Realizinghope

Realizing Hope:
Life Beyond Capitalism

Get it from: Zed Presss / Amazon.com / AK Press / Alternative Bookstores

Book Cover

Realizing Hope
by Michael Albert
256 pages, 18 chapters.
Published by Zed Presss
London, England

You Can Purchase Realizing Hope
(paper edition) Online
In the U.S. also fromAmazon.com
In the U.S. from AK Press — search Albert
Internationally from Zed Press
Or from Alternative Bookstores

Realizing Hope
Table Of Contents

Introduction

1: Parecon
Capitalism, Parecon’s Values, Parecon’s Institutions

2: Polity
Anarchist Roots, The Need for Political Vision, Failed Political Visions, ParPolity, Parpolity and Economy, Addendum: Parpolity and Political Strategy Today

3: Kinship
Kinship Vision, Economics and Women and Men, Parecon’s Impact, Economics and Sexuality, Economics and Intergenerational Conflict

4: Community
Cultural Vision, Race and Capitalism, Race and Parecon, Addendum: Religion and the Left

5: Internationalism
Rejecting Capitalist Globalization, Supporting Global Justice, Participatory Economics Not Capitalist Greed, The Implications of Parecon for International Relations

6: Ecology
Economies and the Environment, Parecon’s Alternative Approach, Other Species

7: Science/Technology
Defining Science, Science Motives, Science and Economics, Parecon and Science, Technology. Economics and Technology, Parecon’s Technology, Health as a Further Indicator

8: Education
Education Now, Future Education

9: Art
Artistic Attitudes, Parecon Art, Artist’s Questions, Artists’ Needs

10: Journalism
Capitalist Media, Parecon and Journalism

11: Athletics
Pareconish Athletics, Athletics?, Competition

12: Crime
Parecon and Crime, Economic Crime in Parecon?

13: Questions
Capitalism Questions , Parecon Questions. Questioning Today’s Society, Questioning Future Society

14: Strategy
Non Reformist Reform Struggles, Class Maps: Class Struggle, Fighting To Win

15: Marxism
Marxism’s Features, Marxist Economism, Marxism and Class, Marxism and Vision and Strategy, Marxism Indicts Marxism, Not People At Fault, But Institutions, Concepts and Collective Behavior, A Better Marxism?, Getting Personal About It

16: Anarchism
The Two Faces of Anarchism, Counter Productive Anarchism, Desirable Anarchism, Anarchist Vision?, 21st Century Anarchism, Addendum 1: Primitivism

17: Aspirations

18: Dissent

Comment From Noam Chomsky, U.S.

“In many earlier studies, Michael Albert has carried out careful in-depth inquiries into systems of participatory economics (parecon), analyzing in detail how they can function justly, equitably, and efficiently, and how they can overcome many of the criminal features of current social and economic arrangements. This new and very ambitious study, Realizing Hope, casts the net far more widely, extending to just about every major domain of human concern and mode of human interaction, and investigating with care and insight how, in these domains, parecon-like principles could lead to a far more desirable society than anything that exists, and also how these goals can be constructively approached. It is another very valuable and provocative contribution to the quest for a world of much greater freedom and justice.”

Jacket Comments from Zed Press About the Book and Author

“Something is profoundly wrong with capitalism. Vast inequalities of wealth and power will not take the world to a better future. ‘What is the alternative?’ is a question echoing all around the globe. Michael Albert has wrestled with this question for many years, and his answer regarding economics has captured the imagination of many. ‘Participatory Economics’ – ‘Parecon’ for short – Albert’s proposed economic system to replace capitalism, rejects competitive anti- sociality, individualist greed, commercial homogenization, and corporate hierarchy, and in their place elevates solidarity, equity, diversity, and self management. In Realizing Hope, Albert goes further to offer insights about how whole areas of life might be desirably transformed in a new society. Whether exploring the way we work, our relationship to the earth, the transformation of global financial institutions, science, technology, the family, culture, sport, art, or education, people rather than profit always take centre stage.”

Michael Albert was radicalized in college at MIT in Cambridge, MA, in the sixties and active in campus, national, and community efforts then and later. He co-founded South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet where he continues to work. He has been involved in diverse movements and written widely about contemporary relations, history, and especially social change strategy and vision. Realizing Hope is his seventeenth book.

Additional Selected Comments about Realizing Hope

Jeremy Brecher, U.S.

