Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism - Softcover

Geoff Mann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849351260 ISBN 13: 9781849351263

Publisher: AK Press, 2013

Synopsis

Capitalism is a complex, dynamic, and extraordinarily robust way of organising human life; it is also a system that achieves prosperity for the few, impoverishes the many, and depletes the commons for all. We know that capitalism is a broken system, in desperate need of change. But, to imagine a different system, we first need to understand how capitalism actually exists today - and be able to explain to others how it works, and why change is needed. Disassembly Required is an attempt to meet these challenges. It offers an anti-capitalist analysis of capitalism, and, even more important, it explains why it is anti-capitalist. It does not stop at claiming that the present way of organizing the "economic" aspects of our lives is politically indefensible and ecologically unsustainable, but digs into the details of capitalist institutions and the economics that justify them. From money and markets to the subprime crisis, it explains the fundamental features of contemporary capitalism and how they contribute, sometimes in surprising ways, to overall capitalist dynamics.

About this title

Review

An essential handbook for understanding 'actually existing' capitalism, and thus the world as it really is - rather than as it is theorized and justified by the dissembling high priests of mainstream academia, policy, and politics. --Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos

A brilliantly lucid book. Mann illuminates the basic principles of modern capitalism, their expressions in contemporary economies and states, and their devastating socio-ecological consequences for working people everywhere. This is a must-read if we are to envision ways of organizing our common planetary existence that are not based upon the illusory promises of market fundamentalism and the suicidal ideology of endless economic growth. --Neil Brenner, New State Spaces

A brilliantly lucid book. Mann illuminates the basic principles of modern capitalism, their expressions in contemporary economies and states, and their devastating socio-ecological consequences for working people everywhere. This is a must-read if we are to envision ways of organizing our common planetary existence that are not based upon the illusory promises of market fundamentalism and the suicidal ideology of endless economic growth. --Neil Brenner, New State Spaces

About the Author

Geoff Mann lives with his partner and sons in Vancouver BC. He teaches political economy and economic geography at Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Centre for Global Political Economy. His book Our Daily Bread: Wages, Workers and the Political Economy of the American West (UNC, 2007) won the Paul Sweezy Prize from the American Sociological Association and the Michael S. Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association, and his writing on capitalism has appeared in New Left Review and Historical Materialism, among other journals. His current research concerns the politics of macroeconomic policy, and he is presently completing a book on the many lives of Keynesianism.

Edition details

• Publisher: AK Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1849351260
• ISBN 13: 9781849351263
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 259