UA-9726592-1

Thursday, January 12, 2012

America Beyond Capitalism: Has The Populist Movement To Reclaim Our Democracy Emerged?


1/10/2012


Jesse Russell takes a look now at a re-released book on America and capitalism.

In 2005 historian and economist Professor Gar Alperovitz (Alper – vitz) released “America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy.” In that book he essentially predicted that due to the economic inequality in the United States history suggested the nation was ready for a new populist movement aimed at reclaiming a democratic society from corporate overreach. He was off by a couple years, but the Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be the first step toward the movement he foresaw. Alperovitz said:

 I think we may be at the beginning point of thinking about, in a much more profound way, that something is really wrong and its time to begin opening a big, big debate, almost likle a Federalist Papers, about where we’re going in this Century.
That book has now been re-released as it provides pieces of what could be a road map for where the movement can go from here. Alperovitz added:

It’s all about changing and democratizing ownership from the bottom up, state-by-state, city-by-city, and reports on an enormous amount going on at worker owned companies, land trusts, co-ops, things the press doesn’t cover but will be part and parcel as we move forward.

The US is an economic throwback to pre-Wold War 2 economics. We are a plutonomy that is supportive of unequal income and wealth distribution that eventually leads to social and economic instability.

After the Nazis were defeated in Europe, societies were developed that are more socially egalitarian.

This is why the Europeans today live longer, are happier and are better educated than Americans.

Of course, the GOP  is quick to jump on any reform that would make the US more egalitarian. According to the right wing such reforms are socialistic.


Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA  

Creative Commons License
\
Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.

No comments: