“A good society,“ Michael Lebowitz tells us, “is one that permits the full development of human potential.” In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned. But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the “development of human potential,” they were not “good societies.” A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically—that is, become both a society’s premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.

Marxism has long been accused of economic determinism, reductionism and a silence on human experience. Beyond Capital argues that these problems can be traced back to Marx's failure to write his planned book on Wage-Labor. Added to the subsequent ignorance of Marx's method, the result has been a one-sided presentation of Marxism. By considering workers and their needs, Beyond Capital demonstrates the one-sidedness of such concepts as the value of labor-power and the theoretical inferences drawn from Capital. However, rather than rejecting Marx, Beyond Capital argues that his "political economy of the working class" and the process of struggle are central for going beyond capitalism.

"Michael A. Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his "Beyond Capital." Whereas Karl Marx, in "Capital," treated capitalism as an organic system that reproduces its premises of capital and wage-labor, Lebowitz argues that the solidarity of workers in struggle points toward an organic system of community, an alternative system that produces its own premises, communality, and recognition of the needs of others. "Between Capitalism and Community" demonstrates the analysis that capitalism contains within itself elements of a different society, one of community"--