Means to a Better World: Two Analytical Methods,Similar Policies

In different ways David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism and Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few tell us what we already know about capitalism’s rigged system favoring the rich while exploiting working people. Reich bases his analysis on five building blocks of “free markets” which demonstrate government’s unbreakable connection to the shape given to those markets. Reich’s solutions move the conversation leftward from the establishment mainstream. Harvey, on the other hand, examines seventeen contradictions in today’s capitalism that need to be resolved and proposes seventeen mandates to resolve them. His “mandates” have similarities to Reich’s policy suggestions. Coming from different perspectives and relying on different methodologies, but both focusing on establishing a more just society, both Reich and Harvey wind up suggesting similar changes.