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The Future of the Market: An Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature After the Collapse of 'Actually Existing Socialism'
The Future of the Market An Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature After the Collapse of 'Actually Existing Socialism' Author:Elmar Altvater In this book Elmar Altvater considers the discordant state of the capitalist world today, drawing on both green and socialist economies. The end of "actually existing socialism" has been widely hailed as confirmation that any barrier to the spontaneous logic of the market can only lead to disaster. Yet, both the post-Communist societies of the E... more »ast and large parts of the South face a protracted crisis to which the victorious West offers no solution in theory or practise. Against this background, Altvater's new book explains why Soviet planning ended in failure, having reproduced many negative features of the Western model without being able to sustain a global challenge to it. Altvater's central concern is to examine the claims currently made for the market, both in the history of capitalism and in the globalized market economy today. Has a free market ever existed in the sense of imposing itself on the will of political actors? Can the free market today ever lead the debt-ridden societies of Africa or Latin-America out of mass impoverishment? Can the world crisis of civilization, in all its dimensions, be overcome by relying on market models of production and consumption? These questions are addressed by drawing on an economic theory that puts human needs and human capacities, as well as the imperative need for a sustainable model of development, at the centre of the analysis.« less