Collective Ownership Based Economy

Capitalism is the socioeconomic system in practice for a long-time world over, including in the so-called socialist and communist countries. The roots of the capitalist economy evolved naturally since prehistoric times out of historical accidents. It is not that human society deliberately and consciously adopted this system.

The fundamental and central feature of the capitalist economy is private ownership of the wealth of society.

Social scientists have now recognized that the capitalist economy is defective, and the main adverse consequence of this is overall material scarcity and economic inequality for the majority. Other unfavorable effects are unscrupulous scramble for the accumulation of wealth and the resulting inter-human competition, conflicts, and violence. The capitalist economy is considered the root cause of all the existing human ills at both social and individual levels-not just for the poor but also the rich.

Since a couple of centuries ago, social scientists have been proposing a socialist model of the economy, with its many versions, as a better alternative to capitalism. The common central tenet of all these versions is collective ownership or common ownership of society's wealth by all its members.

Notable socialist movements that are actively involved at present are World Socialist Movement, The Venus Project, and The Zeitgeist Movement. The central tenet of all these economic models is collective ownership of wealth.

At present, socialist economies are misunderstood and misrepresented, and are associated with low popularity and stigma. It is mainly because the "communist" nations, past and present, have not adopted the twin principal tenets of a truly socialist economy-collective ownership of wealth and democracy.

The economic model proposed in this book resembles the existing models of socialist economic systems a lot. The model is called "Collective Ownership Based Economy" (COBE) because 'collective ownership' is the central tenet of a truly socialist economic model.

However, the proposed COBE model differs from other socialist models. It strongly endorses democracy; believes that the establishment of the new economy needs not to wait until the collapse of capitalism and can be done in a single country in isolation.

The ideas presented in the book aim at bringing about a fundamental structural change in the socioeconomic system. These ideas are in no way utopian, nor do they require rocket science to realize them. They are realistic, practicable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know.

Adopting the policy of collective ownership of wealth provides enormous benefit in terms of attaining material abundance and enhancement of leisure for people. This benefit is because of economies of scale, which is the most fundamental economic principle, though not pointed out hitherto by any of the advocates of socialist or socialist like economic models.

Find in this book the answers for the following questions and more: How an economic system conditions human behavior? How have humans evolved to end up with the current capitalist economic system? How, by replacing the current system with the proposed COBE, would the society achieve-material abundance, enhancement of human leisure, economic and sexual emancipation, elimination of human greed, hatred, superstitions, political corruption, crime, war, the establishment of world society, and so on? Also find in the book suggestions for further reforms in democracy, and an action plan to establish COBE.

It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known.-R. Buckminster Fuller