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Philosopher Addresses Liberty and Unions

Book cover and Mark R. Reiff mugshot
  • In the Name of Liberty: The Argument for Universal Unionization
  • By Mark R. Reiff, research associate, Department of Philosophy

鈥淢ark R. Reiff performs an astonishing intellectual feat in this deeply researched, incisively reasoned and passionately argued volume.鈥 鈥 Joseph A. McCartin, professor of history, Georgetown University


In the Name of Liberty, author Mark R. Reiff says, 鈥渞eclaims the argument for liberty from the political right; paves the way for political philosophers to give unionization the same detailed attention they have long devoted to inequality, but have not applied to unionization before; and provides the first and only moral argument for universal unionization 鈥 the mandatory unionization of every firm 鈥 that is consistent with the principles of liberal capitalism.鈥

In a review, Georgetown history professor Joseph A. McCartin wrote: 鈥淸Reiff] deftly demolishes the claims of those who critique unions for infringing individual liberty; then he elegantly constructs in their place not only a powerful liberty-based argument for unionization, but for universal unionization.

鈥淗is persuasive contention that strong unions are a prerequisite for the preservation of true liberty within 21st-century capitalism demands the attention of anyone who cares about the intertwined fates of workers鈥 rights and democracy.鈥

This is Reiff鈥檚 fifth book, after On Unemployment, Volume I: A Micro-Theory of Economic Justice and On Unemployment, Volume II: Achieving Economic Justice After the Great Recession (both published in 2015); Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State (2013); and Punishment, Compensation and Law: A Theory of Enforceability (2005).

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