This chapter contains sections titled: Why Asset Ownership? The Content of Work: Meaningful Work The Governance of Work: Protection against Arbitrary Interference The Status of Work: Workers as Property Owners Conclusion References.

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms (...) may have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms (...) may have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

It seems evident that class differences and class struggle continue to exist in socialist societies; that is to say, in societies like the Soviet Union and China, which have undergone socialist revolutions and in which private property in the means of production has been largely abolished. I shall not attempt to prove this proposition here; rather it will form my starting point. For my purpose in this paper is to show how the phenomenon of class in socialist society (...) can be understood and interpreted in Marxist terms; and, in particular, to explain and expound Mao Zedong's attempt to do so. For one of Mao's most striking and important contributions to Marxism was his recognition that `contradictions among the people' continue to exist in socialist society, and his attempt to explain them within the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Marx outlines his account of historical development in the following well-known words: It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) It has been common to interpret these words as expressing a simple form of economic or even technological determinism which would rule out the very possibility of class divisions continuing to be a fundamental feature of socialist society. For, according to this account, a socialist society, by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, thereby abolishes the material and economic basis of class differences; and so classes are destined to die out in socialist society 2 as the forces of production are developed. According to this interpretation, which I shall call the `traditional' account, in Marx's account of historical development all the emphasis is placed upon the development of the productive forces.. (shrink)

State ownership, worker ownership, and household ownership are the three main forms in which productive assets (firms) can be held. I argue that worker ownership is not wise in economies with high capital-labor ratios, for it forces the worker to concentrate all her assets in one firm. I review the coupon economy that I proposed in 1994, and express reservations that it could work: greedy people would be able to circumvent its purpose of (...) preventing the concentration of corporate wealth. Although extremely high corporate salaries are the norm today, I argue these are competitive and market determined, a consequence of the gargantuan size of firms. It would, however, be possible to tax such salaries at high rates, because the labor - supply response would be small. The social-democratic model remains the best one, to date, for producing a relatively egalitarian outcome, and it relies on solidarity, redistribution, and private ownership of firms. Whether a solidaristic social ethos can develop without a conflagration, such as the second world war, which not only united populations in the war effort, but also wiped out substantial middle-class wealth in Europe - thus engendering the post-war movement towards social - insurance is an open question. (shrink)

This article sets out a new conception of ‘property as an asset of resilience’. Building on Fineman’s emphasis on ‘webs’ of resilience, and applying insights from Actor-Network Theory and Resilient Property Theory, we examine how the rhetorical claims asserted by owners and non-owners, individually and collectively, and the ways that law recognizes and endorses those claims, affect the production of property-as-resilience. Applying Fineman’s framework, we argue that the ‘embodiment’ and ‘embeddedness’ of human vulnerability is revealed by the necessary and inevitable (...) relationship we have with land, housing and place. Everyone—including homeless people—must ‘be’ somewhere (embodiment); however, it is our ability to access ‘assets of resilience’ through our social embeddedness in institutional structures and relationships that mitigates (or not) our experience and life opportunities. In this article we analyze the nature of real property as an asset of resilience, the consequences of exclusionary concepts of ownership for how resilience is allocated, and the implications for how we think and talk about ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ in property theories and property law. We consider the roles that states perform in the allocation of property as an asset of resilience: both directly, through the protection and enforcement of private property rights and official narratives about the nature of private property; and indirectly, as owners leverage the hinterland of privilege extended to ‘ownership’ and owners to deepen their own networks of resilience. (shrink)

Synthetic foods advocates offer the promise of efficient, reliable, and sustainable food production. Engineered organisms become factories to produce food. Proponents claim that through this technique important barriers can be eliminated which would facilitate the production of traditional foods outside their climatic range. This technique would allow reducing food miles, secure future supply, and maintain quality and taste expectations. In this paper, we examine coffee production via biobased means. A startup called Atomo Coffee aims to produce synthetic coffee with (...) the aim of saving ‘the taste of coffee’ from the effects of climate change. This decontextualisation of coffee production ignores the current and historical contributions of coffee farmers in two ways: the traditional varieties in taste of coffee and their cultural significance, and the potential shade-grown coffee plantations have in capturing carbon. In addition, synthetic coffee may lead to the loss of agricultural biodiversity and the removal of resources away from production systems that provide a safe space for tropical flora and fauna. How should the ‘taste of coffee’ be owned? We investigate the property regimes under which we could consider owning the taste of coffee as a ‘synthetic’ agrobiodiversity to help identify rights and responsibilities. Building on this analysis, we consider dimensions of responsible innovation and social justice to help guide synthetic foods as an agricultural innovation. (shrink)

The book focuses on two pillars of China's economic success: industrial enterprises and the national system of innovation. The first part investigates the nature and evolution of productive enterprises, concentrating on the rounds of transformation of their ownership structure. The second part analyses the structure of China's national innovation systems. The analysis is based on a thorough study of statistical data provided by the China Statistical Yearbook, the World Bank and other sources. Alberto Gabriele emphasizes two key points, (...) which constitute a partly novel interpretation of two aspects of China's unique development. The first point is the crucial role of public ownership of the country's core means of production, in the framework of a harmonious market where different types of property coexist. China, the author argues, gradually abandoned old-fashioned administrative command tools and is relying more and more on indirect and value-based forms of strategic control of productive assets. The second point is China's strategic emphasis on technological progress and innovation, accompanied by an effort to develop national capacity and reduce its dependence on other countries. China's drive to become a first-class technological power revolves around the enhancement of its national innovation system, the author says. Big private high-tech companies play a crucial role; however, the main engines of progress are state-controlled enterprises, universities and research centres. (shrink)

In arguments in support of capitalism, the following propositions are sometimes advanced or presupposed: the best life for the individual is one of consumption, understood in a broad sense that includes aesthetic pleasures and entertainment as well as consumption of goods in the ordinary sense; consumption is to be valued because it promotes happiness or welfare, which is the ultimate good; since there are not enough opportunities for consumption to provide satiation for everybody, some principles of distributive justice must be (...) chosen to decide who gets what; the total to be distributed has first to be produced. What is produced depends, among other things, on the motivation and information of the producers. The theory of justice must take account of the fact that different principles of distribution have different effects on motivation and information; economic theory tells us that the motivational and informational consequences of private ownership of the means of production are superior to those of the various forms of collective ownerships. In the traditional controversy over the relative merits of capitalism and economic systems, the focus has been on proposition. In this paper, I consider instead propositions and. Before one can even begin to discuss how values are to be allocated, one must consider what they are – what it is that ought to be valued. I shall argue that at the center of Marxism is a specific conception of the good life as one of active self-realization, rather than passive consumption. (shrink)

One of the important questions in the interpretation of Rawls’s philosophy is the connection between the two problems he wrote about throughout his life – justice and legitimacy. In this paper, I take the difference principle as a special feature of Rawls’s theory of justice, while I take the idea of the public reason as a special aspect of his theory of legitimacy, and I try to show that both aspects are connected, that is, that we should not see them (...) as two separate projects. I am trying to show that we should formulate the justification of the difference principle as a justification of a particular socio-economic arrangement rather than as an abstract principle, one that is better than other legitimate arrangements. For Rawls, property-owning democracy and liberal socialism are socio-economic arrangements that realize the difference principle. The main difference between the two systems is that in the first one, private ownership of the means of production is allowed, but it is widely dispersed. In this paper, I try to show how such a system can be publicly justified. The justification that we need to use is precisely the one that Rawls formulates through the idea of the public mind, by referring to the political values contained in our public political culture. (shrink)

In arguments in support of capitalism, the following propositions are sometimes advanced or presupposed: the best life for the individual is one of consumption, understood in a broad sense that includes aesthetic pleasures and entertainment as well as consumption of goods in the ordinary sense; consumption is to be valued because it promotes happiness or welfare, which is the ultimate good; since there are not enough opportunities for consumption to provide satiation for everybody, some principles of distributive justice must be (...) chosen to decide who gets what; the total to be distributed has first to be produced. What is produced depends, among other things, on the motivation and information of the producers. The theory of justice must take account of the fact that different principles of distribution have different effects on motivation and information; economic theory tells us that the motivational and informational consequences of private ownership of the means of production are superior to those of the various forms of collective ownerships. In the traditional controversy over the relative merits of capitalism and economic systems, the focus has been on proposition. In this paper, I consider instead propositions and. Before one can even begin to discuss how values are to be allocated, one must consider what they are – what it is that ought to be valued. I shall argue that at the center of Marxism is a specific conception of the good life as one of active self-realization, rather than passive consumption. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 35-39 [Access article in PDF] The Ownership of Thoughts John Campbell Keywords: schizophrenia, thought insertion, immunity to error through misidentification. SYDNEY SHOEMAKER FORMULATED a basic point about first-person, present-tense ascriptions of psychological states when he declared that they are, in general, immune to error through misidentification (Shoemaker 1984). Assuming Shoemaker's point to be correct, the puzzle it raises is this: how are (...) we to explain this datum? Why should it be that first-person, present-tense ascriptions of psychological states are immune to error through misidentification? One type of explanation is in terms of the meaning of the first person: that "I" just stands for whoever is the owner of these (demonstrated) psychological states (including any states being self-ascribed). I argued against this account of the first person in a number of places, and in favor of an alternative explanation of Shoemaker's datum. On the alternative explanation, the reason for the immunity is provided by an account of the ownership of psychological states, on which what makes a psychological state mine is the possibility of self-ascription of it by me (Campbell 1986, 1999a). Suppose we call this the Introspectionist explanation of the immunity to error through misidentification of present-tense self-ascriptions of psychological states. I do think, though, that the simple Introspectionist account is too simple an account of Shoemaker's datum (Campbell 1999a, 1999b). The reason is that there is a certain complexity in our notion of the ownership of a token thought. We cannot give a full account of our ordinary notion of the ownership of a thought simply in terms of the person who is capable of introspective knowledge of the thought. The reason is that there is another dimension to our ordinary notion of the ownership of a thought. We also think of the possessor of a thought as being the person who generated that very thought; we think of the owner of the thought as being the person who brought that particular token thought into existence, the person who formed it. Of course, that token thought may be a copying of someone else's idea; that other person may have influenced my formation of that particular thought. But the point remains that I play a special role in the production of my thoughts.Suppose we have a document bearing a signature and we ask, "Whose signature is that?" In this case we are asking about the authorship of the signature; we are asking who made those particular marks on that bit of paper. Of course, someone else can copy my signature, trying to make it look as if what they write was written by me. But for a particular piece of writing to be an authentic signature of mine, the thing has to be generated by me personally. I think it is helpful to bear in mind this aspect of the notion of the ownership of a signature, when we consider a certain complexity in the notion of the ownership of a thought—I mean, an occurrent, episodic [End Page 35] thought. There are, I am saying, two strands in the ordinary notion of the ownership of a thought, which we do not ordinarily have any reason to separate. First, there is the notion of the person who generated that particular thought, which we might think of on the model of the person who inscribed a particular signature. Of course, in generating a particular token thought, you may be subject to all sorts of influences. Perhaps your thought is derivative, largely shaped by others. Perhaps your thoughts are sometimes simply echoes of the things other people have said. Nonetheless, when we consider how your individual token thoughts are being brought about, you play a proximal role in their formation that no one else does. To give an analogy, suppose that I am taking notes at your dictation. Then there is a sense in which the contents of my notes are entirely determined by you. But there is also a sense in which the token sentences are being generated by... (shrink)

Livestock are important assets in Africa, helping improve the nutritional status of their owners, and contributing to economic growth. Can these roles continue and can livestock production systems be further developed so that they will be sustainable? A key feature of livestock in Africa is that they fulfill multiple roles, ranging from draught power, to providing manure, milk, and meat. Constraints to increasing productivity include both physical and institutional. In the former category, constraints to adopting draught power include insufficient (...) numbers at the individual household level. Lack of adequate pasture is probably the most important constraint. Diseases are also notable constraints to improving productivity, particularly those categorized as Group I (highly contagious — e.g., rinderpest) or Group II (vector-borne parasitic and viral—e.g., trypanosomiasis). Institutional constraints include lack of research and market distortions. To improve productivity, at the macroeconomic level, governments must continue or start policies aimed at liberalizing markets and revaluing exchange rates. Also, research institutions need an increase in funding for periods of ten or more years. Research and other livestock institutions may be able to leverage limited resources by forming more collaborative relationships at the regional level. Research priorities include breeding on specific aspects, such as increased milk production. However, it must be realized that breeding programs have an inherent problem in disseminating improved breeds in a rapid and equitable manner. Quality of pasture may be improved by further research on more accurately calculating stocking rates and on developing mechanisms to control numbers on pastures (e.g., community controlled grazing schemes). Other research priorities include new technologies to improve animal health, funding of micro-enterprises to add value to livestock products, and market information systems for small-scale farmers. Schemes to increase livestock production in Africa will only occur if innovations closely match the local sets of circumstances. Given the multiple roles of livestock, research into innovations that local communities will readily adopt must take a systems approach. (shrink)

Just as the two sides in the Cold War agreed that Western Capitalism and Soviet Communism were "the" two alternatives, so the two sides in the intellectual Great Debate agreed on a common framing of questions with the defenders of capitalism taking one side and Marxists taking the other side of the questions. From the viewpoint of economic democracy (e.g., a labor-managed market economy), this late Great Debate between capitalism and socialism was as misframed as would be an antebellum 'Great (...) Debate' between the private or public ownership of slaves. Even though the Great Debate between capitalism and socialism is now in the dustbin of intellectual history, Marxism still plays an important role in sustaining the misframing of the questions so that the defenders of the present employment system do not have to face the real questions that separate that system from a system of economic democracy. In that sense, Marxism has become the ultimate capitalist tool. (shrink)

Even those who consider themselves lucky to have escaped trauma, long-term illness and death, have experienced radical changes to their conception of life in its relation to public and private domains due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When public space turned into a dangerous realm, private interiors were assigned a new role and with these shifts, also new questions about the relation of interiority to any type of exteriority emerged. The first four contributions in this ‘Projected Interiorities’ issue of (...) Technoetic Arts (TA) reflect from an architectural and urban point of view on the conception of the public and private, their past, present and future. Yet, the pandemic contributed more widely to a re-evaluation of interiority, not least because the public and private realms seemingly coalesced via digital processes. While this journal issue cannot cover all these questions, it indicates the range of the pandemic turn in thought, collecting contributions from theory and practice, including architecture, art, philosophy and literary studies. With authors of a variety of disciplinary backgrounds based in China, India, Norway, France, the United Kingdom and the United States, this issue of TA covers not only a multiplicity of methodological approaches but also diverse regional and cultural perspectives on the idea of ‘Projected Interiorities’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Technology and the Development of Capitalism Monopoly and Welfare State Capitalism Technology and Late Capitalism.

Introduction. The condition of fixed assets and their rational management largely determine the competitiveness of an enterprise. Updating the production base is possible both at the expense of their own funds and at the expense of borrowed funds. When choosing sources of financing for renovating fixed assets, it is important to assess the impact of the chosen acquisition method on cash flows and the financial result of an enterprise. The purpose of the article is to assess the impact (...) of the chosen method of financing the acquisition of fixed assets on the company’s financial results and cash flow. Methods. Comparison, induction, analysis, synthesis, direct counting, the author’s methodology for assessing the impact of the source of renovation on the financial result of the enterprise and cash flow. Scientific novelty of the research. The authors propose an additional criterion for assessing the efficiency of managing fixed assets of an enterprise: choosing the most optimal method of acquisition, based on assessing its impact on the financial results of activities, and they also proposed to supplement the options for renovating the main environments using leases, since, depending on the economic situation, this option may have financial advantages over credit, loan and leasing. Results. The authors predict the influence of the method of financing the acquisition of fixed assets (credit, leasing, rent, own funds) on the financial result of an enterprise and cash flows; develop the general approaches to the method of choosing the optimal source of financing for the renovation of fixed assets. Conclusions. The acquisition of ownership of fixed-capital assets is not always advisable. The article shows that not only credit or leasing operations, but also rent are comparable in efficiency. When choosing a source of financing for renovating fixed assets, it is necessary to compare the costs of acquiring property and their distribution by periods, to analyze the impact of the method of acquiring them on the financial result of the enterprise and cash flow. (shrink)

This paper is about disposability as a technological concern and about how to trace the related issues through the analysis of patents. It examines how moral and social concerns happened to be embedded in technology, based on the case of disposable feminine hygiene products. The focus is placed on what “disposable” means and on exploring relative notions as well as their dynamic and consequences. To conduct such analysis, the paper proposes to perform a classic and computer-assisted analysis of the (...) patents published by Johnson & Johnson over almost a century. Tracing social and moral concerns in patents challenges the existing literature in law, which tends to envision patents as legal assets deprived of moral considerations. The paper shows how hygiene products addressed women, how these products were made disposable, and how what disposability means evolved, both in the heart of technology and in the wider space of “concerned” markets. (shrink)

SummaryThe meaning of the term “health” is properly the subject of social, rather than natural, investigation. The structure of modern industrial capitalist society appears to materially and unavoidably produce a meaning of “health” intrinsically involving substantially preventable disease. Because in such a society private investment responds to cyclical and geographic fluctuations in rates of return and competitive labor markets, much of the disease structure (heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and cancer, among others) encompasses diseases which captive citizens cannot afford (...) to do without. To prevent those diseases through environmental and workplace cleanup, full employment and geographic capital stability is to drive away the very private capital on which economic life is based. Consequently, those diseases are as intrinsic to modern capitalist society as the law of supply and demand and are, therefore, a characteristic component of the meaning of “health,” the socially optimum level of organismic condition, in this epoch. A necessary condition for the emancipation of “health” from socially preventable disease would appear to be the social, rather than private, control of production and accumulation. (shrink)

Until the recent spread of public-private partnerships, pharmaceutical firms had avoided research and development into neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Because these are diseases that affect the poorest populations in developing regions, research and development initiatives have for the most part depended on the resources and expertise drawn from academia, international organizations, and intermittent state interventions in disease-endemic countries. Over the last few decades, however, public-private product development partnerships (PDPs) have been introducing new collaborative agreements in which the existing (...) resources and expertise combine with the those traditionally withheld by the pharmaceutical industry and global health NGOs. This paper explores recent transformations in the representation of NTDs by examining the shifting logic and spaces of knowledge production which the advent of PDPs has enabled. An analysis of two case studies focused on Chagas disease-related initiatives addresses recurring preoccupations in Science, Technology and Society studies as well as in critical analyses of PDPs: that is, the back-and-forth movement of the disease from being an object of scientific inquiry to a public health concern, and the legitimacy risks and material asymmetries entailed in global health PDPs. Both cases show that it is major global health stakeholders and experts in non-endemic countries, rather than transnational pharmaceutical firms, that exert the greatest influence upon these changing representations: PDPs attempt to expand the preexisting biomedical focus on NTDs by means of incorporating “real world” drug development preoccupations (which I term epistemic shifts), but they also combine their stated global humanitarian aim with security concerns about the diseases spreading to non-endemic, industrialized countries (which I term geographical shifts). (shrink)

