The new American revolution challenges the current notions of dog-eat-dog capitalism - through the building of a parallel economic system that shares, co-operates, empowers and benefits fellow workers and community members.

Over the past few decades, thousands of alternatives to the standard, top-down corporate model have sprouted up - worker-owned companies and co-operatives, neighborhood corporations and trusts, community-owned technology centers and municipally owned enterprises.

In fact, today, involvement in these alternative models of business outnumber union membership as the means by which private-sector workers and community members are taking their economics into their own hands. The story is revealed in the 4-year-old book, America Beyond Capitalism, written by University of Maryland political science professor Gar Alperovitz.

Maria Armoudian: How big is this economic movement in the United States?

Gar Alperovitz: It's a huge development. But the president doesn't cover it, and the press, on the surface, is not aware of it.

At the grassroots level, there is a lot of activity that is changing the ownership of wealth and making it benefit neighborhoods, workers, cities and communities, at large. There are 11,000 worker-owned companies in the United States, and more people involved in them than are members of unions in the private sector. There are also 120 million Americans who are members of co-operatives - a huge number, about a third of the population.