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The Right to Work and a Minimum Standard of Living: Democratic Political Economy and FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights
EDWARD J. MARTIN
IJED, Vol. 11 No. 2,
(2018)
In this paper I argue for the right to work and a minimum standard of living based on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (FDR) Economic Bill of Rights. I argue for a democratic political economy as a counter strategy to unregulated financial markets inherent to liberal capitalism.
An Economic Bill of Rights, such as the one initiated in 1944 by FDR, provides the optimal foundation for economic justice and the optimal counter strategy to the negative effects of liberal capitalism. I further argue for the implementation of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights based on: (1) the rejection of market rationality (neoliberalism) as the basis for normative behavior; (2) a democratic economy and social welfare policy that prioritizes economic rights; (3) the prioritization of labor over capital in economic relationships in society; and (4) the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which the United States is a signatory
