beyond capitalism

Len Krimerman, co-founder of Grassroots Economic Organizing, as well as many other things, passed away this last December. A beloved and hard-working comrade, he will be greatly missed by those he leaves behind.

In this chapter, Luis Razeto identifies the key to the democratic transformation of the market – “the formation of a new social block, a subject of transformational action, the bearer of a new structure of social action” – and analyzes the various theoretical and practical obstacles that must be overcome in order for it to occur.

Ten years after India won its independence in 1947, the Communist Party of India won state elections in Kerala. Right from the start, the left government in Kerala adopted an agenda to smash ancient social hierarchies and customs, provide social goods to the public that were not readily available in the rest of India (including quality public education, health care, and transportation), and construct the basis of working-class and peasant power by defending workers’ rights to organise in unions and build cooperatives.

In this chapter, Razeto makes use of a concept that is one of Antonio Gramsci’s most important theoretical contributions – the “determined market.”

This article explores worker cooperatives’ possibilities and challenges of knowledge-making through constructive resistance within the capitalist market economy, based on qualitative material from five Swedish worker co-ops.

What might the world look like if climate change is not stopped? What if societies refuse to, or cannot rein in capitalism and its relentless growth and exploitation of nature? 

In his From Capital to Commons, Hannes Gerhardt introduces us to an exploration of a world beyond capitalism.

We can position ourselves as the seeds of the next system, or more realistically, as the scaffolding of survival in a world of cascading crises.

We need to shift to a new system, so that we can be fed, watered, housed, cared for, and enjoy our lives as best as possible in a more environmentally-unstable future.

Recently, the Garrison Institute invited me to write a short essay about the interconnectedness of all living beings and how commons can serve as vehicles for manifesting that idea.