Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy

摘要

This brief, but wide-ranging and accessible book offers a powerful critique of both neoclassical economic ideas and of the capitalist reality they legitimate. Though much of the critique Panayotakis provides is consonant with a "broad spectrum" left-Marxian analysis, it distinguishes itself in two related ways. First, it uses the concept of scarcity to interrogate the assumptions of neoclassical economics and also to expose the unequal patterns and unnecessary extent of suffering and privation characterizing global society. Second, it departs from much traditional Marxian and leftist thought in its recognition that scarcity is a feature of the human predicament that cannot be eliminated by the establishment of a future post-capitalist society as a realm of freedom and abundance. This aspect of the argument is prompted by (but not wholly determined by) Panayotakis's serious attempt to build recognition of the importance of the ecological conditions of social and economic life into his social theory.