How To Be Free paperback

It is increasingly clear that whether one views capitalism positively or negatively, it is no longer working. This is true even for those with the highest dollar score on the Forbes leaderboard. In this book we argue that capitalism is fundamentally ill suited for the world as it exists. A different set of guiding principles for our economy is required. A new way of using and distributing resources. A new way of relating to one another in our communities, whether local or global.

The undying corpse of capitalism haunts our modern world, twisting global priorities and damaging not just our present but all possible futures. There is no easy solution to the many problems we face, but we believe that a short list of well defined values can help us evaluate the solutions on offer, and that democratic communism offers a way forward for both individual states and the world.

Our proposal is not for a new communist party or a single political movement, but a set of guiding values for those across the left. We want to codify things most people already believe, and point to areas of campaigning. We believe that adopting these values and fighting for true democracy will enable the left to make use of our discursive and self-critical nature. Ultimately, we want to provide a framework to help us to evaluate when people we disagree with are within the values and should be debated, or outside them and should be fought.

In the wake of her ‘literally a communist’ episode, Ash Sarkar in an interview with Owen Jones said that, ‘If you, as a leftist, say it's all or nothing, you've made your peace with nothing’. We agree. Progress is always incremental, whether those increments are large or small. We believe democratic communism is a tool that can be used to shape the future, allowing the marvellous diversity of the left to build a coherent vision of a better tomorrow.

We’ve kept it short. We wanted the book to be substantial enough to make our points without feeling rushed, but we also wanted reading it to feel like a pleasure and not a chore. We’ve also made an effort to write using plain English as much as possible. There’s a lot of left wing writing that requires you to have done a lot of other reading and know a lot of specialist jargon to be able to understand. We’ve tried to avoid that as much as possible, so that even if you’re new to politics you’ll be able to read and understand the points we make, and then decide for yourself what to do next.