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LPE Originals

The Stakes of Law as a Productive Force

What follows, politically, from the idea that law is constitutive of capitalism? What theories of social change does this view make available, where does it locate possibilities for political agency, and what kinds of political energies might it unleash?

LPE Originals

What Law Cannot Explain (or Solve) about Capitalism

If capitalism is a legal regime above all else, then legal reform is not only necessary but sufficient in order to achieve democratic self-governance, ecological sustainability, and equality. As the collapse of the WTO and the rise of China suggest, however, law alone does not decide who holds economic power.

LPE Originals

Rewriting the Laws of Capitalism

When new constitutional orders came about in the 18th and 19th centuries, they left intact the private legal order that they inherited from feudalism, entrenching property rights and contracts as bulwarks against economic democracy. Reforming this system will require placing private law on a normative foundation that is compatible with democratic self-ordering.