History Commons^™

Imagining Basic Income As An International And Domestic Remedy To Wealth Inequality, Christian A. Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Has the success of corporate capitalism undermined the neoliberal ideas it presupposes, leading to the inevitable growth of socialism? While labor unions may lament the export of jobs, the real issue in today’s increasingly administered and mechanized economy is the global loss of jobs. James Ferguson has provided a strong argument that despite the triumphalist narratives of neoliberalism, capitalist development strategies particularly in South Africa have resulted in concentrated wealth, large unemployment, and the growth of transfer payments. More importantly, he shows how traditional critics of capitalism fall short in addressing the issues of a jobless future. For example, Marxists …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …