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.
Is “Capitalism” a Misnomer? On Marx’s “capitalism” and Knight’s “civilization”
The Kantian Person/Thing Principle in Political Economy
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].
The Libertarian Case for Slavery (A Spoof on Nozick)
This is Chapter 3 from my book: Ellerman, David. 1995. Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Liberalism is living a lie. It pretends that the contract to sell all of one’s labor, the self-enslavement contract, is an invalid contract beyond the pale while the contract to sell one’s labor piecemeal (by the hour, day, month, or year) is a perfectly valid contract above reproach. The self-enslavement contract is one of the skeletons in liberalism’s intellectual closet. Defenders of liberal capitalism are quick to accept even the most superficial arguments against voluntary slavery just to shove the issue back in the closet—just so long as the arguments do not carry over to the current contract to rent oneself out, the employer-employee contract. Who wants to be seen as, in effect, defending voluntary slavery by showing how most arguments against the self-sale contract are baseless (aside from one “J. Philmore”)?
Myth and Metaphor in Orthodox Economics
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
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.
Reclaiming Democratic Classical Liberalism
The argument shows that the classical liberal endorsement of sovereign individuals acting in the marketplace generalizes to the joint action of individuals as the principals in their own organizations and associations.
Lavoie Referee Report on “Property & Contract”
Edit This is Don Lavoie’s letter giving his referee report on my Property & Contract book which was published by Basil Blackwell in 1992. Don Lavoie (1951-2001) was a neo-Austrian economics professor at George Mason University. He developed a hermeneutical approach to economics. Click here to download the letter.
Source-paper on theory of inalienability
This paper is only a collection of likenesses and representative quotations from thinkers about inalienability and inalienable rights starting from Antiquity down to the present.
A Theory of Inalienability: Towards a Theory of Classical Liberal Jurisprudence
This is a draft paper that presents some of the arguments I have been making for years in a framework analogous to Type I and Type II error in statistics–which seems to clarify the arguments. Historically, the sophisticated arguments for slavery and autocratic government were consent-based in terms of implicit or explicit contracts. And the legalized oppression of married women was based on the coverture marriage contract. Hence the critiques developed in the abolitionist, democratic, and feminist movements were not simply arguments for consent as opposed to coercion, but arguments against certain voluntary contracts, e.g., in the form of inalienable rights arguments.
Talk: Neo-abolitionism and Marxism
These are the slides for a talk given in Munich in November 2017 at a conference on the Russian Revolution. The basic argument is that much of what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century still sounds radical today. The reason is that Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution set back the Left for a century and a half.