This article shows the philosophical kinship between Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft on the subject of love. Though the two major 18th century thinkers are not traditionally brought into conversation with each other, Wollstonecraft and Smith share deep moral concerns about the emerging commercial society. As the new middle class continues to grow along with commerce, vanity becomes an ever more common vice among its members. But a vain person is preoccupied with appearance, status, and flattery—things that get in (...) the way of what Smith and Wollstonecraft regard as the deep human connection they variously describe as love, sympathy, and esteem. Commercial society encourages inequality, Smith argues, and Wollstonecraft points out that this inequality is particularly obvious in the relationships between men and women. Men are vain about their wealth, power and status; women about their appearance. Added to this is the fact that most middle class women are both uneducated and encouraged by the conduct literature of their day to be sentimental and irrational. The combined economic and moral considerations of Wollstonecraft and Smith show that there is very little room for love in commercial society as they conceived it. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to establish that a widely held criticism of postmodern Marxism – that it is morally relativist and does not offer a basis for a systematic analysis of capitalism – is not warranted. I provide a systematic review of the postmodern Marxist literature in three distinct areas – value theory, class analysis of the household and state, and class justice – and I draw on these contributions to show that postmodern Marxism offers new insights (...) into problems of concern to Marxian theorists. I argue, further, that it provides the normative grounds for a class politics that is open to new alliances and new strategies for engaging in class struggle. (shrink)

In a recent comment made about my paper “A Social Movement Perspective on Finance: How Socially Responsible Investment Mattered”, published in this journal, Déjean, Giamporcaro, Gond, Leca and Penalva-Icher strongly criticize the social movement perspective adopted on French SRI. They both contest the empirical analysis of the movement and the possibility for insiders to trigger institutional change towards sustainability. This answer aims to address the different concerns raised throughout their comment and illuminate the differences between both approaches. It first explains (...) why SRI in France can be considered as a social movement, despite not being protest-oriented. It then reflects on the dangers of systematically associating societal change with radical activism. It concludes by elaborating on the importance of acknowledging the potential contribution of reformist movements from within the economic institutions to the enhancement of the social good. (shrink)

The Pastoral contains a non-Marxist class based non-traditional analysis of sinful acts in economic life. Data on poverty, income distribution, unemployment and economic problems are used to assert the existence of a marginalyzed, economically disenfranchised class, victims of the sinful self-serving actions of individuals influential in economic and political institutions. Economic scarcity, the reality of risk, conflicting policy goals, imperfect economic policy insights, mistaken choices, and the consequences of sinful acts for the sinner (...) are ignored as possible causes of imperfect economic outcomes as the bishops advocate solutions through an expanded agenda of government programs and power. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) can serve as a beneficial public policy to reduce poverty and inequality, yet a great challenge is how to fund it. This article offers a roadmap for fully funding UBI in a manner that: eliminates poverty; bolsters the middle-class; eliminates the stigma and government bureaucracy of social welfare programs; reduces ever-expanding inequality; initiates a path to meeting climate change goals; reduces speculation; and increases fairness and opportunity in the tax code. As stand-alone policies, these revenue (...) proposals are valuable correctives in their own right. If the entire package of UBI and funding sources were in effect, society (and American capitalism) would be on a more stable, equitable, and environmentally sustainable footing. (shrink)

Over one-third of the white working class in America vote for Republicans. Some scholars argue that these voters support Republican economic policies, while others argue that these voters’ preferences on cultural and moral issues override their economic preferences. We draw on in-depth interviews with 120 white working-class voters to defend a broadly “economic” interpretation: for this segment of voters, moral and cultural appeals have an economic dimension, because these voters believe certain moral behaviors will (...) help them prosper economically. Even the very word “conservative” is understood as referencing not respect for tradition generally, but avoidance of debt and excessive consumption specifically. For many respondents, the need to focus on morality and personal responsibility as a means of prospering economically—what we call “walking the line”—accords with the rhetoric they associate with Republicans. Deindustrialization may have heightened the appeal of this rhetoric. (shrink)

This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial melt-down, the essential values of neo-liberalism were reasserted as natural, moral and efficient through two apparently contrasting discourses. First, a victim discourse presented White working people, and (...) their children in particular, as suffering educationally because of minoritised racial groups and their advocates. Second a discourse of degeneracy presented an immoral and barbaric underclass as a threat to social and economic order. Applying the 'interest-convergence principle', from Critical Race Theory, the discourses amount to a strategic mobilisation of White interests where the 'White, but not quite' status of the working class (Allen, 2009) provides a buffer zone at a time of economic and cultural crisis which secures societal White supremacy and provides a further setback to progressive reforms that focus on race, gender and disability equality. The existence of poor Whites, therefore, is not only consistent with a regime of White supremacy — they are actually an essential part of the processes that sustain it. (shrink)

In the contemporary context of increasing inequality and various forms of segregation, this volume analyzes the transition to neoliberal politics in Santiago de Chile. Using an innovative methodological approach that combines georeferenced data and multi-stage cluster analysis, Méndez and Gayo study the old and new mechanisms of social reproduction among the upper middle class. In so doing, they not only capture the interconnections between macro- and microsocial dimensions such as urban dynamics, schooling demands, cultural repertoires and socio-spatial trajectories, but (...) also offer a detailed account of elite formation, intergenerational accumulation, and economic, cultural, and social inheritance dynamics. (shrink)

Many who write on race consider it an ‘illusion’. Others argue that race is real, even if socially constructed, because the notion of race, and the categorizing of people in terms of race, has greatly affected their lives. This paper criticizes a reason that is often given for thinking that race is an illusion: the fact that there is no biological basis of race. I defend two primary claims. First, while there is no biological basis for membership in a socio- (...) class='Hi'>economic class, by which I mean one's being relatively affluent or poor in a particular society, no one takes socio-economic class to be an illusion. Second, race is arguably a more fundamental reality than is socio-economic class. For one's racial identity can causally contribute to, and account at least partly for, one's membership in a socio-economic class. But membership in a socio-economic class does not thus contribute to, or account for, people's racial identities. (shrink)

Using Marcuse's theory of the total mobilization of advanced technology society along the lines of what he calls “the performance principle,” I attempt to describe the complex composition of class oppression in the classroom. Students conceive of themselves as economic units, customers pursuing neutral interests in a morally neutral, socio‐economic system of capitalist competition. The classic, unreflective conception of the classroom responds to this by implicitly endorsing individualism and ideals of humanist citizenship. While racism and cultural diversity (...) have come to count as elements of liberal intelligence in most college curricula, attempts to theorize these aspects of social and individual identity and place them in a broader content of class appear radical and inconsistent with the humanistic notion that we all have control over who we are and what we achieve. But tags such as “radical” and “unrealistic” mark a society based on the performance principle. Marcuse allows us to recognize a single author behind elements of psychology, metaphysics, and capitalism. The fact that bell hooks hits upon a similar notion suggests that we might use Marcuse's theory of the truly liberatory potential of imagination to transform and reconceive our classrooms so that the insidious effects of class, racism, and individualistic apathy might be subverted. Specifically, I outline and place into this theoretical context three concrete pedagogical practices: (a) the use of the physical space of the classroom; (b) the performance of community through group readings and short full‐class ceremonies, and (c) the symbolic modeling represented by interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. All three of these practices engage students in ways that co‐curricularly subvert class (and, incidentally, race divisions) and allow students to imagine, and so engage in, political action for justice as they see it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In response to criticism of empirical or “positive” approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR), we defend the importance of these approaches for any CSR theory that seeks to have practical impact. Although we acknowledge limitations to positive approaches, we unpack the neglected but crucial relationships between positive knowledge on the one hand and normative knowledge on the other in the implementation of CSR principles. Using the structure of a practical syllogism, we construct a model that displays the key role of (...) empirical knowledge in fulfilling a firm’s responsibility to society, paying special attention to the implications of the “ought implies can” dictum. We also defend the importance of one particular class of empirical claims; namely, claims from the field of economics. Even positive economic theory, which is often criticized for endorsing profits rather than values, can cooperate in intriguing ways with non-economic concepts in the implementation of CSR goals. (shrink)

