From Maimonides to Microsoft: the Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print by Neil Weinstock Netanel, with Notes by David Nimmer Oxford University Press, 2016 ISBN 9780195371994, hard cover, 336 pp. Price: £65.00

Review by Michael Factor Republished from the Oxford Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice

This book is an academic treatise that looks at rabbinical rulings relating to book publishing from the dawn of printing to modern times. It includes a thorough introduction that provides an in-depth overview of the halachic process, one of the best short essays on the topic that I have seen in English or Hebrew.

The book publishing industry received special attention by the rabbis as it involved major investment, whereas reprinting was considerably cheaper. This state of affairs resulted in many publishers going bankrupt; the free-market forces that are generally favoured in Jewish law proved expensive and wasteful. In addition to regulating the industry so as to ensure propagation and distribution of books on Jewish scholarship, rabbinic control of the book industry was also a means of preventing the dissemination of heretical ideas.

In general, Jewish law does not consider intangible resources as property per se. However, creative interpretation of Talmudic sources referring to unjust competition gave a legal precedent for quasi-property rights for intangibles that were recognized by some rabbinical authorities. Others simply saw rabbinical intervention as a short-term means of preventing market failure. Because books printed in Venice reached an international Jewish market, tools that had hitherto been applied to regulating local communities were extended to regulating the international market by some rabbis, even while this practice was condemned by others.

Netanel explains how early printing in Italy required papal consent, and the publisher was required to be Christian. Some, like the Calvinist Daniel Bomberg, whose 16th-century pagination of the Talmud is the reference system universally used by Jewish scholars to this day, refused to allow papal intervention or censorship. Nevertheless, the Jewish community desired the Jewish book trade to be free of Christian interference.

When the MaHaRam of Padwa (Rabbi Katzenellenbogen) edited a scholarly edition of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, the first thematic codification of the Jewish law, and invested personal funds in its publication in 1550, a competing publisher, called Giustiniani, brought out his version at the same time, and offered to sell it for one gold piece less than the Padwa edition. Since the main market for these relatively expensive sets of books was the study houses and rabbis of the large Jewish community of Poland and the surrounding countries, the MaHaRam of Padwa appealed to the Polish Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1520–1572) to support him against this predatory pricing tactic. Rabbi Isserles published a responsum that banned God-fearing Jews from purchasing the competing edition, using various creative arguments that essentially obliged the Jewish public to help prevent Giustiniani from transgressing his Biblical obligation under the Noahide laws to respect the institutions of courts and property. The result of Isserles’ efforts, and Giustiani’s complaints against it, was a papal inquisition which resulted in the burning of both manuscripts and printed copies of the Talmud and in them being banned in Italy. This eventually resulted in the moving of the Jewish book publishing industry to Protestant, and more tolerant, Amsterdam. Although politically, Rabbi Iserles’ ruling backfired, it nevertheless became a cornerstone of Jewish legislation.

In general, rabbinical bans were for short periods, typically 10 to 20 years, and were designed to ensure that the publisher could sell the first print run, thus having the opportunity to recoup his investment and make a fair profit. Where the print run sold out earlier, the ban against competing editions was often rescinded. Thus the rabbis generally did not recognize authors’ rights of remuneration and did not busy themselves with philosophical questions of the nature of copyright under natural law; rather, they tried to regulate the industry to promote the availability of Jewish study texts. (There is a much older obligation of correct attribution that is arguably akin to the Author's moral right of attribution (Ethics of the Fathers 6:6) and which finds implicit support from the Bible (Esther 2:22, Jeremiah 23:30).)

Netanel’s book looks at 18th-century battles between Hassidic and non-Hassidic scholars, with each camp backing rival publishing houses in attempts to control the Talmud publishing industry. The book also discusses later rulings from the 19th century, when Jewish autonomy in Eastern Europe came to an end and state legislation banning the import of books across state borders, aimed to encourage the local publishing industry, created a shortage of Jewish festival prayer books; this in turn gave rise to a situation where printers in other states were allowed to publish competing editions in order to ensure adequate supply. A fascinating about-turn from Rabbi Joseph Saul Nathanson (1808–1875), the Rabbi of Lemberg who authored the Sho’el uMeshiv responsa, is discussed. The views of other rabbis, including Rabbi Yitzhak Shmelkes (the Bet Yitzchak 1828–1906) and Rabbi Moses Sofer (the Chatam Sofer1762–1839) are compared and contrasted.

In the 1990s, software piracy was rampant in Israel, which had the dubious distinction of being referred to as a one-disk State. In addition to fighting copyright suits in secular courts, Microsoft approached a rabbinical court in Bnei Brak for a court decree preventing software copying. Such a ruling was eventually issued, but, in line with rabbinical tradition, it was limited to forbidding commercial copying.

