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Britain faces huge challenges: inequality, public services under constant pressure, climate change - and in the long term, the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence. At the same time, the political and economic elite seem to have reached an impasse: there is a sense that things can only get worse. In Why Capitalists Need Communists , Charles Seaford demonstrates that this need not be, that radical, progressive change is perfectly possible and that the polarisation and nostalgia afflicting us is not inevitable. History shows that it is precisely when the ruling elite loses confidence - which it has - that significant change happens and that new alliances are formed to take over. Tackling the challenges will take planning, redistribution, re-fashioned business and finance, and a new ideology - one which confirms that we really can create the conditions for more people to flourish. But this is not a pipe-dream. This book sets out just how this can come about, based on interviews with over 50 business people, politicians, analysts and activists. Everyone with an interest in the future should read it.
List of contents
1: Introduction.- 2: Dystopia and Utopia.- 3: Flourishing and its Role.- 4: Change in the Past (1).- 5: Change in the Past (2).- 6: A Stagnant Society?.- 7: Planning.- 8: Redistribution.- 9: The System's Limits.- 10: Structural Change.- Epilogue: Where Now?.
About the author
Charles Seaford is a co-investigator at the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity, UK, and was formerly Head of the Centre for Wellbeing at the New Economics Foundation.
Summary
Britain faces huge challenges: inequality, public services under constant pressure, climate change - and in the long term, the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence. At the same time, the political and economic elite seem to have reached an impasse: there is a sense that things can only get worse. In Why Capitalists Need Communists, Charles Seaford demonstrates that this need not be, that radical, progressive change is perfectly possible and that the polarisation and nostalgia afflicting us is not inevitable. History shows that it is precisely when the ruling elite loses confidence – which it has – that significant change happens and that new alliances are formed to take over. Tackling the challenges will take planning, redistribution, re-fashioned business and finance, and a new ideology – one which confirms that we really can create the conditions for more people to flourish. But this is not a pipe-dream. This book sets out just how this can come about, based on interviews with over 50 business people, politicians, analysts and activists. Everyone with an interest in the future should read it.
