Absolute Equality

In Luisa Capetillo's three-act play written in 1907, "Influences of Modern Ideas," Angelina, the daughter of a rich Puerto Rican businessman and landowner, educates herself by reading the works of European writers, philosophers, and anarchists. After reading Tolstoy's The Slavery of Our Times, she is convinced that "the slavery of our times is the inflexible wage law." As the workers go on strike in her home town of Arecibo, Angelina tries to convince her father to give his property--home, factories, land--to the working class. And so the stage is set for Capetillo, a militant feminist, anarchist, and labor leader, to inform the public about her passions: the fight for workers' rights; the struggle for justice and equality, for women as well as workers; and the education of all classes and sexes. The themes in this social protest play appear throughout Capetillo's writings. This volume combines long and short plays, fiction, essays, propaganda, letters, poems, philosophical reflections, and journal entries in a never-before-available English translation by Lara Walker. Also included is a facsimile of the original Spanish-language text, Influencias de las ideas modernas, which was first published in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1916. Most of the pieces in this collection were written between 1912 and 1916 while Capetillo was living and working as a labor leader in Tampa and Ybor City, Florida; New York City; and Havana, Cuba. Editor Lara Walker's comprehensive introduction surveys Luisa Capetillo's life and work, placing her ideologies in the appropriate social and historical context. At once a sharp critique and a celebration of the gathering fervor of world politics, Capetillo's workexamines both her native Puerto Rico and the world outside, providing a sense of the workers' movement and the condition of women at the turn of the century. Capetillo embraces the humanistic thinking of the early twentieth century and envisions a world in which economic and social structures can be broken down, allowing both the worker and the women to be free.

Resources, Values and Development contains many of Amartya Sen's path-breaking contributions to development economics, including papers on resource allocation in nonwage systems, shadow pricing, employment policy, welfare economics, poverty assessment, gender-based inequality, and hunger and famines.

The Declaration of Independence aimed to turn our continent from a British colony into an American nation. Yet its first, its primary claim is that we are all individually equal. What’s that got to do with national independence? Yet the Declaration’s claim of universal human equality has grown into our primary political passion. This brief book asks: What concrete, substantial good do we get out of this equality? Well, specific safety of our equality before the law. But beyond that, and the easement of our envy? Equality at work, equalizing, is a mere leveling relation. Whatever is worth having involves distinction, that’s inequality.

This original and compelling book argues that previous studies of John Stuart Mill's work have neglected his egalitarianism and thus seriously misunderstood his views. Morales demonstrates that Mill was fundamentally concerned with how the exercise of unjust or arbitrary power by some individuals over others sabotages the possibility of human well-being and social improvement. Mill therefore believed that 'perfect equality'--more than liberty--was the foundation of democracy and that democracy was a moral ideal for the organization of human life in all of its dimensions. By reinterpreting Mill, Morales also challenges twentieth-century views of liberalism, and addresses its contemporary communitarian and feminist critics.