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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
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy." So begins The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, the latest salvo from David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World). In four sections of three or four chapters each, Korten lays out how it happened and what we can do about it, using model communities that have already begun to "treat money as a facilitator, not the purpose, of our economic lives." 25,000 first printing. (Berrett-Koehler and Kumarian, co-publishers, $27.95 300p ISBN 1-57675-051-5; Mar.) Can the Net really foster, as in Bill Gates's phrase, "friction-free capitalism"? How about "robust direct democracy"? In Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Marketing System, Dan Schiller, professor of communications at UC-San Diego, turns a skeptic's eye to the screen. After reviewing how Internet technology differs from previous forms of telecommunication (and how a "Neoliberal" agenda drove its development), Schiller examines its ever-closer ties with commerce and prognostications for educational revolution. His conclusion: "Digital capitalism has strengthened, rather than banished, the ago-old scourges of the market system: inequality and domination." (MIT, $29.95 320p ISBN 0-262-19417-1; Apr.) Oxford professor of politics John Gray has been an acknowledged influence on Margaret Thatcher, and his writings were appropriated by Britain's New Right. It was thus astonishing to U.K. readers that, in False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Gray does an about-face and argues against a market untethered to cultural foundations within particular societies. Updated with a chapter on the controversy it sparked on its U.K. release, the American version further stresses the all-too-apparent instability of global markets. (New Press, $25 272p ISBN 1-56584-521-8; Apr.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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