“As we humans puzzle our way to an understanding of how to live sustainably within Earth’s carrying capacity, Marvin Brown has provided a crucial piece of the puzzle. Civilizing the Economy is an important book because it expresses a keystone idea of the new economic system that must evolve if our species is to survive and live up to its potential.”
“In this profound and courageous book, Marvin Brown asks the question that moral philosophers and political economists have pondered since Socrates: What is a just society? In a spirit similar to E.F. Schumacher’s ‘economics as if people mattered’, he limns a bold, fresh and scholarly vision of a new civilized economic order with a fairer distribution of income, wealth, and goods.”
“Marvin Brown offers a creative new perspective on the economy. This creative approach will stimulate, provoke, and, hopefully move the conversation about what the economy should look like in the future forward.”
“Marvin Brown's intriguing argument sets out a compelling roadmap for directing the World’s economy at this critical stage of human history. Instead of turning toward disparate, atomic strategies (such as property maximization at any cost), Brown steers us toward a holistic strategy that combines environmental sustainable, corporate responsibility (broadly conceived to include ethical and humanitarian concerns), and real economic development that will provide for all the peoples of the world. The property v. provision paradigm is a foundational discussion that will both stimulate scholars as well as prompt constructive classroom debate.”
“In the current debate about the future of capitalism, Marvin Brown provides essential benchmarks to separate the wheat from the chaff in moving toward a civilized economy. His provocative and well-argued vision not only criticizes the dominant role of property in capitalism but also ventures into a novel design of economics, ‘the economics of provision’, which values economic activity over economic possessions. Moreover, against the ‘economization’ of society, he vigorously places economic activity within a frame of a civic agenda giving a balanced account of both economic and civic demands and limitations. This book is a must read in redefining capitalism.”
“This book is a must read for all of us who believe we must change our operating economic paradigms, and a foreshadowing of the dire consequences for all of us if we don't. Marvin Brown offers us a new economic path, which if followed might just lead us to the true meaning of civilization.”