Online workshop on Productive Freedom and the Multinational

Abstract

Many argue that, if corporations are entrepreneurial ventures, and our freedom is enhanced by being able to undertake such ventures, then corporations embody or actualize freedom. This assumes a particular understanding of what freedom in the sphere of production amounts to. In his paper, Tully Rector presents and defends a different conception, applying it to the structure and role of multinationals. If we understood freedom as non-alienated, rationally-responsive agency, under conditions of generally symmetrical power, could it be realized in the corporate form? Why should we conceive of freedom that way? If we should, and if our political communities were set up to secure this kind of freedom, could the multinational operate in anything like the way it does now? These are among the questions the text pursues.

Speaker

Tully Rector is a post-doctoral researcher at Utrecht University