On his book The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon
Cover Interview of June 03, 2018
Lastly
Everyone is trying to come up with ideas on how to reinvent
labor in the twenty-first century. I hope my book will make the use of working-class
shareholder power a core part of that discussion. I hope union leaders will
invest in it. I hope progressives will rally to protect and defend the pensions
that enable this power. I hope that policymakers will think carefully about how
to nourish the deployment of capital by workers for workers. I hope that
students might consider this work for a career. I also hope it will influence
academics and others to think carefully and strategically about how to reshape
markets from within.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
Lastly
Everyone is trying to come up with ideas on how to reinvent labor in the twenty-first century. I hope my book will make the use of working-class shareholder power a core part of that discussion. I hope union leaders will invest in it. I hope progressives will rally to protect and defend the pensions that enable this power. I hope that policymakers will think carefully about how to nourish the deployment of capital by workers for workers. I hope that students might consider this work for a career. I also hope it will influence academics and others to think carefully and strategically about how to reshape markets from within.