The Importance of Ownership

Following the 2007–08 global financial crisis and subsequent years of stagnation in many economies, there remains no consensus alternative to ‘capitalism unleashed’. This chapter considers that alternative. Just as the rise of capitalism led to the co-operative, Marxian, and other critiques, and just as the crisis of the 1930s led to Keynesianism and social democracy across much of Western Europe and a new international order as fashioned at Bretton Woods, so the failure of capitalism unleashed needs to herald a new era of global economic development—sustainable environmentally, economically, and socially. This will require a greater degree of corporate diversity, with a range of corporate forms—private, state, and co-operative and mutual. This is needed to make the productive system more resilient. It would also be a way of tackling the otherwise relentless spiral of ever greater inequality.