Imprint: Triarchy Press
Publication: February 2025
List Price: £25.00
Format: Paperback
Extent: 342pp.
Size: 15.2 x 22.9 cm
ISBN: 978-1-917251-03-7
​Keywords: Capitalism; post-capitalism; futures; foresight; commons; growth; degrowth; three horizons; collapse; scenarios; sustainability; UBI; 

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Readership

This is a book for anyone thinking about our social and economic system and what comes next:
  • academic and professional futurists
  • business leaders and strategists
  • policy analysts and advisers
  • anyone responsible for strategic planning in any organisation
  • anyone searching for ideas about how to make a better future
  • anyone working with sustainability or the commons and curious to see how they might come together in a systematic way to create a better future. 

Read more:

Read the Introduction to the book
​
The Author

Capitalism ‘did its job’— now it’s time to replace it
“There are a hundred times more books about the end of capitalism, how to fix capitalism than there are about alternatives. There’s not much written about, hey, what should we do instead?” ​

Watch the 3-minute movie

Read the detailed review on Degrowth is the Answer

Imagining After Capitalism

Andy Hines

Imagining After Capitalism is the culmination of professional futurist Andy Hines’s 10-year exploration of what comes next after capitalism. Drawing on his decades of experience developing foresight methodologies, he offers three “guiding images” for the long-term future.

While a lot is written about what is wrong with capitalism, there is much less on what might replace it. The absence of compelling positive alternatives keeps us stuck in a combination of fear, denial, and false hope.

But Andy Hines found that many ideas about what could be next are being developed by citizens, activists, and scholars worldwide. This book analyzes and synthesizes those views, culminating in 3 broad “guiding images”:
  • an environmentally-driven Circular Commons
  • a socially-and politically-driven Non-Workers’ Paradise
  • a technology-driven Tech-Led Abundance.

Among the book’s key findings are:
  • demonizing capitalism is counter-productive – better to adopt the view that capitalism “did its job” but is no longer a good fi t with the emerging future.
  • there are 7 key drivers – shifting values, technology acceleration, inequality, automation, stagnation, climate and carrying capacity, and the ineffective left – creating the need for a new system.
  • proven futurist tools and methods, such as the Three Horizons framework, are uniquely suited to developing compelling images that provide a North Star to more desirable futures.
Imagining After Capitalism argues “first things first.” Let us first decide where we want to go before building detailed plans for getting there. The three “guiding images” are not the answers, but are intended to provoke discussion about the possibilities.

The book offers an alternative to the prevailing doom and gloom and suggests there are indeed positive alternatives out there and it’s time to get started on crafting a different path to the future!

Reviews in Brief...

Reviewed by Nathan M. Moore:
"Andy Hines’ Imagining After Capitalism (2025) presents a bold, speculative intervention in contemporary critical thought, offering a framework to envision economic, social, and cultural structures beyond the entrenched capitalist paradigm. By engaging with utopian imaginaries and theoretical extrapolations, Hines attempts to chart a course toward alternative modes of existence where human flourishing is no longer subordinated to market imperatives."

Reviewed by John M. Smart:
"This is a fantastic book on social, political, and economic change ... After Capitalism appreciates the progress and bounty that industrial capitalism has provided, yet recognizes its many flaws, and the growing recognition that humanity needs a political and economic system that serves the interests of all humans, without ravaging our environment."

Reviewed in AFP Compass
"I found Imagining After Capitalism to be surprisingly dense with foresight tools and information. ... the book uses so many foresight tools. It's an accessible masterclass in how these tools can work together."

Reviewed by Jim Golembeski
"...Imagining After Capitalism is an excellent guide to working through the details of identifying and reading the signals and then planning to create a preferred future instead of letting history unfold on its own terms.  Particularly noteworthy is Hines’ thorough attention to the scanning and researching step. "

Read the extended reviews here

Contents

​Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION AND APPROACH... 
 
PART I. THE RESEARCH... 
Chapter 2 - SIGNALS AND DRIVERS
2.1         Framing: Three horizons and the domain map
2.2         Scanning and researching
2.3         Drivers

 
Chapter 3 - THE BASELINE.
3.1         Context 
3.2         Driver outcomes. 
3.3         Key assumptions guiding Neoliberal Capitalism...
3.4         Other factors disintegrating the Baseline
3.5         Baseline scenario. 
 
Chapter 4 - TRANSITIONS. 
4.1         Collapse scenarios. 
4.1.1    Driver outcomes. 
4.1.2    Overshoot 
4.1.3    Class War. 
4.1.4    Rogue AI. 
4.2         New Equilibrium Scenarios. 
4.2.1    Driver Outcomes. 
4.2.2    New Sources of Value. 
4.2.3    Collaborative Sharing Platforms. 
4.2.4    Sustainability transition.. 
 
PART II. THE GUIDING IMAGES
(each of the next 3 chapters has these headings:  Driver outcomes,     Challenges and responses, Purposes, Principles, Tools, Personal, Leadership, Pathway, Templates)

Chapter 5 - CIRCULAR COMMONS
Chapter 6 - NON-WORKERS’ PARADISE.. 
Chapter 7 - TECH-LED ABUNDANCE 
 
Chapter 8 - IMPLICATIONS. 
8.1         Past: As prologue?. 
8.2         Present: Comparing drivers across the scenarios. 
8.3         Future: Utopia not impossible. 
8.4         The Global Question.. 
8.5         Pathways to the guiding images. 
 
Chapter 9 - CONCLUSION: TEN SHIFTS. 
9.2       In closing. 
 
GLOSSARY.. 
REFERENCES.