Robin Hahnel

The Case against Markets

Markets are an efficient way of producing and distributing a very large number of mundane items. Market incentives are a dependable way of getting our bread baked. Markets allow us to make the best use of the information dispersed throughout a society. Markets give their participants a certain kind of freedom expanding the range of choices and giving each person a variety of partners with whom to deaL David Miller and Saul Estrin (1994) -

Exploitation: A Modern Approach

Political economists who have abandoned the Marxian labor theory of value during the past few decades due to logical inconsistencies have failed to replace it with a logically sound theory that explains how and why the employment relationship is almost always exploitative even when labor markets are competitive. This article argues for a sacrifice-based theory of economic justice rather than the contribution-based theory implicit in the Marxian labor theory of value and uses a simple theoretical framework to explain not only why the employment relationship is exploitative but also why credit relations and goods trading can be exploitative as well.

Why the Market Subverts Democracy

Proponents of neoliberalism contend that promoting free markets is nearly synonymous with promoting democracy. Even those who reject extreme neoliberalism and call for regulating markets often express reluctance to do so because such interventions, in their view, diminish economic freedom to some extent. After a critical examination of competing definitions of economic democracy, this article argues that, contrary to popular opinion, the market system undermines both economic and political democracy in a number of ways.

What Mainstream Economists Won’t Tell You About Neoliberal Globalization.

What I remember most about the demonstrations against the World Trade Org a n i z a t i o n in Seattle in the winter of 1999 was the exhilaration of knowing by sundown of the first day that veterans of the 1960s like myself would not be condemned to live out the rest of our days never again to be part of a living movement for radical social change in our own country. But since I did not read a newspaper or watch a television for four days while in Seattle, I had no idea how the rest of the country was viewing “The Battle for Seattle.” I had only the mouse’s eye view until I returned home to Washington DC and opened five days of newspapers sitting outside my apartment. To my surprise I discovered that the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe h a d finally conceded that someone other than a crackpot or spokesperson for a “special interest” might have legitimate grounds for questioning the merits of neoliberal globalization. What was only a moderate sized demonstration by my standards had, to my surprise, succeeded in moving the issue of globalization from a back to a front burner in the United States.

The Question of Profits

Where do profits come from? Are they morally justified? Sraffians provide a clear answer to the first question but have declined to give a direct answer to the second question. This article argues that the “fundamental Sraffian theorem” implies a compelling moral critique of profits, but that this critique can be strengthened by replacing the “contribution-based” approach common among economists with a “sacrifice-based” theory consistent with work by modern egalitarian philosophers. JEL Classification: B51, D33, D63

The Invisible Foot

This article pays homage to E. K. Hunt who was a founding member of URPE who helped build chapters on several campuses in western states. Much of the author’s own research work over the past forty years was an attempt to strengthen criticisms Hunt voiced long ago about markets and blind spots in mainstream economic theory. The article reviews work inspired by Hunt regarding externalities, endogenous preferences, the Coase theorem, and an alternative to the market system known as participatory planning.