The recognition is growing: truly addressing the problems of the 21st century requires going beyond small tweaks and modest reforms to business as usual—it requires "changing the system." But what does this mean? And what would it entail? The New Systems Reader highlights some of the most thoughtful, substantive, and promising answers to these questions, drawing on the work and ideas of some of the world’s key thinkers and activists on systemic change. Amid the failure of traditional politics and policies to address our fundamental challenges, an increasing number of thoughtful proposals and real-world models suggest new possibilities, this book convenes an essential conversation about the future we want.
Table of Contents:
Preface
1 | Social Democracy and Radical Localism
Chapter 1: Social Democratic Capitalism: The Nordic Experience and Beyond
Chapter 2: The Good Society 2.0
Chapter 3: The Promise of a Million Utopias
2 | New System Values
Chapter 4: The Economy for the Common Good: A Workable, Transformative, Ethics-Based Alternative
Chapter 5: A Civic Economy of Provisions
Chapter 6: Whole Systems Change: A Framework and First Steps for Social/Economic Transformation
Chapter 7: A Living Economy for a Living Earth
Chapter 8: Earthland: Scenes from a Civilized Future
3 | A Planetary Economy
Chapter 9: Towards a New, Green Economy—Sustainable and Just—at Community Scale
Chapter 10: Well-Being Economy: A Scenario for a Post-Growth Horizontal Governance System
Chapter 11: Toward Democratic Eco-socialism as the Next World System: A Vision for the Future
Chapter 12: Six Theses on Saving the Planet
4 | Ownership and Economic Democracy
Chapter 13: Economic Democracy: Ethical, Economically Viable Socialism
Chapter 14: The Next System: Workers Direct Themselves
Chapter 15: Diversifying Public Ownership: Constructing Institutions for Participation, Social Empowerment, and Democratic Control
5 | Community-Based Pluralist Systems
Chapter 16: A Pluralist Commonwealth and a Community Sustaining System
Chapter 17: The Joyful Economy: A Next System Possibility
Chapter 18: Building a Cooperative Solidarity Commonwealth
Chapter 19: Solidarity Economy: Building an Economy for People and Planet
Chapter 20: Democratizing Wealth in the US South and Beyond
Chapter 21: Navigating System Transition in a Volatile Century
6 | Commoning, Cooperation, and Participatory Planning
Chapter 22: Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm
Chapter 23: Cooperative Commonwealth and the Partner State
Chapter 24: An Introduction to Participatory Economics
Chapter 25: Participatory Economics and the Next System
7 | The Emerging New Economy
Chapter 26: Cultivating Community Economies: Tools for Building a Livable World
Chapter 27: Building Economic Democracy to Construct Eco-socialism from Below
Chapter 28: How We Are Building the Movement for Reparative Economic Democracy
Chapter 29: The Arusha Declaration: The Case for Democratic Socialism 50 Years On
Appendix: Questions for Authors of Works on New Models and Systems
