Street thieves are incarcerated and corporate thieves are rewarded in our society. I have read Professor Perelman's book "Steal This Idea" twice and feel I am just coming to grips with the silent government running our country. Corporate America is the enemy of democracy through its donations to elected officials, retainers to influential Washington law firms, and its control of our media.

Dwight D. Eisenhower stated, "Every step we take toward making the State the caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our master." Corporations have merged to purge Americans of their wealth, creativity, and civil rights. Professor Perelman is to be commended for his exposition "How Intellectual Property Rights Enrich the Few While Undermining Liberty, Science, and Society." Read this book and you will learn how your civil rights and your freedom are slipping away rapidly.

I also bought five books for friends, as I didn't want them to be walking around in a fog not knowing what we have become as a nation. Karl Marx wrote, "In the valley of the blind with one eye you can be king." We are in the valley. Read the book, wake up, and be your own king.

Why does our property rights system grant huge sums of money to people who did nothing to create the knowledge that is the source of their wealth? Should so-called "private" corporations be allowed to make hundreds of millions of dollars off Federal and State court cases? Should workers be thrown in jail for filing patents in ideas that the companies they've worked at have ignored as unworthy of consideration for patenting?

These kinds of issues strain our sense of just what property is and as Michael Perelman shows in his clearly written text full of actual yet surreal economic events, the US, indeed the global community of nations, is in dire need of a serious rethinking of property rights in knowledge information and natural resources if we are to avoid the litigatory nuthouse.

Professor Perelman also notes that without a cultural rethink inequalities of income, wealth and power will, in all probability, get even worse, with tragic repercussions for democracy, liberty and the production of future knowledge as well.

By investigating scores and scores of episodes from economic history, both recent and remote, Professor Perelman also shows that was has traditionally been called a free market is in fact a legal oxymoron, as well as inconsistent with what we now know from economic and political theory. As such his book holds important lessons regarding what kinds of questions we need to be asking in all seriousness regarding how our modes of organizing work and citizenship may actually stifle freedom and creativity in producing and distributing knowledge and information.

In an era when genomes, ecosystems and algorithms are being commodified and appropriated at such a frenzied pace, we would do well to ask as many questions as possible about who shall benefit and who will be burdened. All in all, a must read.

this is a collection of everyday incidents in academic life.

They are particularly interesting since they
describe that life in a USSR context.

It is interesting to see how USSR and later Russian scientists
perceive their work, as well as, how they managed
to produce top science with meager means.

Ceratinly the book lacks any sociological analyses
of the russian society that generates this spirit.

As such is a nice collection of anecdotes.

A small correction: when people sleep they
are been taken by Orpheas and not Morpheas.
Morpheas was an old man in Greek mythology
capable of changing form. Orpheas
was something different.

