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William Greider has been writing about the relationship between politics and economics and society for years, for Rolling Syone and now for The Nation. The best way to describe him is as a "pragmatic progressive" in a good sense. He supports the concept of capiytalism -- but he also sees its flaws, and where it has gone wrong. He accurately analyzed and foretold almost everything that has been happening over the last 25 years -- seeing the results long before they happened. Now he has a new book. In it he is emphasizing SOLUTIONS and HOPE. He is pushing for an honest conversation about the nature of capitalism and democracy, what is wrong with it and how it can be reformed. This book needs a lot more visibility. It's not sensationalist -- and it is radical enough that the Corporate Media os overlooking it. But it is important. Below is a press release from his website. (No copyright issues involved.) http://www.williamgreider.com---------------- http://www.williamgreider.com/books/soul/release.phpTHE SOUL OF CAPITALISM Opening Paths to a Moral Economy by William Greider In his previous bestsellers, Who Will Tell the People? and Secrets of the Temple, William Greider laid bare the inner workings of American politics and the Federal Reserve, revealing how they often work against the interests of the majority. Now, in THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy (Simon & Schuster; September 9, 2003; $28.00), Greider examines how the greatest wealth-creation engine in the history of the world is failing most of us, why it must be changed, and how intrepid pioneers are beginning to transform it. Public outrage over crooked corporate officers, the looting of pension funds, the defrauding of stockholders, and the wholesale firing of hard-working employees has reached a new high. Yet Greider argues that our anger actually has much deeper roots, as he analyzes how our relentless pursuit of unprecedented affluence has eroded family life, eaten away at our sense of personal and professional security, corroded our communities, impoverished our spiritual lives, and devastated our natural environment. The solution, Greider contends, will not come from the politics of the past, or from more government regulation, but from a fundamental realignment of power that is already underway on many fronts. A new moment in history We are living in a new historical and economic moment, Greider maintains. Nearly all Americans, with the notable exception of the very poor, have achieved self-sufficiency in basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. We have solved the ancient economic problem of scarcity known to every previous generation. “Yet the United States pushes on,” Greider writes, “like a long-distance runner who has won the race yet keeps running beyond the finish line, not looking back and not quite sure who or what drives him on. . . . The point of overwhelming abundance is now plainly in our face and beyond argument, yet seldom discussed as the new central premise of the economic condition. The incompleteness at the core of American life, I believe, is also about this new fact of history. Our situation is unique — learning how to live amidst endless plenty and, ironically, how to live well in spite of it. Our ancestors never had to face such a struggle. We cannot escape it.”
As people come to terms with this new condition, they are raising many fruitful and provocative questions. What, for example, now justifies the harsh personal sacrifices imposed on people’s lives — like ever-longer working hours and ever-less time for family, friends, and community activities — in the name of expanding the abundance? Why does capitalism continue to defend or ignore its many forms of social injury — especially ecological destruction — when the pursuit of greater accumulation is no longer a matter of human survival? If there is plenty to go around (as there clearly is), why does the economic order still require a permanent subcategory of the poor and dependent? Why must society accept a capitalism that persists in generating bigger inequalities from one generation to the next? If ever-greater concentrations of wealth and power are the inescapable result of our economic system, then what future is there for achieving genuine democracy instead of an elite plutocracy? These and other systemic problems are usually blamed on human nature, on the failure of schooling or the political system or society itself. The only remedy, we are assured, is achieving still “more.”
The reformers
Yet as Greider reports, many Americans no longer believe this line of reasoning and are starting to create a new kind of capitalism. They are experimenting in localized settings, convinced that alternatives are possible — not utopian schemes but self-interested and practical changes that can serve broader purposes. The reformers in THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM are surprisingly diverse, ranging from conservative business managers to small-town civic leaders, social agitators, ecologists, labor leaders, and ordinary citizens. They are turning their attention to a number of key areas in the economy, including:
Work. Our current system regularly puts people — even very successful people — in conflict with their personal values and human-scale aspirations. Others simply turn off their brains and do as they’re told. The remedy includes changing the terms of employment so that workers become owners — holding a real stake in the company and participating as insiders in its decision-making, rather than serving as rented tools of production. This reform has already been achieved, albeit unevenly, in thousands of employee-owned companies.
