This paper presents an argument for the democratic (or 'labor-managed') firm based on ordinary jurisprudence. The standard principle of responsibility in jurisprudence ('Assign legal responsibility in accordance with de facto responsibility') implies that the people working in a firm should legally appropriate the assets and liabilities produced in the firm (the positive and negative fruits of their labor). This appropriation is normally violated due to the employment or self-rental contract. However, we present an inalienable rights argument that descends from the (...) Reformation and Enlightenment which argues that the self-rental contract, like the self-sale or voluntary slavery contract, is inherently invalid. The key intuition of the inalienable rights theory is that one cannot in fact voluntarily transfer de facto responsibility for one's actions to another person. One can only voluntarily co-operate with another person, but then one is de facto jointly responsible for the results. Just as the legal authorities legally reconstruct the criminous employer and employee as a partnership with shared responsibility, so justice demands that every firm be legally reconstructed as a partnership of all who work (working employers and employees) in the enterprise, i.e., as a democratic firm. (shrink)

My contention in this paper is that many of our commonly accepted ideas about property are defective. But these deficiencies are not just simple, surface mistakes that could be cleared up easily. They stem from a flawed conceptual framework used in making sense of and justifying property relationships. I also contend that this flawed conceptual framework maintains property relationships that are unjust. These property relationships produce an unequal distribution of wealth, status, and power, as well as reduced opportunities for autonomy (...) and self-development. This is unjust because, I believe, no satisfactory justification has been given for this inequality. Exposing some weaknesses of this conceptual framework is thus a step in promoting more egalitarian property relationships. (shrink)

When this book was first published in 1990, there were massive economic changes in the East and significant economic challenges to the West. This critical analysis of democratic theory discusses the principles and forces that push both socialist and capitalist economies toward a common ground of workplace democratization. This book is a comprehensive approach to the theory and practice of the "Democratic firm" – from philosophical first principles to legal theory and finally to some of the details of financial structure. (...) The argument for economic democracy supports private property, free markets and entrepreneurship for instance, but fundamentally it replaces the employer/employee relationship with democratic membership in the firm. For students, teachers, policy makers and others interested in the application of democracy to the workplace, this book will serve as a manifesto and a standard reference on the topic. (shrink)

From a pre-publication review by the late Austrian economist, Don Lavoie, of George Mason University: -/- "The book's radical re-interpretation of property and contract is, I think, among the most powerful critiques of mainstream economics ever developed. It undermines the neoclassical way of thinking about property by articulating a theory of inalienable rights, and constructs out of this perspective a "labor theory of property" which is as different from Marx's labor theory of value as it is from neoclassicism. It traces (...) roots of such ideas in some fascinating and largely forgotten strands of the history of economics. It draws attention to the question of "responsibility" which neoclassicism has utterly lost sight of. It is startlingly fresh in its overall approach, and unusually well written in its presentation. ... It constitutes a better case for its economic democracy viewpoint than anything else in the literature." . (shrink)

This article is a review of Erik Olin Wright’s 2010 book Envisioning Real Utopias. The review focuses on certain topics such as his understanding of ‘capitalism,’ his conception of worker cooperatives, and the general issues surrounding markets, the Left, and Marxism.