Transcending the economy: on the potential of passionate labour and the wastes

Michael Perelman, Macmillan, 182 pages, hardback, £30.00

The first part of this book sets out to show that the irrationality of market forces under capitalism imposes burdens of needless waste arising out of features such as conflict and inequality. The author also criticises the failure of traditional economists to make an effective analysis of this waste. Above all, the market system has failed to develop the boundless potentialities of human nature.

In the second part the author, who is professor of economics at California State University at Chico, develops the concept of passionate labour which was first put forward by the early French socialist Fourier, and gives examples ranging from wartime selflessness to blood donations and computer programming.To capture the potential of passionate labour, the author says that the first step is to rid society of all those forces which restrict human potential and the next step is to provide institutions to facilitate communication and co-operation. But the book ends at this point, without indicating the nature of these institutions. It seems designed to stimulate its readers to think this out for themselves.