Shirking, the act of avoiding the demands of one’s job, is generally seen as unethical. Drawing on empirical evidence from the sociology of work, I develop a normative conception of shirking as a form of worker resistance against illegitimate managerial power. In doing so, I present a new approach to the political theory of the firm, which is more adversarial and agent-centered than available alternatives. It is more adversarial as it recognizes the political value of counterproductive and disruptive behavior in (...) capitalist firms. It is more agent-centered because it theorizes the firm from the perspective of workers, asking what pro tanto reasons they have to shirk. I show that shirking under the structural domination of capitalism has diagnostic, agential, and epistemic values. The paper contributes to the wider methodological ambition to tailor political theorizing to the positionality of social actors, by shifting attention from the institutional design of the firm to the methods of worker resistance. (shrink)

Critics of social injustice argue that the agent of transformative social change will (or should) be a mass agent; namely, an agent that is large, complex, and geographically dispersed. Traditional theories of collective agency emphasize the presence of shared intentions and common knowledge, but mass agents are too large for such cohesion. To make sense of mass agency, I suggest a new approach. On the solidarity theory of mass agency, a mass agent is composed of (a) organizers who intend to (...) fight for social change and (b) supporters who are in solidarity with organizers. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends a new conception of freedom as a value in the sphere of economic production. It challenges the common, proprietarian-contractual view of economic liberty. My alternative integrates three elements: compossible control, non-alienation, and reason-responsiveness. After surveying various forms of freedom, conceptual ground is cleared for the presentation of those three elements in a relational structure. I define them, show how they interpenetrate, and argue for their shared centrality. Compossible control involves a person’s conditions of economic agency (...) being sufficiently under their influence to satisfy their entitlement to a self-directed life, consistent with others having equivalent control in their own case. Non-alienation involves having reasons to apprehend one’s productive activities as a worthy manifestation of one’s identity. Reason responsiveness obtains when the requirements of production that one faces can be met by weighing and acting on reasons one takes as normative. I then discuss possible objections to my account. These have to do with its consistency with market requirements, the coherence of its basic distinctions, and the importance ascribed to non-alienation. I show how each of these objections are defeated. (shrink)

Recently, some authors have claimed that, from a republican perspective, market relations are dominating. However, prima facie, this idea does not fit within the (neo-)republican conceptualization of domination, which models domination on the master-slave relation. The aim of this article is to twofold. First, I try to argue that market relations can be seen as dominating. Second, I attempt to show that this can be done through an extension of the (neo-)republican conceptualization of domination. I try to achieve this by (...) comparing the master-slave relation with the accounts of those authors who maintain that market relations entail domination. This comparison reveals that there are fundamental similarities between the master-slave relation and the dynamics within market relations that are identified as dominating. What they have in common is the specific harm of domination, which I call the ‘logic of domination’. However, where the master-slave relation and market relations diverge is in the characteristics of the relation that causes the logic of domination to materialize. I argue that Pettit’s concept of discursive control allows us to extend his account of domination in such a way that we can conceive of market relations as dominating. (shrink)

Bilateral investment treaties constitute an important instrument to facilitate global investment. Recent discussions in political theory have highlighted several normative concerns raised by bilateral investment treaties. One worry is that investment treaties undermine national self‐determination as they grant investors far‐reaching protections that can be legally enforced. Another worry is that the benefits and burdens entailed in bilateral investment treaties are distributed unfairly in a way that benefits investors at the expense of states and disadvantaged groups within states. Instead of critiquing (...) bilateral investment treaties from a perspective of global (distributive) justice, in this article I develop a class‐based critique. This involves a twofold departure. First, the article shifts the focus from distributions to the power relations that are built into the global capitalist economy and that come into sharp relief in the practice of global investment. Second, rather than focusing on the relation between states and investors, I claim that in a class‐based critique the relation between workers and investors should take centre stage. I argue that bilateral investment treaties are effectively an instrument of class domination, insofar as they reproduce and increase the power of transnational corporations while at the same time decreasing the power of workers. (shrink)

This paper presents a critique of left republican writings from a non-republican socialist standpoint. It examines three claims that have been advanced by left republican authors: that workers are dominated 1) by their lack of access to the means of production; 2) by the market; and 3) by their employer. With regard to 1) and 2), it argues that alternative conceptions of freedom can identify the unfreedom in question, and that there are good reasons for pressing these complaints on the (...) basis of these alternative conceptions. With regard to 3), it argues that, while alternative conceptions of freedom may be able to identify the unfreedom in question, republican freedom provides a more suitable basis for pressing this claim. It concludes that while left republicans have shown that socialists have reason to care about republican freedom, they have not shown that socialists should adopt republican freedom at the expense of other conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