In this volume, critical scholars and educational activists explore the intricate dynamics between the enclosure of global commons and radical visions of a common social future that breaks through the logics of privatization, ecological degradation, and dehumanizing social hierarchies in education. In its institutional and informal configurations alike, education has been identified as perhaps the key stake in this struggle. Insisting on the urgency of an education that breaks free of the bonds of enclosure, the essays included in this volume (...) weave together bright threads of radical thought into a vivid tapestry illustrating a critical framework for enacting a global educational commons. (shrink)

Place mouse over image continent. 2.1 (2012): 36–39. From an ethical and political perspective, people and property can hardly be separated. Indeed, the modern political subject – that is, the individual, the person, the self, the autonomous actor, the rational self-interest maximizer, etc. – has taken shape in and through the elaboration, institutionalization, and enactment of that which rightfully belongs to it. This thread can be traced back perhaps most directly to Locke’s notion that the origin of the political state (...) occurs when people rise above the state of nature by ceding the power to prosecute offenses. The rule of law begins then with a defense of the right to property. People become subjects by adhering to the social contract, which they do by deferring the defense of their own property to the state. In this light, the response of the United States federal government to the financial crisis of 2008 appears to many as a breach of the social contract. The chant “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” states the claim plainly. Why exactly did some subjects (e.g., the banks) have their property defended by the state (i.e., through the variety of programs including TARP, the discount window at the US Federal Reserve, etc.), when other subjects (e.g., homeowners) found themselves without protection of their property rights, forced to default on mortgage debts and face dispossession? Even if the rhetoric about “too big to fail” can be believed, and the collapse of the financial system would lead to negative consequences for people who had little or no connection to the activities that brought it about, such consequences need not call into question the notion that everyone stands equally before the law. To occupy, then, appears as a form of civil disobedience, an intentional, retaliatory breach of the social contract by those who feel that they have lost the support of the state to which they ceded their power as sovereign agents. The visible and the invisible The violation of property rights of people who have recognition, protection and power under the law destabilizes their very status as citizens and tests the limit of democracy. Does the financial system force the dematerialized victimization of individuals? Do people become numbers, or worse still, percentages of unemployed, tranches of defaulted mortgages and foreclosures? Are they perhaps instead disenfranchised prospectively from the privileged position occupied by virtual entities and actors such as those involved in the derivatives markets, always already exiled back into the physical, visible realm? The line of conflict appears to be drawn between invisibility/absence/deferral and visibility/presence/realization. The demonstrators occupy an excess property of those subjects, namely, the banks and financial elite, who did receive recognition and protection under the law. By domesticating this excess property, rendering its invisibility visible within the political economy, the protesters raise a new form of threat to the hegemonic order. To occupy, then, involves a rejection of the order under which the “99%” have been subjected to erasure. The occupation seeks creatively to establish a new means of communication and law for its subjects. In the face of an existing power structure that is increasingly disenfranchising the majority of people while consolidating nodes of power and influence, the “occupation”, or the work of the Occupy movement, involves seizing a space that refuses the rules of the existing, allegedly corrupt sovereign state. This refusal of governance extends even to include a steadfast refusal to articulate a strategy, to formulate a list of demands, to converse with the sovereign power on the grounds of its own conventions, to put forth a leader, to resolve the ambiguity of the movement into a discreet identity, face, or voice. Do these tactics provide a resolution to the problem that was its genesis? Not in such a direct and easily resolved manner, but it remains difficult to imagine a direct and simple resolution to the problematic of the breach of the social contract. The ambiguity of the situation has generated significant interest within the broader populace, though many people sympathetic to the cause appear to be frustrated because the movement has not simply put forward a short list of concrete demands, or even a set of leaders and spokespeople, much less a resolution. And yet, this lack of coherence appears as a resolution of a problem generic to protest movements in the past, where individual leaders can be removed or discredited, and lists of demands can be co-opted by others holding more political power. Meanwhile, the ambiguity has compelled imitations on a global scale, with the Occupy Wall Street participants consciously taking actions that can be replicated by anyone anywhere without significant cost. These actions have taken place not in a peripheral location such as a parking lot in New Jersey, but instead close to the centers of power and governance, adjacent to Wall Street, close to the White House, on college campuses, etc. This spontaneous archipelago of protests becomes an irritant, a negation of the accepted order of protests, but when the protesters themselves move outside of their encampments, they are escorted by the police, constantly monitored and maintained so that a permanent state of paranoid persecution takes hold. To occupy, occupying, occupation – these actions involve a variable degree of danger – are you willing to step into a different space, where the rule of law is unclear and evolving? Are you presenting yourself as a representative of the majority, the 99%? Who has a sense of belonging to the 99%? This previously invisible population becomes a focal point of political power, garners increasing public support, infects the public dialogue. The government recognizes this population by forcing it from the occupied space, removing the element of possession of property. It is at this point of conflict, in the struggle to hold the physical property, where the greatest friction and violence occurs. Scaling the rule of law While occupied, the property calls for a redress of grievances, a restoration of the rule of law. The Occupy movement does not select and put forward individuals or leaders, it puts forward places – the occupied property represents the point of conflict, not the individual. And it is this very property that the government then tries to reclaim. The movement remains faceless, anonymous, uncounted, or rather counted only as a mass, the self-labeled mass of 99%. These spaces are like refugee camps or favelas, but constructed to unite the political life and private life of the protesters. This objective is presented as a tactical necessity, as all other means of protest and communication have failed, leaving only the option of seizing, holding, occupying a property. But to what end, exactly? Can anyone deliberately return to the prior social contract, embrace, affirm, and govern in strict accordance with the earlier relationship to property, following the logic of Locke’s arguments? In this respect, the contemporary crisis indicates a new, transitional phase in the way that property operates, or rather, in the balance between real and virtual value. The roots of the crisis lay in the massive overvaluation of property caused by lax lending practices, as more people were encouraged to borrow more money, which drove up the prices of property. At the same time, these individual properties, these mortgages for homes actual families lived in and worked to support, were bundled into securities that could be bought, sold, and speculated on. The reduction of a physical house or piece of real estate to an almost incalculably small element in an investment vehicle appears as a scaling of the hedge that radically diminishes the value of any individually owned property. Moreover, a number of recently-innovated financial products allow investors to hedge in new ways, to deliberately spread risk around a portfolio in hopes of bringing returns even when the individual mortgage defaults. At the level of the ‘free’ market, these virtual negative valuations are designed to balance the physical positive valuation, though many of the biggest lenders are now being investigated for controlling both sides of this valuation, the positive and the negative, to facilitate both the creation and failure of the investments and to profit from both. The ability to benefit from both the negative and positive value of an investment is a result of a technologically enabled capacity to operate within a complex field. These layered and scaled investment vehicles and the simultaneous negation of their value together represent a commingling of the virtual and physical existence that is both complex and multiple. The valuation of a virtual property has tremendous power to change the valuation of the physical - either injecting it with or depriving it of funds, pumping in or draining life and energy. This situation has roots of its own – the notion of property advanced e.g., throughout the enclosure movement in Britain was, from the outset, an imposition of virtuality (i.e., the concept of law, the institutions associated with ownership, etc.) on the physical reality of land. 1 The difference today is that technological trading platforms combined with innovations within the financial services industry have enabled the reduction of each individual property receiving or losing value in scale to an almost atomic level. In turn, the number of properties held simultaneously and valued as a massive, multiple wholes – i.e., the derivatives market in mortgage-backed securities – is a new phenomenon made possible through the application of similar technologies and institutional structures. And those actors who can trade in these layers of complexity can then profit from the new phase of disassociation of the virtual and the physical – unconcerned with and operating at such a virtual distance from the individual residing physically on a particular piece of real estate that they no longer feel the tug of the physical tying them back to the physical, operating literally as in a video game, in a virtually distanced world. What can or should be done about this situation? Answers lie outside the scope of this current essay, but merit consideration in the near future… NOTE 1) Hernando de Soto has emphasized this dimension by empirically demonstrating its non-existence in many countries in The Mystery of Capital. (shrink)