In his early writings, dealing mainly with problems of agricultural policy, Max Weber at times differentiates between “class” and “estate”, but in general he treats them as synonyms. Only after 1909, when he started to work on Economy and Society and Economic Ethic of the World Religions, he felt the necessity to use these concepts in a more clear-cut manner. “Classes” are only placed within the economic order, while “estates” belong to the social order and take shape (...) through the partition of «social prestige» or «honor», which in turn derives from different sources, including the religious ones. This essay explores the forms of religious stratification which arise from the knowledge of rituals and precedents, from the knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, or from a specific knowledge of the conditions of possibility of redemption. (shrink)

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, many commentators latched on to the accusations Rorty levels at the American Left in Achieving Our Country. Rorty foresaw, they claimed, that the Left's preoccupation with cultural politics and neglect of class politics would lead to the election of a "strongman" who would take advantage of and exploit a rise in populist sentiment. -/- In this paper, I generally agree with these readings of Rorty; he does think that the American Left has (...) made the mistake of putting class on the political backburner. However, I suggest that this position follows from his view that economic security is vital for solidarity. Because economic security is under increasing threat in contemporary America, so too is solidarity. If greater solidarity is a goal of liberal democracy, then class politics, aimed at ending selfishness, ought to be as much a priority for the American Left as is cultural politics, aimed at ending sadism. (shrink)

Why the paradigm of the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions of higher education Universities have become major actors on the global stage. Yet, as they strive to be "world-class," institutions of higher education are shifting away from their core missions of cultivating democratic citizenship, fostering critical thinking, and safeguarding academic freedom. In the contest to raise their national and global profiles, universities are embracing a new form of utilitarianism, one that favors market power over (...) academic values. In this book, James Mittelman explains why the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions and proposes viable alternatives that can help universities thrive in today's competitive global environment. Mittelman traces how the scale, reach, and impact of higher-education institutions expanded exponentially in the post-World War II era, and how the market-led educational model became widespread. Drawing on his own groundbreaking fieldwork, he offers three case studies--the United States, which exemplifies market-oriented educational globalization; Finland, representative of the strong public sphere; and Uganda, a postcolonial country with a historically public but now increasingly private university system. Mittelman shows that the "world-class" paradigm is untenable for all but a small group of wealthy, research-intensive universities, primarily in the global North. Nevertheless, institutions without substantial material resources and in far different contexts continue to aspire to world-class stature. An urgent wake-up call, Implausible Dream argues that universities are repurposing at the peril of their high principles and recommends structural reforms that are more practical than the unrealistic worldwide measures of excellence prevalent today. (shrink)

Creative Class, Creative Economy, and the Wisdom Society as a Solution to their Controversy The paper briefly introduces the notion of creativity, linking the concepts of creative class and the related creative economy that are considered by Florida and his followers as the driving force of the current social and economic development. The concept of creative economy and its quantification in form of the Creative Class Index 3T or the Euro-Creativity Index were submitted to strong critique.The (...) critics overturn some key issues of the concept of creative class with an indication that the creative people give priority in choosing the work from the place; and there is no or almost nil correlation of a perceptual representation of the persons of homosexual orientation and the high-tech growth which confirms the opinion that the assertion about higher creativity of homosexual persons is a myth only. The purpose of the article is the examination of propriety of the concept of creative class and its quantification at one hand, and the rightfulness of their critique at the other. The analysis of the axiology of the concept of creative class is the method of examination. From point of view of axiology probably the most significant characteristic of the creative class is its accompanying destruction of thee social capital of creative people and it substitution of the creative capital. The rise of creative class takes place in parallel with the implosion of values at which basis our Jewish-Christian civilization is established. To this Florida expresses rather vague attitude by a statement that all socio-cultural changes that accompany the rise of the creative class will have no favorable impact on society.Florida labeled creativity as a basic human law, furthermore, he announced the need for a new live style in which the quality of life will increase and people become better men. The concept of creativity as an instrument of urban planning evolved into a left-liberal ideology with elements of social engineering that is the most important finding of the axiological analysis. The second finding is the need to accept the meaning of creativity. By implication of the two findings there arises a proposal for wisdom as a new driving force of social and economic development. The conclusion is the contribution is a requirement for formulation of the concept of wisdom society that is currently likely absent in the academic world, and the statement that if the West will not create the wisdom society, it will lose the raison d'être of its existence. (shrink)

Economics has long been the ‘dismal science’. The crisis in classical political economy at the end of the nineteenth century produced radically differing intellectual responses: Marx’s reconstitution of value theory on the basis of his dialectical method, the marginalists’ development of subjective value theory, and the historical school’s advocacy of inductive and historical reasoning. It is against this background that economics was established as a discrete academic discipline, consciously modelling itself on maths and physics and developing its focus on theorising (...) exchange. This entailed extraordinary reductionism, with humans regarded as rational, self-interested actors, and class, society, history and ‘the social’ being excised from economic analysis. On the basis of this narrowing of its concerns, particularly from the 1980s onwards, economics has sought to expand its sphere of influence through a form of imperialism which seeks to apply mainstream economic approaches to other social sciences and sees economics as ‘the universal grammar of social science’. The implications of this shift are discussed in Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis’s two volumes, where they analyse the fate of the social, the political and the historical in economic thought, and assess the future for an inter-disciplinary critique of economic reason. (shrink)

Alongside other types of mass atrocities, genocide has received extensive scholarly, policy, and practitioner attention. Missing, however, is the contribution of economists to better understand and prevent such crimes. This edited collection by 41 accomplished scholars examines economic aspects of genocides, other mass atrocities, and their prevention. Chapters include numerous case studies, probing literature reviews, and completely novel work based on extraordinary country-specific datasets. Also included are chapters on the demographic, gendered, and economic class nature of genocide. (...) Replete with research- and policy-relevant findings, new insights are derived from behavioral economics, law and economics, political economy, macroeconomic modeling, microeconomics, development economics, industrial organization, identity economics, and other fields. Analytical approaches include constrained optimization theory, game theory, and sophisticated statistical work in data-mining, econometrics, and forecasting.A foremost finding of the book concerns atrocity architects' purposeful, strategic use of violence, often manipulating nonrational proclivities among ordinary people to sway their participation in mass murder. Relatively understudied in the literature, the book also analyzes the options of victims before, during, and after mass violence. Further, the book shows how well-intended prevention efforts can backfire and increase violence, how wrong post-genocide design can entrench vested interests to reinforce exclusion of vulnerable peoples, and how businesses can become complicit in genocide. In addition to the necessity of healthy opportunities in employment, education, and key sectors in prevention work, the book shows why new genocide prevention laws and institutions must be based on reformulated incentives that consider insights from law and economics, behavioral economics, and collective action economics. (shrink)

Educational aspirations under an ideal state and educational expectations based on reality have an important impact on children’s academic development, but distinct differences between them exist. On the basis of distinguishing the differences between the two, using the national data of Tsinghua University’s China Urbanization and Child Development Survey, this article endeavors to explore the inequality of educational aspirations and expectations from the perspective of class and urban-rural areas, and lay out the influencing factors of educational aspirations, expectations, and (...) the difference between them. It is found that Chinese parents generally have high aspirations for their children’s education. There is no distinct class difference in “high hopes for children’s bright future.” However, in the sense of educational expectations, there are distinct class differences, which are deeply rooted in socioeconomic status and closely related to education level, family type, family structure, and family economic status, as well as children’s academic performance. (shrink)

After the global economic collapse triggered by the Great Recession, there has been an increased interest in the potential psychological implications of periods of economic decline. Recent evidence suggests that negative personal experiences linked to the economic crisis may lead to diminished generalized trust (i.e., the belief that most of the people of the society are honest and can be trusted). Adding to the growing literature on the psychological consequences of the economic crisis, we propose that (...) the perceived personal impact of the economic crisis not only would undermine generalized trust but also may lead to increased interpersonal trust (i.e., directed to specific and close people) and depersonalized in-group trust (i.e., directed to individuals who, while strangers, belong to the same group [e.g., social class]). Across three studies (N = 1379), we tested these central hypotheses and ascertained whether the perceived personal impact of the crisis would predict these types of trust (assessed using questionnaire and behavioral measures) independent of individuals’ socioeconomic status. Non-experimental data from Study 1 revealed that a higher perceived personal impact of the crisis is related to lower levels of generalized trust and higher levels of interpersonal trust. These effects were independent of participants’ socioeconomic status. Non-experimental data from Study 2 replicated the findings obtained in Study 1 and also showed a positive association between the perceived personal impact of the crisis and depersonalized in-group trust. This pattern of results emerged even after controlling for socioeconomic status, gender, age, political orientation, religiosity, and unemployment status. In Study 3, using an experimental design, we found that the salience of a possible economic downturn led to decreased generalized trust and increased interpersonal and depersonalized in-group trust—independently of socioeconomic status—compared with the control condition. These results challenge the conventional wisdom that economic crises invariably undermine trust in others. The implications of the present research as well as future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

