Books on a range of New Economics and related topics are available from the SANE Resource Library. Books available from this source are indicated under the 'Resource Centre' site topic. Brief descriptions of some books of specific interest are provided below.
The Oikos Journey
A Theological Reflection on the Economic Crisis in South Africa
Copyright © 2006
The Diakonia Council of Churches, Durban,
on behalf of the Oikos study group
Website: www.diakonia.org.za
A GUIDE TO WHAT'S WRONG WITH ECONOMICS
edited by Edward Fullbrook.
PROPERTY for people, not for profit
By Ulrich Duchrow and Franz J Hinkelammert
Published by ZED Books in association
with CIIR (Catholic Institute for International Relations) 2004, 278
pages.
AFTER CAPITALISM - PROUT’S VISION FOR A NEW
WORLD
by Dada Maheshvarananda [More...]
Published by Proutist Universal Publications. ISBN: 1-877762-06-7 247 pages, price: $29.95 plus $2.00 postage and packaging. Proutist Universal, P.O. Box 984, Nelson, N.Z.
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS
By Margaret Legum. Ampersand Press, Cape Town, November 2002.
Clem Sunter, in the foreword, says:
“…the last chapter of this remarkable book… explains the title “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS”.
What we are looking for is a synthesis, but not a mixture of old socialist and capitalist style economics as some people recommend when putting forward a “Third Way”. We’re talking of something completely new; an economic system which is built up around ordinary, decent human values, where the health of families and communities, and the environment they live in, is at the top of the priority list. Start with morality and the sanctity of individual human life and work outwards. Simple as this change in approach seems, it leads to lots of surprising conclusions which run totally counter to current economic practice...
After reading this amazing tract of outrage and hope, we should all immediately go out and do something to improve the odds of this vision materialising.”
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS ! is based upon a set of lectures given at the Summer School of the University of Cape Town in January 2001.
This book is available from:
HORIZON LIBRARY SERVICES CC
P O Box 5,
Plumstead, C.P. 7801
Tel : +27 (0)21 706 0949
Fax : +27 (0)21 706 0940
e-mail: bookmark@bookpro.co.za
Beyond Reasonable Greed: Why Sustainable Business
is a Much Better Idea!
By Wayne Visser and Clem Sunter. Published by Human & Rosseau
Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2002.
“Greed is good”. Remember the phrase immortalised by Michael Douglas who played Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street? Well, the world has more than lived up to these words by pursuing the principle that excessive greed is even better. In a critical analysis of the principles driving modern business, Wayne Visser and Clem Sunter demonstrate that the predatory behaviour of the lion is symbolic of the way most companies are run today. But the world cannot go on like this. They argue strongly for an alternative and more positive vision involving sustainable business in both a social and an environmental sense. In order to achieve this, companies will need to change – as they call it ‘shapeshift’ – from the toothand-claw logic of lions to the more caring, holistic philosophy of the elephant.
The authors offer two scenarios for the medium to long term: Oases in the Desert where the corporate lions continue to rule, but their kingdoms are increasingly restricted by their own destructive behaviour and popular discontent; and Plains of the Serengeti where companies shapeshift into elephants which strive for a proper balance between cooperation and competition and a continuing diversity of species, large and small, strong and weak.
The conclusion of the book is that multilevel shapeshifting is required for sustainability. Apart from corporate transformation, it is up to governments on the one hand and each and every one of us as individuals on the other to adopt the persona of an elephant in order to pass on a worthwhile heritage to our children. Keep your trunks crossed!
MONEY: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal
Tender
By Thomas H. Greco, Jr. E-book Exerpted Version. Publisher Chelsea Green Publishing
Company, White River Junction, Vermont, USA, 2001. E-book
version available here (894Kb, PDF format).
