Finally published. This book has it all. Destined to be a classic
RE:NEW BOOK
NEW BOOK May 1998
by the author of "The MAI: The Plan to Replace Responsible Government"
John McMurtry,
UNEQUAL FREEDOMS: THE GLOBAL MARKET AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM
A complete guide to the theory and practice of the global market, with
direct applicability to everyday life. Table of Contents below. Order from
Garamond@web.net ISBN 1-55193-003-X Cdn.$24.95.
"A devastating critique of market doctrine."
- Gordon Laxer, University of Alberta
"A brilliant, elegantly written exposé."
- Harry Glasbeek, Osgoode Hall Law School
"Some of the most exhilarating philosophy I have ever read."
- G.A. Cohen, All Souls, Oxford University
"Lays bare the foundations of a new economics ... bids well to become a
classic."
- William Krehm, Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform
John McMurtry covers a broad range of important thinkers and major themes,
from John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx to Friedrich
Hayek, Milton Friedman, Robert Reich and the liberal contractarians; from
human needs, national debts and environmental crises to issues of the
global information economy and consumerism vs. citizenship. A
path-breaking work, this book is essential reading for anyone attempting to
come to grips with the crises of the contemporary world and the common
ground of their solution.
This book has been tested to ensure that every subsection can be taught or
read as an independent debate site or explanatory critique, and at any
level of instruction or understanding from first-year to PhD. At the same
time, its 70 subsections connect together into a definitive, systematic
deconstruction of the dominant paradigm of our epoch, and set out the clear
coordinates of an alternative economics structured to serve rather than to
consume and exploit human and environmental life-hosts.
Student reasoning and analytic abilities have been shown to advance
dramatically by the challenge of understanding the theoretical, practical
and value premises and arguments underlying the contemporary world system,
and its domination of social and ecological life-organization across the
planet. An ideal textbook or sourcebook for any course in the humanities,
social sciences, interdisciplinary or environmental studies.
Courses and course topics in which this book have been or could be used as
a primary or secondary text include social and political issues, ethics,
world politics, value theory, international political economy, economic
history, contemporary educational theory, cultural studies, international
development, environmental studies, global ideologies, media and
communications theory, labour history, structural social work, law and
justice, theology and society, women and gender studies, sociology of
politics, philosophy of the environment, Canadian studies, international
relations and trade, peace and conflict studies, and informal logic.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction: An Overview
Understanding How We Live: Recognizing Value Programs
Distinguishing between Representation and Reality
Part One: Behind the Invisible Hand
The Problem: A Question of Freedom
The Pursuit of Freedom: An Irony of History
The Postmodern Response
The Freedom of No Alternative
The Pursuit of Freedom
The Founders of the Theory and Their Revisionists:
From John Locke and Adam Smith to
"Value-Free Economics"
The Moral System of a Market Exchange
Individual Freedom and the Neutral Market State:
Are These Coherent Norms?
The Case of Friedrich Hayek
The Market as God
The Problem of Evil
The Regulating Principles of True Belief
The Confusion of Moral Commandments
and Physical Laws since Ricardo
>From the Market System to the Cosmic Order
Punishments for Disobedience to Market Laws
The Underlying Principles of the Market Theology
The Place of Free Will in the Market Theodicy
Robert Reich's Conversion
The Doctrine of Infallibility
The Invisible Hand Revisited
Part II: Market Theory and Practice: Arguments Pro and Con
Freedom, Private Property, and Money:
From John Locke to the New World Order
John Locke on the Right to Private Property
The Problem of Private Property In Slaves
How Do We Distinguish Buying Slaves from
Buying Labour?
The Free Contract Solution
The Problem of the Propertyless Unemployed
Justifications for Private Property in Money without Limit
The Trickle-Down Theory
Where the Rich Refuse Contract
Private Property for and against Life-Interests
Abstraction as Disguise for Special Interest
Do Property Rights Have Property Obligations?
Money Investment and Community Fetters
The New Crusade for Freedom
Private Profit, Competition, and the Social Good
Adam Smith's Moral Revolution
I Am Rational, Therefore I Self-Maximize
Dehumanizing Adam Smith
The Corporate Person
The New Global Market Sovereign
The Money Ground of Value
The Logic of Comparative Advantage
The Homogenization of Nations in the World Market
The Free Market and Democracy
Freedom of the Consumer - If You Can Pay
The Question of Need
Consumer Sovereignty or Infantile Demand?
The Truth of Consumer Choice
Freedom of the Producer or the Non-Producer?
The Knowledge-Based Economy
Six Ways in which the Knowledge-Based Economy
Is Structured against Knowing the Truth
Education and the Market Model
Freedom of the Press - for Those Who Own One
The Invisible Curtain of the Media
The Grammar of Censorship
The Market Metaphysic:
Rallying Cries and True Meanings
Getting the State off Our Backs
Removing Barriers to Trade
No Free Lunches
Part III: Planetary Health, the Global Market, and the Civil Commons
The Decoupling of Capital from Civil
and Environmental Life
Freeing Capital from Society: The Function of Free Trade
Freeing Corporations from Workers' Demands
Freeing Corporations from Governments
Rootless Investors and the Age of Disposable Life
Seeing through the Rich to the Value Program
The Mutations of the Profit System and Their Cure
>From the Life-Code of Value
to the Logic of the World-System Crisis
Sacrificing Life to the Money-Sequence
Towards a Cure: Relinking Banks to the Public
that Charters and Funds Them
Money Creation and Public Accountability
The Economics of Life and Death
Growth, Development, and the Mutations
of the Money-Sequence
The Pathologization of the Money-Sequence:
From Means of Life to Means of Life Destruction
Banks for and against the Public Interest:
The Market Lessons of the Asian Tigers
Pension and Mutual Funds: A Hidden Market Keel
Taxing Money-Demand: The Unseen Principle of Justice
Beyond the Mega-Machine to the Civil Commons
Confronting the Death Spiral of the System
The Life-Ground of the Civil Commons
The Civil Commons and the State
The Civil Commons and Real Capital
Conclusion: The Way Ahead
Index
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W. Robert Needham
Director, Canadian Studies Program
St. Paul's United College
University of Waterloo
Waterloo Ontario N2L 3G5
http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/ECON/needham.html