David Patterson Ellerman (born 14 March 1943) is a philosopher and author who works in the fields of economics and political economy, social theory and philosophy, quantum mechanics, and in mathematics. He has written extensively on

workplace democracy Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in various forms (examples include voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, systems of appeal) to the workplace. It can be implemented in a variety ...

based on a modern treatment of the labor theory of property and the theory of

inalienable rights Some philosophers distinguish two types of rights, natural rights and legal rights. * Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are ''universal'', '' fundamental'' an ...

as rights based on de facto inalienable capacities.

Education

Ellerman was born 14 March 1943. He received an undergraduate degree in philosophy from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

in 1965. He went on to

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...

for his graduate work, receiving an MA in philosophy of science in 1967, an MA in economics in 1968, and a doctorate in mathematics in 1972. His PhD thesis was titled ''Sheaves Of Relational Structures And Ultraproducts'', and was advised by

Rohit Jivanlal Parikh Rohit Jivanlal Parikh (born November 20, 1936) is an Indian-American mathematician, logician, and philosopher who has worked in many areas in traditional logic, including recursion theory and proof theory. He is a Distinguished Professor at Brook ...

Career

After his PhD, Ellerman remained teaching at Boston University in the mathematics and then the economic department until 1976. He then taught economics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston until 1982, then at

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classified ...

until 1987, and finally at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

until 1990. In 1990, he moved to Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he started a labor consulting firm. From 1992 until 2003, he worked at the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

as an economics advisor to the Chief Economist (

Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the J ...

and

Nicholas Stern Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, (born 22 April 1946 in Hammersmith) is a British economist, banker, and academic. He is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Cli ...

). From 2003 to 2020, he was a visiting scholar at the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban dist ...

and since 2020, he is an associate researcher at the

University of Ljubljana The University of Ljubljana ( sl, Univerza v Ljubljani, , la, Universitas Labacensis), often referred to as UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 39,000 enrolled students. History Beginnings Although certain ...

Books

Ellerman's books include: * ''New Foundations for Information Theory: Logical Entropy and Shannon Entropy''. SpringerNature, 2021. . * ''Putting Jurisprudence Back into Economics: What is Really Wrong in Today's Neoclassical Theory''. SpringerNature, 2021. . * ''Neo-Abolitionism: Abolishing Human Rentals in Favor of Workplace Democracy''. SpringerNature, 2021. . * ''The Uses of Diversity: Essays in Polycentricity''. Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. . * ''Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance''. University of Michigan Press, 2005. . * ''Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics''. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995. . * ''Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy''. Cambridge MA: Basil Blackwell, 1992. . * ''The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm''. London: Unwin Hyman Limited (HarperCollins Academic), 1990. ; 2016 reprint . * ''Economics, Accounting, and Property Theory''. Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1982. .

References

External links

* *
David Ellerman
profile on the

Social Science Research Network The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences, among others. Elsevier bought SSRN from S ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellerman, David 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Living people 1943 births MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Boston University alumni Boston College faculty University of Massachusetts Boston faculty Tufts University faculty American expatriates in Slovenia University of California, Riverside faculty Academic staff of the University of Ljubljana