Toward an alternative culture of work : political idealism and economic practices in West Berlin collective enterprises

ln recent years, and especially in the wake of the upheavals of 1989, there has been a growing perception that the "socialist experiment" has failed and that the "free market" has finally been vindicated as the only successful, realistic model for economic activity. What has become of the idealists, the utopians, and the dreamers of a more humane mode of production within this freshly affirmed dominant system of pragmatic capitalism? In the alternative economic sector of West Berlin, Dr. Müller explores the confrontation between an ideologically motivated philosophy of work and the constraints of survival in the heart of the competitive capitalist market. Through detailed ethnographic analysis of relatively successful cooperative enterprises, the author not only discusses the rationale and viability of the collectivist model of production but also charts a complex of social and psychological factors affecting the participants. Dr. Müller 's unusual, thorough, and readable study will be of interest to anyone concerned with the culture of work and to scholars of countercultural social movements.