It can be useful to sort out the debates over Hegel’s political philosophy in political terms. The early post-war debates took place on essentially liberal grounds, as Hegel’s adherence to free speech and constitutional government had to be defended against cold warriors such as Karl Popper and Sidney Hook. I think it is obvious to everyone that the liberals won. Nevertheless the liberal vision of Hegel gave way to what is really a social-democratic vision - though due to the anachronism (...) and implausibility of calling him a social-democrat, the social-democratic Hegel is called “modern.” The point is that he recognized that capitalism was crisis-prone and that political response was required, yet he had no designs on the private ownership of the means of production, and he would not condone repression. To 20th century ears, Hegel’s position resonates most sympathetically with the position of a social democrat. (shrink)

Because the Israeli kibbutz is innovative in collective ownership, production, consumption, and child care, and in part also because it is erroneously assumed to have once had a gender-egalitarian ideology and structure, it is taken to be a valid test case for many theories explaining or justifying gender inequality or gender equality. This article argues that the kibbutz cannot serve as a test case for theories that blame inequality on the family as such, on the exclusivity of infant rearing (...) by women, on the precultural differences between the sexes, or on compulsory heterosexuality for women. Kibbutz experience refutes theories that blame the inferior social status of women on material inequality, on private ownership of the means of production, or on the inferior ritual evaluation of women's activities. Kibbutz experience is indeed a unique test case for, but also a refutation of, theories that base gender equality on maximal participation of women in work in the public sphere or on the maximal socialization of housework and child care. Finally, kibbutz experience corroborates the theory that gender equality depends on equal control over surplus resources and, conspicuously so, the theory that in modern society, gender equality depends on the full abolition of the gender segregation of all social roles, especially work roles, whether performed in the private sphere or in the public sphere, whether paid for or unpaid. (shrink)

I argue that artworks are of public value because aesthetic experience of them contributes to the development of our aestheticjudgement. I use two accounts of aesthetic judgement to explore how it might do so and how the private ownership of artworks could affect the development of our aesthetic judgement.

The capacity to provide satisfactory nursing care is being increasingly compromised by current trajectories of healthcare funding and governance. The purpose of this paper is to examine how well Marxist theories of the state and its relationship with capital can explain these trajectories in this period of ever‐increasing austerity. Following a brief history of the current crisis, it examines empirically the effects of the crisis, and of the current trajectory of capitalism in general, upon the funding and organization of the (...) UK and US healthcare systems. The deleterious effect of growing income inequalities to the health of the population is also addressed. Marx's writings on the state and its relation to the capitalist class were fragmentary and historically and geographically specific. From them, we can extract three theoretical variants: the instrumentalist theory of the state, where the state has no autonomy from capital; the abdication theory, whereby capital abstains from direct political power and relies on the state to serve its interests; and the class‐balance theory, whereby the struggle between two opposed classes allows the state to assert itself. Discussion of modern Marxist interpretations includes Poulantzas's abdication theory and Miliband's instrumentalist theory. It is concluded that, despite the pluralism of electoral democracies, the bourgeoisie do have an overweening influence upon the state. The bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production provides the foundation for its influence because the state is obliged to rely on it to manage the supply of goods and services and the creation of wealth. That power is further reinforced by the infiltration of the bourgeoisie into the organs of state. The level of influence has accelerated rapidly over recent decades. One of the consequences of this has been that healthcare systems have become rich pickings for the evermore confident bourgeoisie. (shrink)

