Towards an Inclusive Democracy: The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory ProjectWhy have man and nature drifted apart? This book traces the causes of the present crisis in the process of marketization that was initiated two centuries ago, the establishment of the market economy system and the present growth economy. What marks the very foundation of every aspect of the current crisis is the concentration of power in the hands of various elites. The internationalization of today's market economy has caused significant changes in the world's economic and political structures and only furthered the concentration of economic and political power. The solution to the problem of concentration of power cannot be found inside the system that created it - the market/growth economy. Therefore, the way out of the present crisis can only be found from without rather than from within the present framework. A true democracy today can only be derived from a synthesis of two major historical traditions, the democratic and the socialist, along with the radical green, feminist and libertarian traditions. To this end, this book offers a new vision of an inclusive democracy and sketches its political and economic contours, as well as its philosophical foundations. On the threshold of a new millenium, the development of a new liberatory project, which would represent a synthesism as well as the transcendence of major social movements for change in this century, is imperative. Takis Fotopoulos taught political economics for many years, and is now the Managing Editor of Democracy and Nature (formerly Society and Nature). He is the author of Dependent Development: The case of Greece, The Gulf War; The First Battle in the North-South Conflict and The Neoliberal Consensus. |
Contents
The Market Economy and the Marketization Process | 3 |
The Growth Economy and Socialist Statism | 62 |
The Growth Economy and the South | 110 |
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actually existing socialism allocation approach Athenian democracy autonomy basic needs capital capitalist growth economy cent century Chapter citizens civil societarian civil society competition concentration of economic confederal Cornelius Castoriadis create crisis crucial cultural deep ecology democratic demotic dialectical direct democracy dominant ecological economic democracy economic power effect elites employment European fact freedom Furthermore global hierarchical Hirst historical human implies inclusive democracy income individual inequality inevitable institutional framework International internationalized market economy labour liberal democracy liberatory project London marketization process Marxist means Mogens Herman Hansen movement Murray Bookchin nation-state neoliberal neoliberal consensus non-basic objective obvious organization orthodox ownership paradigm Paul Hirst planning political and economic population present problem production proposed radical realm role self-reliance sense significant social controls social democracy social-democratic social-democratic consensus socialist statism Society and Nature South structures Takis Fotopoulos theory tion trade tradition welfare whereas World Bank