Capitalism: Why We Should Scrap It

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Table of Contents

1. Chapter 1: Introduction
2. Chapter 2: The undesirable impacts on our quality of life
   1. The unequal distribution of benefits
   2. Work
   3. Unemployment
   4. Housing
   5. Insecurity
   6. The undesirable cultural effects
   7. Conclusions
3. Chapter 3: The global effects…the destruction of the planet
   1. Now add the growth commitment
   2. The role of market forces
   3. Conclusions on our situation
4. Chapter 4: But what is capitalism? Characteristics, dynamics, contradictions, trajectory
   1. Production for profit not need
   2. The growth commitment
   3. The central role of the market
   4. The “freedom of enterprise”
   5. Privatisation
   6. But why have any big private firms?
   7. The drive to increase unnecessary consumption
   8. Overpricing
   9. Booms and slumps
   10. Welfare, charity…why are these needed?
   11. Automation…is a problem
   12. Inequality: massive and ever-increasing…and inevitable
   13. The “trickle down” claim
   14. Globalisation and the Neoliberal triumph
   15. Financialisation: the destructive power of debt, interest and rent
   16. Investment and investors
   17. Governments favour the rich
   18. Debt
   19. Work
   20. Connections with feminism
   21. Money and banking
   22. Burdens are not shared well
   23. Energy and the economy
   24. Trade
   25. The inevitable accelerating destruction of the environment
   26. The elimination of education
   27. The contradictions built into capitalism
   28. Imperialism: the inevitable stage
   29. Capitalist ideology
   30. Power
   31. War
   32. Merits?
   33. So it’s class war—and we lost!
5. Chapter 5: The social damage
   1. The undesirable morality of the market
   2. The damage to community and cohesion
   3. Polanyi
   4. Individualism vs. collectivism
   5. Community
   6. Human nature
   7. The economy of the medieval town
   8. Conclusion?
6. Chapter 6: Capitalist “development” of the Third World
   1. Recent studies quantifying the resource flows
   2. What’s the alternative?
7. Chapter 7: Where is capitalism taking us? Look what it has done to America
8. Chapter 8: Where is capitalism taking us? The Longer-Term Trajectory
   1. What will happen?
   2. Immiseration
   3. The advent of cannibalism
   4. End game
   5. The problems cannot be solved
9. Chapter 9: Economic theory
   1. The distortion and the mistaken understandings that result
   2. The warped and deceptive definitions
   3. Externalities ignored
   4. Taking the GDP as the supreme measure
   5. The growth assumption
   6. Acceptance of the market as the basic mechanism
   7. The theory’s assumptions about human nature
   8. Conventional economic theory is only a theory of capitalist economics
   9. We should therefore study political economy, not economics
   10. Economists
10. Chapter 10: The alternative economy we need
    1. Preliminaries
    2. Getting clear about capitalism, socialism, communism and anarchism
    3. The emphatically unavoidable elements in the required economy
    4. The required economy has to be discussed in the context of the required society
    5. The Simpler Way
    6. Simpler lifestyles
    7. Local self-sufficiency
    8. Local self-sufficiency in leisure
    9. Government and politics
    10. Culture: ideas and values
    11. Spontaneity
    12. Redundancy and resilience, independence and security
    13. Would there be loafers and cheats?
    14. How might prices and wages be determined if not by a market?
    15. Public ownership of big enterprises
    16. Money
    17. R&D
    18. Capital
    19. World view
    20. The level of the state
    21. Is this socialism?
    22. So the answer is anarchism
    23. To summarise
11. Chapter 11: How could we make the transition?
    1. Socialism’s strategic mistakes
    2. How might we get through in the long run?
    3. Stage 2 of the revolution
    4. What then should I be doing here and now?
    5. Some important points to keep in mind
    6. Optimism or pessimism?
12. References