In Tikkun Magazine, Thad Williamson reviews a handful of new books that “provide a well-timed critique of the fundamentals of our economic system, in each case connecting the critiques explicitly to ethical and in some cases theological conceptions of what makes for a good human life and what makes for a just society”:
If it turns out that little of what the wealthy control now is attributable to individual effort, how can large fortunes such as that accumulated by Bill Gates be justified? Alperovitz and Daly argue that they can’t. To be sure, there is a pragmatic case for continuing to permit patents and for providing other incentives to stimulate further research and creative activity. But we must reject the idea that the person who happens to add the last increment of value to a vast, collective creation produced over many generations is thereby entitled to the whole.
If we were to take seriously the reality that our affluence is primarily the result of the accumulated knowledge and capital of the past and not our personal efforts, we would be forced to reject the assumption that the highly unequal distribution of wealth we witness both nationally and globally are in any way the byproduct of just economic arrangements. (Importantly, recognizing this point does not require abandoning the moral intuition that there should be some connection between economic reward and effort.) Those who claim a disproportionate, lion’s share of economic wealth are not simply claiming their just deserts; rather, they are usurping the common inheritance of humanity, while excluding the vast majority of the national and world populations from a fair share of that inheritance.
Alperovitz and Daly thus (like Magnuson) call for a fundamental rethinking of how wealth is distributed, and for developing new forms of ownership that are democratic and that “spread the wealth around,” as Barack Obama has put it. Alperovitz and Daly’s argumentation and practical proposals offer progressives a chance, after a generation of playing defense, to again assume the initiative in challenging the grotesque distribution of wealth and resources and explaining why, not as a matter of charity or expedience but of moral desert, wealth should indeed be spread around.
Read the full piece here.