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"An examination of the role of John Stuart Mill in the development of modern radicalism"--

When Corporations Leave Town presents new and challenging arguments and solutions surrounding the current political debates about deconcentration.

Drawing on the popular radicalism of the day and his own development of the theory of the stationary state, John Stuart Mill had argued on normative and positive grounds that capitalist firms were transitional institutions and should/would evolve into producer co-operatives. In Britain, Mill's work set off a dialogue among mainstream economists. Contributors included Thornton, Fawcett, and Cairnes from Mill's "school," as well as Jevons and Marshall who while sympathetic endorsed the less radical reform of profit sharing. Ironically, much of the socialist left, including Beatrice Potter (Webb), praised Mill's concerns, but rejected producer co-operatives in favour of nationalisation. By the early twentieth century, Mill's message resonated only with the guild socialists who kept the radical argument for producer co-operatives alive. The subtext of the paper is that modern liberals have too conveniently lost connection with this important history and its radical/liberal message of capitalism as a transitional mode.

Closely reading the works of Thomas Jefferson, George Fitzhugh, Henry Grady, the Nashville Agrarians and others, Persky traces the history of an idea that was to have far-reaching consequences - the southern sense of economic dependency. Since the days of the first settlers, he explains southerners have drawn on both mercantilist and liberal traditions to critique trade regulations, excessive commercial profits, and unequal exchange between industrial and agricultural sectors. Like Latin Americans today, southerners deeply resented what they perceived as economic exploitation - first by Great Britain and later by the more powerful North.

This work combines historical, political, economic, geographical and urban planning analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of how and why urban sprawl occurs.

The Industrial Revolution offered promises of material abundance. In nineteenth century Britain, a series of major cooperative thinkers seized on these possibilities. In effect, they turned the mainstream economics of scarcity on its head and together shaped a humane social science. This book moves toward a reconstruction of nineteenth century British cooperative thought. The analysis is rich in insights still relevant to the present--insights concerning employment relations, persistent inequality, and low levels of human development.