About the Book

Capitalism or market economy is the socioeconomic system currently in practice all over the world, including in the so-called socialist and communist countries, and it has been so for a long time. The roots of the capitalist economy evolved naturally since prehistoric times out of historical accidents. It is not that one day a group of wise folks from different parts of the world sat together, thought through, conceived, and adopted this system.

The fundamental and central feature of the capitalist economy is private ownership of the wealth of society. All other features of capitalism are the consequence of this central feature. Capitalism, therefore, may rightly be called private ownership based economy (POBE).

Social scientists have now recognized that the capitalist economy is defective—unscientific and inefficient. The main adverse social consequence of this defect is material scarcity for the majority despite having enough natural resources in society. Other unfavorable effects are unscrupulous scramble for the accumulation of wealth and the resulting inter-human competition, conflicts, and violence. The capitalist economy is considered the root cause of all the existing human ills and sufferings at both social and individual levels—not just for the poor, but also for the rich.

Since a couple of centuries ago, social scientists have been proposing a socialist model of the economy, with its many versions, as a better alternative to capitalism. The common central tenet of all these versions is collective ownership or common ownership of society’s wealth by all its members. Socialist economy, therefore, may be called collective ownership based economy (COBE) similar to how capitalism may be called private ownership based economy (POBE).

Notable socialist movements that are actively involved at present are Communism, World Socialist Movement, The Venus Project, and The Zeitgeist Movement. The central tenet of all these economic models is collective ownership of wealth.

At present, socialist economies are misunderstood and misrepresented, and are associated with low popularity and stigma. It is mainly because the “communist” nations, past and present, have not adopted the twin principal tenets of a truly socialist economy—collective ownership of wealth and democracy.

The economic model proposed in this book resembles the existing models of socialist economic systems a lot. The model is called “Collective Ownership Based Economy” (COBE) because ‘collective ownership’ is the central tenet of a truly socialist economic model.

However, the proposed COBE model, unlike other socialist models, strongly endorses democracy; it believes that the new economic order can be established in a single country in isolation; it is of the view that the establishment of the new economy needs not to wait until the collapse of capitalism.

An ideal society is the one where all its members enjoy prosperity, peace, and happiness. 

The ideas presented in the book aim at establishing an ideal society by bringing about a fundamental structural change in the socioeconomic system. These ideas are in no way utopian, nor do they require rocket science to realize them. They are realistic, practicable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know.

Adopting the policy of collective ownership of wealth means providing enormous benefit in terms of attaining material abundance and enhancement of leisure for people. This benefit is because of economies of scale, which is the most fundamental economic principle, though not pointed out hitherto by any of the advocates of socialist or socialist like economic models.

Find in this book the answers for the following questions and more: How an economic system conditions human behavior? How have humans evolved to end up with the current capitalist economic system? How, by replacing the current system with the proposed COBE, would the society achieve—material abundance, enhancement of human leisure, economic and sexual emancipation, elimination of human greed, hatred, ego, envy, superstitions, political corruption, crime, war, the establishment of world society, and so on? Also find in the book suggestions for further reforms in democracy, and an action plan to establish COBE.

 “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known’. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. War is obsolete.”—R. Buckminster Fuller

The societal system determines the fate of every member of society. It is not the other way, like some say “The society changes, only if every member of it changes”.

“If solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself.” —Greta Thunberg, Climate activist