Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation, 
Edited by Elandria Williams, Rachel Plattus, Eli Feghali and Nathan Schneider, OR Books, £19.99

IN THESE gloomy times of striking inequality, injustice, eco-disaster and war, it is easy to succumb to poison of defeatism. Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation is a welcome antidote.

This “collection of tools for transforming the economy and how people can co-govern it” centres on case studies from Argentina to Zimbabwe that show how some of the most oppressed people have devised, in the most difficult of circumstances, their own collective remedies to tackle hunger, joblessness, poverty and pollution. It is an ambitious work, with examples covering every area of the economy designed to show “another world is under construction.”

Targeted at both the “experienced activist and the person who doesn’t know where to start”, the book’s editors aim to “support people and communities working to make the places they live better – with big ideas, creative solutions and practical resources.” More specifically, it is to encourage the development of a “solidarity economy” that takes the world “beyond” a capitalist system controlled by a tiny, wealthy elite, and to do so in a way that interlinks with struggles to achieve climate justice and to overcome exploitation, racism and other forms of oppression.