robin hahnel's new book

[michael perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation
(Routledge, 2005) argues that progressives need to go back to the
drawing board and rethink how we conceive of economic justice and
economic democracy. After carefully examining competing notions, this
book argues for defining economic justice as reward commensurate with
effort, or sacrifice, and economic democracy as decision making power in
proportion to degree affected.

After explaining why capitalism, central planning, and market socialism
are all incapable of providing economic justice and democracy, and after
examining why both social democracy and libertarian socialism failed to
sustain the cause of equitable cooperation, permitting the economics of
competition and greed to dominate the last quarter of the twentieth
century, a coherent set of economic institutions and procedures that can
deliver economic justice and democracy, while protecting the environment
and promoting efficiency, is carefully spelled out.

However this "participatory economy" is only a long-run goal, or guiding
vision. The final five chapters explore how to promote the economics of
equitable cooperation in the here and now through economic reform
campaigns and movements that already exist, and through alternative
experiments that promote cooperative over commercial values. Ways to
broaden the base of existing economic reform movements while deepening
their commitment to more far reaching change are emphasized.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901