Here are 100 books that Private Property fans have personally recommended if you like
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Ever since my graduate student days in philosophy and economics, I have slowly come to understand more and more the case for workplace democracy based on normative principles (i.e., the inalienability, property, and democratic principles), not just the obvious consequentialist or pragmatic arguments based on increased productivity (people working jointly for themselves), less worker alienation, and eliminating the divide down the middle of most enterprises between employers and employees. In addition to two decades of teaching university economics, I have co-founded several consulting companies dedicated to implementing these principles in practice, the Industrial Cooperative Association in Massachusetts (now the ICA Group) and the Institute for Economic Democracy in Slovenia, where I have retired.
The third leg of the stool supporting workplace democracy (in addition to the democratic and property arguments) is the inalienable rights argument based on the factual inalienability of people’s responsible agency, which the legal employment contract pretends to be alienated in the firm based on employment. The truth comes out when an employee commits a crime at the behest of the employer; then they suddenly become partners in crime. Since the responsible agency is factually inalienable in both criminous and non-criminous actions, the contract that legally alienates all agency to the employer in the non-criminous case should be abolished. Garry Wills traces the history of the inalienable rights clause in the Declaration of Independence back to its roots in the Scottish and European Enlightenment.
From acclaimed historian Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, a celebrated re-appraisal of the meaning and the source of inspiration of The Declaration of Independence, based on a reading of Jefferson's original draft document.
Inventing America upended decades of thinking about The Declaration of Independence when it was first published in 1978 and remains one of the most influential and important works of scholarship about this founding document. Wills challenged the idea that Jefferson took all his ideas from John Locke. Instead, by focussing on Jefferson's original drafts, he showed Jefferson's debt to Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as Lord…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Ever since my graduate student days in philosophy and economics, I have slowly come to understand more and more the case for workplace democracy based on normative principles (i.e., the inalienability, property, and democratic principles), not just the obvious consequentialist or pragmatic arguments based on increased productivity (people working jointly for themselves), less worker alienation, and eliminating the divide down the middle of most enterprises between employers and employees. In addition to two decades of teaching university economics, I have co-founded several consulting companies dedicated to implementing these principles in practice, the Industrial Cooperative Association in Massachusetts (now the ICA Group) and the Institute for Economic Democracy in Slovenia, where I have retired.
This is the best book about worker-owned firms in America by two authors who have each worked on the issue for almost a half-century. It focuses on the Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) developed in the US. There are now almost 7,000 ESOPs in America and 10% of the private workforce work in ESOPs so one out of ten workers are co-owners of the company where they work. Hence worker ownership is not just an academic pipe dream but a growing reality in America.
Winner of the William Foote Whyte and Kathleen King Whyte Book Prize from the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
Employee ownership creates stronger companies, helps workers build wealth, and fosters a fairer, more stable society. In this book, two leading experts show how it works—and how it can be greatly expanded.
Wages don’t cover the bills. Wealth inequality is growing. Social trust is eroding. There are endless debates about what to do, but one key factor is inexplicably left out: who owns the companies that drive the economy?
Ever since my graduate student days in philosophy and economics, I have slowly come to understand more and more the case for workplace democracy based on normative principles (i.e., the inalienability, property, and democratic principles), not just the obvious consequentialist or pragmatic arguments based on increased productivity (people working jointly for themselves), less worker alienation, and eliminating the divide down the middle of most enterprises between employers and employees. In addition to two decades of teaching university economics, I have co-founded several consulting companies dedicated to implementing these principles in practice, the Industrial Cooperative Association in Massachusetts (now the ICA Group) and the Institute for Economic Democracy in Slovenia, where I have retired.
This short book by the late Staughton Lynd is the best summary of the radical principles upon which America was founded. Lynd goes deep into the intellectual history of the underlying principles in English and European history. In spite of writing such an important book and perhaps due to his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, Lynd was not given tenure as a historian at Yale University. He then became a labor lawyer and lived the rest of his life as a labor activist.
Now an established classic, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism was the first book to explore this alternative current of American political thought. Stemming back to the seventeenth-century English Revolution, many questioned private property, the sovereignty of the nation-state, and slavery, and affirmed the common man's ability to govern. By the time of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine was the great exemplar of the alternative intellectual tradition. In the nineteenth century, the antislavery movement took hold of Thomas Paine's ideas and fashioned them into an ideology that ultimately justified civil war. This updated edition contains a preface by the author, which…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
Ever since my graduate student days in philosophy and economics, I have slowly come to understand more and more the case for workplace democracy based on normative principles (i.e., the inalienability, property, and democratic principles), not just the obvious consequentialist or pragmatic arguments based on increased productivity (people working jointly for themselves), less worker alienation, and eliminating the divide down the middle of most enterprises between employers and employees. In addition to two decades of teaching university economics, I have co-founded several consulting companies dedicated to implementing these principles in practice, the Industrial Cooperative Association in Massachusetts (now the ICA Group) and the Institute for Economic Democracy in Slovenia, where I have retired.
