The folks at CESJ are no slouches...Norm Kurland was the author of the ESOP legislation introduced by Senator Russell Long (D-LA). He maintains an active consulting firm in the field. Norman Bailey was a member of the National Security Council. So their thoughts on Capital Homesteading are not just a hobby of theirs. That alone is good reason to get acquainted with their "binatarian economics."

While I would love to see key parts of their agenda passed into law, most especially legislation leading to Community Investment Companies (CICs), I believe that their philosophical underpinnings are flawed. Their critique of capitalism as found in their "Capitalist Manifesto" is really an apologetic for capitalism and thousands of years worth of oppression of working people by priviledged elites.

But if I were in Congress and had a chance for to vote "yea" on CICs and other capital homesteading ideas, I'd vote early and often in the affirmative.

CESJ's main intellectual rival is David Ellerman (World Bank). Among notable things Ellerman has done while at the World Bank is to write the speech that got Joseph Stiglitz fired, so I'm a big fan! (of both Ellerman and Stiglitz, of course). Ellerman contends that workers cannot morally pass off responsibility for the results of production to owners of assets used by a firm. He contends that to do so is to subject oneself to slavery, by the hour, by the month. The employment contract, according to Ellerman, differs from antebellum slavery in the South only in that masters used to pay for slaves up front. Things are better for the Ol' Massa now: he can get his slaves on the installment plan and take off with their pension too! ;)

Ellerman believes that owners of capital are not entitled to ownership of the firm. The capitalist is just what a capitalist is: an owner of capital. Workers are what they are, people who are responsible for their work and their entitled to the total fruit, or even lack thereof, of that work. And therefore the only moral employment is self-employment or joint-employment i.e. the democratic employee-owned firm or cooperative. What's a capitalist to do to make a little on her investment? Rent out or lease the capital to worker-owned firms, according to Ellerman.

Since I'm an "inalienable rights" kind of guy, a believer in the inalienable worth and responsibility of each person, I pretty much take Ellerman's point to be right on the money.

I share your analysis. Sure, the folks at CESJ are proposing a step in the right direction, but only one step. From this discussion, it seems clearer to me that employee ownership is part.. but not the whole... of a democratic economy.