This is the first paper to analyze all the different varieties of worker-owned firms as well as conventional firms in terms of how they parse the bundle of rights in a firm.
Horizon Problem and its Solution
December 7, 2012 by
This is the paper that explained how the system of internal capital accounts solves the Furubotn-Pejovich horizon problem that occurs in labor-managed firms with “social equity” like in a non-profit company.
Foundations-of-Self-Management-1975
December 7, 2012 by
This old typescript was probably the first written and published version of the argument for worker self-management (as we called it in those days) based on democratic theory and the labor theory of property seen as the property application of the usual principle of imputing legal responsibility in accordance with de facto responsibility.
3 Hats Paper
December 6, 2012 by
This is the “famous” 3-hats paper that first laid out the ICA model for a worker cooperative and that clarified how different rights would be assigned to different functional roles (“hats”) in a worker cooperative.
The Democratic Corporation
December 6, 2012 by
This is a law-journal treatment, coauthored with Peter Pitegoff, of the theory and practice of worker ownership in the US in the early 1980s.
Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics
December 3, 2012 by
Dramatic changes or revolutions in a field of science are often made by outsiders or ‘trespassers,’ who are not limited by the established, ‘expert’ approaches. Each essay in this diverse collection shows the fruits of intellectual trespassing and poaching among fields such as economics, Kantian ethics, Platonic philosophy, category theory, double-entry accounting, arbitrage, algebraic logic, series-parallel duality, and financial arithmetic.
The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm
December 2, 2012 by
My second book was the 1989 The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm. The book was revised for the Chinese translation, and that is the version that can be downloaded here. This book develops the labor theory of property and democratic theory arguments for a democratic firm, and analyzes the connection between those principles and the legal structure of the firms.
Employment Contract and Liberal Thought
November 17, 2012 by
This was the first of several papers that focused on the employment contract and inalienable rights, rather than on the labor theory of property.
Introduction to Normative Property Theory
November 16, 2012 by
This was my first (1972) publication in property theory. The normative part of the theory is essentially the same as what I would espouse today, but for the descriptive theory, I was still in the grip of the “fundamental myth” that the rights to the product are part and parcel of some existing property rights to some capital asset.
Jobs & Fairness
January 1, 2012 by
This the late Robert Oakeshott’s magnum opus of case studies of and reflections on employee ownership. There is nothing else like it but it is very little known.