In practice, most rabbinical authorities see modern copyright as binding since it is the law of the land: despite not being a concept developed from Jewish sources per se, the secular regime is still obligatory. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews download films for personal viewing and make copies of music albums for personal consumption, arguing that Jewish law does not forbid it, but these copyright infringements are no more prevalent in the religious sector than in other sectors of the Israeli society. Rabbis generally do not consider such actions as theft. Nor do IP scholars. However, the creative industries do use this argument.

One refreshing aspect of the book is that the author does not personally espouse the cause of any specific level of Jewish observance. He is highly respectful of the sources, but not to the extent of failing to point out inconsistencies, misconceptions and negative ramifications of religious rulings.

This well-written and enjoyable book shows an impressive familiarity with classical Jewish texts, rabbinic responsa, secular copyright law, European and Jewish history and the development of the printing industry.

The author devotes less attention to the discussions of modern rabbinical views. The book is heavily influenced by Nahum Rakover’s book on Copyright in Jewish Law (1970), Jewish Legal Heritage Society, Jerusalem. Rabbi Rakover researched Jewish Law for Israel’s Ministry of Justice. However, subsequent religious academic scholarship, such as the work of Michael Vagoda and a number of Israeli doctoral students, some of whom now lecture in various Israeli law schools, is not discussed.

Greater emphasis could also be placed on how the printing revolution changed Jewish law. It was thanks to the invention of the printing press that Rabbi Yosef Karo’s (1488–1575) Shulhan Arukh, a seminal code of Jewish law, was first published in Venice in 1565. Instead of publishing a separate Ashkenazic code, Rabbi Moshe Isserles added glosses reporting on Central and Eastern European practices. The combined work became the standard reference on Jewish law. It in turn standardized Jewish law and, to some extent, caused an ossification that was not necessarily beneficial to the subsequent development of Jewish law and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

As a work of historical scholarship (and probably since it was written by someone whose standpoint did not require a commitment to halachic authority), Netanel’s book does not look at how rabbinical ideas on market regulation, in general, and intellectual property and the printing industry, in particular, could usefully be applied to contemporary market failures.

Contemporary Israel has an active, but limited book market. Despite a population of only a little over 8.52 million, some 4,200 new titles are published each year and 35 million books are sold annually, of which 40 per cent are translations of foreign works. However, there are very few independent bookshops and recent publications are frequently subjected to special offers or otherwise discounted, preventing authors and translators from realistically being able to make a living. A legislative attempt to regulate the Israeli book industry by lex specialis was made with the Law to Protect Literature and Authors 2013,1 which was tried out and revisited after a couple of years.2 The market failure of the Israeli book industry could usefully relate to rabbinical rulings which reflect nearly half a millennium of attempting similar interference with free market forces.

That said, all books have to have an agenda and must begin and end somewhere. This book reviews 500 years of rabbinical rulings on copyright-related issues and does so in a well-written, thorough and scholarly manner.

Margaret Thatcher: A Life and Legacy is published by Oxford University Press.

Margaret Thatcher: A Life and Legacy is published by Oxford University Press.


Margaret Thatcher by David Cannadine – how Thatcher led to Brexit

This concise book avoids the usual controversies and offers a new analysis of Thatcher’s sweeping economic reforms



Political reign of restless antagonism … Margaret Thatcher in 1982. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex/Shutterstock


The year 1986 was pivotal in Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. The “Big Bang” opened up the City of London to overseas banks, and the Single European Act harmonised regulations, which was to produce the “single market”. Astonishingly, it was also the first year since Thatcher came to power in May 1979 that the unemployment rate fell. Meanwhile, sales of council houses surged, passing 1m in September 1986.

From most liberal economic perspectives, these are positive achievements. And yet, while carving his way through the warring judgments on Thatcher, David Cannadine notes that “there is some agreement” that she “performed better before 1986 than after”. Given the temptation to associate “Thatcherism” with market deregulation and a new era of private sector excess, it feels strange to be reminded that “yuppies” and credit card frenzies appeared relatively late in the day, at a time when the Conservative leader was already beginning to lose her touch.


‘It would be bad for our interests’: why Thatcher ignored the murder of an Observer journalist


“Thatcherism was a political phenomenon rather than a coherent philosophy,” Cannadine concludes. Her devotees may wish to give her credit for the long economic boom of 1992-2007 and the more open, dynamic economy that went with it, and Thatcher claimed responsibility for the Labour party’s abandonment of socialism during this era. But it would be difficult to paint Thatcher as an ideologue of globalisation, less still of cosmopolitanism. She became less sympathetic towards Europe in the final years of her premiership (Cannadine points to the Channel tunnel agreement of January 1986 as the high point of her Europeanism), and it was her opposition to British membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism that ultimately drove a wedge between Thatcher and her most important allies, Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe.

She read Friedrich Hayek’s programmatic neoliberal text, The Road to Serfdom, while an undergraduate at Oxford, though there is little to suggest that she was especially influenced by it. Only when Keith Joseph encouraged her to explore the ideas of Milton Friedman in the 1970s did she show much intellectual interest in economic policy. Given that she never successfully reduced the size of the state, and that inflation had returned as a serious problem by the early 90s, her preferred macroeconomic tests would judge her a failure.

She was essentially uninterested in the areas of the country that her policies damaged, tightening London's stranglehold

If Thatcherism was never really an ideology, then, what kind of political phenomenon was it? Reading this artfully concise book (originally commissioned as an entry to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Thatcher’s political prowess can sometimes appear something of a mystery. Cannadine leads us calmly but quickly through a series of often familiar events, managing to avoid being sucked into the usual controversies. The rapid pace of Margaret Thatcherproduces a telling effect: it becomes a tale not so much of coalitions or prosperity as a succession of enmities.



Thatcher on the set of Calendar at Yorkshire Television Studios in 1987. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Whatever else they were, Thatcher’s administrations were not much of a democratic triumph. “Thatcher was never popular with most of the electorate,” Cannadine reminds us, “and studies showed that her values were not widely shared.” She was essentially uninterested in the areas of the country that her policies damaged, making her “only prime minister of the south-east of England and the rural constituencies” in any representative sense. Both economically and politically, she greatly tightened London’s stranglehold over the rest of the country.

Nor was she especially skilled at attracting political allies, other than those who mattered most, such as Ronald Reagan, or provided her with invaluable personal support, such as Willie Whitelaw. Cannadine reserves his highest praise for the way Thatcher successfully navigated the gender politics of Westminster and the Conservative party, using her femininity in precisely the ways most likely to benefit her and disarm her opponents. Her famous intransigence was a problem throughout her term in office, though it wasn’t until Michael Heseltine’s resignation over the Westland affair in January 1986 that it started to weaken her.

For a leader of Thatcher’s temperament, what the early 80s offered her in abundance was the right sort of enemy. Opponents included Whitehall officials, local government and the “wets” in her own cabinet. Also in her sights were socialists of all stripes – whether in the Labour party, the Soviet Union or the National Union of Mineworkers. Most auspiciously for her, her enemies included General Galtieri of Argentina. Terrorists of the IRA or (in her perception) the African National Congress offered the perfect foil for her political style. The first seven years of her rule were punctuated by battles on various fronts, the winning of which served to empower her further for the next one. The conflicts of the final four years, however, seemed to have the opposite effect.

The vanquishing or neutering of enemies gradually destroyed the purpose of “Thatcherism” as a political project, leaving only a restless oppositional sensibility. It is entertaining to discover, as we did at the end of 2016, that Thatcher had it in for house music after an all-night party in 1989 disturbed the uncle of a Hampshire Tory MP. It is also telling: could Thatcher have functioned as a politician without the sense that “our way of life” was under imminent threat from socialists, bureaucrats and the feckless? She may have played her part in constructing the more consensual policy paradigm of the post-Berlin Wall era, but it is unlikely that she would have been politically comfortable in it, had her career continued.


Thatcher with cabinet members at the end of the Conservative party conference in Blackpool, 1989. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Who can say what produced this oppositional psychology? Cannadine’s brief sketch of her early life focuses on the austere Methodism of her upbringing, and the instruction to “hold opinions because they were right, not because they were popular”. He also points to the influence of two visits to the US in 1967 and 1969, where Thatcher believed she’d discovered the same Protestant entrepreneurial ethos possessed by her father in Grantham. In this regard, her closest successor was arguablyGordon Brown. But why Thatcher met her foes with such unbending opposition is a question for psychoanalysts rather than historians.

Thatcher still provides the model of what a strong and transformative prime minister should be

We think of Thatcher as the exemplary “conviction politician”, a figure whose clarity of purpose still provides the model of what a strong and transformative prime minister should be. Tony Blair was often seen as the inheritor of this mantle. But convictions come in various guises. Blair was also described (less flatteringly) as “evangelical”, given his zeal for all things “modern” and his moralistic self-confidence. By contrast, Thatcher’s most powerful convictions were fuelled by hostility, perhaps even by resentment.

The referendum on Brexit produced widespread surprise (at least in the liberal media) that so many voters could be motivated by feelings of antipathy rather than of progress. Was Thatcher’s pitch so different? In sucking so much power, status and wealth towards post-industrial London, her policies no doubt contributed to the simmering resentments and alienation that drove Brexit. The woman from Lincolnshire (later a heartland of Euroscepticism) could speak the same angry, often paranoid language as Nigel Farage, pitting tradition against modernity, us against them.

In one of her final and most celebrated Commons performances, Thatcher was asked whether she was now an obstacle to European integration. In response, she listed a series of proposals currently emanating from Brussels, followed by the three-word line that could have served her as a decent epitaph: “No. No. No.”



