Norwegian by birth, Roar Bjonnes has lived here in the U.S. for the majority of his life, managing a retreat center in Madison County. Author of several books, he has also written numerous articles on economic and environmental issues in magazines and newspapers. With this background it is no surprise that his recent book, “Economic Democracy: A Practical Guide to Life After Capitalism,” (Inner World Publications, 2026, 151 pages) should appear right at a time when the world is faltering and it is needed most.
In a heavily researched volume, but written in a casual conversational tone, Bjonnes convincingly shows us the failings of American capitalism and how it has led us to the precipice we are now standing on as we not so casually peer over the cliff. But this is not a treatise of doom and gloom. In this tome, he doesn’t merely focus on the negative aspects of our culture, but provides us with alternatives such as changing the ground rules of our economy, creating an economic democracy and the importance of regenerative agriculture.
As a young man, Bjonnes was concerned about pesticides and chemicals in farming practices in Norway, and asked the School for Agriculture there to grant him and a friend some land to demonstrate the non-toxic results of organic gardening. That land, today, has become a beacon of sustainable organic agriculture worldwide. “Growing up in Norway,” he writes, “during the 1960s and 1970s, I experienced a way of life that now seems almost lost. Nearly every household in my village maintained a productive garden. This pattern of local self-reliance began to disappear in the 1980s.”
He goes on to describe how the gardens and rivers have become polluted and are thus degrading the ecosystems. He surmises in the early pages of the text that the problem was not only industrialized agriculture but “the broader logic of centralized, growth-driven capitalism itself.”
“We are consuming resources at a rate that would require nearly 3 earths to sustain us. How far we have drifted from a sustainable relationship with the natural world in a remarkably short time,” he proclaims.
From these and other realizations, Bjonnes then embarks upon the book’s journey into the imagined world of recovery and sustainability. “The challenge before us is to realign our systems of production and consumption with the limits and rhythms of the Earth,” he begins in a positive progressive vein.
Bjonnes touts his vision of an “economic democracy,” which he describes like this: “economic power needs to be broadly distributed rather than concentrated in the hands of a few. This vision would include worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, public and commons-based ownership models and decentralized production systems rooted in place; with prioritizing the fulfillment of human needs, social well-being, and ecological balance. It values resilience over efficiency, cooperation over competition, and sufficiency over excess.”
With these generalizations, Bjonnes is off to a good start. He is not talking here about cutting ourselves off from the world, but rather “creating an economy that is capable of sustaining a flourishing life for both people and planet.”
In the chapter on “From Mercantilism to Green Capitalism,” he writes that “the core claims used to justify capitalism — that self-interest produces shared prosperity, that free trade benefits all, and that green reform can reconcile profit with ecology — do not hold up well against the historical record.” He breaks this down throughout the book, using acknowledged factual details featured in scientific and journalistic records which are listed in a four-page Appendix at the end of the book citing sources such as E.F. Schumacher, Paul Hawken, Erik Reinert, Theodore Roszak and print sources such as The Economist Ecologist Magazine, New Internationalist and Atlantic Monthly.
Bjonnes discusses “green capitalism” and “regenerative agriculture” in an economic democracy, quoting E.F. Schumacher’s classic (which I read when I was in my 20s) and “Small Is Beautiful” (1973), where Schumacher says, “an economy detached from nature would ultimately undermine itself.” Schumacher’s words resonate as prophetic when we look at the numbers and statistics related to today’s U.S. and the notion of sustainability.
Bjonnes goes on to say that “people and planet need to be part of economic planning and accounting,” citing the many Green parties from across Europe, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand that are working models for what can and needs to be achieved here in the U.S. if we are going to ever achieve any sense of balance and economic and environmental stability. Toward the end of the book, Bjonnes states that “the crises of our time — inequality, ecological breakdown, financial instability, democratic erosion — are not accidental deviations, they are among capitalism’s most predictable outcomes. The task ahead is, therefore, to build the alliances, institutions, and democratic capacities required to move beyond capitalism. That work will be difficult, uneven, and contested. But history shows that economic systems are not fixed laws of nature, they are human creations, and what has been made can be remade.”
Finally, Bjonnes’ humble and hopeful last words in “Economic Democracy” come from his heart and go to the heart of the matter: “It is my hope that this book can offer a modest contribution to the profound changes that are both necessary and, I believe, already underway.”
(Thomas Crowe is the author of 30 books including the award-winning book of environmental nonficton Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods. He is a resident of Jackson County.)