India: Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse

Abstract

Realizing Hope: Life beyond Capitalism, sums up the spirit of the entire book. In this sense, the question Albert is facing is not ‘is there an alternative to capitalism?’, which seems to be taken for granted. Rather, the author sets out to answer, both at once, how concretely to build a better society and overcome the vast inequalities of wealth and power that capitalism creates, and what consequences a new socio-political system might have. Offering arguments in defence of his radical egalitarian and democratic project, Albert furthers his idea of ‘Participatory Economics’(‘Parecon’), which he has already presented in previous works. This edition of Realizing Hope, which is targeted at a wide audience of activists beyond academia, is mainly aimed at showing the positive implications that Parecon may bring to other human spheres, in a broadly conceived manner. In this regard, it is not only economics and politics