Product Description

* Named as one of Future Survey's Super 70 books
* Written by a well-known globalization realist with extensive international experience in business
* Uses biological and evolutionary principles to illustrate the differences between capitalism and economic systems

Korten examines the fissure between the promises of new global capitalism and the reality of financial insecurity, inequality, social breakdown, spiritual emptiness, and environmental destruction. By drawing on insights from biology and evolutionary principles, Korten renders economic terms and ideas more understandable through the use of simple metaphors regarding living systems. The book prescribes economic solutions to capitalism's maladies, and provides readers with viable ways to work toward a healthy, sustainable economy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #582577 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-31
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .90" h x 6.02" w x 9.50" l, 1.04 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Amazon.com
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

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.

From Library Journal
For 30 years, Korten toiled as a development worker seeking to end the poverty of the world's underdeveloped nations. In that time, he noted a stark difference between capitalism's democratic myth and the reality of social, economic, and environmental deterioration that accompanied such efforts. In this intriguing sequel to When Corporations Rule the World (Berrett-Koehler, 1995), Korten identifies the root causes of these failures as consumerism, market deregulation, free trade, privatization, global consolidation of corporate power, a focus on money as purpose for economic life, and corruption of our democratic institutions. His solutions prescribe excluding corporations from political participation, implementing serious political campaign reform, eliminating corporate welfare, regulating international corporations and finance, making financial speculation unprofitable, reestablishing locally owned and managed economies that rely predominantly on local resources, and focusing on service to life, not money, as the purpose of our economic existence. Korten makes a good case, but his solutions won't necessarily fly in the face of reality. Still, his book should find a receptive audience in both academic and public libraries.ANorman B. Hutcherson, Kern Cty. Lib., Bakersfield, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.