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Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.
In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by buyers and sellers negotiating in an open market without market coercions. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority other than those interventions which are made to prohibit market coercions. Examples of such prohibited market coercions include: economic privilege, monopolies, and artificial scarcities. Proponents of the concept of free market contrast it with a regulated market in which a government intervenes in the exchange of property for any reason other than reducing market coercions.
Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, and part of the Washington metropolitan area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City", is a Tree City USA and a nuclear-free zone. A planned commuter suburb, it is situated along the Metropolitan Branch of the historic Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, just northeast of Washington, and it shares a border and history with the adjacent D.C. neighborhood of Takoma. It is governed by an elected mayor and six elected councilmembers, who form the city council, and an appointed city manager, under a council-manager style of government. The city's population was 17,629 at the 2020 census.
Finance capitalism or financial capitalism is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system.
Industrial relations or employment relations is the multidisciplinary academic field that studies the employment relationship; that is, the complex interrelations between employers and employees, labor/trade unions, employer organizations and the state.
The Third Way is a political position akin to centrism that attempts to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of centre-right economic platforms with some centre-left social policies. The Third Way was created as a re-evaluation of political policies within various centre to centre-left progressive movements in response to doubt regarding the economic viability of the state and the overuse of economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularised by Keynesianism, but which at that time contrasted with the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The Third Way has been promoted by social liberal and social-democratic parties. In the United States, a leading proponent of the Third Way was 42nd President Bill Clinton, who was in office from 1993 to 2001.
Louis Orth Kelso was a political economist, corporate and financial lawyer, author, lecturer and merchant banker who is chiefly remembered today as the inventor and pioneer of the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), invented to enable working people without savings to buy stock in their employer company and pay for it out of its future dividend yield.
Ordoliberalism is the German variant of economic liberalism that emphasizes the need for government to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential, but does not advocate for a welfare state.
The Progressive utilization theory (PROUT) is a socioeconomic and political theory created by the Indian philosopher and spiritual leader Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. He first conceived of PROUT in 1959. Its proponents (Proutists) claim that the theory exposes and overcomes the limitations of both capitalism and communism. Since its genesis, PROUT has had an economically progressive approach, aiming improve social development in the world. The theory is in line with Sarkar's Neohumanist values which aim to provide "proper care" to every being on the planet, including humans, animals and plants.
Criticism of socialism is any critique of socialist models of economic organization and their feasibility as well as the political and social implications of adopting such a system. Some critiques are not directed toward socialism as a system, but rather toward the socialist movement, parties or existing states. Some critics consider socialism to be a purely theoretical concept that should be criticized on theoretical grounds while others hold that certain historical examples exist and that they can be criticized on practical grounds. Because there are many models of socialism, most critiques are focused on a specific type of socialism and the experience of Soviet-type economies that may not apply to all forms of socialism as different models of socialism conflict with each other over questions of property ownership, economic coordination and how socialism is to be achieved. Critics of specific models of socialism might be advocates of a different type of socialism.
Ted Howard is a social entrepreneur and author. He is the founder and Executive Director of The Democracy Collaborative and served as the Minter Senior Fellow for Social Justice with the Cleveland Foundation from 2010-2014. For more than 30 years, Howard has worked for non-profit organizations including UN agencies and The Hunger Project.
Post-capitalism is a state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to some classical Marxist and some social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism. The most notable among them are socialism, anarchism, and degrowth.
Gar Alperovitz is an American historian and political economist. Alperovitz served as a fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics; a founding Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies; a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution; and the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland Department of Government and Politics from 1999 to 2015. He also served as a legislative director in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate and as a special assistant in the US Department of State. Alperovitz is a distinguished lecturer with the American Historical Society, co-founded the Democracy Collaborative and co-chairs its Next System Project with James Gustav Speth.
Cooperative economics is a field of economics that incorporates cooperative studies and political economy toward the study and management of cooperatives.
Economic reconstruction refers to a process for creating a proactive vision of economic change. The most basic idea is that problems in the economy, such as deindustrialization, environmental decay, outsourcing, industrial incompetence, poverty and addiction to a permanent war economy are based on the design and organization of economic institutions. Economic reconstruction builds on the ideas of various institutional economists and thinkers whose work both critiques existing economic institutions and suggests modes of organizing society differently. Economic reconstruction, however, places much more emphasis on the idea of alternative plans and alternative organization.
The Evergreen Cooperatives are a connected group of worker-owned cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. They are committed to local, worker-owned job creation; sustainable, green and democratic workplaces; and community economic development.
Occupy is a short study of the Occupy movement written by the American academic and political activist Noam Chomsky. Initially published in the United States by the Zuccotti Park Press as the first title in their Occupied Media Pamphlet Series in 2012, it was subsequently republished in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books later that year.
After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action is a 2012 book by United States author Dada Maheshvarananda, an activist, yoga monk and writer. The book argues that global capitalism is terminally ill because it suffers from four fatal flaws: growing inequity and concentration of wealth, addiction to speculation instead of production, rising unsustainable debt and its tendency to exploit the natural environment. The author proposes a grassroots movement for economic democracy with cooperatives and local economies based on the Progressive Utilization Theory or Prout, a post-capitalist model conceptualized by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar of India. The book includes a conversation with Noam Chomsky and essays by Frei Betto, Johan Galtung, Leonardo Boff, Sohail Inayatullah, Marcos Arruda, Ravi Batra and others.
Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift decision-making power from corporate managers and corporate shareholders to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, customers, suppliers, neighbours and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's inherent effective demand gap.
The New Economy Movement in the United States is a group of organizations that are attempting to restructure the current economic system. The movement prioritizes human well-being over economic growth. Its primary goal is to localize the economy in an attempt to spread wealth and promote sustainable business practices. The New Economy movement challenges both neoclassical and Keynesian economics to include theories of ecological economics, solidarity economy, commons, degrowth, systems thinking and Buddhist economics. The movement promotes more public ownership of the economy through organizational structures such as cooperatives, and state-owned banks. The goal of these changes is to remove or alleviate harmful environmental and social impacts of capitalism through alternative economic as well as political practices. A principal leader of the movement is the political economist and activist Gar Alperowitz, who, with others, promote the democratizing ownership of businesses and the economy as a means to achieve a sustainable, fair, and equal society.
References
- Alperovitz, Gar. "The Pluralist Commonwealth". http://www.pluralistcommonwealth.org/. The Democracy Collaborative. Retrieved 8/14/2014.
- Alperovitz, Gar (May 1, 2013). What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution (1st ed.). 85 North Main Street, Suite 120, White River Junction, VT 05001: Chelsea Green Publishing. p. 145. ISBN 1603585044.
- O'Neill, Martin; Williamson, Thad (Mar 3, 2014). Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond. 5521 Research Park Drive, Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 269. ISBN 1444334107.
- Alperovitz, Gar; Speth, Gustave (Nov 9, 2011). America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy (2nd ed.). 6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 501, Takoma Park, MD 20912: Democracy Collaborative Press. pp. 70–77. ISBN 0984785701.
- Garnett Jr, Robert F; Olsen, Erik; Starr, Martha (November 10, 2013). Economic Pluralism. 270 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016: Routledge. p. 8. ISBN 0415747414.