The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism - Softcover

Korten, David C.

3.8

127 ratings by Goodreads

9781887208031: The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1887208038 ISBN 13: 9781887208031

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2000

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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.

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Review:

In his bestselling 1995 call to arms, When Corporations Rule the World, David C. Korten first attempted to raise public consciousness about the potentially disastrous consequences of economic globalization and the expansion of corporate power. Now, in his provocative new work, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, he goes further by defining these dual ills as a collective cancer that will ultimately destroy the larger society upon which they actually depend for survival.

Containment of this cancer, Korten suggests, is a wholly inadequate remedy. Rather, a "curative regime"--consisting of measures aimed at "virtually eliminating the institution of the limited liability for-profit public corporation as we know it"--is necessary to save us from an otherwise inevitable fate. The book opens with Korten's downbeat view of capitalism infecting "democracy, markets and life itself." Its following three sections are much more optimistic, however, as he focuses on ways both individuals and the community can reorganize their institutional and policy choices to "eliminate the economic pathology that plagues us and create truly democratic, market-based, life-centered societies." Only by intentionally building this radical new post-corporate world, he boldly proposes, will a sustainable community be created that truly meets our future needs. --Howard Rothman

From the Publisher:

Kumarian Press congratulates the Post-Corporate World for being named as one of 'Future Survey's Super 70, 1996-2000'!

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