David Ellerman: Neo-Abolitionism: Abolishing Human Rentals in Favor of Workplace Democracy

This is a review of Professor David Ellerman’s book Neo-Abolitionism: Abolishing Human Rentals in Favor of Workplace Democracy, a recent book that is the result of several decades of the author’s theoretical elaboration. The book deals with the reintroduction of jurisprudence in basic microeconomic theory and reinterpretation of its basic categories in terms of “property and contracts” and as opposed to the standard neoclassical treatment that proposes a stylized deductive analysis of productivity sets and marginal factor productivity in the context of a competitive economic system. Although his theses on inalienable rights, human agency, and labour control are highly controversial and may be debated or rejected by many commentators embracing more traditional approaches, they are in any case an impetus for innovating academic research as they require new conceptual tools and elaboration.