This paper analyses exploitation and class formation in a dynamic context. An intertemporal model of a subsistence economy is set up and, among other results, it is proved that, in an interior equilibrium, Differential Ownership of (Scarce) Productive Assets is an inherent feature of a capitalist economy, while exploitation tends to disappear in the long run. Asset inequality is therefore proved to be a normatively secondary (though causally primary) wrong. It is also argued that these results raise (...) several doubts about the possibility of providing robust micro-foundations to Marxian concepts by means of Walrasian general equilibrium models. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 35-52 [Access article in PDF] Means Without End:Production, Reception, and Teaching in Kant's Aesthetics Gary Peters The Work of Art If aesthetics is to have a role within an art school context, it must be able to engage with the work of art as an ongoing and ontologically open productive enterprise. The reception of the artwork as a completed thing (...) or act and the aesthetic judgment necessary to take pleasure in the contemplation of it is largely irrelevant to the day-to-day work of the artist in the studio or onsite. Rarely do the tutor or student stand before a work that could be claimed to have reached completion or achieved what might be called "finality." On the contrary, in most cases an essential aspect of teaching practice is precisely to resist the impending closure of the work through a critical engagement which challenges the student to consider and reconsider the aesthetic possibilities of given forms within a situation of infinite reflection. Given this, it is important at the outset to consider Kant's notion of finality without end. So we may at least observe a finality of form, and trace it in objects — though by reflection only — without resting it on an end....Whenever an end is regarded as a source of delight, it always imports an interest as determining ground of the judgment on the object of pleasure. Hence the judgment of taste cannot rest on any subjective end as its ground. But neither can any representation of an objective end, i.e., of the possibility of the object itself on the principles of final connection, determine the judgment of taste. 1Echoing his famous description of art as "purposiveness without purpose," here the Kantian relation between finality and endlessness turns attention away from the art object, and the objective judgment determined by it, to the reflective process whereby the act of aesthetic judgment has primacy as that which acts upon the pleasure attending finality in the manner [End Page 35] of a tracing to be traced and retraced by the receiver. By thus denying finality an objective end, it is true that Kant removes the specter of desire from his aesthetics. But does this not also remove the originary work of the work of art, its eruptive production prior to reproduction in what might be called the "instant" of its creation outside of the "always already there" of what Jean-François Lyotard calls "aesthetic time?" 2 Indeed, to go further still, Maurice Blanchot famously conceives of the art work as harboring a radical "worklessness," a "neutral" absence that, nevertheless, is essential to its being a work, or its being as a work. 3 Does Kant's nonobjective account of aesthetic experience direct us, ultimately, toward this peculiar ontological neutrality, or does the communicative imperative at the heart of his aesthetics overlook what Blanchot would call the "fascination" of the work as the inscrutable presence of an absence? It is this problematic that weighs heavily upon the reading and teaching of Kant's aesthetics as presented here.In Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Lyotard offers one solution to the problem. For him, reflective judgment is itself productive — "production that exceeds simple reproduction is an a priori condition for aesthetic judgment" (LAS, 67). That is to say, the power of the imagination and the pleasure associated with this power concern respectively the exercise and the registration of a productivity that is crucial for aesthetic reception to be possible. But does this playful enjoyment of our receptive/productive faculties and their beautiful attunement not obscure or distract us from the pure and immediate desire of the aesthetic where the concatenation of work and worklessness, that is to say, of production and reception, within the creative moment demands from the artist an interest in the ownership of, and responsibility for the work, as well as an absolute (one might say obsessive) commitment to the work of art — the labor of the aesthetic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 35-52 [Access article in PDF] Means Without End:Production, Reception, and Teaching in Kant's Aesthetics Gary Peters The Work of Art If aesthetics is to have a role within an art school context, it must be able to engage with the work of art as an ongoing and ontologically open productive enterprise. The reception of the artwork as a completed thing (...) or act and the aesthetic judgment necessary to take pleasure in the contemplation of it is largely irrelevant to the day-to-day work of the artist in the studio or onsite. Rarely do the tutor or student stand before a work that could be claimed to have reached completion or achieved what might be called "finality." On the contrary, in most cases an essential aspect of teaching practice is precisely to resist the impending closure of the work through a critical engagement which challenges the student to consider and reconsider the aesthetic possibilities of given forms within a situation of infinite reflection. Given this, it is important at the outset to consider Kant's notion of finality without end. So we may at least observe a finality of form, and trace it in objects — though by reflection only — without resting it on an end....Whenever an end is regarded as a source of delight, it always imports an interest as determining ground of the judgment on the object of pleasure. Hence the judgment of taste cannot rest on any subjective end as its ground. But neither can any representation of an objective end, i.e., of the possibility of the object itself on the principles of final connection, determine the judgment of taste. 1Echoing his famous description of art as "purposiveness without purpose," here the Kantian relation between finality and endlessness turns attention away from the art object, and the objective judgment determined by it, to the reflective process whereby the act of aesthetic judgment has primacy as that which acts upon the pleasure attending finality in the manner [End Page 35] of a tracing to be traced and retraced by the receiver. By thus denying finality an objective end, it is true that Kant removes the specter of desire from his aesthetics. But does this not also remove the originary work of the work of art, its eruptive production prior to reproduction in what might be called the "instant" of its creation outside of the "always already there" of what Jean-François Lyotard calls "aesthetic time?" 2 Indeed, to go further still, Maurice Blanchot famously conceives of the art work as harboring a radical "worklessness," a "neutral" absence that, nevertheless, is essential to its being a work, or its being as a work. 3 Does Kant's nonobjective account of aesthetic experience direct us, ultimately, toward this peculiar ontological neutrality, or does the communicative imperative at the heart of his aesthetics overlook what Blanchot would call the "fascination" of the work as the inscrutable presence of an absence? It is this problematic that weighs heavily upon the reading and teaching of Kant's aesthetics as presented here.In Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Lyotard offers one solution to the problem. For him, reflective judgment is itself productive — "production that exceeds simple reproduction is an a priori condition for aesthetic judgment" (LAS, 67). That is to say, the power of the imagination and the pleasure associated with this power concern respectively the exercise and the registration of a productivity that is crucial for aesthetic reception to be possible. But does this playful enjoyment of our receptive/productive faculties and their beautiful attunement not obscure or distract us from the pure and immediate desire of the aesthetic where the concatenation of work and worklessness, that is to say, of production and reception, within the creative moment demands from the artist an interest in the ownership of, and responsibility for the work, as well as an absolute (one might say obsessive) commitment to the work of art — the labor of the aesthetic... (shrink)

Digital personal data is increasingly framed as the basis of contemporary economies, representing an important new asset class. Control over these data assets seems to explain the emergence and dominance of so-called “Big Tech” firms, consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google/alphabet, and Facebook. These US-based firms are some of the largest in the world by market capitalization, a position that they retain despite growing policy and public condemnation—or “techlash”—of their market power based on their monopolistic control of personal data. (...) We analyse the transformation of personal data into an asset in order to explore how personal data is accounted for, governed, and valued by Big Tech firms and other political-economic actors. However, our findings show that Big Tech firms turn “users” and “user engagement” into assets through the performative measurement, governance, and valuation of user metrics, rather than extending ownership and control rights over personal data per se. We conceptualize this strategy as a form of “techcraft” to center attention on the means and mechanisms that Big Tech firms deploy to make users and user data measurable and legible as future revenue streams. (shrink)

