Imagining After Capitalism

Imagining After Capitalism is the culmination of professional futurist Andy Hines’s 10-year exploration of what comes next after capitalism. Drawing on his decades of experience developing foresight methodologies, he offers three “guiding images” for the long-term future.

While a lot is written about what is wrong with capitalism, there is much less on what might replace it. The absence of compelling positive alternatives keeps us stuck in a combination of fear, denial, and false hope.

But Andy Hines found that many ideas about what could be next are being developed by citizens, activists, and scholars worldwide. This book analyzes and synthesizes those views, culminating in 3 broad “guiding images”:

an environmentally-driven Circular Commons

a socially-and politically-driven Non-Workers’ Paradise

a technology-driven Tech-Led Abundance.

Among the book’s key findings are:

demonizing capitalism is counter-productive – better to adopt the view that capitalism “did its job” but is no longer a good fi t with the emerging future.

there are 7 key drivers – shifting values, technology acceleration, inequality, automation, stagnation, climate and carrying capacity, and the ineffective left – creating the need for a new system.

proven futurist tools and methods, such as the Three Horizons framework, are uniquely suited to developing compelling images that provide a North Star to more desirable futures.

Imagining After Capitalism argues “first things first.” Let us first decide where we want to go before building detailed plans for getting there. The three “guiding images” are not the answers, but are intended to provoke discussion about the possibilities.

The book offers an alternative to the prevailing doom and gloom and suggests there are indeed positive alternatives out there and it’s time to get started on crafting a different path to the future!