This book is the follow-up to Robert Dahl’s influential Preface to Democratic Theory—published in 1956. The newer Preface to Economic Democracy applied democratic theory to the workplace. Dahl, as the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale, was arguably the foremost democratic theorist of his time, so it is important that he applied the democratic theory arguments to the organizations where most people spend much of the waking time. I am particularly thankful for knowing him and when he set out to describe his vision of economic democracy (p. 91), he had a footnote reading, “In clarifying my ideas on this question I have profited greatly from a number of unpublished papers by David Ellerman, cited in the bibliography....”
Tocqueville pessimistically predicted that liberty and equality would be incompatible ideas. Robert Dahl, author of the classic A Preface to Democratic Theory, explores this alleged conflict, particularly in modern American society where differences in ownership and control of corporate enterprises create inequalities in resources among Americans that in turn generate inequality among them as citizens.
Arguing that Americans have misconceived the relation between democracy, private property, and the economic order, the author contends that we can achieve a society of real democracy and political equality without sacrificing liberty by extending democratic principles into the economic order. Although enterprise control by…
I’m a writer and professor of literary studies whose work has been deeply involved in topics of truth, realism, and public policy. My recent book considers works of fiction that openly and honestly experiment with questions of uncertainty, identity, and risk in the supermodern present. This book draws from disciplinary discourses in law, finance, and economics, which similarly contend with competing claims to truth and value and dive deep into the circumstantial and speculative games that authors play when they write fiction about reality. I have my PhD in Spanish Literature (UVA), M.A. in International Affairs and Economics (Johns Hopkins Univ.), and a B.A. from Harvard University.
This book makes American history relevant, alive, and urgent.
This is not a book to read in one sitting–but to enjoy in segments. I felt so much smarter and prepared to understand our current challenges to truth and trust after reading this book.
At this critical juncture in our democracy, this book will illuminate, enlighten, and inform!
The American experiment rests on three ideas-"these truths", Jefferson called them-political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, "on a dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching", writes Jill Lepore in a ground-breaking investigation into the American past that places truth at the centre of the nation's history.
Telling the story of America, beginning in 1492, These Truths asks whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them. Finding meaning in contradiction, Lepore weaves American history into a tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological…
I previously had no interest in politics, but in 2020 the world became so politically charged that I wanted to better understand the landscape. That led me down a rabbit hole of questioning the basic assumptions about what government is and why we have it. Fortunately, there are many brilliant thinkers whose work I was able to study. I ultimately integrated this thinking into my own worldview. This list of books provides a starting point for thinking about our world—and the nature of reality—in an entirely new way. They certainly helped to alter my views, and they all contain excellent references if you’d like to explore them even further.
For a New Libertybreaks apart traditional assumptions about politics in ways that I hadn’t considered until reading this book.
Rothbard uses common-sense reasoning to explain the problems with our governing structures today and paves the way for a whole new paradigm. Even more than that, Rothbard shows how society could look in the future if government functions were privatized.
This book is also a great primer for the “Austrian School” of economics. I had many ahamoments when reading this book, and it helped change my worldview.
In For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Rothbard proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the two major political parties, the ideologies they embrace, and their central plans for using state power against people. Libertarianism is Rothbard's radical alternative that says state power is unworkable and immoral and ought to be curbed and finally overthrown.To make his case, Rothbard deploys his entire system of thought: natural law, natural rights, Austrian economics, American history, the theory of the state, and more.It is relentless, scientific, analytical, and morally energetic — a book that makes an overwhelming case. Indeed, it gave an entire movement…
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I’ve studied Smith and his Scottish contemporaries, off and on, for over fifty years. My whole professional career has been spent at Glasgow University where Smith was both a student and later professor. I thus have a personal affinity to him and his work, all the more so because his published writings were all trailed in his professorial classroom. While I have published extensively on Smith, the particular book of mine that I’ve selected was chosen because I wanted to distill all my scholarship into a volume that would be accessible to non-academics.
This is a defence of Smith's continuing relevance. It combines an overview of Smith's life and writings together with an assessment of his long-term and enduring contribution.
What is distinctive is that second-half of the book takes up Smith's ideas thematically and analyses them in the light of contemporary issues. Norman's judgment is that mainstream academic discussion of 'economics' is too self-absorbed and would be improved by heeding Smith's inclusive insights. Impressively what could have been a heavy read is conveyed in a readable, accessible style.