The author of the book writes in his introduction that "The Sprit of Russian Science"
charms him by the of certain atmosphere, the style of relationships between the people.
After reading "The Sprit of Russian Science", like any other good prose, there comes a need of a dialogue with an author. You need to pinpoint all the features of intangible spirit that was so well portrayed in the book. You unavoidably see the author as a human being with great deal of will power, enormous ability to survive and rather significant influence on people.
"The Spirit..." is ironic and wise, cynical and sentimental, rather optimistic and at the same time soaked in all the troubles of modern reality. And after all, it's not that important whom the turns pout to resemble: Baron Munchauzen, Tile Ulenshpigel, brave soldier Shveyka or Jvanetsky's lyric hero? "The Spirit..." isn't "teachy" or "preachy", he doesn't require adoration, and that is why so many a time my hand seeks the book, and doesn't get tired of discovering and rediscovering it.
I think that the power and the charm of "The Spirit..." are only in its appearance, but in its inside all-sufficient that is so powerful that it energizes anybody who touches it one way or the other.
Being employed as an instructor of Russian Linguistics in Technical University (Taganrog Radiotechnical State University), I always appreciated the charming atmosphere of professionalism and genuine humor that our instructors-physicists created. Most of them in their forties or fifties, they have attended Moscow, Rostov and other state academic institutions all over the Russia, their souls have obviously drunk that fairy tale liquor that has "The Spirit...".
It's seems as if "The Spirit..." isn't alone in this world. He has blood siblings that are scattered on numerous islands of professionalism, quality work and culture that still manage to exist in Russia. And although author's end isn't quite a happy one: "We are writing applications, receiving grants, working abroad. But the doors are closing slowly but steadily. Equipment is aging, the fittest are leaving, and those who are left are getting weaker...But the doors are closing. " I want to believe that everything is not as bad as it seems.
I draw resources for hope from my personal experiences. Russian workaholics of today, living in America, miss Russia. They still keep in touch with their Russian friends, family and colleagues. And last but not least, this "The Spirit..." identified by the author, goes on living here, on the foreign soil.
Here, like in Saint Petersburg, Moscow or tiny Taganrog, small groups of people are formed that are capable to appreciate high quality work, that are capable of not being afraid of work, and of keeping sense of humor in any circumstances.
New life will demand continuation of this book, but I want to thank the author for what's already written. I realize what kind of work you have endured by gathering accidental jokes scattered in the stream of every day's reality.
The author succeeded in saving in his writing the style, the language and genuine charm of real life.
Of course the elements of Russian "get-together" and masculine folklore add certain spice to the overall dish of the book, but most of all I appreciate something else about it. Having read the book in quite unfavorable for myself circumstances, I realized: life isn't over yet, and our sadness has to be light, no matter what. It seems like this book is able to settle optimism and love of life in any mind and do it in a very easy and elegant manner.
Today "The Spirit..." lives like we all do, through difficult and surprising times.
And one more thing. When my sixteen-years-old daughter, who according to unwritten laws of her age, neglected the ideals of her parents, read the book with the same pleasure as myself, I have secretly celebrated. But when she wrote a version of review of "The Spirit...", I was puzzled. The review was sincerely encomium, only it was written in English... Having lived in America for two years, my daughter didn't loose the ability to be influenced by unknown to her "The Sprit of Russian Science", but it became easier for her to express her emotions in English and in typical American manner.

I sighed deeply and thought: "But maybe this is good?" "The Sprit of Russian Science" is alive and respected by us, and our children are able to comprehend it. So let it take its second breath, and let life bring into this new process its own sudden corrections.
"We are born to make fairy tale reality."

Maya Solovieva, Ph. D.,
Instructor of Russian Language
Currently residing in the United States

I finished the "The Spirit of Russian Science" by Prof. M.E.Levinshtein in one day.

I was sick, had a bit of a fever and could not do much. So I got "The Spirit" to get some distraction. And distraction I got! I started to smile from the very first page and constantly called my husband to come to my room so I could read out loud to him and laugh with him again. I could not stop either reading or smiling and often laughing until the very end of the book.

It is a great book about people who create, practice and breathe Science every day of their lives. It is also about how they live, work and manage to have a lot of fun regardless of poor living conditions.

Lots of my friends have borrowed "The Spirit", I actually had a waiting list at one point, and the comments were always most favorable with a request to keep it another day or two for a husband/wife to finish.

I am delighted "The Spirit" is published in English and am getting several copies for my friends. The publication of this book in English has solved, at least for a while, a problem with Christmas/New Year, end of school year and birthday presents.

Enjoy the book,

Lara Yendler

I came at this work with an open mind and an independent background in the history of economic thought. I was severely disappointed. Occasional inconsistencies of argument or a few personal correspondences noting the short comings of the markets do not turn the classical political economists into dyed-in-the-subsidized-wool interventionists.

Far from being a "secret history" of primitive accumulation, this book is a work of theory plain and simple. I was really expecting more concrete evidence of the collusion of the classical political economists in the final phases of primitive accumulation in Great Britain, but this book does not present much compelling evidence to support its over-hyped premise. Primitive accumulation was all over but the shouting in Great Britain by the time the philosophers turned their attention to matters economic. The idea that intervention was required to move "self-provisioning farmers" (generously defined) into the factories as wage slaves is an appealing one. But the book simply does not cite enough historical evidence to prove the point.

The author is half way through the book before he addresses Adam Smith's supposedly interventionist tendencies to promote the "early" capitalists. Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill merit bare mentions. I did give the book two stars for introducing the reader to some of the neglected political economists of the early period. Overall, Marx receives the spotlight throughout the work.

This is the first book I've read that goes into much detail about the subject of primitive accumulation, and I'm impressed. Having an American History perspective, when I think about the social engineering behind a capitalist economy, I think about protective tariffs, slavery, moving Indians off the land, subsidies to canals and railroads, etc. It's fascinating to see that coercion and government involvement goes back much farther than that. And it's good to learn about some of the more forgotten political economists like James Steuart.

