https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/01/03/18704055.php
Raul Zelik and Elmar Altvater discuss the nature of utopia, economics, how growth and work became fetishes, how what is rational in micro-economics can become irrational in macro-economics, time prosperity, how the financial crisis shows the self-destructiveness of capitalism and how Marx recognized the contradictions in capitalism. Alternatives are possible and necessary. Viva Occupy!
SURVEYING UTOPIA
A Conversation about the Myths of Capitalism and the Coming Society
By Raul Zelik and Elmar Altvater
[The following chapter on economics published in: Surveying Utopia (“Vermessung der Utopie,” 2010) is translated from the German on the Internet.]
Raul Zelik, b.1968, works in the border area of literature, social sciences and political activism. Zelik was a guest professor for politics at the National University in Bogota. Elmar Altvater, b.1938, is an emeritus professor for political economy at the Free University of Berlin. His books on globalization have been bestsellers. Altvater is a member of the academic advisory council of Attac Germany.
The Book
The “free market” seems unable to solve basic social and economic problems – whether climate change, industrial over-capacity, unemployment or distribution of wealth. Is a society beyond capitalism even conceivable? In their conversation Raul Zelik and Elmar Altvater give a critical analysis of the present. Their common attempt to develop a utopian model of society starts from an idea of the economy that is based on reason and includes ecological and social public interest
