The Divine Right of Capital

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK is the product of many minds. Karl Mannheim, one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge, perhaps said it best in his 1936 work Ideology and Utopia: “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to say that the single individual thinks. Rather it is more correct to insist that he participates in thinking further what other men have thought before him.” If writers like John Locke, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine had the original thoughts of democracy, others today are carrying this stream of thought into economics. For opening the channels in which my own thought has flowed, I would particularly like to acknowledge a handful of contemporary writers who have deeply influenced me—David Korten, Ralph Estes, Richard ...