Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2023
The need for a new economy is great and the obstacles are many: growing inequalities within and between nations and regions, new complicity between corporations and non-democratic political regimes and failure of workers worldwide to make common cause. There are alternative models, indicating that a more egalitarian approach does not necessarily reduce living standards. Environmental degradation cannot be addressed by a technological fix: the threat to our long-term survival is pre-figured in the impact of climate change and corporate rapacity on the land and sea resources of the indigenous minorities who live as humanity has lived for most of its existence. A 10-point plan for a follow-up to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals is suggested, but it will work only if solidarity networks can be built across divides of ascribed race, religion and nominal income levels, to express the will of the people in place of the government representatives who are prepared to gamble the future of humanity for corporate profit and power.