Review by Choice Review
In this provocative volume, Alperovitz (political economy, Univ. of Maryland) presents a call to arms to citizens of varying ideological stripes, asking readers to understand the dire state of the American body politic and society while maintaining hope that seemingly intractable problems can be solved. Alperovitz offers evidence that, below the radar of the 24-hour news cycle, many social, economic, and environmental problems actually are being addressed effectively, though not yet at the scale necessary to deal with institutional breakdown, massive and growing inequality, and dire environmental threats. He argues persuasively that the sort of progressive changes necessary to revitalize democracy, meet policy challenges, and transform society will not come about through politics as usual and that the crisis mechanisms responsible for producing meaningful change in the past--economic depression and global war--are not likely to provide similar results in the future, given the collapse of the labor movement. Instead, to produce what he calls "evolutionary reconstruction," Americans will need to build on the surprising rise of community-based organizational forms such as worker-owned companies, and consider the nationalization of industries, such as banking, that cannot be effectively regulated. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate collections. S. E. Horn Everett Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
With the gulf between the wealthy haves and unwealthy have-nots growing year by year in America, more and more people are becoming disenchanted with so-called free-market capitalism. Political economist Alperovitz takes the pulse of this collective fiscal dissatisfaction here and offers some tantalizing but well-grounded ideas about closing the income gap without sliding into socialism. The author begins by deconstructing politics as usual and deflating the notion that progressive policies can provide much real guidance. Because banks are more stable these days, major crises like the recent recession are also unlikely to provoke much transformation. According to Alperovitz, something different beyond token protests and special-interest groups is necessary for true systemic change, and this difference comes in the form of more worker-owned and -operated companies, neighborhood corporations, and locally run public enterprises. Alperovitz's deliberately informal, conversational style makes normally rarefied economic concepts accessible to a wide audience, enhancing his inspiring message that, with the right strategies, a wholesale economic revolution is not only possible but achievable by well-organized, average citizens.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Alperovitz (America Beyond Capitalism), a University of Maryland political economist and cofounder of the Democracy Collaborative, transcends simple political disenchantment to examine the intertwining of political and economic power and the need to develop new institutions that help the 99% obtain more of both. The atypical conditions that made possible the postwar boom fostered the development of institutions that now are losing strength. With a nod to Tolstoy, Alperovitz encourages the reader to ponder how to redress the staggeringly unequal distribution of wealth. His survey of the American landscape highlights co-ops, employee stock ownership plans, publicly owned utilities and hospitals, and other already-successful alternatives to the for-profit corporate model. By so doing, he persuasively argues, new constituencies tied to these alternative models will emerge. His emphasis throughout is on the local level, as if to emphasize the movement toward a new American community that he espouses. The reader is certain to find his views challenging, even if the schism between conventional corporatism and "New Age" practices that Alperovitz envisions seems to evoke the gulf between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Alperovitz (political economy, Univ. of Maryland; America Beyond Capitalism) alternately elicits hope and despair in his discussion of the state of America's current economic system-despair because he believes it no longer works and hope in the spreading economic democratization and successful cooperatives and progressive local government ventures. Alperovitz states that corporate politics and policies that deliberately transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, not to mention the sustained attack on labor unions, demonstrate that the American social system is fundamentally broken. He asserts that early 20th-century progressivism, the New Deal, and the Great Society helped save America in times of crisis, and that a new paradigm in which social, environmental, and democratic policies reside at the forefront of our political and economic development is needed. VERDICT Alperovitz's sophisticated tone both informs and engages. Recommended for all readers interested in an economic and political perspective of what's gone wrong with America.-Duncan Stewart, Univ. of Iowa Libs., Iowa City (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Any cure for America's economic plight lies deeper than politics as usual, argues an author who believes that a fundamental, radical, systemic transformation offers the possibility of an economic corrective. Alperovitz (Political Economy/Univ. of Maryland; America Beyond Capitalism, 2004) argues that a faulty sense of history underlies what little faith remains in economic progress through conventional politics. For those who would categorize the New Deal as a political triumph, he counters that it had "a very, very unusual contextin large part made possible by a massive global Depression" and led to "postwar achievements [that] were in significant part made possible by the ongoing impact of a massive (and highly unusual, global-scale) war and its extraordinary aftermath." In short, great change spawned by great crises, not the working of the political process. The economic disparity between the rich and the masses has since gotten much wider, with no indication that politics can even address the situation, let alone improve it, as the decline of labor unions has left the power of corporate wealth unchecked and unchallenged. Yet the author believes he "offers a reasonably hopeful sense of the future, and a strategy aimed at possibly getting there." Such hope lies in "the democratization of wealth," through employee-owned companies, regional co-ops, the systemic transformation of the banking and health care industries into public utilities and an emphasis on "what has often been called the triple bottom line (emphasizing people and planet in addition to profit)." And if such radical restructuring causes some to scream about socialism, he counters that "socialism--real socialism, not the fuzzy kind conservatives try to pin on Barack Obama--is as common as grassin the United States." Alperovitz's conversational style avoids academic jargon while making complex issues easy (some might say too easy) to digest, but he's not likely to convince those of the conservative persuasion that a more hopeful future involves more collective action and government consolidation.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
