What is The Next System Project?
The Next System Project is our research and development laboratory for building the democratic economy.
The Next System Project is aimed at bold thinking and action to address the systemic challenges we are facing now and in coming decades. Deep crises of economic inequality, racial injustice, failing democracy, and climate change are already upon us, and systemic problems require systemic solutions.
Together we must build a democratic economy – a next system in which democratic principles of popular sovereignty are extended from the political realm to the economy itself, and wealth is held in common in a plurality of forms, making for a just, accountable, and community-sustaining system that operates within planetary boundaries where all can thrive.
The need for a democratic economy stems from the recognition that a society half plutocratic and half democratic cannot long endure, as one half must – will – eventually supersede the other. This is occurring today before our eyes, as the plutocratic economy consumes our democratic polity. We must reverse this, suffusing democracy into our economy, and building the new political-economic system now necessary for our survival.
Responding to genuine hunger for a new way forward, and building on innovative thinking and practical experience wi new economic institutions and approaches being developed in communities across the country and around the world, our Next System Project works to assemble the elements, institutions, and strategies of a new political economy for the twenty-first century.
We first launched the Next System Project in March 2015 with a statement signed by hundreds of leading scholars, activists and practitioners, joined by thousands of others – called It’s Time to Face the Depth of the Systemic Crisis We Confront. We wrote an accompanying prospectus, New Political-Economic Possibilities for the Twenty-First Century. Back then, our contention that we were facing a crisis of the system, not just local political or economic difficulties, was a bold and provocative one. Today, this fact is increasingly understood.
But while there is growing agreement that there’s a crisis, there is little understanding of why and what that truly means. A dangerous gulf remains between the magnitude of the systemic challenge that is increasingly acknowledged and the scope and scale of the responses that are being conceived and proposed. Closing that gap – in understanding, political will, and the design of solutions – is the principal goal of the Next System Project in its current phase.
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Index of Systemic Trends
One of the signs that a crisis is systemic, rather than purely political or economic, is that key indicators decline or stay the same regardless of changes in political power or business cycles. Our Index of Systemic Trends tracks key social, economic and political indicators to provide a “snapshot” as to the performance of the U.S. political economy as a whole over time. On many very important indicators of economic, social, and democratic health there has been little improvement and, in many cases, substantial deterioration over an extended period – pointing to the need to move in the direction of a new system that will produce better outcomes.
In late 2024 we are publishing the first ever UK edition of the Index of Systemic Trends.
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Financialization
Financialization – the diversion of financial flows away from production and consumption towards asset markets in pursuit of capital gains – is not yet widely enough understood, even as it becomes the increasingly damaging force behind the extractive economy and its consequences for workers, society, and the natural world. Our work seeks to make visible and quantify financialization as a powerful and system-shaping process behind the present crisis, and to propose democratic economy solutions that point in the direction of definancialization and decommodification – an escape from the new dead hand of rent-seeking in our political economy.
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Wealth Supremacy
In her latest book, Wealth Supremacy, TDC’s Marjorie Kelly identifies a key driving force behind the multiple global crises we face today: financialization. She calls it “the problem we’re not yet talking about.” There is too much financial wealth in too few hands. To address this, Kelly highlights alternative economic models that are already in place, outlining what the foundations of a new, more democratic economy could be and the pathways we can take to get there.
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Next Generation Enterprise Design
Who owns and controls economic enterprises – public, private, and all forms in between – is an essential feature of every political economy. Today we accept capital-controlled, capital-owned, capital-maximizing corporations – driven by unlimited financial extraction – as the norm. TDC’s work on Next Generation Enterprise Design explores and demonstrates how deep enterprise design is creating the enterprises and institutions necessary for the future – from democratic, worker, community, and public ownership forms to redesigned traditional companies – if enterprises are to be fit for purpose in a democratic economy on a flourishing planet. Related work explores the spectrum of a Next System of Capital that can move beyond financialized capitalism to help create a life-serving economy.
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A Next System of Health
The U.S. healthcare sector currently consumes nearly one-fifth of GDP. This massive investment is inefficient and ineffective, producing highly inequitable outcomes for patients, communities, and the healthcare workforce. As a highly financialized sector, it contributes to growing economic inequality, itself an upstream determinant of health. What might it look like if we leveraged the incredible investments we make in healthcare to actually maximize the health and wellbeing of our communities? Our work aims to fundamentally transform the health and pharmaceutical sectors to make that possible.
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Next System Project Archive, 2015-2021
An archive of the earlier work of the Next System Project from 2015-2021 can be found at thenextsystem.org. This includes extensive work on environment and energy, including the nationalization of the fossil fuel industry; on community, land and housing ; on democratic ownership; on new systems, plus much more. Please pardon our dust as we migrate all this content to the TDC website over time.