It is time to leave capitalism behind. We live in a system of economic feudalism that has nothing to do with a free market economy. The innovations we need for the solution of our truly important problems are not forthcoming. How can it be that technological developments financed by the taxpayer end up enriching private companies even if their activities violate public interests? We should reward talent and real performance and promote start-ups with good ideas. Based on a clear analysis and concrete proposals, Sahra Wagenknecht launches a discussion on new forms of ownership and sketches the outlines of an innovative and just economy.

Sahra Wagenknecht holds a Ph.D. in Economics and is a journalist and politician. Since October 2015 she has been the parliamentary leader of the party Die Linke in the German Bundestag. From 2010 to 2014 she was deputy secretary of her party, from 2004-2009 she was a Member of the European Parliament.

Translator's Foreword Sahra Wagenknecht is a prominent figure on Germany's political stage. Since 2009 she has been a member of the federal parliament and the party leadership of Die Linke. She appears regularly on public affairs talk shows and is frequently in the news. She is one of Germany's intellectually strongest and economically most knowledgeable politicians. While these are not the only, or even main, characteristics of a successful politician, they are all too rare in the country's political class. Like Chancellor Angela Merkel, Wagenknecht grew up in the former GDR (East Germany). She became politically active just prior to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. She is in the leadership of Die Linke, currently an opposition party in the German Bundestag with a feminist and socialist orientation. Wagenknecht may well earn a place in the German government, if not after the next elections in the fall of 2017, then at some future time. Prosperity without Greed is in equal parts political analysis and reform program. It explains in clear and jargon-free terms how today's capitalist economy really works, demonstrating how it runs afoul not only of basic ideas of social justice, but of the principles of a free market economy itself. She shows how today's dominant financial sector functions and how "the one percent" end up with most of society's wealth, for which they do not have to work. Most importantly, Wagenknecht sketches a vision of an alternative economy, a more genuine market economy without the dominance of private capitalists. While private wealth can still be earned in firms in which the owner remains personally liable, the ownership system of private shareholding, which she characterizes as "neo-feudalism", will be largely replaced by enterprises that are "self-owned"-employee-owned and common-good companies. Wagenknecht's brand of socialism has significant elements of "market radicalism", though clearly not of the neoliberal type which uses market ideology to disguise an anti-market and inegalitarian corporate order. It is clear by now that successful solutions for climate change-­induced problems will need to transcend the capitalist logic of limitless private capital accumulation. The significance of Wagenknecht's work emerges in this context with particular force-a guide for progressive organizations, movements and activists for how the existing economy could be transformed. The book comes at what seems like an inauspicious time for radical reform ideas, with a reactionary U.S. President recently installed in office. But political dynamics tend to be unpredictable, which is why the prospects for radical change of a progressive kind cannot and should not be discounted. Andreas Pickel, February 2017 Preface The time is out of joint; O curs'd spite, That ever I was born to set it right! Hamlet, in Shakespeare's famous tragedy, surveying the state of his kingdom Hamlet's attempt to set things right ends in major bloodshed, suggesting that such attempts ought not be imitated. Yet the lesson is not that we should simply accept society's dissolution. Instead, we need to approach the problem in a way that rises to the challenge. Hamlet yearns to return to the good old days. But the future lies in what is new and has never existed before. Ideas for change should be assessed in terms of their plausibility and persuasiveness, not for whether they have a track record of success. And isn't our own time out of joint? Isn't this what the news we hear and read on a daily basis, the online flood of information, tells us? The truth is, we all feel that things cannot and will not continue the way they are. The big question therefore is: what comes next? Civilization in retreat In many regions of the world, civilization is in retreat. Wars and civil wars have turned the Middle ast and parts of Africa into a blazing firestorm. Public order is collapsing. Clan leaders, war lords, and terror militias are taking control. Fear, chaos, atrocities and arbitrary killings are the result. Pretty much everywhere, the United States and European countries are involved in these conflicts. It's about raw materials and markets, profits and geostrategic advantages, pipeline routes and the competition for power with the West's old opponent, Russia. More than 60 million people worldwide have lost their homes and have become refugees as a result of such conflicts. Some of them make it to Europe. The majority survive in camps and tent cities located just outside their countries of origin: without work, without a future, without hope, relying on others to feed them and keep them alive. Even in the advanced industrialized countries-islands of wealth with a comparatively high standard of living-life has become tougher rather than better for many people. Financial bubbles, economic crises, unemployment, dying industrial regions, squalid bedroom communities, jobs that don't pay a living wage, poverty in old age, insecurity-all threaten our daily lives and frighten us. After us the flood Who is willing to find new solutions for our time, who has the ability, the courage and the right ideas? And who, conversely, has a secret or not so secret interest in keeping things just the way they are? "Après nous le déluge!"-"after us the flood"-in the words of the legendary mistress of French King Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour, in 1757 when bad news threatened to disrupt one of their lavish court celebrations. For the majority of French people at the time, on the other hand, life was no party-which is why the royal house of Bourbons would experience its own flood thirty years later. "After us the flood" is not a particularly attractive slogan for those who are up to their necks in water. That was true in the eighteenth century. Is it not true in the same way today? What are we waiting for? The richest 1 percent of the world population now has more wealth than the other 99 percent. 62 multi-billionaires own more assets than half of humanity combined1. At the same time, the inequality of incomes and assets continues to grow, not only on a global scale, but also and especially in the old industrialized countries. Over the past twenty years, the exploding wealth at the top has ceased to pull up the middle class, let alone the poor. Their standard of living does not simply lag behind economic growth, it has become completely disconnected. The tide that was once supposed to raise all boats now only carries luxury yachts. Since the 1980s, average wages in the United States have stagnated, while lower wages have gone into free fall. In the meantime, Europe has adopted the same model. The upper classes are sitting in their penthouses, elevators on hold and ladders pulled up. The rest are lucky if they manage to continue living on one of the lower floors-which many don't. This is the case not only in crisis-ridden Southern Europe, but also in wealthy Germany with its booming export economy. Neither hard work and qualifications nor second or third jobs nowadays offer any guarantee of a relatively comfortable existence. Prosperity in the "middle of society", to which political hypocrites like to appeal, has become fragile. Whereas in earlier years individuals were able to rise-if not from dishwasher to millionaire, then at least from a working class background to the middle class-nowadays the typical experience is one of decline. Rarely do children today fare better than their parents, while the opposite is often the case. The inheritance club One exception is the exclusive club of heirs who can expect a large inheritance that will insure a good life regardless of their own contributions. The promise of social betterment, a main reason for the popularityf capitalism in the second half of the twentieth century, sounds hollow and has lost credibility. Once again it is social origin rather than talent and personal initiative that determines whether one will reach the upper ec...