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QUESTION: Alternative Economic Systems

Submitted by Anonymooose on Wed, 05/30/2007 - 11:30am
question / pregunta: 

Hello,

I am a graduate in Economics and Political Science at the University of Missouri Kansas City. I recently saw an interview of Noam Chomsky in which he pointed out that there was a great deal of literature that explain what an economic alternative to Capitalism might look like. As of yet I have had bad luck finding books or authors that deal with anarchist alternatives. I would like to know if you could be so kind as to tell me what books, authors or websites I could visit in order to satisfy my curiosity. I hope to hear from you whenever you get a chance.

Answers

Answer posted by: laura

One possibility--though I'm sure there are others that my fellow Radical Reference volunteers will think of--is the work done by Michael Albert on participatory economics. His most recent book on the subject is Parecon: Life After Capitalism, which was published in 2003. He has also written and/or produced several other books and videos on the subject, and there is a whole page devoted to parecon on ZNet.

A subject search for Economic policy--Citizen participation in any library catalog (the results I've linked to are from WorldCat, which includes the holdings of many, though not all, of the libraries in the US) looks like it might also yield some interesting and helpful results.

Answer posted by: MRM

A recent article on parecon is "Wages, Prices, and Money in a Post-Capitalist Economy" by Eric Patton, published on the Dissident Voice website.

A book like No Gods, No Masters by Daniel Guerin would at least contain chapters on historical examples of anarchist alternatives to capitalist economies. For a specific historical example, you could try to find Anarchist Economics: The Economics of the Spanish Libertarian Collectives, 1936-39 by Abraham Guillen, for which there is a critical review on the NEFAC (Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists) website.