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Posted by Stephen Darori at 9:30 PM


Labels: @Stephendarori, #CameosFromZion, #Israelbookreview, #JustARipRoaringZionist, #stephendarori, Brexit, ISrael Book Review, Margaret Thatcher,Oxford University Press, Stephen Darori

Viva Rose by Susan Krawitz, Holiday House

The Middle School Book to Read in 2017: Viva Rose!
Susan Krawitz' awaited debut novel details her teenage ancestor's frequent attempts to escape from Pancho Villa's gang





Panco Villa. Wikipedia.

When I first stumbled upon Susan Krawitz’ column in the tiny community newspaper published near my Catskills cabin, I thought to myself, “What’s a writer like you doing in a place like this.” In a half page or so, whether she recounted tales about picking berries, her eccentric neighbors or her temperamental chickens, Krawitz entertained and educated readers about her community. “I write about the smallest of things,” Krawitz told the Observer from her home in Stone Ridge NY, “seasons in the garden, the struggles of winter. But basically, I end up discussing huge-picture issues: life, death, despair, loss, hope, renewal.”

Krawitz, a perpetually sunny woman who chortles with ease, is now poised for her own professional renewal. After a dozen years massaging and polishing a manuscript for a debut novel geared to middle school students, Krawitz won the prestigious Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries in 2015, subsequently landed a powerful literary agent, Janklow and Nesbit’s Emmy Parry, and signed a deal with Holiday House, which will publish Viva Rose! in March.

The book fictionalizes the hard-to-believe yet largely true story of some of Krawitz’ relatives, including 14-year-old Rose, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who lived in San Antonio TX at the turn of the 20th Century. The young girl is bereft and angry to find out that her beloved older brother Abraham has run off to join the famed Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.


Viva Rose! examines the role of Jews in the Old West Courtesy Susan Krawitz

The brave—some might say foolhardy—Rose then embarks on a quest to coax (more like blackmail) her brother to return home to their controlling parents. But Villa’s gang kidnaps the girl, and Viva Rose! details her frequent attempts to escape from the so-called “Robin Hood of Mexico,” who was both celebrated for his belief in social justice and feared for his brutality. As historian Ronald Atkin wrote in Revolution! Mexico 1910-1920, Villa “has been described as ‘a twentieth-century compound of Attila, Robin Hood and Jesse James, with a flavoring of red-hot chili sauce.’”

“Diversity is a huge theme in this book,” said Krawitz, “and the prejudice white Texans have for Mexicans and Jews. And in Villa’s camp, the prejudice Mexicans have for Anglos. This storyline came naturally as part of the main character’s coming-of-age story arc, but Wow, what a time for a book like this.”

A visit to Krawitz’ elderly great aunt Edie’s house long ago sparked the idea for the novel. In a bedroom, Krawitz noticed a serape and a sombrero that belonged to Abraham, who became a gun for hire after his stint riding with Villa.

Krawitz researched her historic novel by riding horses and mountaineering in Texas, studying the writings of John Reed, the socialist journalist (and the subject of the film Reds), who covered Villa’s uprising for Metropolitan magazine and hunting down genealogical records. She also read books about Jewish settlement in the Old West, including Zayda Was a Cowboy, a previous winner of Sydney Taylor Award. When Krawitz learned that book won an award, it prompted her to enter her oft-rejected manuscript into the contest, a fortuitous decision for the author and her readers alike.

Israel Education Matters A 21st Century Paradigm for Jewish Education Lisa D. Grant and Ezra M/ Kopelowitz, Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education

My first impulse in writing this review is to add an exclamation mark to the title of this book. Yes Israel education matters! , and Lisa Grant and Ezra Kopelowitz have made a forceful case for this idea. In the recent Pew research paper findings, Israel remains a component of the identity of the least active members of the Jewish community. As I read this study, I reflected on this book about teaching Israel. I found myself asking, what does the average American Jew know about the ‘real” Israel? My immediate answer is, not much! My experience after forty years in Israel has taught me that a strong minority are up to date and well informed about our somewhat raucous political life, and leadership. Many, but not as many as one would think, have visited Israel, and some have spent time as students on over seas college programs. Some have wrestled with the crowds, ridden the buses, and eaten their fair share of falafel and other mid eastern delicacies. A few have worked in the Israeli business community, and others have tried their hand at agricultural life on a kibbutz. All in all Diaspora students and adults have learned their way around the energetic work a day Israeli world. Despite the variety of activities and opportunities, not enough has been done to prepare any of them for their experience. Yes, there are ulpanim, short orientation sessions, and some nice educational work, but an in depth look at culture, language and religion in Israel seems lacking. 

Lisa Grant and Ezra M. Kopelowitz join the ranks of Jewish educators who are concerned about this issue. They have written a book that they think could/should be used by” academics and intellectuals, but also by community leaders, educators, and practitioners who are concerned with the practical work a day challenges of fortifying collective Jewish life in our times”. Early on in the book they set out the three core principles that will guide their work :”integrate, complicate and connect”. 

correctly see that Israel is an integral part of world Jewish life, and that it is a complicated idea and entity, and can be, or should be a foundation for the connection. 

They elaborate on these ideas through out the book. These ideas alone would not make this an unusual book, but they have expanded and elaborated on their themes in a direct, and honest way. They are not hard sell advocates of a “beautiful Israel, a place that exists in imagination, but not in reality. They present the reality of conflict between Israel and the Jewish people. They do not yield to the temptation to be cheerleaders, but present political and religious differences openly for students and teachers to deal with. In this particular example and in the other issues that appear throughout the book, the authors have maintained a steady hand, and forthright balance demonstrating that the reality of difference and dispute is part of the vitality and appeal of Israeli society. They are also aware of, and responsive to, the needs of their students. 

In vignette 4, Alex Pomson presents a wonderful glimpse into the opinions of students when he lets them talk for themselves. Here, too, we see one of the fascinating aspects of the book. The description of the interviews, and the recording of responses can serve as an example of qualitative research tools that are widely used today. The responses, and the way they are presented, add to an understanding of students and the way they think, and not how we feel they ought to think. This combination of a researsh

Israel Book Review: Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narrati...

Israel Book Review: Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narrati...:  In Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narratives, Kate Crehan examines a number of core concepts in the work of theorist Antonio Gr...

Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narratives. Kate Crehan. Duke University Press. 2016.

 In Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narratives, Kate Crehan examines a number of core concepts in the work of theorist Antonio Gramsci – including common sense, the subaltern and the intellectual – that can help give precise insight into the emergence and persistence of social inequalities. Drawing on such case studies as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, this is a timely and profound account that has much to contribute to understandings of political change, writes Marcos González Hernando.





Amongst twentieth-century Marxist social theorists, Antonio Gramsci is perhaps the most important neither to have held a permanent academic post nor to have founded a ‘school’. An intellectually imposing man with a minute and frail figure, his imprisonment under Benito Mussolini, during which he wrote his famed notebooks, is one of the most memorable milestones of twentieth-century political thought. Under the most inauspicious circumstances, Gramsci produced an oeuvre that, while fragmentary, has greatly influenced the fields of political science, international relations, cultural studies and postcolonial theory amongst many others. Yet, while his concepts are widely known and employed, they are generally understood unsystematically and remain relatively marginal in the fields of sociology and anthropology.

Addressing this neglect is the aim of Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narratives by Kate Crehan, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at City University New York (CUNY). It comes to challenge many common readings of this thinker, particularly concerning his thoughts on intellectuals and on processes of cultural and political change. Crehan has previously written on the applicability of Gramsci’s concepts to her discipline of anthropology and to the study of culture more generally. Gramsci’s Common Sense is another attempt to recast his ideas and render them applicable to the study of politics and to understanding how commonly held beliefs become so.

Discounting the introduction and conclusion, the volume is structured into two sections, each comprising three chapters. The first covers some of Gramsci’s core concepts – namely common sense, subalterns and intellectuals – which, taken together, allow a more precise grasp of how inequalities come about through his implicit theory on the production of social knowledge. Indeed, one of the book’s main features is its close reading of Gramsci’s sociology of knowledge, which explains Crehan’s criticism of previous deployments of Gramscian ideas. Two instances of this are worth mentioning here.
Image Credit: (thierry ehrmann CC BY 2.0)

The first example concerns his usage of ‘common sense’. Unlike its English counterpart, the Italian senso comune lacks positive connotations of reasonableness and even-mindedness. Senso comune simply means the disparate set of ideas and beliefs that are held commonly, yet vaguely, within a certain community. It is the result of institutions and producers of knowledge which, often in a sedimentary manner, promote a particular vision of the world. These ideas are, for Gramsci, affected by institutions and hierarchies that expound ‘good sense’ – a relatively coherent set of ideas about the world that can be disseminated ever more widely. Here, Gramsci is thinking especially of churches and political parties, and his ‘philosophy of praxis’ is but another example of ‘good sense’. Hence, whether senso comune is ‘commonsensical’ is beside the point – what is important is its quality of being common, which more often than not entails vagueness. This leads Crehan to be critical of the idea that democracies ought to be animated by a seemingly natural common sense, which she detects in Hannah Arendt’s writings. Quite the contrary, the very role of politics is to determine what becomes part of the senso comune, bereft of any ‘common sense’ to which one could return.

The second instance is her critique of romantic conceptions of intellectuals, exemplified by Edward Saïd’s reading of Gramsci. Against the idea that intellectuals should be autonomous – and hence that ‘organic intellectuals’ are basically hacks – Crehan understands Gramsci to be saying that intellectuals are necessarily embedded in social relationships through which knowledge is produced. All may think, but ‘not all […] have in society the function of intellectuals’ (27). Intellectuals are simply a subset tasked to reproduce a particular organisation of knowledge, which in time percolates into a senso comune. For Gramsci, the intellectual’s ‘organic’ character is linked to their social position rather than to self-interest or ‘bad faith’. His advocacy for cadres of organic intellectuals of the proletariat should thus be understood as an attempt to articulate a ‘good sense’ for the subaltern. Hence why Crehan reminds us that for Gramsci, incoherence is always negative – indeed, intellectual and political incoherence are commonly associated with subordinate positions.

