| BOOK CORNER Class Action June 2007 Book of the Month!
Book Review: Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons (Berrett Koehler, 2006)
Peter Barnes, the co-founder of Working Assets, argues that capitalism  needs a radical “system upgrade” to address the degradation of nature and grotesque class inequalities.
This is a wonderfully readable book that serves as both an introduction to the economic theory of the commons –while proposing big system solutions. Central to a critique of classism is his discussion of “universal” and “birthright claims” – the belief that everyone has a claim on common wealth.
True to form, Peter and Berrett Koehler have put the book into the commons, making the book available for free downloading at:
http://capitalism3.com/files/Capitalism_3.0_Peter_Barnes.pdf
Barnes is critical of the ways that corporations externalize their costs and siphon off wealth created by public investments and knowledge for private gain. Congress continually gives away our common wealth, such as the $70 billion giveaway in 1995 of broadcast spectrum to media monopolies.
In Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, Peter Barnes argues that we are at a historical moment where our common wealth must be reclaimed and secured. We need to find ways to protect the commons –and use its bounty for the common good, not for just the privileged few.
Peter Barnes suggests that there are three large pools of common wealth that should be tapped at a national level to enhance the common good. These are: the waste absorption capacity of nature; socially-created wealth captured by individuals; and socially-created wealth captured by corporations. Taken together, these pools represent trillions of dollars worth of shared resources and hundreds of billions of dollars in potential annual revenue that should be used to reverse historic class inequalities.
View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...
May Book of the Month: Death in the Haymarket
April Book of the Month: Food Politics
March Book of the Month: Psychology and Economic Injustice
February Book of the Month : What's My Name, Fool?
December Book of the Month:
Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming
November Book of the Month: Awol
October Book of the Month: Class Passing
September Book and Video of the Month: Beyond Silenced Voices and Declining By Degrees
August Books of the Month: Human Cargo and Gathering the Sun
July Book of the Month: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor
June Book of the Month: More Money Than God by Steven R. Leder
May Book of the Month: Global Class by Jeff Faux
April Books of the Month: Classified and Strapped
March Book of the Month: Welfare Brat, A Memoir by Mary Childers
February Book of the Month: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg
View last year's Book of the Month selections...
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