by 
Ten years ago my journey to After Capitalism began. My grad students, in particular GA Christopher Manfredi, got excited by the topic. We chose it as the theme of our Annual Spring Gathering in 2012. While we identified more problems than solutions, I was hooked. It is important to keep in mind that at that time, any mention of alternatives to capitalism in public would get an eye roll or a chilly or even hostile reaction.
I lightly scanned and started reading books. Interesting stuff, but seemingly random and disconnected. About five years ago, however, things started to change. Ideas related to life beyond capitalism started to find their way into “polite society.” It was time to kick the research into gear. The occasional odd piece about after capitalism turned into a steady stream. About three years ago, it became a flood. Not only was Bernie Sanders threatening to win the Democratic nomination, but Andrew Wang ran for president on a Universal Basic Income (UBI) platform. What? The unthinkable became thinkable.
That said, most of the writing and ideas were focused on how to fix or reform capitalism. This is still true today, despite the fact that the world is seemingly on a path toward collapse. As a futurist I looked beyond and searched for alternatives. I became persuaded that capitalism is toast. It can’t be saved and it’s a matter of when, not if.
That finding inspired me to turn the research into a book (a draft is now in the hands of a publisher). Not just a book, though, as I plan to continue tracking this topic. I see “capitalism” as bigger than just an economic approach, but rather an operating system. Tracking changes to our operating system seems to me to be well worth the effort. – Andy Hines
Eye rolls would seem to be a particularly USA response… discussed much more commonly here in Europe. Re: changes to the operating system, this aligns very much with the Deep Transitions theory of change which suggests transformations require a hollowing out of the old regime and rules (= to “operating system”). See Deep Transitions / Deep Transitions Futures project, here https://deeptransitions.net/ – although admittedly, even the immediate applications of this project in the finance sector assume initially working within capitalist systems (finance / investment) rather than burning down the stock market. The trick to create a deep transition, according to the theory, is to encourage initiatives that break established system linkages and hollow out the old regime, while encouraging niches of innovation (new paradigms, mental models, actual innovations) that interconnect and reinforce each other to support emergence of the truly novel and transformative.