The second section of Crehan’s book exemplifies these ideas through three case studies of intellectuals and social movements centred on inequality. The first of these covers the conditions under which Adam Smith in hindsight became the foremost organic intellectual of an ascending bourgeoisie, laying out the ideas of an emerging social class and its associated social order. The other two are more contemporary, both reflecting political dynamics that followed the 2008 financial crisis. The second chapter studies the rise of the Tea Party in the USA, while the third examines the travails of the Occupy Wall Street movement. While Crehan claims the former is an attempt to render ‘commonsensical’ a particular narrative of political crisis through media networks and intellectuals funded by corporate interests, the latter is an as-yet-unfinished attempt to articulate a good sense to challenge global financial capitalism.

Following Gramsci, one of Crehan’s central points in the empirical analysis of political movements is the importance of coherence. All of these examples are attempts to conquer the incoherent and vague through the formation of a coherent body of knowledge, and her analysis excels in highlighting these dynamics. However, there is one fundamental methodological issue this book does not solve. Towards the beginning of the book, Crehan claims Gramsci cannot but think in agonistic terms, citing him: ‘I don’t like to cast stones into the darkness; I want to feel a concrete interlocutor or adversary’ (7). An anthropology that thinks through oppositions goes against the grain of much of the history of the discipline, weary as it is of accusations of ethnocentrism. Without claiming that a Gramscian anthropology is impossible, this reviewer would have liked to read more on the matter.

Nevertheless, this point does not subtract from the fact that Crehan has produced a felicitous and profound intervention that could inform our understanding of both intellectual and political change. In 2016, as a new senso comune begins to develop in an age of ‘post-truth’ politics, Gramsci’s ideas are more timely than ever.

Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works: Politics, Economics, Constitution of Athens Paperback – December 20, 2016 by Aristotle (Author), Jonathan Barnes (Translator), Melissa Lane (Introduction)

Aristotle was the first philosopher in the Western tradition to address politics systematically and empirically, and he remains a central figure in political theory. This essential volume presents Aristotle's complete political writings--including his Politics, Economics, and Constitution of Athens--in their most authoritative translations, taken from the complete works that is universally recognized as the standard English edition. Edited by Jonathan Barnes, one of the world's leading scholars of ancient philosophy, and with an illuminating introduction by Melissa Lane, an authority on ancient political philosophy, this compact but comprehensive volume will be invaluable for all students of politics, philosophy, classics, or Western thought.


Aristotle: private property and money 

The views of the great philosopher Aristotle are particularly important because the entire structure of his thought had an enormous and even dominant influence on the economic and social thought of the high and late Middle Ages, which considered itself Aristotelian. Although Aristotle, in the Greek tradition, scorned moneymaking and was scarcely a partisan of laissez-faire, he set forth a trenchant argument in favour of private property. Perhaps influenced by the private-property arguments of Democritus, Aristotle delivered a cogent attack on the communism of the ruling class called for by Plato. He denounced Plato's goal of the perfect unity of the state through communism by pointing out that such extreme unity runs against the diversity of mankind, and against the reciprocal advantage that everyone reaps through market exchange. Aristotle then delivered a point-by-point contrast of private as against communal property. 

First, private property is more highly productive and will therefore lead to progress. Goods owned in common by a large number of people will receive little attention, since people will mainly consult their own self-interest and will neglect all duty they can fob off on to others. In contrast, people will devote the greatest interest and care to their own property.

 Second, one of Plato's arguments for communal property is that it is conducive to social peace, since no one will be envious of, or try to grab the property of, another. Aristotle retorted that communal property would lead to continuing and intense conflict, since each will complain that he has worked harder and obtained less than others who have done little and taken more from the common store. Furthermore, not all crimes or revolutions, declared Aristotle, are powered by economic motives. As Aristotle trenchantly put it, 'men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold'. 

Third, private property is clearly implanted in man's nature: His love of self, of money, and of property, are tied together in a natural love of exclusive ownership. 

Fourth, Aristotle, a great observer of past and present, pointed out that private property had existed always and everywhere. To impose communal property on society would be to disregard the record of human experience, and to leap into the new and untried. Abolishing private property would probably create more problems than it would solve. 

Finally, Aristotle wove together his economic and moral theories by providing the brilliant insight that only private property furnishes people with the opportunity to act morally, e.g. to practise the virtues of benevolence and philanthropy. The compulsion of communal property would destroy that opportunity. While Aristotle was critical of money-making, he still opposed any limitation - such as Plato had advocated - on an individual's accumulation of private property. Instead, education should teach people voluntarily to curb their rampant desires and thus lead them to limit their own accumulations of wealth. 

