How the Scales Fell from our Eyes

When, some 15 years ago, I was Team Leader of an EC-funded project in Central Asia I tried to formulate what I saw as the “gold standard” for a democratic system – after some false starts, it eventually came as follows -

·         A political executive - whose members are elected and whose role is to set the policy agenda- that is develop a strategy (and make available the laws and resources) to deal with those issues which it feels need to be addressed

·         A freely elected legislative Assembly – whose role is to ensure (i) that the merits of new legislation and policies of the political Executive are critically and openly assessed; (ii) that the performance of government and civil servants is held to account; and (iii) that, by the way these roles are performed, the public develop confidence in the workings of the political system.

·         An independent Judiciary – which ensures that the rule of Law prevails, that is to say that no-one is able to feel above the law.

·         A free media; where journalists and people can express their opinions freely and without fear.

·         A professional impartial Civil Service – whose members have been appointed and promoted by virtue of their technical ability to ensure (i) that the political Executive receives the most competent policy advice; (ii) that the decisions of the executive (approved as necessary by Parliament) are effectively implemented ; and that (iii) public services are well-managed

·         The major institutions of Government - Ministries, Regional structures (Governor and regional offices of Ministries) and various types of Agencies. These bodies should be structured, staffed and managed in a purposeful manner

·         An independent system of local self-government – whose leaders are accountable through direct elections to the local population[1]. The staff may or may not be civil servants.

·         An active civil society – with a rich structure of voluntary associations – able to establish and operate without restriction. Politicians can ignore the general public for some time but, as the last ten years has shown, only for so long! The vitality of civil society – and of the media – creates (and withdraws) the legitimacy of political systems.

·         An independent university system – which encourages critical thinking

I did have the grace to admit that “such a democratic model is, of course, an “ideal-type” – a model which few (if any) countries actually match in all respects. A lot of what the global community preaches as “good practice” in government structures is actually of very recent vintage in their own countries and is still often more rhetoric than actual practice”.

But there was no doubt that I felt Britain was as close to the gold standard as it got. Gradually, however, my naivety was exposed. A year or so later, 

“Public appointments, for example, should be taken on merit – and not on the basis of ethnic or religious networks. But Belgium and Netherlands, to name but two European examples, have a formal structure of government based, until very recently, on religious and ethnic divisions[2]. In those cases a system which is otherwise rule-based and transparent has had minor adjustments made to take account of strong social realities and ensure consensus.
“But in the case of countries such as Northern Ireland (until very recently), the form and rhetoric of objective administration in the public good has been completely undermined by religious divisions. All public goods (eg housing and appointments) were made in favour of Protestants.“And the Italian system has for decades been notorious for the systemic abuse of the machinery of the state by various powerful groups – with eventually the Mafia itself clearly controlling some key parts of it[3]. American influence played a powerful part in this in the post-war period – but the collapse of communism removed that influence and allowed the Italians to have a serious attempt at reforming the system – until Berlusconi intervened”.

These are well-known cases – but the more we look, the more we find that countries which have long boasted of their fair and objective public administration systems have in fact suffered serious intrusions by sectional interests. The British and French indeed have invented words to describe the informal systems which has perverted the apparent neutrality of their public administration – “the old boy network”[4] and “pantouflage” of “ENArques”[5]. A decade later I had to amend my picture further 

In recent years, bankers have become a hated group. However, before the politicians could do any damage to their privileges and excesses, the British right-wing media was able to make an issue of some excessive financial claims made by numerous member of parliament (average 20k) and neuter what remaining power politicians had in that country. It was Harold MacMillan who suggested at a meeting of ex-Prime Ministers that the collective noun for a group of political leaders was a “lack of principles” (He also, interestingly, said that “we did not give up the divine right of kings to succumb to the divine right of experts”!).

The media scandal in Britain (finally) exposed the moral bankruptcy of the “tabloid” newspapers which struck fear into politicians and therefore reluctant to take actions which would offend newspaper moguls. A joke which beautifully illustrates the perversion of these papers has the Pope in a rowing boat with the leader of the miners’ union of the 1980s then in deep conflict with the government. The oars are lost and Scargill (the miners’ leader) gets out of the boat and walks across the water to retrieve the oars. The next day’s newspapers headlines are “Arthur Scargill can’t swim!”!! That scandal also brought police corruption into the frame in England.

