Publication of "Capitalism for All: Realizing its Liberal Promise"

[harr...@sd-institute.org]

SUNY Press has published Capitalism for All: Realizing its Liberal Promise by Neil E. Harrison and John Mikler.

 

 

Capitalism has lost its glamor. In just three decades since it "defeated" a totalitarian Soviet Union, capitalism is today blamed for slowing growth, a dangerously changing climate, inequality, social misery, and a rise in nationalist populism. How did capitalism fall so far from grace? Capitalism for All shows how, quite simply, the governments of the world’s wealthiest countries have forgotten capitalism’s initial purpose.

 

Capitalism was born out of a liberal philosophy that values the competition of ideas and goods in the service of social progress while respecting the individual and preventing excessive power. Yet, with the aid of governments, giant corporations (or "MegaCorps") have usurped power, dominated markets, and reduced competition. The result is not liberal capitalism but "CorpoCapitalism." This is the belief that corporations are the best architects of national economic growth and that therefore corporate interests must be served, and that social wellbeing is the natural consequence of economic growth. The evident failure of CorpoCapitalism to serve the needs of the people is a cause of an unhappy populace seeking radical political change while challenges like climate change continue to race forward largely unchecked.

 

Climate change requires two major policy processes. To meet the necessarily ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions demanded by the Paris Agreement requires "climate innovation”—the development and diffusion of technologies specifically designed to mitigate climate change. To meet the many dangerous impacts of a changing climate requires social resilience. Capitalism for All shows how CorpoCapitalism prevents both processes and how a return to Liberal Capitalism would enable them.

 

For more information and to order examination or review copies go to https://sunypress.edu/Books/C/Capitalism-for-All.

 

Neil E. Harrison, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Sustainable Development Institute (www.sd-institute.org)

 

Publications

Co-Author (with Robert Geyer), Governing Complexity in the 21st Century. (Abingdon: Routledge 2022). https://www.routledge.com/Governing-Complexity-in-the-21st-Century/Harrison-Geyer/p/book/9780367276270.

 

Co-Author (with John Mikler), Capitalism for All: Realizing its Liberal Promise (SUNY Press 2022). https://www.sunypress.edu/p-7234-capitalism-for-all.aspx.

 

Author, Sustainable Capitalism and the Pursuit of Well-Being (Abingdon: Routledge 2014) -  www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415662819

 

Co-Editor (with John Mikler), Climate Innovation: Liberal Capitalism and Climate Change (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014) - http://us.macmillan.com/climateinnovation/NeilEHarrison.

 

Editor, Complexity in World Politics: Concepts and Methods of a New Paradigm (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006). https://www.sunypress.edu/p-4294-complexity-in-world-politics.aspx.

 

Author, Constructing Sustainable Development (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000). See https://sunypress.edu/Books/C/Constructing-Sustainable-Development