Beyond Capitalism: Framework for a Multidimensional Economics

If you would like to receive calendar invites with the links to all our speaker series events and receive updates on our project please email us at a.c.moiteirodasneves@uu.nl. 

You can read more about Aaron Benanav’s account of a multidimensional economics in two published articles in the New Left Review, or in Benanav’s website.

About the session: This talk presents an alternative socio-economic system—what I call a multidimensional economy—grounded in the premise that modern societies pursue multiple, irreducible goals that cannot be collapsed into a single universal equivalent without distortion. At its core is a set of democratically governed investment bodies that allocate resources across competing social priorities—such as decarbonization, improving care infrastructures, technological development, and raising work quality—under explicit budget constraints. Firms operate not as profit-maximizing entities but as worker-run organizations. Markets continue to play a role in coordinating production and consumption, but their outcomes are politically mediated through investment decisions that shape the direction of economic development. Rather than promising social harmony, this system treats conflict over economic futures as unavoidable and productive. It starts from the view that societies committed to multiple social and ecological values require economic structures capable of surfacing conflicts among these goals and providing legitimate ways of deciding among them. The multidimensional economy is designed to make such trade-offs visible, contestable, and collectively binding. The talk outlines the key components of this system and argues for its viability as a distinct alternative to both market-centered and technocratic planning models.

About the speaker: ​Aaron Benanav is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. As a historian, sociologist, and economic and social theorist, Benanav’s research spans a variety of topics, including automation and the future of work, unemployment and underemployment, histories of social and economic development, critical theory, and alternative economic systems. His first book, Automation and the Future of Work, was published by Verso in 2020 and has been translated into ten languages. He has also edited a special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History on the topic of “Workers and Obsolescence.” In addition to academic journals, Benanav’s writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, New Statesman, Boston Review, New Left Review, Jacobin, and Dissent.

Currently, Benanav is working on two new book projects. One project delves into the history and future of economic planning and democracy, while the other explores the global history of unemployment since 1940. 

If you would like to receive information about the speaker series, please email Catarina Neves at a.c.moiteirodasneves@uu.nl.