THE system we have grown up in is in a mess. It’s falling apart at the seams and a lot of people are in pain because the things we thought would work don’t. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw up our own roadmap, says the author. We are no longer a faceless cog in the machinery of capitalism. We have a choice now.
This book outlines the two paths of management and labour available to each of us and teaches why we might be apt to resist the less-travelled but better choice. Talking of evolution which began with a single class – the aborigines or the tribals, the author says that over time it gave way to two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, with the former providing the capital and the latter their skill. Social economists wrote, “By producing their means of subsistence, we are indirectly producing the actual material life.” But here the author asks, “What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labour, but a third team – one that straddled elements of both?”
The social economists went on to argue that what we do all day, the way money is made, drives our schooling, our politics and our community, has been going on for centuries. For our entire lives, the push has been to produce, to conform and to consume. But what would happen if these three pillars were to change, or lose value? What would happen if the world began to care more about unique vices and remarkable insights than it does about cheap labour on the assembly line?
(Hachette, Little, Brown Book Group, 100 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DY; www.hachette.co.uk)
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