Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

Antinomies Of Capitalism (Review Of Globalization Its Discontents Joseph Stiglitz, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

We present the central arguments of the critics on the limits and scope of globalization on the work

Financial Theory Has A Paradigm A La Kuhn?, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

This article aims to discuss two issues relatively linked. The first is an evaluation of the concept of paradigm of T. Kuhn in his representative work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ERC, [Ku96] and the complementary version by W. Stegmüller, Structure and dynamics of theories EDT, [Steg83]. This refined interpretation of the concept of paradigm allows for a more complete set of central Kuhnian concept. The second objective is to analyze the scope of the Kuhnian concept of models to evaluate financial explanation. Is explored preliminarily proposed fractal models / multifractal (F / M) of Mandelbrot [Mand97, 82, 02, 05]. …

The Genesis Creation Sequence: The Principles Of Social Choice Theory Impossibility-Resolution, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The Genesis Creation Sequence is not about the creation of the physical world, per se. Rather, it is about the resolution of conflict in the philosophy of the human condition.

The Apostle Table - Part Iii - Incompetent Endogenous Response Intransitivity, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The Apostle Table illustrates a New Testament encryption scheme revealed in the Book of Matthew. Specifically, the list of the twelve apostles in Matthew, 10:1-4, points to the Matthew, Chapters 8 and 9, disciple characterizations. The disciples metaphorically characterize the social choice theory aspect of the scripture writers' (ordered relations theory: social choice theory: welfare model) regression. The paper is written in two parts: I. The Exogenous Pressures; and, II. The Endogenous Response. Interestingly, the paper explains why the crucified Jesus could not get off the cross.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

What's Wrong With Exploitation?, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Abstract: Marx thinks that capitalism is exploitative, and that is a major basis for his objections to it. But what's wrong with exploitation, as Marx sees it? (The paper is exegetical in character: my object is to understand what Marx believed,) The received view, held by Norman Geras, G.A. Cohen, and others, is that Marx thought that capitalism was unjust, because in the crudest sense, capitalists robbed labor of property that was rightfully the workers' because the workers and not the capitalists produced it. This view depends on a Labor Theory of Property (LTP), that property rights are based ultimately …

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …