Beyond Markets: Economics for the Real World

A User's Guide to Unlearning Economics

Beyond Markets shows readers how to unlearn everything they know about economics. To confront the defining crises of the twenty-first century — climate change, widening inequality, global instability, and precarious work — we must challenge the narrow assumptions of conventional economics and develop a renewed “worldly philosophy” grounded in history, power, institutions, and shared human well-being.

The book opens with a broad historical account of how societies have organized economic life to meet human needs, from early systems of coordination to the rise and contradictions of capitalism. It shows how contemporary neoliberal economics represents a sharp departure from earlier liberal traditions associated with Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and John Kenneth Galbraith, which treated markets as tools embedded in moral, social, and political institutions. Building on the legacy of the worldly philosophers, including Smith, Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter, and later thinkers such as Samir Amin, Alice Amsden, Elinor Ostrom, Edith Penrose, Raúl Prebisch, and Amartya Sen, the book revisits core economic categories such as labor, value, interdependence, public goods, supply chains, and power. It emphasizes ethical, social, and planetary dimensions often hidden within economic models.

Beyond Markets does not offer a checklist of policy solutions. Instead, it provides a framework for rethinking economics itself, challenging the assumptions of standard introductory courses. Written for students, educators, and engaged readers without advanced training in economics, the book invites both unlearning and fresh learning, broadening how readers understand markets, capitalism, and their place in the wider social and ecological context.