Public-private partnerships are established to specifically harness the potential of Big Data in healthcare and can include partners working across the data chain—producing health data, analysing data, using research results or creating value from data. This domain paper will illustrate the challenges that arise when partners from the public and private sector collaborate to share, analyse and use biomedical Big Data. We discuss three specific challenges for PPPs: working within the social licence, public antipathy to the commercialisation of (...) public sector health data, and questions of ownership, both of the data and any resulting intellectual property or products. As a specific example we consider the case of the UK National Health Service providing patient data to Google’s DeepMind AI program to develop a diagnostic app for kidney disease. This article is an application of the framework presented in this issue of ABR. Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. We use four specific values to help analysis these issues: public benefit, stewardship, transparency and engagement. We demonstrate how the Deliberative Framework can support ethical governance of PPPs involving biomedical big data. (shrink)

This paper provides an examination of some problems caused by the concentration of influence in the capital markets of developed countries. In particular, I argue that large asset managers exercise quasi-political power that is not democratically legitimate. In section two, I will examine the economic driver behind the size and power of the big asset managers: the passive investing revolution. I will discuss several respects in which this revolution has fundamentally changed capital markets, most notably by making a large share (...) of investors universal owners. In the third section, I argue for my central analytical conjecture: asset managers exercise quasi-political power. They use their influence to shape the rules of the game in public capital markets in order to implement social and environmental policies that have traditionally been the exclusive purview of states. “Asset manager capitalism” is a recent term coined to refer to the contemporary system of corporate governance that succeeded the Berle and Means corporation with its dispersed ownership; the argument of this section is that asset manager capitalism is also a new political-economic regime. In the fourth section I defend my central normative claim: asset manager capitalism is an untenable and illegitimate political-economic arrangement, for at least two reasons. First, the power of asset managers is not checked by any institutional constraints, and is not rendered legitimate by any democratic process. More fundamental than this procedural critique is an argument that the interests of asset managers could not be aligned with the public interest, given the fact that the distribution of capital is highly unequal. I conclude by discussing several proposals to reform asset manager capitalism. (shrink)

A criticism is offered of the chief argument employed by Davidson to debunk the notion of “metaphorical meaning”, which exploits the static nature of standard truth-conditional semantics. We argue, first, that Davidson's argument fails, and go on to suggest, secondly, that truth-conditional semantics would profit if the static feature were abandoned and were replaced by a processual, dynamic conception of meaning. We try to show that this processual aspect can be captured without making the ensuing semantic theory open to the (...) charge of psychologism. (shrink)

As the functional capabilities of high-tech medical products converge, supplying organizations seek new opportunities to differentiate their offerings. Embracing product sustainability-related differentiators provides just such an opportunity. This study examines the challenge organizations face when attempting to understand how customers perceive environmental and social dimensions of sustainability by exploring and defining both dimensions on the basis of a review of extant literature and focus group research with a leading supplier of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning equipment. The study encompasses seven (...) hospitals and one private imaging center in the Netherlands and identifies five social aspects that cover 11 indicators. The authors conduct 22 customer perception interviews with key decision-making stakeholders involved in purchasing MRI scanning equipment. Respondents find environmental and social sustainability dimensions personally relevant but professionally secondary to cost, performance, and ability to use the equipment in their organizations' physical infrastructure. Finally, incorporating a product's environmental and social credentials within the marketing of MRI scanning equipment enhances the perception of the product offering in decisionmaking stakeholders' minds and provides a means of differentiation. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how the dynamic nature of words’ meanings plays a role in a philosophical theory of meaning. For ‘dynamic nature’ we intend the characteristic of being flexible, of changing according to many factors (speakers, contexts, and more). We consider meaning as something that gradually takes shape from the dynamic processes of communication. Accordingly, we present a draft of a theory of meaning that, on the one hand, describes how a private meaning is formed as a (...) mental state of individual agents during a lifetime of experiences, and, on the other hand, shows how a public meaning emerges from the interaction of agents. When communicating with each other, agents need to converge on a shared meaning of the words used, by means of a negotiation process. A public meaning is the abstract product of many of these processes while, at the same time, the private meanings are continually reshaped by each negotiation. Exploring this dynamics, we have been looking at the work done by computer scientists dealing with problems of heterogeneity of sources of information. We argue that a suitable solution for both disciplines lies in a systematic characterization of the processes of meaning negotiation. (shrink)

In a capitalist economy, taxes are the most important instrument by which the political system puts into practice a conception of economic and distributive justice. Taxes arouse strong passions, fueled not only by conflicts of economic self-interest, but by conflicting ideas of fairness. Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or (...) injustice in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights. (shrink)

Strengthening the abilities of smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly women farmers, to produce for both home and the market is currently a development priority. In many contexts, ownership of assets is strongly gendered, reflecting existing gender norms and limiting women’s ability to invest in more profitable livelihood strategies such as market-oriented agriculture. Yet the intersection between women’s asset endowments and their ability to participate in and benefit from agricultural interventions receives minimal attention. This paper explores changes in (...) gender relations and women’s assets in four agricultural interventions that promoted high value agriculture with different degrees of market-orientation. Findings suggest that these dairy and horticulture projects can successfully involve women and increase production, income and the stock of household assets. In some cases, women were able to increase their control over production, income and assets; however in most cases men’s incomes increased more than women’s and the gender-asset gap did not decrease. Gender- and asset-based barriers to participation in projects as well as gender norms that limit women’s ability to accumulate and retain control over assets both contributed to the results. Comparing experiences across the four projects, especially where projects implemented adaptive measures to encourage gender-equitable outcomes, provides lessons for gender-responsive projects targeting existing and emerging value chains for high value products. Other targeted support to women farmers may also be needed to promote their acquisition of the physical assets required to expand production or enter other nodes of the value chain. (shrink)

BackgroundTo prevent the planet from catastrophic global warming a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to net zero is required. Thus, divestment from fossil fuels must be a strategic interest for health insurers. The aim of this study was to analyse the implementation of environmental, social and governance criteria in German private health insurers’ investments.MethodsIn 2019 a survey about ESG strategies was sent to German private health insurance companies. The survey evaluated investment strategies and thresholds for the exclusion of (...) sectors and business practices, as well as company strategies for sustainable business development.FindingsGiven their business reports, German private health insurers manage assets of more than €350 billion. 11 of 40 insurance companies provided quantitative data, 10 refused to answer. According to quantitative data, €66 billion of assets is managed according to any ESG criteria; this equals an average of 76% of each company’s bonds. None of these insurers excluded the production and sale of fossil fuels. All excluded coal mining but only at high thresholds. For €226 billion, no data were provided.InterpretationThe findings are in contrast to the expected intrinsic economic interest of the insurers to stop global warming and improve public health. The majority of assets are managed in a highly problematic manner, especially the absence of capital allocated in fields contrary to medical ethics cannot be presumed. Lack of transparency is a major problem that limits clients in choosing the insurer who has the most advanced ESG criteria. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to highlight ways in which institutional policymakers tend to insufficiently conceptualise their role as ethics practitioners. We use the case of blood product recall notification as a means of raising questions about the way in which, as we have observed it, discourse for those who make institutional ethics policies is constrained by routine balancing of simplified principles to the exclusion of reflexive practices—those that turn ethics reasoning back on itself. The latter allows ethics (...) practitioners with comparatively little formal training to take ownership of traditional parameters, which define their discussions and ultimately ought to make them more insightful when doing ethics. Thus, in the midst of calls for more training to increase the competency of ethics committees, we suggest that an additional problem of how these lay ethicists conceive of their roles also needs to be addressed. (shrink)