So, in the course of 3-4 years, 4 core professions of the British Establishment (or Power Elite) have been demonised – bankers, politicians, media and police. Perhaps the most powerful professional group, however, has managed to stay out of the spotlight – but needs now to be “outed” and ousted from its privileged and corrupting position. And which group is that? They are the (corporate) lawyers. Britain and America have more lawyers than most of the countries of the globe put together – and they basically protect the amorality of corporations. And it is these people who then go to become judges - Craig Murray has written about the amorality of our judges. And those with any optimism remaining for the future of the planet will be disappointed to learn that the majority of graduates these days still want to go into either the finance or legal sectors. If our churches had any morality left they would be focusing on this – and discouraging our youngsters from such decisions.

So I offer you the 5 groups who are destroying our civilisation - investment bankers, politicians, corporate lawyers and judges, tabloid journalists and corrupt policemen. But what about the accountants/economists, academics and preachers??? Damn! There seem to be 8 horses of the apocalypse! Let me in conclusion, offer this quotation from mediaeval times -

Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other human beings - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends 

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[1] Encouraging a strong and free system of local self-government is perhaps the most difficult part of the transition process – since it means allowing forces of opposition to have a power base. But it is the way to develop public confidence in government! 

[2] Ie each of Belgium’s 3 Regions has a both an executive and a “community” structure – with the latter reflecting ethnic issues. Netherlands has long had its “Pillars” which ensured that the main religious forces had their say in nominations and decisions. This has now weakened.

[3] There is a voluminous literature on this – the most lively is Peter Robb’s Midnight in Sicily (Harvill Press 1996). For an update, read Berlusconi’s Shadow – crime, justice and the pursuit of power by David Lane (Penguin 2005)

[4] published critiques of the narrow circles from which business and political leaders were drawn started in the early 1960s – but only Margaret Thatcher’s rule of the 1980s really broke the power of this elite and created a meritocracy

[5] business, political and Civil service leaders have overwhelmingly passed through the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) and have moved easily from a top position in the Civil Service to political leadership to business leadership.

Ways of Seeing

You may have noticed that the last few posts have mentioned the importance of trying to see the world from a variety of perspectives. I stumbled on the importance of such a vision through the accident of my birth – caught in the middle of the tensions (class, religious and political) between the West and East ends of a shipbuilding town in the West of Scotland. 

In my 30s, as a senior local politician, I felt the pull between loyalties to local constituents; to party colleagues; to official advisers; and to my own conscience – and indeed developed a diagram for students to show the 4 very different pressures (audiences) to which politicians are subjected – 

- local voters (if the electoral system is based on local constituencies);

- the party;

- the officials (and laws) of the particular government agency they had entered;

- their conscience.

Politicians, I argued, differ according to the extent of the notice they took of each of the pressures coming from each of these sources – and the loyalties this tended to generate. And I gave names to the 4 types which could be distinguished – eg populist; ideologue; statesman; maverick.

- The "populist" (or Tribune of the people) simply purports to gives the people what (s)he thinks they want - regardless of logic, coherence or consequences. 

- The "ideologue" (or party spokesman) simply reflects what the party activist (or bosses) say - regardless of logic etc. 

- The "statesman" (or manager) does what the professional experts in the appropriate bit of the bureaucracy tell him/her - regardless of its partiality etc

- the "maverick" (or conviction politician) does what they think right (in the quiet of their conscience or mind - no matter how perverted) 

I tried to suggest that the effective politician was the one who resisted the temptation to be drawn exclusively into any one of these roles. Each has its element of truth - but it is when someone blends the various partialities into a workable and acceptable proposition that we see real leadership, 

And, as a nomadic consultant, I have noticed how academic and national boundaries make mutual understanding difficult – but that those who persist in working in the "no man's land" on these boundaries get superb opportunities for new insights……A bridge-builder is a metaphor I like - although there is a famous central European saying that "the problem with bridges is that, in peace time horses shit on them and, in war, they are blown up" 

All this came back to me as I read a paper by Peter Mair (from 1995) which, looking at the relationship of the political party to both society and the state, nicely tracks the historical trajectory of the politician.

First “grandees” (above it all); then later “delegates” (of particular social interests), then later again, in the heyday of the catch-all party, “entrepreneurs”, parties, the authors argued, have now become “semi-state agencies”. The article has some simple but useful diagrams showing how the three entities of political party, society and state have altered their interactions and roles in the last century.

     

We are told that proportional representation gives citizens a much stronger chance of their preferences being expressed in the final makeup of a Parliament. But that fails to deal with the reality of the party boss. Politicians elected for geographical constituencies (as distinct from party lists) have (some at least) voters breathing down their necks all year round. 

Not so those from the party lists who only have to bother about the party bosses who, in the past few decades, have got their snouts increasingly stuck in the state (and corporate) coffers.

