From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth

Know about the book -

From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth is written by Alex Gourevitch and published by Cambridge University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1107033179 (ISBN 10) and 9781107033177 (ISBN 13).

This book reconstructs how a group of nineteenth-century labor reformers appropriated and radicalized the republican tradition. These "labor republicans" derived their definition of freedom from a long tradition of political theory dating back to the classical republics. In this tradition, to be free is to be independent of anyone else's will - to be dependent is to be a slave. Borrowing these ideas, labor republicans argued that wage laborers were unfree because of their abject dependence on their employers. Workers in a cooperative, on the other hand, were considered free because they equally and collectively controlled their work. Although these labor republicans are relatively unknown, this book details their unique, contemporary, and valuable perspective on both American history and the organization of the economy.