Despite his cogent defence of private property and opposition to coerced limits on wealth, the aristocrat Aristotle was fully as scornful of labour and trade as his predecessors. Unfortunately, Aristotle stored up trouble for later centuries by coining a fallacious, proto-Galbraithian distinction between 'natural' needs, which should be satisfied, and 'unnatural' wants, which are limitless and should be abandoned. There is no plausible argument to show why, as Aristotle believes, the desires filled by subsistence labour or barter are 'natural', whereas those satisfied by far more productive money exchanges are artificial, 'unnatural' and therefore reprehensible. Exchanges for monetary gain are simply denounced as immoral and 'unnatural', specifically such activities as retail trade, commerce, transportation and the hiring of labour. Aristotle had a particular animus toward retail trade, which of course directly serves the consumer, and which he would have liked to eliminate completely. Aristotle is scarcely consistent in his economic lucubrations. For although monetary exchange is condemned as immoral and unnatural, he also praises such a network of exchanges as holding the city together through mutual and reciprocal give-and-take. 

The confusion in Aristotle's thought between the analytic and the 'moral' is also shown in his discussion of money. On the one hand, he sees that the The first philosopher-economists: the Greeks 15 growth of money greatly facilitated production and exchange. He sees also that money, the medium of exchange, represents general demand, and 'holds all goods together'. Also money eliminates the grave problem of 'double coincidence of wants', where each trader will have to desire the other man's goods directly. Now each person can sell goods for money. Furthermore, money serves as a store of values to be used for purchases in the future. Aristotle, however, created great trouble for the future by morally condemning the lending of money at interest as 'unnatural'. Since money cannot be used directly, and is employed only to facilitate exchanges, it is 'barren' and cannot itself increase wealth. Therefore the charging of interest, which Aristotle incorrectly thought to imply a direct productivity of money, was strongly condemned as contrary to nature. Aristotle would have done better to avoid such hasty moral condemnation and to try to figure out why interest is, in fact, universally paid. Might there not be something 'natural', after all, about a rate of interest? And if he had discovered the economic reason for the charging - and the paying - of interest, perhaps Aristotle would have understood why such charges are moral and not unnatural. 

Aristotle, like Plato, was hostile to economic growth and favoured a static society, all of which fits with his opposition to money-making and the accumulation of wealth. The insight of old Hesiod into the economic problem as the allocation of scarce means for the satisfying of alternative wants was virtually ignored by both Plato and Aristotle, who instead counselled the virtue of scaling down one's desires to fit whatever means were available.

 Aristotle: exchange and value 

Aristotle's difficult but influential discussion of exchange suffered grievously from his persistent tendency to confuse analysis with instant moral judgement. As in the case of charging interest, Aristotle did not remain content to complete a study of why exchanges take place in real life before leaping in with moral pronouncements. In analysing exchanges, Aristotle declares that these mutually beneficial transactions imply a 'proportional reciprocity', but it is characteristically ambivalent in Aristotle whether all exchanges are by nature marked by reciprocity, or whether only proportionately reciprocal exchanges are truly 'just'. And of course Aristotle was never one to raise the question: why do people voluntarily engage in 'unjust' exchanges? In the same way, why should people voluntarily pay interest charges if they are really 'unjust'? 

To muddle matters further, Aristotle, under the influence of the Pythagorean number-mystics, introduced obscure and obfuscating mathematical terms into what could have been a straightforward analysis. The only dubious benefit of this contribution was to give many happy hours to historians of Economic thought before Adam Smith economic thought attempting to read sophisticated modern analysis into Aristotle. This problem has been aggravated by an unfortunate tendency among historians of thought to regard great thinkers of the past as necessarily consistent and coherent. That of course is a grievous historiographic error; however great they may have been, any thinkers can slip into error and inconsistency, and even write gibberish on occasion. Many historians of thought do not seem able to recognize that simple fact. 

Aristotle's famous discussion of reciprocity in exchange in Book V of his Nichomachean Ethics is a prime example of descent into gibberish. Aristotle talks of a builder exchanging a house for the shoes produced by a shoemaker. He then writes: 'The number of shoes exchanged for a house must therefore correspond to the ratio of builder to shoemaker. For if this be not so, there will be no exchange and no intercourse'. Eh? How can there possibly be a ratio of 'builder' to 'shoemaker'? Much less an equating of that ratio to shoes/houses? In what units can men like builders and shoemakers be expressed? The correct answer is that there is no meaning, and that this particular exercise should be dismissed as an unfortunate example of Pythagorean quantophrenia. And yet various distinguished historians have read tortured constructions of this passage to make Aristotle appear to be a forerunner of the labour theory of value, of W. Stanley Jevons, or of Alfred Marshall. The labour theory is read into the unsupportable assumption that Aristotle 'must have meant' labour hours put in by the builder or shoemaker, while Josef Soudek somehow sees here the respective skills of these producers, skills which are then measured by their products. Soudek eventually emerges with Aristotle as an ancestor of Jevons. In the face of all this elaborate wild goose chase, it is a pleasure to see the verdict of gibberish supported by the economic historian of ancient Greece, Moses I. Finley, and by the distinguished Aristotelian scholar H.H. Joachim, who has the courage to write, 'How exactly the values of the producers are to be determined, and what the ratio between them can mean is, I must confess, in the end unintelligible to me'.

