisations; Frederic Laloux (2014) – a strange sort of book (which can be downloaded in full from the link) redolent of the American 1990s’ style of Peter Senge et al who promised a more liberating type of organization.

Shifts and Shocks – what we’ve learned, and still have to, from the financial crisis; Martin Wolf (2014) – with accompanying power point presentation. Although Wolf was an apologist for globalization, he is as clear and objective economist as that breed is capable of producing..

Utopia or Bust – a guide to the present crisis (2014) a small book with a rather misleading title and subtitle – since it actually deals with 6 authors, David Harvey, Robert Brenner, David Graeber, Fredric Jameson and 2 useless others. But it has a good little guide to further reading

The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014).Important analysis of the implications and likely impact of information technology

Laudato-Si – the Papal Encyclical of 2015 which threw down an ecological and moral challenge to the power elite. A summary is available here. Its entire 184 pages can be read here

Rise of the Robots; Martin Ford (2015). I’m told this is one of the key writers on this fashionable topic

Sociology, Capitalism, Critique; Dora, Lessenich and Hartmut  Rosa (2015 – translated from 2009 German original). Too many of the references I give are, of necessity, anglo-saxon so I am delighted to include this book.

A New Alignment of Movements? D Bollier (2015) How the thinking of the “platform commons” people has developed

The Butterfly Defect – how globalization creates systemic risks and what to do about it; Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan (2015) I actually don’t know anything about this book but the theme is an important one

Change Everything – creating an Economy for the Common Good; Christian Felber (2015 English – 2010 German). I’m not impressed with this book at all – too simplistic and doesn’t reference the relevant literature but it seems to have encouraged some European groups…..

Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis; Brian Davey (2015) An original alternative approach to economics

Commons Transition (2015) a curious book from the Commons in Transition people which is frankly a bit of a scissors and paste job from various projects including one in Ecuador….

Post Capitalism – a guide to our Future; Paul Mason (2015) a best-seller but bit of a curate’s egg whose basic thesis is spelled out here….

Inventing the Future – Postcapitalism and a world without work; N Srnicek and Williams (2015) - sociologists . You can read it for yourself in full here and take in a good review of both above books here. Also a best-seller….

Cyberproletariat – global labour in the digital vortex; Nick Dyer-Witheford (2015) Thought provoking book from a Canadian media/political economy academic

The Locust and the Bee – predators and creators in capitalism’s future; Geoff Mulgan (2015) a typically dispassionate analysis from the ex-head of the Demos ThinkTank who was also Head of Tony Bliar’s Policy Unit

The Next System Report – political possibilities for the 21st Century (2015) The opening essay from a fascinating American project whose latest output is this great series of papers

Rethinking Capitalism – economics and policy for sustainable and inclusive growth; Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato (2016). Looks well-written and up-to-date – from the social democrat stable

How will Capitalism End?; Wolfgang Streeck. (2016) a collection of this political economist’s key articles, many from New Left Review. Superbly written but weak on future of work and environment

And the Weak Suffer what they must – Europe, austerity and the threat to global stability; Yanis Varoufakis (2016) Partly an update to his “Global Minotaur” but much more – a passionate analysis of the perversity of the austerity doctrine

Utopia for Realists – and how we can get there; (2016 Eng) Journalist whose little book has got a high profile. It certainly is written very well but is very light and focuses mainly on universal income and the short working week. Example of great marketing

  

Globalisation and its Discontent Revisited; Joseph Stiglitz (2017). Stiglitz is one of the clearest writers and has long been free to say exactly what he thinks…

Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures; Paul Kennedy (2017)

A sociologist’s treatment which earns high points by stating in the very first sentence that it has “stood on the shoulders of so many giants that he is dizzy” and then proves the point by having an extensive bibliography with lots of hyperlinks…It can be read in full here

Economics for the Common Good ; Jean Tirole (2017 Eng) Nobel prize winner 2014..French Economist. This is political economy as it should be practised – taking the themes of interest to us all and reasoning seriously with us about them.

Crashed; how a decade of financial crises changed the world; Adam Tooze (2018) The definitive book on the subject, with another good review here

The Future of Capitalism – facing new anxieties; Paul Collier (2018) a very thoughtful book which sparked off a series of posts on my blog

Come On! Capitalism, short-termism, population and the destruction of the planet; (Club of Rome 2018). The quality and bite you expect of Club of Rome publications

The Value of Everything – making and taking in the global economy; Mariana Mazzucato (2018)

It’s remarkable that this is one of the few books to focus on the obvious question of what gives products their value….

People, Power and Profits – progressive capitalism for an age of discontent; Joseph Stiglitz (2019) a dissident ex-World Bank chief economist whose latest book I’ve not had a chance to read….

Capitalism, alone – the future of the system that rules the world; Branko Milanovic (2019) Ditto for the present WB Chief Economist’s

The Globotics Upheaval – globalisation, robotics and the future of work; Richard Baldwin (2019) A highly readable analysis of these topics

Capitalism on Edge - How fighting precarity can achieve radical change without crisis or utopia; Albena Azmanova (2020) excerpts of which I review here