Starting from the assumption that the price we pay for everything – from fundamental to unnecessary goods – is systematically distorted in and by the capitalist world, incapable of reflecting the real value of things, Raj Patel criticizes the way market society manages its own resources and offers examples of alternative experiences in the approach to the territories and communities we live in.

In the first part of the book, Raj Patel explains how the value of any product or service – land, food, work, health, entertainment, and people themselves – is inappropriately determined by the price market society sets for them. From the historical point of view, a crucial moment – almost a starting point – in the process leading to the profit-based and profit-oriented resources management system of market societies may be identified in the enclosures phenomenon of Medieval England: putting an end to the Commons, goods collectively owned or shared, it also destroyed the abilities to allocate and exploit resources in an equitable, sustainable way people had developed for centuries.

A key role in this economic and cultural distortion process is played by corporations, that can use labour force, capitals, and resources minimizing costs and maximizing profits – as suggested by John Stuart Mill’s notion of homo economicus – because they can ignore the social and environmental costs of their activity, the so-called externalities imposed on the whole society. Moreover, corporations tend to influence more and more governments’ priorities and decisions: and if governments stop protecting and promoting the right to life, work, property, health, and education of their citizens, freedom inevitably comes to depend on money and can no longer be universal.

In the second part of the book, the author examines some social movements, countermovements, reacting to the world privatisation process, fighting against the destruction of common or shared resources, and promoting different ways of living together through participation, local autonomy, solidarity, equity. For instance, Porto Alegre, Brazil, is experiencing an interesting form of direct democracy thanks to the participatory budget. Another example is the international peasant movement La via Campesina, claiming for food sovereignty – the right to use land, water, and seeds for agricultural production.