New Internationalist

Capitalism is failing and ordinary people are forced to pay the price. With such deep-rooted problems there is real hunger for alternative ways of organizing our economic system. Answering the question, "Is there a co-operative alternative to capitalism?" this book showcases fourteen responses from economists, academics, co-operators, politicians, and campaigners, exploring both the success and untapped potential of co-operatives. Each essay approaches from a new direction—from the flourishing open source movement to cases of co-operative success in different parts of the world.

Rob Harrison has written and commented widely on social change issues for more than twenty years.

From Occupy to Uncut, from the Arab Spring to the Slutwalk movement, few questions about recent activism raise as much controversy as the role of the internet. This book suggests that the internet is a tool, not a cause, of social change. It has profoundly affected the way people communicate, making it easier to find the truth, to learn from activists on the other side of the world, to co-ordinate campaigns without hierarchy and to expose governments and corporations to public ridicule. But it has also helped those same governments and corporations to spy on activists, to disrupt campaigns and to create illusions of popular support.

Focused on the real-life experiences of activists rather than theory or abstract statistics, Digital Revolutions asks how the internet has affected activism, how it has allowed movements to go global more quickly and what the future holds for corporations and social movements that are doing battle online.

Symon Hill has campaigned on the arms trade, religious liberty, same-sex marriage, disability rights, and economic injustice. He has worked with the Campaign Against Arms Trade and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and was a founding member of Christianity Uncut. He has trained hundreds of activists in campaigning skills and media engagement. In February 2012 he was dragged by police from the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral during the eviction of Occupy London Stock Exchange. He is associate director of the Ekklesia think tank and associate tutor at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. He writes for The Guardian, Morningstar, The Friend, and Third Way. His first book was The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion.

The free-market capitalist system is in the process of collapse and we must now adjust to the reality of declining prosperity in the West. We should forget about growth and concentrate instead on the creation of jobs and reducing fossil fuel use—and it isn't impossible to achieve these two apparently conflicting aims.

This is the thrust of the author's arguments and through the use of clear consistent charts he builds his case up from first principles. He graphically illustrates every important point and creates a compelling and powerful picture of why it's bad, why it's going to get worse, and why this presents an opportunity to make things better.

This is a vision of life in which we will be forced to confront the real issues. Among other things, we must recognize that all wealth comes from the earth, we must concentrate on creating jobs and sharing earnings more fairly, and we should have more regulation especially in relation to banks and corporations and reducing competition between nations. And most of all we must return to the real values of real industry away from the current obsession with making money from money.

Mike Roscoe is a journalist with many years' experience in the interpretation of data and the illustration of such information in graphic form, accompanied by clear and concise text. He has worked at the Financial Times, the Economist, the Daily Telegraph, and the Independent.

"A major contribution to changing the parameters of political debate. It helps move beyond the pseudo-alternatives of the political mainstream and begin to work for the kind of change we can believe in." —John P Clark, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, New Orleans

Financial collapse and crisis; disgust at bankers' greed; the devastating effects of yawning inequality: all these and more have led to widespread dissatisfaction and disenchantment with capitalism. People are crying out for an alternative but are continually told that one does not exist.

Richard Swift examines the past shortcomings and present health of not one but many other paths to changing the world, including socialism, social democracy, anarchism, ecology, and degrowth.

In this fully updated new edition he argues that our current centralized but beleaguered 'thin democracy' is vulnerable to corruption by big money and by crude populism and patriotism. A sane alternative is based on a democratically controlled commonwealth, and a 'thick democracy' populated with many nodes of popular power rooted in both the economy and civil society.

Combining the practical with the visionary, he shows that finding alternatives to capitalism is no longer an academic issue for the left—it is an urgent planetary necessity.

Richard Swift is a journalist and activist who works in print and radio. He was for more than two decades an editor of the New Internationalist magazine. He has written a number of books on themes as diverse as mosquitoes and street gangs. His current interests include forms of radical democracy and ecological degrowth alternatives.

"You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring." Malalai Joya, the young member of the Afghan parliament, refuses to let injustice go unchallenged. Her words reflect the irrepressible attitudes and actions of all the women and men who tell their stories here.

As with all the titles in New Internationalist's World Changing imprint, Nine Lives sees opportunity in the midst of adversity and presents the life stories of people who have been confronted with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, opposition, and oppression.

Whether it is human rights activist Harry Wu, who spent nineteen years in Chinese labor camps, or Nobel Laureate and President of Costa Rica Oscar Arias Sánchez, each of the nine voices in this collection has confronted an urgent and inescapable need to dig deep, either to rescue themselves or to forge a fresh way forward for others.

To understand the key stories behind the headlines, Peter Braaksma believes that it is essential to feel the personal, intimate experience of people working on the frontline of human rights and humanitarian issues; that the stories, uninterrupted and unpolished, must speak for themselves.