As political theorists explore work beyond traditional workplaces, how should we understand the vast class of insecure, informal, and unsalaried workers whose existence defies traditional categories of employment? In asking this question, I revisit the political theory of the Marxist feminist and cofounder of the International Wages for Housework movement, Selma James, to explore her “internationalism of the unwaged” and her writings on wagelessness. An example of political theory in service of struggle, James’s internationalism was widely circulated in anticolonial, Black (...) radical, and autonomous Marxist circles in the 1970s. In this article, I argue that it was grounded in three intertwined and mutually reinforcing arguments: an account of how capitalist life is spatially divided into distinct workplaces; an anticapitalist theory of identity that explains social difference as maintained by the international division of labor and labor market hierarchies; and a diagnosis of work organization viewed from the perspective of the wageless worker. I trace how James developed these arguments about the spatial division of labor, hierarchies of identity, and internationalist political struggle and how her view of the common exploitation and division of workers formed the basis of a class-struggle identity politics. Her political theory was an important contribution to women’s international thought and transnational feminist critiques of global forms of domination and exploitation. It also offers a critique of capitalism’s organization of the displacement of work and workers and an account of wagelessness as a work situation, both of which illuminate capitalist organization of work and wageless life today. (shrink)

Recently, some scholars have sought to cast Marx and other socialists as participants in the republican tradition, expanding ideas such as non-domination and self-rule beyond what they had been typically conceived of as by many of the instigators of the revival of republican thought in recent decades. The ramifications of such an expansion, however, have not yet been fully grappled with in the area of rights. This article aims to remedy this by building a theory of social republican rights by (...) drawing on both prongs of this framework. I argue that (1) rights ought to function primarily as instruments to overcome domination and that Marxist and socialist analysis identifies novel forms of domination missed by other republicans, (2) certain liberal rights are themselves vectors of domination, (3) rights are realised through active will formation in politics and the public sphere rather than being pre-political claims against these things, (4) rights should be based on a social ontology that is relational rather than individualist and (5) rights are powers that are struggled for and operate as zones of contestation rather than trans-historical principles. (shrink)

While the challenges workers face in the gig economy are now well-known, reflections on emancipatory solutions in political philosophy are still underdeveloped. Some have pleaded for enhancing workers' bargaining power through unionisation; others for enhancing exit options in the labour market. Both strategies, however, come with unin-tended side-effects and do not exhaust the full potential for worker self-government present in the digital gig economy. Using the republican theory of freedom as non-domination , I argue that G.D.H. Cole's 20th-century defence of (...) guild socialism offers a promising avenue for enhancing worker autonomy in the gig economy. Platform companies rely on relational and structural domination to undermine worker autonomy, but Cole's guild socialism was specifically designed to enhance autonomy in the workplace. Following Cole's advice today would amount to a defence of worker-owned cooperative platforms. By putting workers in control of platform design and governance, cooperative platforms create new opportunities for worker autonomy. However, platform coopera-tivism faces serious challenges if it plans on becoming a realistic alternative to the traditional gig economy. (shrink)

Recent work in republican political theory has identified various forms of domination in the structures and relations of capitalist societies. A notable absence in much of this work is the concept of exploitation, which is generally treated as a predictable outcome of certain kinds of domination. This paper argues that the concept of exploitation can instead be conceived as a form of structural domination, understood in republican terms, and that adopting this conception has important implications for republican attempts to theorize (...) modern capitalist societies. Building on existing domination accounts of exploitation, we argue that exploitation is a form of structurally constituted domination that enables a systemic illegitimate extraction of value. However, in contrast to competing accounts, domination is understood here in the republican terms of subjection to arbitrary power. We show that conceiving of domination in these terms not only makes the concept easily accessible from within a republican framework, but has advantages over competing accounts. Our argument also demonstrates why using the concept of exploitation will be useful for republican theorists. We show that a polity based on exploitative relations of production is antithetical to key republican commitments. These asymmetric power relationships undermine the economic and political independence of citizens and, crucially, constrain the political and economic ends that a polity will be effectively able to pursue. As such, exploitation should be a central preoccupation of republican political economy. (shrink)

I analyse the political, economic, and cultural circumstances that have given rise to persistent political disputes about race (known colloquially as “the culture war”) among a subset of Americans. I argue that they point to a deep tension between widely held normative aspirations and pervasive and readily observable material facts about our society. The characterological pathologies this gives rise to are discussed, and a normatively preferable path forward for an individual attempting to reconcile themselves to the current social order is (...) suggested. (shrink)