TIM DI MUZIO is a supporter of the Occupy movement, whose protests in Wall Street, at St Paul’s Cathedral and many other locations internationally target the 1 per cent of the world’s population who own nearly half of global wealth and control the money supply.

The consequence is that the super-rich, even where there is a shell of democracy, shape policy outcomes that subject the bulk of the population to varying degrees of austerity and deprivation and even access to the material means of existence.

Di Muzio dismisses the view that their wealth is the result of extraordinary talents or efforts, arguing that most of the dominant class’s income derives from their control of assets such as land, money, buildings and equipment.

He draws on Marx’s analysis of capitalism to some extent but argues unconvincingly that the doctrine of profit arising from the difference between the value of labour power and the value which that labour power creates is invalid because of contributions made to wealth by other factors, particularly the exploitation of fossil fuels.

Yet he endorses Marx’s analysis of primitive accumulation, which shows how over centuries people were forced into wage labour and dependence on the market by state power serving capitalist landlords, merchants and industrialists.

This process was further developed by the privately funded violence of landlords seeking to create pasture out of arable land, buttressed later by parliamentary Acts enclosing the commons — the people’s land — which became private property.

The peasantry became wage labourers both for agricultural capital and industry.

Di Muzio attacks the conspicuous consumption of the rich and more controversially the goal of economic growth which, he contends, distracts attention from social and economic change.

He is on firmer ground when he argues that the rich oligarchs are destroying the planet in their pursuit of profit.

His — unstated — aim seems to be to produce a broad consensus of support for a radically reformed capitalism that cannot be branded as socialism, a word missing from this book’s index. What he’d like to see is a new party of the 99 per cent that would call for reform of the monetary system, with a public bank pursuing socially desirable investments.

It would demand universal and free education, healthcare and childcare and there would be a not-for-profit public insurance system and a guaranteed income for all adults through a public bank.

The only other income available would be that coming from a person’s direct labour, while another important measure would be a transition away from fossil fuels by every means possible. Such parties should “work together to demilitarise the world,” Di Muzio argues.

One might nod in sympathy with many of these proposals but the question of how they could be achieved is not resolved. Occupy needs to engage with contemporary workers’ struggles and link up with the social class that has the power to bring about change.