One does not have to be particularly leftist appreciate this book. Whether means to capitalist economic development was wrong or a "necessary evil", it's still extremely useful to know that things just didn't evolve naturally out of free exchange. The system was consciously engineered so that the "right sort" of people would be successful, and there's nothing sinister when people, through democratic choice, re-engineer things to bring about a reduction in income inequality, environmental protection, etc.

While not all leaders and thinkers in the 18th century were economists, I have a slight problem with the portrayal of Adam Smith. Now perhaps I've been seduced by his charm, but it seems as though he has a more complex view of the common good. Of course he wasn't a modern leftist or a cultural relativist, but at the same time, he wasn't a William Graham Sumner-style Social Darwinist of the late 1800s either.

"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters. "

The author doesn't use quotes like this from Smith, perhaps he assumes the "pro-worker" statements are well-known enough not to repeat. But how many ways can we interpret this?

"The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquility of any body but themselves."

Pretty strong language. The author would say that he's talking only about a certain class of merchants, perhaps.

Some leftists like Noam Chomsky will talk favorably about Adam Smith, as part, I think, of a larger argument to show that market fundamentalism and Social Darwinist "class warfare" are a departure from Classic Liberalism. Maybe I'm being naïve but I'm more sympathetic to this view. I feel it unwise to throw away so much of classic liberalism when it seems that most 18th century liberals wouldn't support modern corporate capitalism. From reading this book, I partly get the sense that you should either be a supporter of "invisible hand" market economics, or a Marxist. But that isn't the case.

Benjamin Franklin, a friend of Adam Smith, wrote a lot of contradictory statements, it is true. But this quote, I think, shows the concept of civic virtue that many of America's "founding fathers" had:

"Private property is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt."

This is a superb refutation of the warmed-over 1890s Social Darwinist mentality. Wealthy people aren't being punished when they pay higher taxes. Nor are they doing an act of benevolence. They are paying a "just debt" because in the long run, large-scale private-property is socially engineered, and the rich man depends on government more than the poor man.

Overall I have few disagreements with this book, and I highly recommend it.

You're self-employed, with many religious holidays, and while you're not rich, at least you're getting along. So why give this up to become a wage worker for somebody else, with little spare time, and a struggle for subsistence. Despite obvious simplifications, this is a core problem confronting capital at the dawn of the modern era, known also as primitive accumulation. How, that is, can self-sufficient peasants and others of similar status be converted into subservient factory hands, an obvious degradation. Yet without some such conversion, where would the labor for fields and factories come from if not the rural economy. To meet the need, New World colonies imported slaves and indentured servants. But Great Britain needed a new social division of labor, one that would stock emerging markets with commodities from a work force employed by a new social class. As conditions stood, the capitalist equation was only half complete--a wage labor class was needed.

Perelman examines the problem through the eyes of early political economists such as Adam Smith. What he finds is disturbing. Smith and followers generally suppress the real historical conflict, replacing actual coercive measures (game laws, etc.) with imaginary allusions to voluntary choice, as though worker autonomy was willingly swapped for a dependent wage rate. Nonetheless, voluntarism preserves the fiction of an immaculate conversion, and comports with market relations as an irresistable harmonizing force --the Smithian paradigm. However, other early thinkers primarily James Steuart are more candid than Smith, arguing that state intervention is necessary to separate working people from their subsistence, forcing them into the labor pool. As an analyst of the period, the obscure Steuart stands as a more accurate guide, in Perelman's view, than the celebrated author of The Wealth of Nations. Nevertheless, all the early economists, it appears, are eager to assist a nascent capitalist class in its quest for primitive accumulation. Yet, among them, Smith offers the most elegantly stated and publicly palatable version. Therefore, it is his version of a bloodless voluntarism that dominates an official record which even now continues to mislead. In short, orthodox opinion to the contrary, Smith and company operate as apologists of capital first, social scientists second.

This is an important and controversial contention. Perelman marshalls considerable evidence to support the thesis. Moreover, he argues that despite common impressions, primitive accumulation is not an historical relic, but continues in many parts of the globe. An important -- though unargued--theoretical point also emerges. Smithian thought characterizes market relations as a kind of natural necessity, like Law of Gravity; Marxian thought characterizes them as an historical necessity, a stage on the way to communism. According to both popular schools, there is something inevitable--beyond choice--about capitalist production relations . If I understand Perelman correctly, these same relations are understood as in no sense inevitable. Instead they are invented. History could have taken a non-capitalist course, and still can-- a key step in confronting the inequities of a post-Cold War world.

