The issue of private property and the rights it confers remain almost undiscussed in critiques of globalization and free market economics. Yet property lies at the heart of an economic system geared to profit maximization. The authors describe the historically specific and self-consciously explicit manner in which it emerged. They trace this history from earliest historical times and show how, in the hands of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in particular, the notion of private property took on its absolutist nature and most extreme form - a form which neoliberal economics is now imposing on...

Spanning the continents, three internationally respected theologians here demonstrate how the thought and legacy of Martin Luther can serve in an ecumenical and interfaith context as a resource for a radical critique of global economics and culture. This book wields Luthers theology to engage the reality of poverty, hunger, oppression, and ecological degradation caused by an imperial capitalism as the most urgent theological issues in the contemporary world. The volume demonstrates the liberating possibilities of theology done out of a biblical and Lutheran perspective for the economic and...

This major work offers an historical description and systematic analysis of the root causes of this global economic crisis, which the authors understand as a crisis of western civilization, and provides a comprehensive solution based on theological social justice.