“During the grim decades of “there is no alternative,” few did more than Michael Albert and his collaborators to promote discussion of alternatives to domination by either state or market. Now, when millions assert “another world is possible,” Michael Albert’s proposals for “participatory economics” provide an essential starting point for thinking about what that world might be and how we might get there.

In Realizing Hope, he goes beyond the primarily economic framework of participatory economics to open the crucial but too-rarely posed questions of how to coordinate economic change with the changes we need in other spheres of life.”

Mandisi Majavu, South Africa

“Michael Albert is a very serious thinker. In Realizing Hope he not only presents an alternative to capitalism, he provides profound insights into how economics affects personalities and social relations and vice versa. The book opens many doors for social vision and strategy.

At a moment when Africa needs an alternative to nationalist politics. Realizing Hope is amazingly timely. Pan-Africanists and Black Marxists alike will find much to enrich and expand our politics in this book.”


Andrej Grubacic, Serbia

“Michael Albert has posed a breathtakingly simple question- what do left-libertarians want, exactly, ‘beyond capitalism’? – and, in answering it, has produced a work of exhilarating scope. Albert captures the best of the spirit of the new global social movement. He consciously rejects all vanguardism, and demands a direct action in the realm of thought: he asks us to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, to try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are doing, and then to offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts.

Albert combines close empirical insights with a magisterial conceptual grasp. We will be arguing about this work for years.”

  


Milan Rai, England

“In Realizing Hope Michael Albert mulls over the better society that we may create after capitalism, provoking much thought and offering a generous, hopeful vision of the future. His prescriptions for action in the present are modest and wise; his suggestions for building the future are ambitious and humane. There is a hunger for this kind of practical, visionary alternative.

Realizing Hope is an important part of the internal development of the global movements for peace and justice, helping us to recover lost insights.” 


Stephen R. Shalom, U.S.

“Those of us who have been grappling with the question of the good society in limited domains of inquiry are indebted to Michael Albert for bringing together so much of this work into a coherent and exciting whole and expanding on it.

Anyone disgusted with existing society — which is to say, just about everyone — who wants to know if there are any alternatives, will find Realizing Hope informative, provocative, creative, engaging, and, yes, full of hope.”

Sudhanva Deshpande, India

“Michael Albert is the head cook in that incredible virtual community kitchen of global activists, zmag.org, where all varieties of political culinary recipes are concocted. But Michael Albert is more than a man behind a virtual address – he is an organizer, he is a dreamer, he is a fighter, he is a man with a vision. Erudite and learned, his prose is marked by that increasingly rare commodity, simplicity. His intellectual and political roots may be in Anarchism, but he is, in the best sense of the term, a Utopian. Not for him, though, the lazy distractedness of the utopian. His feet are firmly on the ground. He recovers for us the best aspects of the socialist traditions of the nineteenth century: the anger with an unjust and exploitative system, the return of morality to the centre of thinking about politics, economics and society, and the belief, simple though not naïve, that human beings are amenable to reason.

There are, in Realizing Hope, ideas you may agree with fully, or partially, or not at all. But there are no ideas that you can throw in the waste bin. But for the most fanatical loony fringe of the far-Right, no one believes, not even those who earn billions from it, that capitalism and imperialist globalization are just or equitable. Millions across the world are coming together in hitherto unprecedented networks of solidarity to struggle against poverty, inequality, discrimination, and war. These fighters proclaim that a better world is possible. Realizing Hope challenges us to imagine how. Its conclusions may be controversial; the project itself is not. Indeed, there was never a greater need for it than now, when the new century has dawned with new wars and new struggles, with new hopes and new troubles.” 

Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan

“The need for an alternative vision has never been greater than now – a time when moral compasses are unsteady, and capitalism crows victory even as much of the world descends into dark despair. Michael Albert passionately argues for a different future where equity, diversity, justice, and self-management are more than just distant dreams.

Those who have seen through the childish notions offered by religion and its vision of a perfect society, as well as the false claims of unreconstructed Marxism and promises of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, will benefit from this profoundly important work. It does not shy away from the awesome complexity of human issues, nor does it reek of the stultifying dogmatism of so many left-wing tracts. One can disagree at places, but it forces the reader to think and be conscious of choices.” 

  

Vittorio Agnoletto, Italy

“This book is against all those who accuse the social movements of only being able to say “no”. A better world is indeed possible and not just a Utopia.

Michael Albert points the way towards a society based on participation and justice. Utopia is somewhere that does not exist yet. This book can really help turn a dream into reality.”

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