Resources for learning more about Market Fundamentalism

In addition to the materials provided here, those who want to learn more about the problems with Market Fundamentalism and possible alternatives should look at some of these recent books:

Jared Bernstein, All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair     Economy, Berrett-Koehler, 2006.

In this short book, Bernstein draws a powerful contrast between YOYO—You’re on Your Own—Economics and WITT—We’re In This Together. YOYO is his name for Market Fundamentalism.

William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a         Moral Economy, Simon and Schuster, 2003.

One of our best economic journalists elaborates a vision of how our economy could be organized to be fairer, more efficient, and more environmentally sustainable. Greider draws on actual movements and experiments that point the way to a different economic future.

Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, The Fox and the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy, Berrett-Koehler, 2005.

Kahn and Minnich systematically attack one of the core ideas of Market Fundamentalism—that private solutions are always better than public ones. They show the destructive consequences of privatization in many different areas of social life.

For more scholarly books that explain the deep flaws in Market Fundamentalism, see: 

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Beacon Press, 2001     [originally published in 1944].

Polanyi develops a powerful historical argument that explains why the belief in self-regulating markets led to the 20^th century’s most tragic developments. 

Fred Block, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse, University of California Press, 1990.

In this book, Longview’s Senior Fellow explains how transformations in our economy have made the ideas on which Market Fundamentalism rests obsolete. He shows how technological transformations create the potential for a very different kind of economy.