The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism, by Paul S. Adler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 240 pp.

Abstract

The financial collapse, deepening wealth inequality, police brutality against African Americans, wage stagnation and antilabor practices, sexual discrimination, corporate personhood, tech monopolization, increased urgency of the climate crisis, and current COVID-19 pandemic have given rise to left-leaning populism under the guises of such movements as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Poor People’s Campaign, Fight for 15, Indivisible, #MeToo, and the Sunrise Movement, among numerous others. [...]in seeking the root causes of these six crises, Adler threads together the features and by-products of the capitalist system, such as private enterprise, wage employment within firms, the capture of government by business, the natural environmental and social externalities posed by businesses, and a world economy that inherently depends on very uneven power relations. Admittedly, the majority of our research in business ethics and organizations and management offers at best theoretical and empirical tweaks to the status quo, translated practically into minor and temporary repairs to the crises posed by neoliberal capitalism.