Patel is a
libertarian socialist and has described himself as "someone who has very strong anarchist sympathies." In his book
The Value of Nothing he praised the grassroots
participatory democracy practised in the
Zapatista Councils of Good Government in southern Mexico and has advocated similar decentralist models of
economic democracy and
confederal administration as templates to go by for
social justice movements in the
global north. He described himself in 2010 as "not a communist [or socialist] ... just open minded". Nonetheless, the analysis of
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, published seven years later, locates its concept of "cheapness" within a Marxist framework. According to the authors, "Capitalism values only what it can count, and it can count only dollars. Every capitalist wants to invest as little and profit as much as possible. For capitalism, this means that the whole system thrives when powerful states and capitalists can reorganize global nature, invest as little as they can, and receive as much food, work, energy, and raw materials with as little disruption as possible." This extrapolates a key formulation by Marx: “The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities.” ==Personal life==