Looking at the three models as a dynamic rather than as three isolated snapshots, suggests the possibility that the movement of parties from civil society towards the state could continue to such an extent that parties become part of the state apparatus itself. It is our contention that this is precisely the direction in which the political parties in modern democracies have been heading over the past three decades. 

(We have seen a massive) decline in the levels of participation and involvement in party activity, with citizens preferring to invest their efforts elsewhere, particularly in groups where they can play a more active role and where they are more likely to be in full agreement with a narrower range of concerns, and where they feel they can make a difference. The more immediate local arena thus becomes more attractive than the remote and inertial national arena, while open, single-issue groups become more appealing than traditional, hierarchic party organizations.

Parties have therefore been obliged to look elsewhere for their resources, and in this case their role as governors and law-makers made it easy for them to turn to the state. Principal among the strategies they could pursue was the provision and regulation of state subventions to political parties, which, while varying from country to country, now often constitute one of the major financial and material resources with which the parties can conduct their activities both in parliament and in the wider society.

The growth in state subvention over the past two decades, and the promise of further growth in the coming years, has come to represent one of the most significant changes to the environment within which parties act

the drawing is by Bulgarian Alexiev (Zdravko) - a tribute to the martyrs of the 1876 uprising

Stories We Tell

As I was skimming the hundreds of books I have been checking for the working draft of my Dispatches to the Next Generation , I was reminded of the idea of there being only a small number of basic plots writers use in their novels (eg voyage and return; rags to riches; the quest; the tragedy). Some people have suggested seven basic plots, others twenty; one even 36. In an amusing clip, Kurt Vonnegut made it even more simple!

But what about non-fiction books? Since we were small children, we have all needed stories to help us give meaning to the strange world we inhabit. In this post-modern world, “narratives” indeed have become a fashionable adult activity for the same reason. Just google “story telling in management” if you don’t believe me – this booklet is just one fascinating example which the search produced

At University in the 60s I had been interested in how social systems held together and why people (generally) obeyed - Max Weber’s classification of political systems into – “traditional”, “charismatic” and “rational-legal” was an eye-opener. But it was the sociologist Ametai Etzioni who first impressed me in the 1970s with his suggestion that we behaved the way we did for basically three different types of motives – “remunerative”, “coercive” and “normative” – namely that it was made worth our while; that we were forced to; or that we thought it right. He then went on to suggest (in his 1975 “Social Problems”) that our explanations for social problems could be grouped into equivalent political stances - “individualistic”, “hierarchical” or “consensual”.

During the 1980s, when I was doing my (part-time) Masters in Policy Analysis, I registered the potential of “Frame Analysis” (originating from Erving Goffman in 1974) which showed how different “stories” were used to make sense of complex social events – but had no occasion to use it myself. Little did I realize that it was becoming a central part of post-modernism’s encouragement of diverse realities…  

For me, the typologies surfaced again in political scientists Chris Hood’s The Art of the State (2000) which used Mary Douglas’ grid-group theory to offer a brilliant analysis of 4 basic “world views” and their strengths and weaknesses in particular contexts. Substantial chunks of a similar sort of book "Responses to Governance - governing corporations and societies in the world" ed by John Dixon (2003) can be read on google books.

Michael Thompson is an anthropologist who has used Mary Douglas’ cultural theory to make The case for clumsiness (2004) which, again, sets out the various stories which sustain the different positions people take on various key policy issues – such as the ecological disaster staring us in the face. There is a good interview with the author here

Three short reports give an excellent summary of all this literature; and how it finds practical expression in government policies – Keith Grint’s Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions (2008); Common Cause (2010); and Finding Frames (2010)

Three years ago I enthused about a book called Why We Disagree About Climate Change which uses seven different lenses (or perspectives) to make sense of climate change: science, economics, religion, psychology, media, development, and governance. His argument is basically that –

We understand science and scientific knowledge in different ways

We value things differently

We believe different things about ourselves, the universe and our place in the universe

We fear different things

We receive multiple and conflicting messages about climate change – and interpret them differently

We understand “development” differently

We seek to govern in different ways (eg top-down “green governmentality”; market environmentalism; or “civic environmentalism”)

But few authors have had the courage to apply this approach to the global economic crisis. Most writers are stuck in their own particular “quadrant” (to use the language of grid-group writing) and fail to do justice to the range of other ways of seeing the crisis.

Misrule of Experts? The Financial Crisis as Elite Debacle M Moran et al (2011) is a rare essay which tries to plot the different types of explanation of the crisis - eg as “accident”, “conspiracy” or “calculative failure” and then frames the crisis differently as an “elite political debacle”

As I like such lists,  I should try to draw one for the crisis and try to fit the existing literature into the various categories! My starter would look like this –

- Stuff happens

- Things go up

- Things go down

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