'A superb book' Financial Times, Books of the Year
Adam Smith is now widely regarded as 'the father of modern economics' and the most influential economist who ever lived. But what he really thought, and what the implications of his ideas are, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and the freedom of the individual? Or a prime mover of 'market fundamentalism' and an apologist for inequality and human selfishness? Or something else entirely? Jesse Norman's brilliantly conceived \book gives us not just Smith's economics, but his vastly wider intellectual project. Against the turbulent backdrop of Enlightenment…
I have cross-disciplinary expertise (ethics and moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology and moral psychology), and my work focuses on personalist virtue ethics, moral human development, and the links between ethics and economics; I am a person who loves nature and animals, and I’m thrilled to do good work. I was educated and worked internationally, with academic degrees in different Europe countries and the USA, and 30 years of work and academic experience in Europe, the USA, and SE Asia. I live with my family near London, U.K.. I am passionate about enabling a more sustainable society that however remains rooted in human dignity and avoids instrumentalizing the person
I like that the economic advantages of capitalism have not been underestimated, but also that its social, economic failures (corruption, exclusion/poverty, harmfulness and hubristic behaviours, impersonalism, and environmental degradation).
A solution offered is balancing justice and productivity, is trying to fix capitalism without alienating its elites.
Despite the great economic advantage of capitalism - that it is an efficient system of production and distribution - capitalist societies struggle with its by-products of poverty, exclusion, corruption, and environmental destruction. The essays in "Ethics and Capitalism" address the question of ensuring ethical and just societies within a capitalist system without sacrificing productivity. The introductory essay is a guide to the issues in the emerging field of ethics and capitalism, and refers to recent contributions from several disciplines. The collection as a whole evaluates the morality of capitalism by looking at its foundation in property theory, its relationship to…
I’m an assistant professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. I’m interested in automation because discussions about it often tend towards ridiculous hyperbole or acritical boosterism. Whether it’s killer robots that terminate humanity or “ethical” AI which raises all boats, discussions about the social implications of contemporary machines often neglect to include the critical analysis of the capitalist mode of production. I don’t think the two can be studied in isolation from one another.
This book provides a linkage between Marx’s time and contemporary capitalism through an in-depth study of scientific management or Taylorism. Braverman shows that the essence of Taylorism, the capture, by capital, of the worker’s skills and knowledge, is a necessary precondition for automation. Automation, Braverman reveals, is not simply a technical process, but a deeply social one.
First published in 1974, this text is written in a direct way by Harry Braverman, whose years spent as an industrial worker gave him insight into the labour process and the conviction to reject the reigning wisdoms of academic sociology. Here, he analyzes the division of labour between the design and execution of industrial production, which underlies all our social arrangements. This new edition features a new introduction by John Bellamy Foster, setting the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two more articles by Harry Braverman.
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I don’t think of myself as a dreamer but, rather, a hard-headed activist scholar. Globally, most of us live under the domination of production for trade. We have ceded co-governance of production—collectively deciding what we produce, how we produce it, and for whom—to the abstract logic of markets operated via money. We face two great challenges reproduced by capitalism—growing socio-political inequities and ecological unsustainability. So, I argue that we must replace monetary values and operating systems with ‘real’, social and ecological, values and production for demand, for the basic needs of humans and the planet. Postcapitalism means moving beyond money to realize our self-value and emancipation.
Cleaver by name, cleaver by nature? Certainly, as an analyst following in Marx’s footsteps, Harry Cleaver resembles a nimble knife aspiring to a heavy-duty hatchet.
His ideas are impressive but make easy reading. So much so, he has attracted a great following since the publication of his now classic work Reading Capital Politically(1979).Rupturing the Dialectic(2017) is one of Cleaver’s most recent books. In three parts, he sings the praises of Marx’s work-oriented concept of ‘value’, delves into ‘decoding’ the financial sphere that currently mires us, and argues that "getting rid of money and markets entirely is not only a necessary condition for getting rid of capitalism but also desirable in its own right."
"Rupturing the Dialectic rejects the quietism inherent in all economistic approaches to the current crises within capitalism, and furnishes working people with a clear, concrete, sensible program for how to move forward. This is a fine book, and it is one from which activists will greatly benefit." —David Sherman, author of Sartre and Adorno
"Cleaver's theory of the value of labor to capital, explanation of money as a critical mediator of class conflicts, and discussion of strategies for resistance and transformation are remarkable. Rupturing the Dialectic offers emancipating ways to understand everyday life and financial crises in capitalism today." —Anitra…
