David Ellerman — Labor theory of property and Marginal productivity theory

After Marx, dissenting economics almost always used ‘the labor theory’ as a theory of value. This paper develops a modern treatment of the alternative labor theory of property that is essentially the property theoretic application of the juridical principle of responsibility: impute legal responsibility in accordance with who was in fact responsible. To understand descriptively how assets and liabilities are appropriated in normal production, a ‘fundamental myth’ needs to be cleared away, and then the market mechanism of appropriation can be understood. On the normative side, neoclassical theory represents marginal productivity theory as showing that (a metaphorical version of) the imputation principle is satisfied (‘people get what they produce’) in competitive enterprises. Since that shows the moral commitment of neoclassical economics to the imputation principle, the labor theory of property is presented here as the actual non-metaphorical application of the imputation principle to property appropriation. The property-theoretic analysis at the firm level shows how the neoclassical (and much heterodox) analysis in terms of ‘distributive shares’ wholly misframed the basic questions. Finally, the paper shows how the imputation principle (modernized labor theory of property) is systematically violated in the present wage labor system of renting persons.…

David Ellerman

Labor theory of property and Marginal productivity theory

David Ellerman — PBS Making Sen$e blog: The case for employee-owned companies

I was asked by Paul Solman, the PBS National Economics Correspondent, to write down in non-technical terms the basic argument for the labor theory of property, i.e., the ordinary juridical responsibility principle applied to property rights and liabilities. This is the “justice in production” argument in a nutshell. You can go directly to the PBS Making Sen$e site, or

Click here to download a PDF of the blog entry.

Quite interesting that Paul Solman would make this request of David Ellerman, especially when PBS is going over the cliff in other respects.

This is short.

David Ellerman
PBS Making Sen$e blog: The case for employee-owned companies
David Ellerman | University of California, San Diego, Political Science, Fellow, Center on Global Justice, University of California, Riverside, Philosophy, Visiting Scholar

David Ellerman — Property and Production: An Introduction to the Labor Theory of Property

David Ellerman:

This is the 30th anniversary of the publication of this paper, Property and Production, which laid out the whole property-theoretic analysis of production. I would not change a word today. It was published in an anthology of papers on property rights:

Ellerman, David. 1984. “Property and Production: An Introduction to the Labor Theory of Property.” In Property: Cases, Concepts, Critiques, edited by Lawrence Becker and Kenneth Kipnis, 220–35. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Click here to download file.