Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Praise -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- A Note About What Can Be Talked About, and in What Ways -- Introduction -- Part I: The System Problem -- 1. How to Detect a System Problem Without Really Trying -- 2. But Hasn't What We Normally Call Politics Done What Needs to Be Done in the Past? -- 3. Flies Number Two and Three in the Traditional Theory of Politics -- 4. The Fading Power of Traditional Politics -- Part II: Systems Old and New: Evolutionary Reconstruction -- 5. A Note About Systems and History and Prehistory And Also About Just Plain Useful Change -- 6. An Initial Way to Think About System Change -- 7. Quiet Democratization Everywhere -- 8. Worker Ownership Redux -- 9. Cultural and Ideological Hegemony, Utopia-and Us -- Part III: "Checkerboard": Emergent Municipal and State Possibilities -- 10. How the Conservatives Buried Adam Smith And What It Might Mean for Us -- 11. Everyday Socialism, All the Time, American-Style -- 12. Checkerboard Strategies, and Beyond -- Part IV: Hot Spots: Banking, Health Care, and Crisis Transformations -- 13. Banking -- 14. Health Care -- 15. Beyond Countervailing Power -- 16. Bigger Possibilities and Precedents -- Part V: Narrow-Minded Efficiency, Public Enterprise, and All That -- 17. Public Enterprise Redux I -- 18. Public Enterprise Redux II -- Part VI: The Emerging Historical Era -- 19. The Emerging Historical Context -- 20. Two Dogs That Are Unlikely to Bark Again -- 21. Stagnation and Punctuated Stagnation -- 22. The Logic of Our Time in History -- Part VII: Conclusion -- 23. The Prehistory of the Next American Revolution -- Afterword -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- About the Author.

New developments at various level of the political-economic system suggest possible institutional trajectories supportive of community, and a longer term systemic design more supportive of strong democracy and a caring culture. An integration of institutional elements also offers possibilities more productive of equality and ecologically sustainable outcomes. The "Pluralist Commonwealth" is both pluralist in its institutional characteristics and supportive of such "commonwealth" institutions as co-operatives, neighborhood land trusts and community corporations, municipal utilities and a range of other larger scale ownership forms. An "evolutionary reconstructive" institutional, political, and cultural path is projected as a longer term transformative process different from both traditional reform and traditional ideas of revolution. Such a path inherently seeks to maximize the development of a caring community as it builds.

The following is an interview with historian, political economist, activist, and writer Gar Alperovitz from City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis, a collection of essays on American cities, written by the people who live in them.

For over a century, liberals and radicals have seen the possibility of change in capitalist systems from one of two perspectives: the reform tradition assumes that corporate institutions remain central to the system but believes that regulatory policies can contain, modify, and control corporations and their political allies. The revolutionary tradition assumes that change can come about only if corporate institutions are eliminated or transcended during an acute crisis, usually but not always by violence. But what happens if a system neither reforms nor collapses in crisis?

For over a century, liberals and radicals have seen the possibility of change in capitalist systems from one of two perspectives: the reform tradition assumes that corporate institutions remain central to the system but believes that regulatory prices can contain, modify, and control corporations and their political allies. The revolutionary tradition assumes that change can come about only if corporate institutions are eliminated or transcended during an acute crisis, usually but not always by violence. Quietly, a different kind of progressive change is emerging, one that involves a transformation in institutional structures and power, a process one could call "evolutionary reconstruction.". Adapted from the source document.