This article comments on Isabelle Ferreras’s “Democratizing the Corporation.” The focus is on the conceptual framing, which arguably contains a number of problems that are quite common on the left and are thus doubly deserving of commentary and explanation.
Tocqueville and Employee Ownership
March 15, 2025 by
There seems to be two rather different philosophies of aid to development and poverty relief. (1) The progressive/social-democratic approach is for the government or aid agencies to do more and more good things for people. (2) The classical-liberal approach is to change the underlying conditions so that people are empowered to do good things for themselves. In this paper, we analyze Alexis de Tocqueville’s approach to these questions in his First Memoir and his (unfinished) Second Memoir on Pauperism.
Is “Capitalism” a Misnomer? On Marx’s “capitalism” and Knight’s “civilization”
June 11, 2024 by
This is an open access article from the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.
The name “capitalism” derives from Marx’s false analogy between medieval land ownership and the “ownership of the means of production.” However, unlike medieval land, capital goods can be rented out, e.g., by Frank Knight’s entrepreneur, and then the capital owner does not hold those management or product rights. What then is the characteristic institution in our civilization? It is the voluntary renting of workers. What then is the relationship between Classical Liberalism, the dominant philosophy behind Economics, and a lifetime labor contract? Frank Knight had plenty to say against the doctrine of inalienable rights which disallows such contracts.
The Kantian Person/Thing Principle in Political Economy
June 1, 2024 by
This is Chapter 4 in my book: Ellerman, David. 1995. Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ethical theories can be broadly grouped into utilitarian theories and rights-based theories. Modern economics is so thoroughly utilitarian that most economists would be hard-pressed to cite the application of a rights-based argument to economic institutions. Yet the normative principles outlined in the first two chapters, the labor theory of property and the de facto theory of inalienability, are squarely within the rights-based tradition. The democratic principle of self-determination is also a closely allied rights-based theory [see Ellerman 1992].
Myth and Metaphor in Orthodox Economics
June 1, 2024 by
This is Chapter 2 from: Ellerman, David. 1995. Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Discussion of the fundamental questions of political economy is today almost completely clouded and distorted by a number of basic myths and metaphors. Deconstruction is necessary before constructive discussions can begin. The myths and metaphors are concerned with basic conceptions about property and contract, not with prices and markets. As layer upon layer of distortions are removed, new facts and new perspectives on old facts will emerge. These facts have fairly direct normative implications, but the disagreements and controversies are about the facts, not about norms or prescriptions.
Trespassing against the Happy Consciousness of Orthodox Economics
June 1, 2024 by
This is Chapter 1 in my book: Ellerman, David. 1995. Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
This first chapter addresses the problems of trespassing involved in understanding the arguments presented in the first five “controversial” chapters of the collection. These chapters challenge the whole idea of the employer-employee relationship that is the institutional basis for our present version of a private-property market economy. The problems of trespassing against fundamental orthodoxy in the social and moral sciences are of a completely different order of magnitude than the problems of trespassing in the natural and mathematical sciences.
Less-Known Supporters of Workplace Democracy
June 30, 2021 by
his paper, published as an editorial in the Journal for Participation and Employee Ownership collects together extensive quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.
The “Ownership of the Firm” is a Myth (1975)
November 26, 2020 by
This paper was originally published in a journal: Ellerman, David. 1975. “The ‘Ownership of the Firm’ Is a Myth.” Administration and Society 7 (1 May): 27–42, and then we immediately reprinted in a collection of essays: Ellerman, David. 1975. “The ‘Ownership of the Firm’ Is a Myth.” In Organizational Democracy : Participation and Self-Management, edited by David Garson and Michael P. Smith. Beverly Hills CA: Sage Publications.
Towards Abolishing the Renting of Persons
September 30, 2020 by
This paper is a write-up of a speech given in 2017 at a centennial ‘celebration’ of the 1917 Russian Revolution at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.
Conceptual Errors in the Arrow-Debreu Model
July 15, 2020 by
The highly mathematical nature of the Arrow-Debreu and other similar models of general equilibrium hide rather than elucidate the nature of equilibrium in a private property market economy where all factors of production may be purchased or rented.