Civilizing the State
Description
The liberal state is dead, long live the partner state
Across the world, the liberal nation state is on its knees. Rising inequality, deep political polarization, and the pervasive power of corporations are tearing apart the social contract and threatening to crush democracy.
Civilizing the State traces the history and development of the liberal state and its changing role from the enabler of capitalism to protector of citizen welfare, to its hollowing out and capture by corporate and elite interests rendering it unfit to address the compounding crises of inequality, injustice, ecological collapse, and loss of legitimacy.
Author John Restakis explores citizen-powered alternatives and experiments in co-operation, deep democracy, solidarity economics, and commoning from Spain, India, the global peasant movement, and the emerging stateless democracy of Rojava rising from the wreckage of the Syrian civil war.
The final section views the current crisis as an opportunity to reimagine the state not as handmaid to predatory elites but as a partner state that promotes equity, economic democracy, co-operation, and human thriving, driven by deep democracy and a fully sovereign civil society.
Incisive, penetrating, and inspirational, this is essential reading for all engaged citizens with a stake in co-creating a better future for all.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
John Restakis has been active in the co-op movement for 25 years. He is the former Executive Director of Community Evolution Foundation and the BC Co-operative Association. John is Co-founder of Synergia Co-operative Institute. A practitioner and pioneering researcher into international co-operative economies, he writes and lectures on economic democracy and the role of co-operatives in humanizing economies. He is the author of Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital and lives in Vancouver, BC.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Treason of the State
2. Civil Power and the New Legitimacy
3. The Commons: Dispossession and Reclamation
4. The Co-operative City
5. The Way of the Peasant
6. Deep Democracy in Kerala
7. Living Without Approval: Stateless Democracy in Rojava
8. The World Unmasked
9. Transformation and Integration
10. From Welfare State to Partner State
11. Civilizing the State: Principles and Policies
Epilogue
Notes
Index
About the Author
About New Society Publishers
