This paper attempts to specify theoretically the origins of money. Rather than the exchange-based view of neoclassical economists where money is seen as a transaction cost-reducing instrument (and where exchange itself is asserted to be a universal phenomenon), we argue that money is a social...

Marx and Engels developed their position on the state in the context of their attempt to understand and analyze society in general, in particular, capitalist society. Over the course of five decades of examination, their argument was refined, partly due to their historic investigations, partly...

Social outcomes are analyzed either by placing responsibility for those outcomes on the individual or to locate the cause in a specific social factor -- discrimination. Here, I argue that individual decision-making cannot be the cause of poverty, illustrative of one outcome, and that commentary...

This essay has two main objectives. Initially, I specify the relationship between neoclassical theory and the property rights regime on which that theory rests. In this portion of the argument I show that the property rights consistent with neoclassical theory are inconsistent with those of a...

The focus of this paper is John Locke's theoretical defense of economic inequality. It is well known that Locke identified labor as the original and just foundation of property. Succinctly, Locke's was a labor theory of property. Now, while Locke saw private property as legitimate, he proposed...