Hakuna Wakubwa, Uchumi Mpya kwa Ulimwengu Bora, publication date, November 1, is now available. Two British friends, Mark Evans and Eugene Nulman, created a wonderful book site at nobossesbook.com that includes advance testimonials, early reviews, the table of contents, and links to purchase. I hope you will visit it.
Niliandika Hapana Wakubwa kwa sababu ninaamini tunahitaji maono ya pamoja ili kudumisha matumaini, mkakati wa kuelekeza, na kuongeza kujitolea. Hivi majuzi nilijiuliza, vipi ikiwa ningealikwa kukagua Hapana Wakubwa? What would I say?
Imagine, it isn’t hard if you try. It is a sunny day sometime in the future. In many countries, a massive transformation has redefined society’s basic institutions. In other countries, similar transitions are in mid to late stages.
Supporters have named their aims “participatory socialism” or perhaps “participatory society.” Whatever its name, their project has transformed political, kinship, gender, cultural, community, economic, ecological, and international relations. All humanity and all humanity’s habitats.
Hapana Wakubwa says to reach such new relations, we need to know their defining features. To have hope, orientation, and commitment, we need economic, political, kinship, and culture/community vision.
Lakini Hapana Wakubwa doesn’t propose what future workers and consumers will eat or wear. Nor does it picture what they will drive. Nor enumerate their jobs. Nor indicate how long they will work each day. Hapana Wakubwa doesn’t list future holidays or describe future products. It celebrates no new gizmos.
Badala yake, Hapana Wakubwa envisions the personal and social characteristics of future workplaces. It envisions how future jobs affect us and how we affect them. It envisions norms that determine our future incomes. It envisions how we freely decide what to produce and consume.
Hapana Wakubwa proposes how we collectively and cooperatively decide our economic responsibilities and benefits. It proposes how we have no individuals dominate others. It explains what classlessness means and it proposes how to attain it in a self managing, equitable, solidaritous, and sustainable economy.
Hapana Wakubwa does not discuss contingent future policy decisions. It does not discuss as yet unknowable details of future economic life. Instead, Hapana Wakubwa proposes only what it finds necessary to ensure that our children and their children and their children’s children will equitably and freely implement the content and practices of their future economic lives.
Hapana Wakubwa proposes ways for future workers and consumers to implement their own free choices. It proposes ways for future workers and consumers to collectively organize their work and consumption. It proposes ways for them to collectively self manage their economic circumstances and simultaneously propel, reflect, and respect comparably liberating outcomes in also revolutionized families, sex/gender relations, cultural and community relations, and politics.
Kwa kifupi, Hapana Wakubwa proposes a new economy for a better world. Hapana Wakubwa proposes a post capitalist commons of productive assets; a non-hierarchical and self managing mode of economic decision making; a non corporate conception of work; a classless division of labor; workplace and society-wide methods to allot equitable incomes; and finally a new, non market, non centrally planned, decentralized and participatory self managing approach to allocation. Hapana Wakubwa is about dignified freedom. Goodbye, capitalism. Hello, participatory economics.
Hapana Wakubwa proposes five core institutional innovations it deems necessary to attain a classless, self managing, equitable, caring, innovative, sustainable, and even artistic economy. It offers these economic proposals as a flexible scaffold for movements to creatively enrich with diverse details based on practical experiences.
A book that addresses how we might better conduct economics in a better future is not a tweet or even a set of tweets. It is not a selfie. It is not binging a new TV series with snacks in hand. It doesn’t say only what one already agrees with. For these reasons it requires more hours, more intensity, and more commitment than many other uses of one’s time.
Lakini Hapana Wakubwa rejects academic pretense. It does not obfuscate. It prioritizes activism, organizing, hope, desire. As author and self-interested reviewer, I would say, yes, Hapana Wakubwa delivers viable and worthy economic vision. Big deal—of course I think that. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have written the book.
Beyond me, however, consider that Noam Chomsky says, “Hapana Wakubwa describes and advocates workers’ and consumers’ self-managing councils, a division of labor that balances empowering tasks among all workers, a norm that apportions income for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, and finally not markets or central planning, but instead participatory planning of what is produced, by what means, to what ends. It makes a compelling case that these features can be brought together in a spirit of solidarity to establish a self-managing, equitable, sustainable, participatory, new economy, with a rich artistic and intellectual culture as well.”
Or that Yanis Varoufakis says: “Hapana Wakubwa helps us retrieve from within ourselves the suppressed conviction, shared by every human being, that it is not alright to live under the tyranny of market forces weaponised by cunning bosses.”
And Kathy Kelly adds: “Seriously and carefully, Hapana Wakubwa aims to create a framework, a ‘scaffold,’ for a worthy economic plan. Hapana Wakubwa describes participatory economics with enjoyable candor, raising as many questions as it answers and inviting readers to set cynicism aside.”
Or Ron Daniels says: “Hapana Wakubwa, proposes an answer for economics from self managed decision making to balanced work and from equitable incomes to ending class division. Hapana Wakubwa should be widely read as we assess the way forward in this unprecedented moment in the history of this nation.”
And Bill Fletcher adds: Hapana Wakubwa does not argue whether the future that it proposes is probable, but rather insists that it is necessary. Albert’s latest book Hapana Wakubwa accomplishes just that and is a delight to read.”
Or Medea Benjamin says: “Read Hapana Wakubwa with delight at the creative ways we can organize—asap—to sweep Mr. Moneybags into the dustbin of history and create the new equitable, participatory, empowering, and sustainable world that we want to live in. “
And Ezequiel Adamovsky adds: Hakuna Wakubwa, Uchumi Mpya kwa Ulimwengu Bora offers a refined, compelling argument in favor of a non-capitalist, participatory economics. Its vision is of utmost importance for people and social movements struggling for a better world.”
And Jeremy Brecher concludes: “You’ll have a hard time finding a better guide to moving from capitalism to a genuinely free, equal, and participatory economy.”
But even such testimonials only suggest that Hapana Wakubwa fulfills a necessary but a far from sufficient condition for effectivity. Words unheard, even good books unread, sounds of silence have little practical impact.
Writing is a hit or miss endeavor. As its author, I can answer interview queries and do anything else in my reach to help Hapana Wakubwa soma. Ninaweza hata kujitathmini kwa ujasiri. Lakini nini kitaamua Hapana Wakubwa kufaulu au kutofaulu watakuwa wasomaji wa kitabu. Je, wasomaji wake watakagua, kukosoa, kusahihisha, kupanua au kujihusisha nayo kikamilifu Hapana Wakubwa? Will outlets carry readers’ reviews and debates? Will outlets address readers’ concerns, extend their extrapolations, evaluate their detractions, and elaborate their extensions? Will individuals, organizations, and media who doubt or who even already reject capitalism initiate inquiring, critical, creative steps toward together arriving at shared advocacy of a new economy for a better world? Only time and you will tell if that occurs at least in part by way of assessing No Bosses’ participatory socialist proposals.
ZNetwork inafadhiliwa tu kupitia ukarimu wa wasomaji wake.
kuchangia