Some truths are harder to take than others. The really hard
ones are turning points in our maturation, our understanding of this world we
live in. Losing Santa but discovering that Mom and Dad are the ones bringing
you presents might be a tolerable trade of fiction for reality. But learning
that Mom and Dad don’t love each other anymore and are getting a divorce
is an earthquake that might rock your world for life. To use another analogy,
learning that the earth is round was revolutionary 500 years ago but is apparently
“ho-hum” now. Yet try looking “up” at the stars and thinking
of them as being “down” (just as true) or “out” and see
what your insides do. Try thinking about sunrises and sunsets as the earth rolling
toward or away from the sun and see if everything changes. When truth perhaps
known but suppressed for survival erupts, often rage, relief, sorrow, confusion,
and liberation flow out like lava from our core. Tom Greco’s revelations
about the reality of money have this kind of power to change you forever.
SHORT CIRCUIT – Strengthening Local
Economics for Security in an Unstable World
By Richard Douthwaite – author of "The Growth Illusion" Publisher: Green Books,
U.K. 1996
The global economy can no longer be relied upon to provide the necessities of life. Even in wealthy countries, the vagaries of free trade and the unimpeded movement of capital pose a threat not just to job security but to food and energy supplies as well.
Short Circuit proposes that each community build an independent local economy capable of supplying the goods and services its people would need should the mainstream economy collapse. It details the financial structures necessary for self-reliance, and it describes the techniques already in use in pioneering communities across the industrialised world. These include local currency schemes and community banks that enable local interest rates and credit terms of differ from those in the world economy. Efforts to meet local food and energy requirements using local resources are also reviewed. Blending sophisticated analysis with practical guidance, Short Circuit opens up a wide range of possible futures and demonstrates sources of empowerment and cultural identity beyond conventional politics and economics. It is at once a survival manual, a guide to community self-sufficiency, a celebration of pluralism and diversity and an exciting call to action.
BUILDING A WIN-WIN WORLD
By Hazel Henderson
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. U.S.A. 1996
World-renowned futurist Hazel Henderson extends her twenty-five years of work in economics to examine the havoc the current economic system is creating at the global level. Markets are now spreading world-wide – a spread which is often equated with the hope of democracy spreading along with it. But markets still run on old textbook models that ignore social and environmental costs – leading to a new kind of warfare: global economic warfare.
Building a Win-Win World demonstrates how the global economy is unsustainable because of its negative effects on employees, families, communities, and the ecosystem. Henderson shows how win-win strategies can become the norm at every level when people see the true current and future costs of short-sighted, narrow economic policies.
PARADIGMS IN PROGRESS – Life beyond
Economics
By Hazel Henderson
Publisher: Knowledge Systems inc. U.S.A. 1991
Powerful and irreversible globalizing forces are at work. Out of the turbulence and momentum are emerging new sets of personal, institutional and global standards pointing the way toward a more workable human ecology. For this evolutionary process we need new directions and expanded contexts for creating a “win-win” world and new scorecards for measuring a saner, more equitable, gender-balanced, ecologically-conscious future. Hazel Henderson, economist and human ecologist reveals our vast potentials and possibilities.
GLOBAL MIND CHANGE – The Promise
of the Last Years of the Twentieth Century
By Willis Harman, PhD
Publisher: Knowledge Systems Inc.
U.S.A. 1988
We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history – a change in the actual belief structure of Western industrial society. Just as the Copernican revolution triggered the advances of modern science and technology, so is this transformation opening up new potentials of human consciousness. This global mind change not only possesses the ability to explain seeming paradoxes in our society but is giving us a universe that is awe-filled again. Its message is that no economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind by deliberately changing their internal image of reality, people are changing the world.
Few are better equipped to tell this tale than Willis Harman, president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, whose career spans both technical (electrical engineering) and psychological sciences.
BEYOND GROWTH – The Economics of
Sustainable Development
By Herman E.Daly
Publisher: Beacon Press U.S.A. 1996
In a book that will generate controversy, Daly turns his attention here to the major environmental debate surrounding ”sustainable development”. Daly argues that the idea of sustainable development now a catchword of environmentalism and international finance is being used in ways that are vacuous, certainly wrong, and probably dangerous. The necessary solutions turn out to be much more radical than most people suppose.
