by Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams
Pluto Press
12/20/2025, paperback
SKU: 9780745351575
Exploring utopian experimental alternatives to capitalism
Capitalism's crisis is planetary. It is a system upending nature and society, causing many to live and work in despair. So far, the left has been incapable of inspiring a practical challenge to it. In Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy, Vishwas Satgar and Michelle Williams map a new transformative politics arising from inspiring worker cooperative systems that advance planetary care from below and that have the potential to undermine the capitalist status quo.
Based on over a decade of research across 15 countries, the authors examine case studies that explore transformative approaches to social reproduction, public power, nature, and territorial expansion in opposition to global hegemonic power. They also uncover the power of solidarities engendering emancipatory, utopian imaginaries in the global north and south.
They show how, against all the odds, people are experimenting with deep democracy and building systems of care to live differently and exit the planetary crisis.
Reviews:
"In a world spiraling through climate breakdown and extreme inequality, this book reveals how communities are already building real alternatives from below. From Kerala to Mondragón, these stories of solidarity, commons, and planetary care show that another post-capitalist future is not just possible, it's happening" --Kohei Saito, author of Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism
"Just when it seems the world is hurtling toward capitalism's final solution, Satgar and Williams show us another path forward; masses of people making life, fashioning new social relations, and building power, not by withdrawing from struggle but heightening the contradictions and finding strength in creativity and collectivity. In these dark times, this book is the brilliant light and the compass we need, not just to save the planet but to make the world anew" --Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
"For anyone wanting to find out what worker cooperatives and the solidarity-economy based cooperative systems are, this book is an important source of knowledge and insights. It is also a great source of inspiration about the positive difference that the cooperative system can, and does, make to individuals, communities, societies, and to nature" --Adotey Bing-Pappoe, Co-Chair of Cooperation Africa
"As social democratic politicians do their best to prove in practice that there is no alternative, Satgar and Williams provide a timely map of the transformative experiments that are daily seeding feasible systemic alternatives. A remarkable book in which the documentation of innovation in ethical economics drives the development of an original theory of a solidarity based political economy just when it is most needed. A very useful resource for immediate use rather than simply a book to add to your bookshelves!" --Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper, co-author of New Politics from The Left
About the Contributors:
Vishwas Satgar is Professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the editor of the Democratic Marxism series, Principal Investigator for Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene and a veteran activist. He has worked extensively on post-apartheid cooperative development in township communities and has co-founded the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign and Climate Justice Charter Movement. He is the author of A Love Letter to the Many - Arguments for Transformative Left Politics in South Africa.
Michelle Williams is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her research focuses on democracy, transformative projects, alternative development, and women's participation in political and economic spaces. She is the co-author (with Thomas Isaac) of India, Building Alternatives: the Story of India's Oldest Worker Cooperative, and the co-editor (with Vishwas Satgar) of Destroying Democracy: Neoliberal Capitalism and the Rise of Authoritarian Politics.