Democratizing Wealth and Building a Community-sustaining Economy From the Ground Up

This symposium consists of a keynote talk by Gar Alperovitz, noted scholar, activist, founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and author of such books as America Beyond Capitalism, followed by discussion and provocation by Jerry Davis. Alperovitz has been directly involved in community-based efforts at economic revitalization, including most recently the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland. His talk poses the provocative question: If you don’t like capitalism, and you don’t like socialism, what do you want? He outlines the rationale and prospects for a new economy movement, what it means to build a new system to replace the crumbling one, and how we might begin. He proposes a possible next system that is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else entirely—and something entirely American.