This paper addresses the way the American “Wall Street Capitalism” embodies the irresponsible disconnect between action and the results that markets (unlike governments) are supposed to prevent. This paper is in the Slovene journal Theory and Practice that dates back to 1964.
Marxism as a Capitalist Tool
December 13, 2012 by
The Great Debate between capitalism and socialism is now in the dustbin of intellectual history, but Marxism still plays an important role in sustaining the misframing of the questions so that the defenders of the present employment system do not have to face the real questions that separate that system from a system of economic democracy. In that sense, Marxism has become the ultimate capitalist tool.
The Market Mechanism of Appropriation
December 12, 2012 by
This is a non-mathematical treatment of the fundamental theorem about the laissez faire mechanism for property appropriation.
Hume Implies Locke: Fundamental Theorem of Property Theory
December 12, 2012 by
The fundamental theorem for the invisible hand mechanism in the property system is that if Hume’s conditions are satisfied, then the invisible judge imputes in accordance with the Lockean responsibility principle. The paper mathematically formulates and proves the theorem using vector flows on graphs.
The Two Institutional Logics
December 12, 2012 by
This paper, published in a Korean English-language journal, argued for the logic of commitment in the design of a firm rather than the logic of exit. The contrasts between these two logics is explored in many fields.
Harvard Business School Case: Mondragon
December 12, 2012 by
This is a reprint of Case No. 1-384-270. Harvard Business School 1984. It gives an overall view of the Mondragon cooperative movement of the Basque country in northern Spain as it was in the early 1980s.
Who Pays for ESOP Shares?
December 12, 2012 by
This is an old paper (1980s) analyzing the American Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP. The original proposer of the ESOP idea, Louis Kelso, and his ardent follows have shrouded the ESOP transactions in such a cloud of rhetoric, that one needs to independently perform an analysis to see what is really going on. The paper was never published (except in this website version) since I had no reason to publicly attack ESOPs, only to be clear about them and their true institutional contribution–which is considerable.
On the Role of Capital in “Capitalist” and in Labor-Managed Firms
December 10, 2012 by
This paper outlines the “fundamental myth” about the structure of property rights in a capitalist economy, namely the idea that being the residual claimant in a productive opportunity is part of a bundle of property rights known as the “ownership of the firm.” Residual claimancy is contractually determined so there is no such “ownership.” The fundamental myth exposes a basic fallacy in capital theory that has hitherto escaped attention in the capital theory debates. (Reprint from: Review of Radical Political Economics, Winter 2007)
Translatio versus Concessio: Retrieving the debate about contracts of alienation with an application to today’s employment contract
December 10, 2012 by
Liberal thought is based on the fundamental question of consent versus coercion. The autocracies and slavery systems of the past were based on coercion whereas today’s democracy in the political sphere and employment system in the economy are based on consent. This paper retrieves an almost forgotten contractarian tradition, dating from at least the Middle Ages, that based political autocracy and economic slavery on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts. Hence the democratic and antislavery movements had to hammer out arguments not simply in favor of consent and against coercion, but arguments based on the distinction between contracts to alienate (translatio) sovereignty versus contracts to only delegate (concessio) self-governance rights.
The Democratic Firm: An Argument based on Ordinary Jurisprudence
December 9, 2012 by
This is an article in the Journal of Business Ethics treating a more fundamental topic than the usual fare on business ethics.