Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T23:50:43.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Private Property versus Markets: Democratic and Communitarian Critiques of Capitalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Claudio J. Katz
Claudio J. Katz*
Affiliation:
Loyola UniversityChicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay assesses communitarian and democratic critiques of capitalist economies. Distinguishing them are sharply contrasting evaluations of markets and private property. Communitarian critics of capitalism trace its moral failure to the marketplace. Drawing on Aristotle's normative economics, this school maintains that production for gain corrodes society's moral fabric. I defend the democratic approach. Democratic critics accept the modern claim that markets are both efficient and liberating. Capitalist ownership relations are another matter, indicted because they constitute a form of private power over people's lives. I reconstruct the ethical core of the democratic school and contend that it offers a better understanding of the most objectionable aspects of capitalist economies while avoiding the dangers inherent in the communitarian approach.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 91 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 277 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Perry. 1974. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: NLB.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1962. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Ostwald, Martin. Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1984. The Politics. Trans. Lord, Carnes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bendix, Reinhard. 1963. Work and Authority in Industry. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Bloch, Marc. 1966. French Rural History. Trans. Sondheimer, Janet. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Blumberg, Paul. 1969. Industrial Democracy. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Booth, William James. 1994. “On the Idea of the Moral Economy.” American Political Science Review 88 (09):653–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Robert. 1986. “The Social Bases of Economic Development.” In Analytical Marxism, ed. Roemer, John. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert. 1987. “The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism.” In The Brenner Debate, ed. Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. H. E.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duby, Georges. 1968. Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West. Trans. Postan, Cynthia. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. 1964. The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. Simpson, George. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1967. “Introduction” to The Gift, by Mauss, Marcel. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Finley, Moses I. 1980. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Finley, Moses I. 1981. “Homer and Mycenae: Property and Tenure.” In Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, ed. Shaw, Brent D. and Saller, Richard P.. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth. 1971. The New Industrial State. New York: New American Library.Google Scholar
Genovese, Eugene. 1976. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Edward. 1986. Workplace Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hampsher-Monk, Iain. 1976. “The Political Theory of the Levellers: Putney, Property and Professor Macpherson.” Political Studies 24 (12):397–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayek, F. A. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hilton, Rodney. 1973. Bond Men Made Free. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Hilton, Rodney. 1975. English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lane, Robert. 1991. The Market Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Charles. 1977. Politics and Markets. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1980. Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C. B. 1973. Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Maine, Henry Sumner. 1963. Ancient Law. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Marglin, Stephen. 1978. “What Do Bosses Do?” In The Division of Labor, ed. Gorz, Andre. Sussex, England: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse. Trans. Nicolaus, Martin. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital. Trans. Fowkes, Ben. Vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift. Trans. Cunnison, Ian. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington Jr. 1978. Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. New York: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Murphy, James Bernard. 1993. The Moral Economy of Labor. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Nove, Alec. 1991. The Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Pagano, Uno. 1985. Work and Welfare in Economic Theory. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando. 1991. Freedom. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 1957. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 1968. Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, Essays of Karl Polanyi, ed. Dalton, George. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Postan, M. M. 1972. The Medieval Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Samuelson, Paul. 1957. “Wages and Interest: a Modern Dissection of Marxian Economic Models.” American Economic Review 117 (12):884–912.Google Scholar
Schor, Juliet. 1991. The Overworked American. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Schweickart, David. 1996. Against Capitalism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shanin, Teodor. 1971. “Peasantry as a Political Factor.” In Peasants and Peasant Societies, ed. Shanin, Teodor. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1937. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Special Task Force to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. 1973. Work in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tawney, R. H. 1912. The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Burt Franklin.Google Scholar
Taylor, Frederick Winslow. 1976a. “Shop Management.” In Scientific Management, by Taylor, Frederick Winslow. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Frederick Winslow. 1976b. “The Principles of Scientific Management.” In Scientific Management, by Taylor, Frederick Winslow. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith. 1964. “Work and Leisure in Pre-Industrial Society.” Past and Present 38 (12):50–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1968. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1991. Customs in Common. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1955. Community and Association. Trans. Loomis, Charles. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1990. “The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism.” Political Theory 18 (02):6–23.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1994. Thick and Thin. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whyte, William Foote, and Whyte, Kathleen King. 1988. Making Mondragon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric. 1969. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric. 1966. Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. 1988. Peasant-Citizen and Slave. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. 1995. Democracy against Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Neal. 1984. John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.