The author's style is accessible to the serious but non-professional. And except for a really murky last chapter on Smith and Lenin, the work stands as a solid and provocative piece of research. Recommended.

I saw this in the school library as perhaps a left wing, no, marxist view of the sociology of cyberspace. It is a good attempt. Yes, it follows many of the current writers in sociology on cyberspace(like Castells) and the so called information revolution which I live everyday. It also looks at work and Taylorism well. I can't find any faults with it really. But does he do the title justice? I think, yes, he covers the sociology of work and the ideas of being replaced by a computer well. I also think he attempts to break out of the mold of much of the unoriginal writing being done on cyberpsace these days in the schools. He doesn't seem like a hipppy as one other reviewer noted. I don't get the idea that Perelman is a libertarian living on the West Coast nor do I think he is rich. He does seem to be an academic economist though. Good work Perelman!

We need intelligent critiques of Toffler-style rhetoric (as opposed to tirades by resentful hippies), and this is one. Lots of good ideas here. Problems: Perelman generalises so much he sometimes contradicts himself; the exclusively U.S. focus was frustrating to this foreigner (must be worse for non-Westerners); there might have been attention paid to the ways in which IT has been used as a means of resistance, to complete the picture. But it should be read. An excellent starting point for discussion.

Though this book presents a few interesting ideas, most of them are confused by far-fetched metaphors and lack of substantial proof. Perelman is clearly interested in making the material accessible, but he does so by using so many different metaphors that it is difficult to figure out exactly what he is trying to say. Though his claims seem to be revolutionary, he touts nothing more than the modern liberal agenda. I happen to agree with his ideas, but the methods he uses to support them are weak and could afford to be better informed by classical theory. If you want a good criticism of modern competition, this is not it. This book ends up being a long justification of an unclear, poorly editted, and weak thesis.

I think the point of this book was generally clear enough. Those people above who have criticised Perelman's use of analogy to the biological sciences clearly missed Perelman's view of economic systems. Because humans are biological organisms, and because our economic system is a construct of biological organisms, it stands to reason that it would behave much more like a biological system than anything classical economics could ever hope to describe. In order for Perelman to model his thesis in such a way as to please the economic community (which I believe he noted in an early chapter would turn a deaf ear to his book because of its lack of conventional economic argument and modeling) would have required far more print, to far less effect than Perelman has achieved. In a nutshell, Perelman suggests that economics is complex because human beings are complex, because we have a very wide range of perception, understanding, and experience to inform our economic choices. It is a very big idea. And it really suggests something far broader than any economics we can imagine. In order for this discipline to be valuable, HUMAN DECISION MAKING must be modeled. Artificial intelligence. In different terms, Perelman also suggests that current decision-making structures, because they are so narrow (inhuman) are ineffective at dealing with complex problems. Decision making is intelligence. To understand it is to crack the code of AI. No one has done that yet. Readers should also take a look at Herbert Simon's "Models of Bounded Rationality" and "Complex Information Processing" as well as Fritjof Capra's "Web of Life" for more insight into these issues that will supplant classical economics. I'd give it five stars, but Perelman raises more questions than he answers, so I'll give it four.

BTW, I should note that his explanation for market volatility rests on the premise that decision-making apparati are deficient for these reasons.

Unlike most conventional economists who assume that the self-equilibrating properties of their models are replicated in the global economy, Michael Perelman demonstrates the inherent instability of unfettered capitalism. Like Thorstein Veblen's "Absentee Ownership", Perelman demonstrates how the lack of intervention and regulation compounds market volatility. It is a lesson not lost on major players such as the World Bank, which speaks of a "crisis of state effectiveness" and recognizes the damage caused by speculative whim. Perelman's characterization of markets as inherently unstable garners support, however unintentional, from no less a source than US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, whose recent pronouncements have focused upon the need for concerted efforts aimed at promoting stability. These efforts will, of necessity, originate from non-market sources. Of course Summers and the World Bank differ from Perelman in their solutions, but this is hardly unexpected, given their advocacy and implementation of policies responsible for heightening economic instability in the first place.

At a time when US economic health appears to depend somewhat disproportionately upon the wisdom of another notably non-market institution, Alan Greenspan, Perelman's book offers a welcome injection of critical objectivity. It is well-argued and accessibly written. It deserves a wide readership.