Daly argues that if sustainable development means anything at this historical moment, it demands that we conceive of the economy as part of the ecosystem and, as a result give up on the ideal of economics growth. We need a global understanding of developing welfare that does not entail expansion. These simple ideas turn out to be fundamentally radical concepts, and basic ideas about economic theory, poverty, trade, and population have to be discarded or rethought, as Daly shows in careful accessible detail.
These are questions with enormous practical consequences. Daly argues that there is a real fight to control the meaning of “sustainable development”, and that conventional economists and development thinkers are trying to water down its meaning to further their own ends Beyond Growth is an argument that will turn the debate around. A crucial, wide-ranging update of a major economist’s work, Beyond Growth is mandatory reading for anyone engaged in the debates about the environment.
BENEFITS AND TAXES – A Radical
Strategy
By James Robertson
Publisher: New Economics Foundation U.K. 1994
This paper is about simplifying the present system of welfare benefits and the present system of taxation, so as to promote economic efficiency, social justice and ecologically sustainable ways of Life. It is based on a preliminary study of the feasibility of combining four policy proposals. They are for:
In recent years, support for each of these four proposals has been growing. The case for each is strong in its own right. Their supporters will no doubt continue to research and promote each of them on its own merits. "New economics" writers have suggested that the proposals be combined. But so far the implications of combining them have not been explored or discussed in depth. This paper aims to stimulate further exploration and discussion.
THE GRIP OF DEATH
By Michael Rowbotham
Jon Carpenter Publishing, U.K. 1998
As a result of fractional reserve banking, over 90% of our money supply is loaned into existence by commercial banks and thus must grow by enough to at least pay the interest on the loan by which it was created. This gives a basic growth bias to the economy. Fractional reserve banking also transfers to private hands the state’s traditional right to issue money, and does so in a way that increases the cyclical instability of the economy. The corrective call for 100% reserve requirements has been made periodically not only by so-called ‘monetary cranks’ but also by economists of impeccable reputation such as Frank Knight and Irving Fisher. Michael Rowbotham’s forceful discussion is a welcome revival of an issue that has been too long dormant. - Herman Daly
CREATING NEW MONEY
By Joseph Huber and James Robertson
Publisher: New Economics Foundation
U.K. 2000
The existing money system is out of date.
In modern democratic societies, the value created by issuing new money should be a common, not a private, resource. New money should be put into circulation as public spending, not as profit-making loans by commercial banks. In Britain, the result would be equivalent to 12p off income tax. Other countries would benefit comparably.
In the information age, money has mainly become information, electronically stored and transmitted. Monetary policies that serve the public interest can no longer be founded on a smoke-and-mirrors fiction that "real money" lurks behind the information.
The authors propose a simple reform, and spell out its practicalities step-by-step. The economic, social and environmental arguments for it are very strong. The public purse, private households and businesses will all benefit from it.
How can the money system be made to work better? How can its workings be made less mysterious, easier for politicians and citizens to understand? This report gives the answers.
WEALTH BEYOND MEASURE
By Paul Ekins
Publisher: Gaia Books U.K. 1992
Cash tills ring, money changes hands; an electronic message from the London Stock Exchange affects lives in Ghana or New York, Sydney or Jakarta. Every day, all over the world, billions of people play their part in humanity’s global growth economy. Money is the god, material wealth the principal virtue, and market economics the ruler of our times. But this economics of consumption is full of hidden costs. It is drawing us ever deeper into social, ecological, and economic crisis. We are trading the health of Gaia and our communities for freeways and the free market.
Wealth Beyond Measure shows us a way out of this destructive obsession with economic growth. It explores a new concept of wealth and wealth creation; it describes a new economic synthesis between the market state, families, and communities: it sets out what governments and people can do to build a sustainable society, to create prosperity and a fairer world in a healthy environment.