Radical Abundance

'Rigorously argued and radically hopeful' - Grace Blakeley, author of Vulture Capitalism 'Indispensable ... resets the terms of left debate' - Jodi Dean, author of Capital's Grave Capitalism has created a world of bullshit abundance, where we have too much of what we don't need and too little of what we do. Through this system's pursuit of profits, we have been put on a collision course with social and ecological limits that can no longer be ignored. We need an alternative. We need radical abundance. A world of human and non-human flourishing made possible by democratically planned production. But radical abundance can't just be voted into existence through parliamentary means, it must be made by taking control of our collective reproduction in the here and now. Packed with fascinating research and real-life examples of communal planning and resistance, this book will convince you that a better future is possible, if we want it.

Kai Heron is a political organiser, trade unionist, and Lecturer in Political Ecology at Lancaster University's Environment Centre. He is the co-editor of the De Gruyter Degrowth Handbook (2024) and has published widely on the politics of green transitions, political theory, and political economy in academic journals and in popular outlets including The New Statesman, Sidecar, Jacobin Magazine, the Verso blog, e-flux, Rupture Magazine, and Spectre Journal. Keir Milburn is a writer, researcher, and activist. He has a background as an academic in political economy and organisational theory. His book Generation Left rovoked debate across several countries on generational political divides driven, in part, by generational imbalances in asset ownership. The book was reviewed in venues such as the London Review of Books and the New Left Review. He is an internationally recognised expert on economic democracy, the commons and Public-Common Partnerships, and is co-director of the think tank Abundance. Bertie Russell is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is an activist-researcher with a doctorate in critical geography from the University of Leeds. He specialises in urban commons, economic democracy, co-production and radical municipalism. He is co-editor of the forthcoming book Radical Municipalism: The Politics of the Common and the Democratization of Public Services.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: From Bullshit Abundance to Radical Abundance
Part I
2. The Necessity of Transition
3. Instituting Popular Protagonism
4. Denial and Derisking
Part II
5. Public-Common Partnerships
6. Urban Development
7. Pharmaceuticals
8. Food Systems
9. Conclusion: Futures
Notes
Bibliography