The Rights of Man to Property

Abstract

James Huston's Securing the Fruits of Labor makes the most sense to the reader if begun from appendix B and then read from the beginning. As the appendix illustrates, Huston firmly believes that twentieth-century American classical economists, by focusing on efficiency and growth, have given very short shrift to the problem of a fair distribution of wealth and income. Rejection of fair distribution as a primary social value has led to poverty, crime, and, in a quite wonderful phrase, turned the United States into The aristocratic disgrace of western European civilization (p. 383). In contrast, the quest for an distribution of wealth and income, however equitable was defined, was the primary concern of nineteenth-century American political economists. Huston's admirably well-organized book searches for the reasons for our failure to address the issue of equity, by following the path from there to here.