From the standpoint of libertarian ideology, capitalism is a form of liberation. In contrast to the slave, whose productive powers are wholly owned by his master, and the serf, whose productive powers are partially owned by his lord, the worker under capitalism is presented as possessing the fullest possible self-ownership. That capitalism fosters self-ownership is a false and stultifying myth. Exposing its errors from within capitalism's own conceptual framework requires a careful analysis of the concept of (...) a person's “ownership” bodh of his or her productive powers and of the means of exercising these productive powers. This analysis will show that, in certain plausible circumstances, the capitalist economic system can make full self-ownership impossible. Since capitalism's supposed nurturing of self-ownership provides one of the major justifications for its moral legitimacy, capitalist ideology has a serious internal inconsistency. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in (...) the workplace and wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

An exploration of the central role of indirect modes of expression in ancient China.In what way do we benefit from speaking of things indirectly? How does such a distancing allow us better to discover--and describe--people and objects? How does distancing produce an effect? What can we gain from approaching the world obliquely? In other words, how does detour grant access? Thus begins Francois Jullien's investigation into the strategy, subtlety, and production of meaning in ancient and modern Chinese aesthetic and political (...) texts and events. Moving between the rhetorical traditions of ancient Greece and China, Jullien does not attempt a simple comparison of the two civilizations. Instead, he uses the perspective provided by each to gain access into a culture considered by many Westerners to be strange--"It's all Chinese to me"--and whose strangeness has been eclipsed through the assumption of its familiarity. He also uses the comparison to shed light on the role of Greek thinking in Western civilization. Jullien rereads the major texts of Chinese thought--The Book of Songs, Confucius's Analects, and the work of Mencius and Lao-Tse. He addresses the question of oblique, indirect, and allusive meaning in order to explore how the techniques of detour provide access to subtler meanings than are attainable through direct approaches. Indirect speech, Jullien concludes, yields a complex mode of indication, open to multiple perspectives and variations, infinitely adaptable to particular situations and contexts. Concentrating on that which is not said, or which is spoken only through other means, Jullien traces the benefits and costs of this rhetorical strategy in which absolute truth is absent. (shrink)

The development of collective beliefs via informational and reputational cascades represents a way of shortcircuiting the difficulties related to the collective action of ‘latent groups’ to ensure the promotion of their particular interests. This essay focuses on the protection of consumers, whose quality of the life has never been so high, despite the prevalence of hazardous products.Rationally ignorant individuals form their opinions by conforming to those of others; this can take two forms, either by consolidating their personal judgement or their (...) private information, or by pure conformist behaviour. It may even be that such individuals rarely hesitate, if necessary, to admit beliefs that they do not actually hold in order to avoid being ostracised by others. ‘Latent groups’ activists manipulate the process of formation of beliefs in order to bring about a predominant opinion on any given issue. Armed with the asset of the prevailing opinion, pressure can be exerted upon politicians in view of obtaining regulations and subsidies which would protect the ‘latent group’ of which they claim to be the representatives.This is the new face of collective action where the “politically correct” replaces physical violence or the strike. This way of shaping public opinion could have a beneficial outcome if it were not founded on erroneous information or led to a violation of individual rights due to regulation. However, this not the case. The very leitmotif of this method is, in fact, to bring about regulation which, by definition, violates private lives. In any case, it is dangerous because the manipulation of public opinion by these activists implies an intensive use of rhetoric, distorting the perception of risk, which in turn involves the circulation of misleading information in order to create a cascade modifying public opinion in favor of the proposed regulation, rather than informing the public on the potential risks and letting them insure freely against it if they judge to do so. But for the activist the end justifies the means. Thus, this manipulation of public opinion is a danger to the notion of modern democracy, already so sensitive to the pertaining to the majority.La formation des croyances par le biais des cascades d’information et de réputation est un moyen de courtcircuiter les difficultés liées à l’action collective des groupes latents pour assurer la promotion de leurs intérêts particuliers. Dans le cadre de cet essai est analysée la protection des consommateurs, dont la valeur de la vie est élevée, contre les produits à risque.Les individus rationnellement ignorants forment leurs opinions en se conformant aux croyances des autres, soit pour conforter leur jugement personnel ou leurs informations privées, soit par conformisme pur. Il se peut même que les individus n’hésitent pas, s’il le faut, à afficher de fausses croyances, pour ne pas être frappés d’ostracisme par les autres.Les activistes des “groupes latents” manipulent le processus de formation des croyances pour faire émerger une opinion majoritaire sur un problème spécifique. Grâce à cette opinion majoritaire ils vont pouvoir faire pression auprès des hommes politiques pour obtenir une réglementation et des subventions à leur propre profit dans le but de protéger le “groupe latent” dont ils prétendent être les représentants. Ce sont les nouvelles formes d’action collective où le politiquement correct remplace la violence physique ou le piquet de grève.Cette façon de former l’opinion publique pourrait avoir des conséquences bénéfiques si elle n’était pas fondée sur des informations erronées et si elle n’aboutissait pas à une violation des droits individuels par la réglementation. Or ce n’est pas le cas. Elle est faite justement pour faire émerger une réglementation qui par définition viole la vie privée des gens. Par ailleurs, elle est dangereuse parce que la manipulation de l’opinion publique par ces activistes implique un usage intensif de figures de rhétorique, de biais dans la perception des risques, de diffusion de fausses informations dans le but d’enclencher une cascade qui va modifier l’opinion publique en faveur de la réglementation et non pas dans le but d’éclairer le public sur les véritables risques encourus, la fin justifiant les moyens.Cette manipulation des croyances est alors un danger pour la démocratie politique contemporaine déjà si sensible à l’opinion majoritaire. (shrink)