The Transatlantic slave trade radically impaired Africa's potential to develop economically and maintain its social and political stability. The arrival of Europeans on the West African Coast and their establishment of slave ports in various parts of the continent triggered a continuous process of exploitation of Africa's human resources, labor, and commodities. This exploitative commerce influenced the African political and religious aristocracies, the warrior classes and the biracial elite, who made small gains from the slave trade, to participate in the (...) oppression of their own people. The Europeans, on the other hand, greatly benefited from the Atlantic trade, since it allowed them to amass the raw materials that fed the Industrial Revolution to the detriment of African societies whose capacity to transform their modes of production into a viable entrepreneurial economy was severely halted. (shrink)

Henryk Grossman's discussion of economic crises was designed to complement his Leninist understanding of politics. For Grossman, as for Marx, the fundamental contradiction of capitalist production is between the unlimited scope for expanding the output of use-values and restrictions imposed by the framework of producing profits. The increasing weight of capitalists' outlays on dead compared to living labour, which is the only source of new value, gives rise to the system's tendency to break down and, hence, to economic (...) crises. Deep financial crises can only be understood in the context of developments in production and particularly movements in the rate of profit. The initial widespread hostility to Grossman's development of Marxist economics can mainly be explained in terms of the logics of Social-Democratic and Stalinist politics. In contrast to dominant views on the Left today, the Marxist tradition in which Grossman stood places the construction of organisations capable of assisting the working class' conquest of political power at the heart of the responsibility of socialists. Grossman's political practice expressed his understanding of the close relationship between capitalism's breakdown tendency and the importance of building a revolutionary party. (shrink)

Rising exclusion rates indicate the continuing marginalisation of many young people in education in the UK. Working-class boys, children living in poverty, and children with additional/special educational needs are among those experiencing a disproportionate rate of exclusion. This book traces the processes of exclusion and alienation from school and relates this to a changing social and economic context. Jean Kane argues that policy on schooling, including curricular reform, needs to be re-connected to the broad political pursuit of social (...) justice, and presents compelling case studies of excluded pupils, showing the multi-faceted identities of pupils, with a particular focus on masculine and feminine identities. This invaluable contribution to the literature offers an alternative analysis where the social identities of pupils are shown to be tied up with their exclusion from school. Themes investigated include: the meanings of school exclusions social class, gender and schooling social identities of excluded pupils negotiating identities in school: moving towards exclusion exclusions and young people’s lives improving participation in schooling. Providing fascinating reading for teachers, social workers, researchers and policy-makers this book considers how educational disadvantage might be addressed through recognition of the gender and class identities of pupils. (shrink)

The following interview was conducted on July 13, 2009 at the JFK Institute for Graduate Studies, Freie Universität in Berlin, shortly after a conference, entitled “Class in Crisis: Das Prekariat zwischen Krise und Bewegung,” at which Harvey delivered a keynote address. The conference, organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, engaged the political, socio-economic, and conceptual dimensions of the so-called precariat class. The precariat (das Prekariat or la précarité) is typically defined by short-term employment, persistent marginalization, and social (...) insecurity—something of a fragmented urban underclass whose precariousness is increasingly evident in traditionally middle-class economic life. While the concept of the precariat has yet to take root in English-language social theory, the work of Loïc Wacquant (who also delivered a keynote at the Berlin conference), for example, has been popularizing it. (shrink)

This study, first published in 1986, provides a systematic account of the processes and structure of class formation in the major advanced capitalist societies. The focus is on the organizational mechanisms of class cohesion and division, theoretically deriving from a neo-Marxian perspective. Chapters consider the organization and structure of the ‘corporate ruling class’, the middle class and the working class, and are brought together in an overarching analysis of the organization of class in relation (...) to the state and the economy. This title will be of particular interest to students researching the impact of recession on societal structure and the processes of political class struggle, as well as those with a more general interest in the socio-economic theories of Marx, Engels and Weber. (shrink)

