THE GUILD SYLLABUS
The 21 Foundational Texts of Restorative Inquiry.
To dismantle the system, you must first understand its internal logic. This curriculum is designed to move the reader from Diagnosis to Restoration.
PHASE I: THE DIAGNOSIS (How the Machine Works)
Objective: To understand the system’s internal logic and its deceptions.
1. The New Industrial State
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
The Concept: The Technostructure. The economy is not controlled by “market forces” but by corporate planning systems that manufacture consumer demand.
2. The Theory of the Leisure Class
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
The Concept: Conspicuous Consumption. The system is driven not by utility, but by status signaling. Efficiency is sabotaged by “Business” to maximize profit.
3. Zombie Economics
JOHN QUIGGIN
The Concept: The Zombie Idea. Theories like “Trickle-Down” and “Efficient Markets” were killed by the 2008 crisis but keep rising from the dead because they serve the powerful.
4. Technofeudalism
YANIS VAROUFAKIS
The Concept: Cloud Capital. Capitalism is dead. It has been replaced by a feudal system where Tech Giants are the lords, and we are the serfs producing data-rent for free.
PHASE II: THE GENEALOGY (How We Got Here)
Objective: To see that the current order was not inevitable; it was constructed by specific choices.
5. The Great Transformation
KARL POLANYI
The Concept: Fictitious Commodities. The dangerous lie that Land, Labor, and Money are just items to be sold. When treated this way, society inevitably rebels.
6. The Heart of Christianity
MARCUS BORG
The Concept: Faith as Assent. The definition of faith shifted from “Loyalty” to “Believing Impossible Things,” creating a mind rigid enough to accept Market Fundamentalism.
7. Democracy in Chains
NANCY MACLEAN
The Concept: The Constitution of Lock-in. How the Austrian School deliberately designed institutions to shackle democracy so the poor could never vote to tax the rich.
PHASE III: THE CRISIS (The Cracks in the Wall)
Objective: To analyze the collision with physical and social reality.
8. Crashed / Chartbook
ADAM TOOZE
The Concept: The Poly-Crisis. We are no longer facing single problems; we are facing a tangle of feedback loops where solving one problem worsens another.
9. Less is More
JASON HICKEL
The Concept: Degrowth. Infinite growth on a finite planet is physics-denial. We must plan a democratic downscaling of production to get back inside planetary boundaries.
PHASE IV: THE MORAL ARCHITECTURE (The Soul)
Objective: To rebuild the definition of Justice and the Good Life.
10. What Money Can’t Buy
MICHAEL SANDEL
The Concept: Market Society. When we put a price on civic goods (health, education), we corrupt their intrinsic value and crowd out moral norms.
11. A Theory of Justice
JOHN RAWLS
The Concept: The Veil of Ignorance. A just economy is one you would be happy to be born into blindly—maximizing the well-being of the least advantaged.
12. Development as Freedom
AMARTYA SEN
The Concept: The Capability Approach. Poverty is not a lack of income; it is a “deprivation of freedom.” The goal is to expand what humans can actually do and be.
PHASE V: THE NEW PARADIGM (The Hope)
Objective: To design an economy embedded in the Earth and the Spirit.
13. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
THOMAS MERTON
The Concept: The True Self. Resistance begins by rejecting the “False Self” (the consumer) and reclaiming the “True Self” (the person in communion with others).
14. Small is Beautiful
E.F. SCHUMACHER
The Concept: Buddhist Economics. Work is spiritual nourishment. The economy should maximize well-being with minimum consumption.
15. For the Common Good
HERMAN DALY & JOHN COBB JR.
The Concept: The Person-in-Community. Replacing Homo Economicus (the isolated atom) with a view of humans as deeply interconnected with each other and the Earth.
APPENDIX: THE STRUCTURAL FOUNDATIONS
The Deep History: The essential texts for understanding the long-term mechanics of power.
16. Globalists
QUINN SLOBODIAN
The Concept: Encasement. The WTO and EU were designed to “encase” the market in international law, protecting property rights from democratic voters.
17. Debt: The First 5,000 Years
DAVID GRAEBER
The Concept: The Myth of Barter. Markets were created by states to fund wars. Debt was originally a moral relationship, only recently weaponized into a tool of domination.
18. The Age of Extremes
ERIC HOBSBAWM
The Concept: The Great Compromise. The “Golden Age” of high wages was a concession made by elites terrified of the Soviet alternative. When the fear vanished, the compromise ended.
19. Debtor Nation
LOUIS HYMAN
The Concept: Financialization. Post-WWII, corporations realized they could make more profit lending money for consumption (credit cards) than producing goods.
20. The Half Has Never Been Told
EDWARD BAPTIST
The Concept: The Whipping Machine. Proof that American industrial dominance was built on the torture-based securitization of enslaved people, proving “Efficiency” is morally neutral.
21. Civilization and Capitalism
FERNAND BRAUDEL
The Concept: The Longue Durée. History moves in deep, slow currents (geography, climate) that dwarf political events. To understand the Crisis, you must look at the 500-year cycle.
KNOWLEDGE IS A COMMONS.
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