The Associative Economy : Insights Beyond the Welfare State and Into Post-Capitalism

The main thesis of the book is that the welfare state cannot have a sustainable future, given the overburdened state budget, unless it is managed by a strategic planning process. The book deals, moreover, with the new emergence of a non-profit private sector that feeds a kind of 'associative economy'. In this economy, which can be termed 'post-industrial society', deep changes occur in the structure of consumption preferences, production modes, labour-market behaviour and the role played by the state. The book also warns of the possible impact of the structural changes described by the accepted paradigms of conventional economics. The book gives a more clearly defined face to the undetermined post-industrial or post-capitalist society in advanced countries. "The main thesis of the book is that the welfare state cannot have a sustainable future, given the overburdened state budget, unless it is managed by a strategic planning process. The book deals, moreover, with the new emergence of a nonprofit private sector that feeds a kind of 'associative economy'. In this economy, which can be termed 'post-industrial society', deep changes occur in the structure of consumption preferences, production modes, labour-market behaviour and the role played by the state."--BOOK JACKET. Are Welfare States in crisis? Forty years after Gunnar Myrdal's seminal Beyond the Welfare State it is still little grasped in the 'reform' debate that the whole structure and economies of our societies are being transformed. This book reasserts the importance of a new employment and productive model - that of the 'associative economy' - which integrates social solidarity with economic planning.