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The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism
The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism
The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism
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The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism

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There is a deep chasm between the promises of the new global capitalism and the reality of social breakdown, spiritual emptiness, and environmental destruction it is leaving in its wake. In this important book, David Korten makes a compelling and well-documented case that capitalism is actually delivering a fatal blow not only to life, but also to democracy and the market. Among his startling ideas:

Capitalism is a pathology that commonly afflicts market economies in the absence of vigilant public oversight. Since the economy internal to a corporation is a planned economy, the current consolidation of economic control under a handful of global corporations is a victory for central planning-not the market economy. The alternative to the new global capitalism is a global system of thriving, healthy market economies that function as extensions of healthy local ecosystems to meet the livelihood needs of people and communities.

Radical as such proposals may seem, they actually reflect processes that are steadily gaining momentum around the world. The Post-Corporate World provides a vision of what's needed and what's possible, as well as a detailed agenda for change. Korten shows that to have a just, sustainable and compassionate society, concentrated absentee ownership and footloose speculative capital as embodied in the global, for-profit public corporation must be eliminated in favor of enterprises based on patient, rooted, stakeholder ownership limited to those who have a stake in the firm as a worker, supplier, customer, or member of the community in which it is located.

Korten outlines numerous specific actions to free the creative powers of individuals and societies through the realization of real democracy, the local rooting of capital through stakeholder ownership, and a restructuring of the rules of commerce to create "mindful market" economies that combine market principles with a culture that nurtures social bonding and responsibility.

Like Korten's previous bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, this provocative book is sure to stimulate national dialogue and debate and inspire a bevy of grassroots discussions and initiatives. The Post-Corporate World presents readers with a profound challenge and an empowering sense of hope.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 1, 1999
ISBN9781605093963
The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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    I was very very impressed by Korten's analysis of how capitalism has gone wrong, and how current law gives corporations goals that are bad for society as a whole. I was also very very impressed with his educated, well-thought-out, and creative solutions, such as changing the notion that corporations are in some senses legally "persons". What annoyed me, however, was the way he got from his analysis to his solutions, which was a new-age metaphor with ecology and evolution. Look, economics is not ecology, and having all of this crap in an otherwise fantastic book is going to make many potential supporters say, "just another tree-hugging wacko, ignore him"! As one of the most knowledgeable and articulate members of the anti-corporate movement, Korten has a responsibility to show to mainstream, non tree-hugging people, that his position is a moderate, sensible, reasoned solution, and is not associated with deep ecology, anti-technological movements, or socialism! The only way for us to win is to seem reasonable, to recruit people who want the material results of capitalism, and to avoid alienation at all costs! This book is two steps forward and one step back.

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The Post-Corporate World - David C. Korten

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