Meme Wars ─ The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics

"Engrossing, exciting [...] This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics ..."
—Literary Review of Canada

"Thought-provoking and creative" — Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics


From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a more ecological model. Meme Wars aims to accelerate the shift into this new paradigm that takes into account psychonomics, bionomics, and other aspects of our physical and mental environment that are often left out in discussions of economics.

Like Adbusters, the book will be image heavy and full-color throughout. Lasn calls it "a textbook for the future" that provides the building blocks, in texts and visuals, for a new way of looking at and changing our world. Through an examination of alternative economies, Lasn hopes to spur students to become "barefoot economists" and to see that a humanization of economics is possible. Meme Wars will include contributions from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Samuelson, George Akerlof, Lourdes Beneria, Julie Matthaei, Manfred Max-Neef, David Orrell, Paul Gilding, Mathis Wackernagel and the father of ecological economics Herman Daly, among others.

Based on ideas that were presented in a special issue of Adbusters entitled "Thought Control in Economics: Beyond the Growth Paradigm / An Activist Toolkit," Meme Wars will help move forward the Occupy Wall Street movement.

KALLE LASN is an internationally known, award-winning documentarian. He is publisher of Adbusters magazine and founder of the Adbusters Media Foundation and Powershift Advertising Agency. Lasn has dedicated himself to launching social marketing campaigns with Adbusters such as Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, and to fighting legal battles for the right to access the public airwaves, primarily through the anticapitalist tactic of culture jamming. Lasn, along with Adbusters senior editor Micah White and Adbusters' 90,000-strong global network of activists were the instigators of the first #OccupyWallStreet event on September 17, 2011.

ADBUSTERS is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, advertising-free, 70,000-circulation magazine that lays bare anticapitalist, pro-environment concerns through incisive philosophical essays, activist commentary, and advertising spoofs. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters past and present contributors include Slajov Zizek, David Graeber, Simon Critchley, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Matt Taibbi, Bill McKibben, Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Cook, and Chris Hedges.