“Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.

The economic crisis has many labels ranging from "subprime crisis" to "credit crunch," to "financial tsunami" or "economic Armageddon. Around the world, people are coming to a single diagnosis: "Something is deeply unhealthy in our world." This book advocates a deep paradigm shift, not just from one rigid paradigm to another rigid paradigm, but away from rigidity altogether. Away from massive institutions toward a global movement that is co-created by people and their enthusiastic energy. We need a dignity revolution, and not just in Tunisia or Egypt. Now we need a global dignity revolution, a world dignity movement, a movement that creates inclusion, both locally and globally. This book by the author of award winning books "Making Enemies - Humiliation and International Conflict," "Emotion and Conflict," as well as "Gender, Humiliation, and Global Security" provides an overview about the plurality of concepts and movements aimed at this.

The big economic story of our times is not the Great Recession. It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long. The result was an explosion in economic growth and proof that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment, or material causes, and a whole lot more on ideas and what people believe. Or so says Deirdre N. McCloskey in Bourgeois Dignity, a fiercely contrarian history that wages a similar argument about economics in the West. Here she turns her attention to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to reconsider the birth of the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity. An utterly fascinating sequel to her critically acclaimed book The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity is a feast of intellectual riches from one of our most spirited and ambitious historians—a work that will forever change our understanding of how the power of persuasion shapes our economic lives.

Does work give our lives purpose, meaning and status? Or is it a tedious necessity that will soon be abolished by automation, leaving humans free to enjoy a life of leisure and basic income? In this erudite and highly readable book, Jon Cruddas MP argues that it is imperative that the Left rejects the siren call of technological determinism and roots it politics firmly in the workplace. Drawing from his experience of his own Dagenham and Rainham constituency, he examines the history of Marxist and social democratic thinking about work in order to critique the fatalism of both Blairism and radical left techno-utopianism, which, he contends, have more in common than either would like to admit. He argues that, especially in the context of COVID-19, socialists must embrace an ethical socialist politics based on the dignity and agency of the labour interest. This timely book is a brilliant intervention in the highly contentious debate on the future of work, as well as an ambitious account of how the left must rediscover its animating purpose or risk irrelevance.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

“A Humane Economy is like a seminar on integral freedom conducted by a professor of uncommon brilliance.” —Wall Street Journal “If any person in our contemporary world is entitled to a hearing it is Wilhelm Röpke.” —New York Times A Humane Economy offers one of the most accessible and compelling explanations of how economies operate ever written. The masterwork of the great twentieth-century economist Wilhelm Röpke, this book presents a sweeping, brilliant exposition of market mechanics and moral philosophy. Röpke cuts through the jargon and statistics that make most economic writing so obscure and confusing. Over and over, the great Swiss economist stresses one simple point: you cannot separate economic principles from human behavior. Röpke’s observations are as relevant today as when they were first set forth a half century ago. He clearly demonstrates how those societies that have embraced free-market principles have achieved phenomenal economic success—and how those that cling to theories of economic centralization endure stagnation and persistent poverty. A Humane Economy shows how economic processes and government policies influence our behavior and choices—to the betterment or detriment of life in those vital and highly fragile human structures we call communities. “It is the precept of ethical and humane behavior, no less than of political wisdom,” Röpke reminds us, “to adapt economic policy to man, not man to economic policy.”

This books brings together scholarly works on the Economy for the Common Good (ECG), both from conceptual and empirical perspectives. The contributions were presented at the first-ever international scientific conference on this topic in Bremen, Germany, organised by the School of Graduate and Professional Studies (Institut für Wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung) of Hochschule Bremen - City University of Applied Sciences and the Research Council of the Economy for the Common Good (Forschungsverein der Gemeinwohlökonomie e.V.) in November 2019. The Economy for the Common Good (ECG) can be considered as a new approach in-line with several socio-economic and political approaches that aim to frame economic activity within ecological and social boundaries. But different to other approaches, the ECG aims to embed economic activities into a broader cultural and social context and to link them with the core human values of dignity, solidarity, social justice, environmental sustainability, democracy and transparency. The movement started in 2010 with the publication of the book "Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie" (Economy for the Common Good) by Christian Felber and the presentation of a first version of the common good balance sheet by a group of Austrian entrepreneurs. Since then, the movement has spread from the German-speaking countries to other countries, especially in Europe and Latin America.