Another grave fallacy in the same paragraph in the Ethics did incalculable damage to future centuries of economic thought. There Aristotle says that in order for an exchange (any exchange? a just exchange?) to take place, the diverse goods and services 'must be equated', a phrase Aristotle emphasizes several times. It is this necessary 'equation' that led Aristotle to bring in the mathematics and the equal signs. His reasoning was that for A and B to exchange two products, the value of both products must be equal, otherwise an exchange would not take place. The diverse goods being exchanged for one another must be made equal because only things of equal value will be traded. The Aristotelian concept of equal value in exchange is just plain wrong, as the Austrian School was to point out in the late nineteenth century. If A trades The first philosopher-economists: the Greeks J7 shoes for sacks of wheat owned by B, A does so because he prefers the wheat to the shoes, while B's preferences are precisely the opposite. If an exchange takes place, this implies not an equality of values, but rather a reverse inequality of values in the two parties making the exchange. If I buy a newspaper for 30¢ I do so because I prefer the acquisition of the newspaper to keeping the 30 cents, whereas the newsagent prefers getting the money to keeping the newspaper. This double inequality of subjective valuations sets the necessary precondition for any exchange. If the equation of ratio of builder to labourer is best forgotten, other parts ofAristotle's analysis have been seen by some historians as predating parts of the economics of the Austrian School. Aristotle clearly states that money represents human need or demand, which provides the motivation for exchange, and 'which holds all things together'. Demand is governed by the use-value or desirability of a good. Aristotle follows Democritus in pointing out that after the quantity of a good reaches a certain limit, after there is 'too much' , the use value will plummet and become worthless. But Aristotle goes beyond Democritus in pointing out the other side of the coin: that when a good becomes scarcer, it will become subjectively more useful or valuable. He states in the Rhetoric that 'what is rare is a greater good than what is plentiful. Thus gold is a better thing than iron, though less useful'. These statements provide an intimation of the correct influence of different levels of supply on the value of a good, and at least a hint of the later fully formed Austrian marginal utility theory of value, and its solution of the 'paradox' of value. These are interesting allusions and suggestions; but a few fragmentary sentences scattered throughout different books hardly constitute a fully fledged precursor of the Austrian School. But a more interesting harbinger of Austrianism has only come to the attention of historians in recent years: the groundwork for the Austrian theory of marginal productivity - the process by which the value of final products is imputed to the means, or factors, of production. In his little-known work, the Topics, as well as in his later Rhetoric, Aristotle engaged in a philosophical analysis of the relationship between human ends and the means by which people pursue them. These means, or 'instruments of production', necessarily derive their value from the final products useful to man, 'the instruments of action'. The greater the desirability, or subjective value, of a good, the greater the desirability, or value of the means to arrive at that product. 

More important, Aristotle introduces the marginal element into this imputation by arguing that if the acquisition or addition of a good A to an already desirable good C creates a more desirable result than the addition of good B, then A is more highly valued than B. Or, as Aristotle put it: 'judge by means of an addition, and see if the addition of A to 18 Economic thought before Adam Smith the same thing as B makes the whole more desirable than the addition of B' . Aristotle also introduces an even more specifically pre-Austrian, or preBohm-Bawerkian, concept by stressing the differential value of the loss, rather than the addition of a good. Good A will be more valuable than B, if the loss of A is considered to be worse than the loss of B. As Aristotle clearly phrased it: 'That is the greater good whose contrary is the greater evil, and whose loss affects us more.' Aristotle also took note of the importance of the complementarity of economic factors of production in imputing their value. A saw, he pointed out, is more valuable than a sickle in the art of carpentry, but it is not more valuable everywhere and in all pursuits. He also pointed out that a good with many potential uses will be more desirable, or valuable, than a good with only one use. 

Critics of the economic importance ofAristotle's analysis charge that, with the exception of the saw-and-sickle passage, Aristotle made no economic application of his broad philosophical treatment of imputation. But this charge misses the crucial Austrian point - made with particular force and elaboration by the twentieth century Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises - that economic theory is but a part, a subset, of a broader, 'praxeological' analysis of human action. By analysing the logical implications of the employment of means to the pursuit of ends in all human action, Aristotle brilliantly began to lay the groundwork for the Austrian theory of imputation and marginal productivity over two millennia later.