Property and Contract 1973

This 1973 unpublished typescript was probably the first time my settled views on property theory were put into writing.

Property Appropriation and Theory of the Firm

This is the first of my papers published by Warren Samuels who became a great supporter of this property theoretic analysis.

Marxian Exploitation Theory

This 1983 paper in a philosophical journal analyzes the Marxian labor theory of value and exploitation as an incorrect and superficial theory.

The Labor Theory of Property

This is a 1985 paper in a philosophical journal spelling out the labor theory of property.

Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics

Dramatic changes or revolutions in a field of science are often made by outsiders or ‘trespassers,’ who are not limited by the established, ‘expert’ approaches. Each essay in this diverse collection shows the fruits of intellectual trespassing and poaching among fields such as economics, Kantian ethics, Platonic philosophy, category theory, double-entry accounting, arbitrage, algebraic logic, series-parallel duality, and financial arithmetic.

The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm

My second book was the 1989 The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm. The book was revised for the Chinese translation, and that is the version that can be downloaded here. This book develops the labor theory of property and democratic theory arguments for a democratic firm, and analyzes the connection between those principles and the legal structure of the firms.

Economics, Accounting, and Property Theory

This is my first book. In order to develop a mathematical model of the stocks and flows of property inside a firm, I first had to give a math model of the usual double-entry accounting for the stocks and flows of the scalar value, and then generalize it to vectors of property rights.

Introduction to Normative Property Theory

This was my first (1972) publication in property theory. The normative part of the theory is essentially the same as what I would espouse today, but for the descriptive theory, I was still in the grip of the “fundamental myth” that the rights to the product are part and parcel of some existing property rights to some capital asset.

Property Theory and Value Theory 1980

This is an old (1980) paper published in the Yugoslav journal Economic Analysis and Workers’ Management. It shows essentially all the ideas in the modern treatment of the labor theory of property (i.e., using the juridical principle of imputation) coming together by that date.