Quantum Logic of Direct-sum Decompositions

The usual quantum logic, beginning with Birkhoff and Von Neumann, was the logic of closed subspaces of a Hilbert space. This paper develops the more general logic of direct-sum decompositions of a vector space. This allows the treatment of measurement of any self-adjoint operators rather than just the projection operators associated with subspaces.

Reframing the Labor Question

Subtitle: On Marginal Productivity Theory and the Labor Theory of Property
This paper reframes the labor question according to the normal juridical principle of imputation whose application to property appropriation is the modern treatment of the old natural rights or labor theory of property.

Labor theory of property and predistribution

This is the online-first publication in Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs of an article on the labor theory of property showing the superficiality of the inequality-debate framing in terms of distribution (i.e., how much is distributed by a firm to labor versus capital) in favor of a framing in terms of what is now called “predistribution”–in this case the question of who is to be the firm in the first place, Capital or Labor.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Little-known proponents of workplace democracy:

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

From Abstraction in Math to Superposition in QM

This is a draft paper that makes a perhaps surprising connection between the old Platonic notion of a paradigm-universal like ‘the white thing’ and an indefinite superposition state in quantum mechanics.

Review of Erik O. Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias

I rarely review books and almost never books by Marxists. However, in order to comment on a presentation at a conference, I decided to write up my extensive comments in the form of a book review of Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias.

Review of Dahl’s Preface to Economic Democracy

This is my review in Commonweal of Robert A. Dahl’s 1985 book Preface to Economic Democracy shortly after it was published.

Knowledge and Institutional Change

This paper attempts set forth systematically some of the knowledge questions that determine certain strategies for institutional change.

Voucher Privatization with Investment Funds

This paper has been cited many times as the representative critique of voucher privatization with investment funds.

Straddler interview and video

This is the text and edited video of an interview with The Straddler in January 2016 entitled: Against the Renting of Persons.