Stealing back the commons: Citizen economics beyond capitalism

Michael Jacobs, an ex-SpAd to Gordon Brown, has recently written in the New Satesman that ‘green social democracy can save capitalism’. Well, not everyone agrees. For some, the ‘green social democracy’ experiment has, thus far, not worked, and indeed, might be running out of time. 

And as for capitalism – or at least capitalism1.0, it’s no longer heresy to question its infallibility. Since we last blogged about capitalism, a host of mainstreamers like the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders, the FT’s Martin Wolf, UBS’s George Magnus, Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini, have started questioning our growth-obsessed, capitalist economics and calling up Karl Marx from his grave.

And, as a search of Amazon will show you, there’s no shortage of recent books both questioning capitalism and laying out ideas for its updating or replacement.
But why might we have to consider alternatives to capitalism and what might an alternative look like?

Resilience
Stealing back the commons: Citizen economics beyond capitalism
Jules Peck | Citizen Renaissance