Reading like nine mini-novels, the nine remarkable stories belong to Bassam Aramin (Palestinian National Authority), Monireh Baradaran (Iran), Youk Chhang (Cambodia), Sompop Jantraka (Thailand), Malalai Joya (Afghanistan), Chaeli Mycroft (South Africa), Oscar Arias Sánchez (Costa Rica), and Harry Wu (China).

Peter Braaksma has worked as an editor, communications advisor, and journalist in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Since September 2011, the Occupy movement has captured the world's imagination. The media has been flooded with accounts of demonstrations, descriptions of the encampments, interviews with Occupiers, and discussions of Occupy's merits, political and otherwise. But what do its participants have to say?

Dreaming in Public gathers together dispatches, essays, blog posts, and images from within the movement aimed at influencing its development and addressing those not yet involved. Produced by participant journalists, political analysts, writers, polemicists, photographers, organizers, and activists, these documents capture the vibrant, contentious, illuminating, and inventive exchange of Occupy.

Work from contributors such as Naomi Klein and Harsha Walia complement public declarations from the movement, images, and graphics. Some pieces explore the rites and rituals of the movement, others its aims and overall structure. Yet others take up the role differences of race and gender play in a movement that claims to represent the 99%, and the complicated business of maintaining urban encampments. Many consider the challenge participatory democracy poses to conventional ideas of what politics is or should be.

The materials in this collection attest not only to the extraordinary political energy that has already come out of Occupy, but to the implications of the movement for the future.

Amy Schrager Lang is professor of English and humanities at Syracuse University and author of a number of books.

Daniel Lang/Levitsky is an artist, theater producer, writer, and founding member of the Direct Action Network and Jews Against the Occupation.

This timely book argues that no major movement has ever been successful without counterpower, or the power that the "have-nots" can use to remove the power of the "haves."

Investigating the history and tactics of major movements of the past and today's global justice and human rights movements, Tim Gee demonstrates what works and what doesn't work. In showing how counterpower can be strategically applied, Gee has created an inspiration for activists and an invaluable resource for teachers and students of social change.

Tim Gee is a writer and communications specialist working with campaigning organizations in the United Kingdom and worldwide.

With capitalism vulnerable and out-of-step in the wake of financial crises this book investigates the alternatives that are on offer—including socialism, anarchism, and deep ecology. It picks its way through the pockets of resistant thinking and emerges with paths to changing the world that rest less on rigid ideology imposed from above than on practical transformation from below.

Richard Swift is former editor of New Internationalist magazine and author of the No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy. In 2011, he won the Daniel Singer Millenium Prize for an original essay which helps further socialist ideas.

This is the updated second edition of the acclaimed anthology of radical writing about the economic crisis. People First Economics sees a historic opportunity to build a new model with humans rather than profit at its heart. The book has been expanded to include new contributions by Joseph Stiglitz, Walden Bello, and Jayati Ghosh.

Features the work of twenty three leading authors and experts including Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Klein, and George Monbiot.

People First Economics takes a long, hard look at the mess globalized capitalism is in, and shifts the focus back to where it belongs – putting the needs of people and the environment first.

Vanessa Baird and David Ransom have gathered a passionate group of writers, activists, leaders and thinkers to seize this opportunity to replace deep-rooted problems with well-founded solutions.

This book is about more than economics. It’s about radical changes that are social, moral and ecological, and it provides the opportunity to rethink what really matters in life.

David Ransom and Vanessa Baird are co-editors of New Internationalist magazine.

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Toxic debt, rising job losses, collapsing commodity prices and expanding poverty. How can we rein in these beasts unleashed by the free market economy?

People First Economics takes a long, hard look at the mess globalized capitalism is in, and shifts the focus back to where it belongs – putting the needs of people and the environment first.

People-First Economics looks at what recent events mean and could mean for us all. It's about economics—and about a lot more. It's about radical changes that are social, moral, ecological, and philosophical, too—changes that are already beginning to happen.

In a series of plain-speaking contributions, David Ransom brings together exciting and radical activists and thinkers, such as Naomi Klein, Walden Bello, and Susan George, to set the agenda for "economic democratization." Launching New Internationalist's World Changing imprint, People-First Economics covers everything from the green revolution and feminist economics to what we can learn from history and a ten-step economic detox. In doing so, it provides the opportunity to rethink what really matters in life.

David Ransom has been a co-editor of the New Internationalist since 1989. He is the author of the No-Nonsense Guide to Fair Trade.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and author. Her latest book is the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Walden Bello is a campaigner, academic, environmentalist, and journalist. He is senior analyst of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.

Susan George is a political scientist and fellow of the Transnational Institute. She has written many books, including Another World is Possible If...