On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 04:39 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > John McDermott, "Individual Rights over Economic Equality, "
Thank you for this reference! A 17 page excerpt containing the book's introdution and table of contents is available here ( https://content.e-bookshelf.de/media/reading/L-24940179-1dce4e7519.pdf ). > > Finally, Individual Rights over Economic Equality provides a fitting > capstone to the body of John’s work over the past 35 years. It extends his > analysis of modern society, of corporate-made society, and of US society > in particular, by addressing a central paradox of corporate society today. > For decades in the US, the protected legal rights of women, of people of > color and other minorities, of the very young and the very old, of gay > persons, of consumers and of the handicapped, have been vastly expanded in > the name of equality. But in the same period economic inequality has grown > exponentially. Indeed, as many have noted, economic inequality has > “exploded”. Then, more recently, abortion rights, affirmative action and > other rights have begun to be rolled back by the Supreme Court, right-wing > state legislatures and administrations in Washington. > > The book explores the seeming contradiction between this expansion of > rights and this explosion of economic inequality. It shows why the seeming > rights revolutions were doomed to be inherently unstable, due to the > philosophical basis on which rights have been conceptualized in the first > place. Our ubiquitous “individual rights” philosophy offers the central > ideological basis for the astronomical accumulations of wealth that > produce this inequality to begin with. This is because, at the center of > Natural Rights theorizing lies the “inalienable” right to private > property, and the actual concepts and practices of the accumulation of > property defeat other personal liberties at every turn. > > These “rights” philosophies have thus allowed gross disparities in wealth, > and therefore in power, ironically making possible the current rollback of > rights themselves. The book analyzes how all this occurred, ultimately > proposing some remedies. > > Current political philosophers espousing Natural Rights, including the > ultraliberal John Rawls and the conservative James M. Buchanan, share > nearly identical premises. They fail to recognize that the freestanding > individual, making rational choices, who stands at the center of > mainstream theorizing in Economics and politics, simply does not exist. We > are social animals, embedded in unequal networks of social and economic > relations, requiring very different explanatory frameworks than those > given by individual rights theorizing. Beyond exploring the defects of > rights theory, the book analyzes the networks of contemporary corporate, > business and financial power that control and limit specific groups of > citizens’ real lives and choices > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39956): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39956 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116961607/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