Finance capital. The financial system, as front-page stories of recent scandals have demonstrated, concentrates both economic and political power. Using other people’s money, Wall Street makes decisions that vastly alter the terms of American life, yet the great majority of those people are never consulted. Profound changes are beginning to unfold, however, as individuals and new financial institutions figure out how to withdraw their money from standard investment vehicles and use it to target social objectives. Paradoxically, while personal wealth has become more concentrated among the few, the broad ranks of working Americans may now have greater collective leverage through their pension funds. The institutions that hold retirement savings now essentially own the stock market — some 60 percent of the thousand largest companies, for example. And they are gingerly starting to assert their power, championing social values that neither Wall Street nor corporate boardrooms can afford to ignore.
Consumption. The concept of “more” started with the Pilgrims. Greider traces how our acquisitive values are deeply embedded in the American character, not just American capitalism. Nevertheless, people are beginning to recognize that patterns of consumption have to change, since the destruction of nature they produce is ultimately threatening to life itself. Ecologists argue that nothing short of industrial transformation is required to avert a crisis. Many companies, large and small, are demonstrating how it can be done.
Corporate power. The modern American corporation is relatively young and ripe for re-invention. Greider examines the privileged legal position of the corporation and how this protected status figured in the recent corporate scandals. He also explores how corporate governance and structure can be reformed while preserving the positive corporate qualities of efficiency and innovation. Resourceful companies show that concentrated, self-aggrandizing power is not required to function profitably and responsively. The challenge is to forge these rare exceptions into a general trend.
Public works. From the earliest canal-building projects, government has always participated in economic development. But the modern state, embraced by corporate political influence, has become a fountain of special indulgences and favors. Most do not actually advance development in any real sense, but merely enhance the profitability of individual firms or sectors. Meanwhile, government subsidy helps to foster many of the same social abuses its regulatory laws are supposed to curb. Greider explores the prospects for a “redevelopment state” that confines itself to long-term investments that authentically promise to reform society.
Greider acknowledges that the approaches taken by many of the reformers he profiles may seem remote from the current preoccupations of big politics and big business. But the margins are where society’s deepest reforms have usually originated in the American past. In fact, many of the reforms Greider proposes are old ideas that failed to take hold in earlier periods of history. Nevertheless, they all exist successfully within capitalism right now. In fact, one of capitalism’s great virtues is its tolerance for odd exceptions and deviations, its open space for invention. Indeed, capitalism is always reinventing itself — trying out new methods and ideas that if successful will be absorbed into conventional practice.
Toward a healthy, humane future
As Greider documents, the process of capitalistic re-invention is being refocused, here and there, to address social complaints the system has long ignored. He believes that we are at the very beginning of what will prove to be a long and difficult era of discovery and reform. But he also believes that American capitalism can be altered fundamentally so that it is aligned more faithfully with what people want and need in their lives, and with what American society needs for a healthy, humane future.
THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM is about making big changes in the way our economy functions — and malfunctions. Although deeply critical of the current system, it is above all optimistic. Brilliantly perceptive and sweeping in its analysis, it is also hard-headed and practical. Greider assures us that it is within our power to reinvent capitalism so that it works for us rather than against us. First, however, we must take responsibility for the system (and for ourselves) by exercising our capacity to shape the future we desire. Most people feel powerless to even consider such questions, since they know they are currently cut out of the big economic decisions that control so much of their lives. But Greider explains why we are not powerless as he shows us where our leverage is located, how others have used it, and how we can follow their example.
In THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM, one of our most eloquent populist spokesmen describes how reformers are finding ways to reconfigure the world’s mightiest economy so that it works for people as well as profits. In a nation no longer willing to allow the business and political elite to shape the economy to suit themselves, William Greider’s ideas and urgency are certain to find an enthusiastic audience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
William Greider is the bestselling author of five previous books on apparently inscrutable institutions that govern our lives, including One World, Ready or Not (on the global economy), Who Will Tell the People? (on the decline of democracy in America), and Secrets of the Temple (the first inside report on the Federal Reserve). A reporter for forty years, he was a national correspondent, an assistant managing editor, and a columnist for The Washington Post, as well as a columnist for Rolling Stone. He has also been an on-air correspondent for six documentaries for Frontline on PBS. Currently the national affairs correspondent for The Nation, he lives in Washington, D.C.
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