Incessant propaganda endlessly blares “there is no alternative” to capitalism. But there is always an alternative.

Humanity need not be condemned to sit by helplessly as an uncontrollable economic and political system spanning the world brings us devastating inequality, precarious jobs, life-threatening environmental destruction and global war. WHAT DO WE NEED BOSSES FOR? TOWARD ECONOMIC FREEDOM analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis, dissecting the mounting inequalities of capitalism and theorizing how we might organize a better world. Workers everywhere have repeatedly sought to create that better world, organizing to reverse their subordinate positions under capitalism and to take charge of their working lives and their workplaces through egalitarian movements that sought to build economies for everybody rather than for a minuscule capitalist elite. Political democracy is impossible without economic democracy. Economic democracy, in turn, is impossible under capitalism. As ever more people realize the present world system offers them nothing but more hard-ship, movements to create a better world inevitably will rise again.

Pete Dolack is an activist and writer who has organized with several groups working on human rights, environmental, trade and social issues, among them the No Spray Coalition, the Brooklyn Greens and Amnesty International, and most recently Trade Justice New York Metro. He is the author of the book WHAT DO WE NEED BOSSES FOR?, examining alternatives to capitalist economies and structures, and IT'S NOT OVER: LEARNING FROM THE SOCIALIST EXPERIMENT, a study of the 20th century’s experiments in socialism with an eye toward doing it better in the 21st century, along with the pamphlet THE WINNER AND LOSERS OF FASCISM, which examines the class nature of fascist régimes. He writes about the ongoing economic crisis and the political and environmental issues associated with it, on his Systemic Disorder blog, and for news sites such as CounterPunch (for whom he is labor and economics columnist) and ZNet. His articles have been published in more than 40 publications around the world.