An interesting read.  Ellerman shows how the sale of human beings (slavery) and the renting of human beings (employment) can both be seen to violate an inalienable right of personhood.  The slave or the employee pretends to have the role of a thing, which is a fraud.  He illustrates that the abolitionists argued against slavery not just for its coercion, but against the legal and philosophical soundness of making a pact with a master that transfers personness (decision-making ability and responsibility) away from oneself.  Ellerman suggests that same argument can be made to invalidate the worker's transferrence of responsibility, including the positive reward of respoinsibility, profit, away from themselves, even if voluntarily.        He also talks briefly about what ownership of the firm means in comparison to the contractual postion of the residual claimant, though not as clearly as or in the depth he expresses it in in The Democratic Firm.   For a moment he also touches a little on how his efforts to apply a more radical democratic vision was not always easy to expalin to workers during his ICA work converting manufacturing firms to employee owned companies.