The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back
The book the American Prospect calls "an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern," by America's leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian
"An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons." -Naomi Klein
A sweeping exposéeacute; of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, The Privatization of Everything has elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as "a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains," Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it "a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book," and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a "persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best."
From Diane Ravitch ("an important new book about the dangers of privatization") to Heather McGhee ("a well-researched call to action"), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can--and are--wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code.
"Enlightening and sobering" (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls "a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship."
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Praise for The Privatization of Everything:
"Deserves a wide readership, and would be an informative and appropriate addition to courses in urban politics and public administration, but also potentially courses on democratic theory, American politics, and contemporary political economy. "
--Journal of Urban Affairs "Cohen and Mikaelian have written a seminal book on how government went wrong in the age of Reagan--an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern."
--The American Prospect "Privatization has become disturbingly widespread, as Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian show in their new book, The Privatization of Everything, seeping into every aspect of our society, from our schools, to our food inspection, to weather forecasting, to even the administration of our public welfare systems."
--The New Republic
"A strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains."
--Kirkus Reviews
--Publishers Weekly
"The Privatization of Everything is not just an invaluable critique of corporate America's fifty-year campaign to turn public goods into private profit centers--it also includes reproducible examples of successful anti-privatization fights."
--Labor Notes
"The book demonstrates why racial justice is a foundational principle for our democracy and how the racialized dismantling of the public is an attack on our core values as a nation. Racial justice and democracy are inextricably intertwined, and we cannot have one without the other. Both require robust public institutions driven by our values. The authors provide compelling, detailed and unassailable history and case studies on how privatization impoverishes our government and divides our people from each other. It is a powerful call to end these practices and build our public institutions through an equitable vision. We would be wise to heed that call."
--Glenn Harris, president, Race Forward "From water systems to private prisons, charter schools to exclusive patents on life-saving drugs, Cohen and Mikaelian describe an astonishing array of privatization scams and schemes and, helpfully, where some communities are successfully resisting."
--Annie Leonard, executive director, Greenpeace USA, and author of The Story of Stuff "Brilliantly distills and illustrates the critically important idea that our public goods should be controlled by the American people."
--Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains "Connects the dots between privatization and our current political crisis, showing how it has been enabled by and fed racism and the deterioration of our democratic culture. A must-read for policymakers and activists who want to rebuild government and democracy."
--Deepak Bhargava, distinguished lecturer, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, and former director, Center for Community Change "A well-researched call to action that reveals with crystal clarity the stakes of the stealth project to destroy the commons."
--Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together "A compelling and poignant case for why our publ...
