Purpose – Whereas a combination of unique historical conditions and a specific set of public policies in the United States enabled labor to significantly increase its relative power during the quarter century following World War II, this halcyon period for labor was followed by a period of...

It was typical in nineteenth century economic thought to view the tensions between the interests of capital and labour as critical to industrial society. Yet later economic thought has generally reduced these tensions to those captured in contract theory. Explores how this narrowing of focus has...

In recent years, in the partial vacuum left by the apparent inadequacy of Keynesian economics, there has been a renaissance of natural law cosmology. Accordingly, the social world is again viewed through pre‐Keynesian spectacles as ideally self‐adjusting through the action of the free...

Modern economics, because of its instrumental orientation and its adherence to positivistic canons of science, suffers from two pernicious illusions. The first is that the discipline fails to acknowledge its own participation in the determination of the ends to be sought. The task of...

For over 2,000 years Confucian philosophy dominated Chinese social thought, thus leaving an enormous body of Confucian literature addressing social problems. Yet very little of that which is Confucian social thought appears to possess economic content. Joseph J. Spengler concluded that “the...

Purpose – Whereas a combination of unique historical conditions and a specific set of public policies in the United States enabled labor to significantly increase its relative power during the quarter century following World War II, this halcyon period for labor was followed by a period of...

Formerly socialist economies of Eastern Europe have been advised by the West to adopt the property rights of classical capitalism. Yet the Western economies from which this advice emanates are all struggling to overcome productivity stagnation, resulting from the tensions between the interests...

Reports that although there has been significant progress towards greater worker participation and even fuller forms of workplace democracy in recent decades, its potential is all but ignored in modern political discourse. Addresses the compelling reasons why it should receive greater attention....

Although the Catholic Church has rarely throughout its long history taken stances on socio‐economic issues that might be characterized as socially progressive, its view of work has constituted a notable exception. Its early view not only granted work dignity, but also reinforced an attitude of...