Consumption Values of Trade Unions

The widening of the U.S. market following the adoption of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution stimulated changes in methods of production and business organization. These changes required a radical change in finance that prompted the Supreme Court to adopt exchange value as the accepted principle of property rights. These rights did not rest on tangible material, but on incorporeal and intangible assets. This legalized the firm as a going concern instead of a bundle of things and enhanced the role of finance relative to production. These evolving business practices and supporting judicial decisions set the U.S. economy on the path that has resulted in our current financial economy. The steps along this path are discussed in this article and we conclude that an economic theory based on intangible property is needed.     

American Unionism: From Protest to Going Concern

This article is the companion to "Pragmatism(s) Plural, Part I" which argued the virtue of classical pragmatism (of C.S. Peirce and John Dewey) as a methodological and philosophical adjunct to empirical inquiry in political economy. This article briefly examines the use of "pragmatism" to refer to philosophical positions having little to do with classical pragmatism and which are generally antithetical to it. Succeeding sections indicate how W.V. Quine, Richard Rorty, Karl Popper and others are associated with distortions, misreadings, and baseless criticisms of classical pragmatism — or more often of imagined or phantom versions of classical pragmatism. These other "pragmatisms" block more effective inquiry by substituting philosophical attacks and rationales for ongoing, evidential criteria.