"It is illusory to believe that it is possible to visualize collective wholes. They are never visible; their cognition is always the outcome of the understanding of the meaning which acting men attribute to their acts. We can see a crowd, i.e., a multitude of people....
Economics
The Socialist Spirit
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 1, 2025 | Blog, Economics
"Of course, not Marxists alone, but most of those who emphatically declare themselves anti-Marxists, think entirely on Marxist lines and have adopted Marx’s arbitrary, unconfirmed and easily refutable dogmas. If and when they come into power, they govern and work...
Production for Profit Is Production for People, part 2
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 31, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"In his capacity as a businessman a man is a servant of the consumers, bound to comply with their wishes. He cannot indulge in his own whims and fancies. But his customers’ whims and fancies are for him ultimate law, provided these customers are ready to pay for them....
Production for Profit Is Production for People
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 30, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"Profit and loss can be expressed in definite amounts of money. It is possible to ascertain in terms of money how much an individual has profited or lost. However, this is not a statement about this individual’s psychic profit or loss. It is a statement about a social...
Pseudo-Liberalism
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 29, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"The detractors of liberty are in this sense right in calling it a 'bourgeois' issue and in blaming the rights guaranteeing liberty for being negative. In the realm of state and government, liberty means restraint imposed upon the exercise of the police power. "There...
Freedom and Competition
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 28, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"The freedom of man under capitalism is an effect of competition. The worker does not depend on the good graces of an employer. If his employer discharges him, he finds another employer. The consumer is not at the mercy of the shopkeeper. He is free to patronize...
“Mature Capitalism” Ain’t Capitalism
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 27, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"It would be correct to describe this state of affairs in this way: Today many or some groups of business are no longer liberal; they do not advocate a pure market economy and free enterprise, but, on the contrary, are asking for various measures of government...
TGIF: Social Cooperation Versus Violence
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 27, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The chilling photo of a hooded man cold-bloodedly executing a health-insurance CEO on a busy New York City street should make any decent person pause and reflect. Anyone who even glimpses the role of social cooperation in making life better and longer felt sickened,...