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- 1.
Some of these topics have been discussed in Chap. 4. The following describes a participatory approach that develops these issues in a broader context.
- 2.
- 3.
An excellent on-line “Instructor’s Manual” for the third edition, with Arjun Jayadev listed as the author, that includes this exercise (on p. 37) is available at: sttpml.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/UnderstandingCapitalismInstructorsManual.pdf. UMass Amherst offers one of the five (as of 2012) radical or heterodox economics Ph.D. programs in the USA, the others are: The New School for Social Research in New York, The University of Missouri at Kansas City, The University of Utah, and American University in Washington D.C.
- 4.
For the purposes of this discussion, I generally define productivity in the standard NC sense as market valued output per hour of labor, though discussions of the differences between market productivity defined in this way and real productivity that takes into account the actual human benefits of what is being produced (including distinctions between private and public goods and services, and market externalities) often come up and are good to engage in if there is time.
- 5.
More extreme sector productivity differences can be drawn, as between workers in finance, for example, who receive greatly out-sized compensation and to whom are attributed enormous market-valued contributions, and home-makers who, in standard national income accounting, produce zero market-value added and who receive no compensation; see for example (Baiman 2014) and (Mutari 2000).
- 6.
See, for example, Second Treatise on Government, John Locke 1690, Barnes & Noble Publishing.
- 7.
Though, as discussed in Chap. 4, even in an ideal competitive market, there are substantial technical difficulties with actually equating value-added productivity with “factor” returns (wages, profits, and rents) due to the problem of assuming that “marginal” output is a good approximation of “average” output, similar to the marginal cost equal price conundrum discussed in chapters 9 and 10. (Schweickart 1993, Chap. 1).
- 8.
See data from Emmanuel Saez, Economics, University of California, Berkeley, Tables A7 and A8 at: http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~saez/TabFig2008.xls. Based on this data, 44.8 % of all income of these top 0.01 % of filers came from capital gains, and 64 % of all their income exclusive of capital gains came profits, dividends, interest, and rent so that (1 – 0.448) × (1 – 0.64) = 0.184 share of their income came from labor.
- 9.
For a clear and systematic comparison of wage-labor to slavery and workplace democracy, see Archer (1995 , Chap. 2). For a comprehensive discussion of the benefi ts of economic democracy in relation to ca through appropriate institutional struct pitalism, including a review of examples of existing large-scale, fast-growing, and highly successful worker cooperatives like the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Spain, see Schweickart (1993, 2011) and Whyte and Whyte (1991).
- 10.
Though Bowles and Gintis express a concern about a possible excessive risk adversity public investment problem in a market socialist system, it would appear that this can be overcome through appropriate institutional structures given the Mondragon experience of extraordinarily rapid and successful entrepreneurship and innovation (Schweickart 1993, 2011; Whyte and Whyte 1991). The latter, in fact, emphasizes the much greater efficiency of the more rational, planned, collective entrepreneurship practiced by the Mondragon, compared to the large-scale waste of human and physical resources typical in conventional capitalist individual risk-taking entrepreneurship; and the environmental benefits of an economic democracy with locally rooted worker cooperatives more concerned about point of production environmental impact and better able to regulate the pace and allocation of growth to serve economic justice and environmental sustainability goals (Schweickart 1993, 2011). Though it should be noted that many commentators, including myself, believe that the nonmarket allocation mechanism proposed in Albert and Hahnel (1991) is unworkable (Baiman 1999).
- 11.
- 12.
More precisely, human activity exclusive of natural forces beyond the powers of human anticipation or control. For better or worse, the impact of human activity has exponentially increased over millennia of recorded human history.
- 13.
That is the committee that awards the Economics “Nobel,” not the real Nobel Prize committee that awards Nobel prizes in natural science. The Economics Nobel Committee is sponsored by Sweden’s Central Bank.
- 14.
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Baiman, R.P. (2016). The Morality of Radical Economics. In: The Morality of Radical Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45559-8_11
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