Opposition within the organic agriculture community to a state regulatory initiative intended to close a loophole on the prohibition of stoop labor in California agriculture illuminates critical tensions around the “labor question” underpinning California's rapidly expanding organic sector. Through an exploration of the contradictions between the political economic realities of organic agriculture, the lived realities of farm workers, and the ideological framework of “agricultural exceptionalism” espoused in the organic community, this article challenges widely held assumptions that organic agriculture embodies (...) a more socially sustainable form of production. We conclude that these tensions must be confronted if any progress is to be made toward the incorporation of social justice into definitions of agro-food system sustainability. (shrink)

Prior research has shown the relationship between objective economic inequality and searching for positional goods. It also investigated the relationship between social class and low income with conspicuous consumption. However, the causal relationship between economic inequality has been less explored. Furthermore, there are also few studies looking for the psychological mechanisms that underlie these effects. The current research’s main goal is to analyze the consequences of perceived economic inequality on conspicuous and status consumption and the possible (...) psychological mechanisms that could explain its effects. Furthermore, the current research aims to examine whether there is a causal relationship between PEI and materialism preferences and attitudes toward indebtedness. This work includes two preregister experimental studies. In the Study 1, we manipulated PEI and its legitimacy through a 2 × 2 between-participants experiment. Results showed a main effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, status anxiety, materialism, and attitude toward indebtedness. No interaction effect between legitimacy and inequality was found. In the Study 2, we manipulated the PEI through the Bimboola Paradigm. We replicated the effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, and materialism and found that status seeking mediated the relationship between PEI and status and conspicuous consumption. Economic inequality affects consumer behavior and favors consumption preferences for products that provide desirable symbolic values associated with status. These results could have important implications in the interpersonal and intergroup processes, including those related to consumption and purchase. (shrink)

By exploring how gender norms and material interests vary between women in different classes, this article highlights interactions between class and gender that mitigate against the mobilization of political support for activist family policies in the United States. Ironically, while educated women in professional and managerial jobs are ideologically most favorable toward the dual earner/dual carer model, it is not in their economic interest for the state to make it happen. Scandinavian-style interventions would impose costs on relatively privileged (...) women in their role as child care consumers. There is also reason to believe that these interventions would indirectly undermine their labor market attainments. (shrink)

The following interview was conducted on July 13, 2009 at the JFK Institute for Graduate Studies, Freie Universität in Berlin, shortly after a conference, entitled “Class in Crisis: Das Prekariat zwischen Krise und Bewegung,” at which Harvey delivered a keynote address. The conference, organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, engaged the political, socio-economic, and conceptual dimensions of the so-called precariat class. The precariat (das Prekariat or la précarité) is typically defined by short-term employment, persistent marginalization, and social (...) insecurity—something of a fragmented urban underclass whose precariousness is increasingly evident in traditionally middle-class economic life. While the concept of the precariat has yet to take root in English-language social theory, the work of Loïc Wacquant (who also delivered a keynote at the Berlin conference), for example, has been popularizing it. (shrink)

This article explores an under-examined theme, which is who or what is the working class and what is wrong with the situation that members of this class share. It argues that class divisions impose a unique harm for a diverse and interdependent group within capitalist societies both in spite and because of differences among group members. Class matters not just because it creates economic groups in which some are rich and others are poor, but because (...) competition creates conditions that militate against solidarity, toward cleavage and conflict. Class is a constraint on collective self-determination and, therefore, a source of domination. (shrink)

In this paper, we undertake a genealogical study to illustrate how Karl Marx derives his concept of class conflict from Adam Smith’s theory of social order. Based on these findings, we argue that both Smith’s and Marx’s political economies should be interpreted in relation to each other – from the perspective of social philosophy, in particular their shared concepts of social order and necessary opposition of class interests. By appeal to process philosophy, we also argue that this reinterpretation (...) needs to take into account two other ideas shared by Smith and Marx, namely the social individual as person-in-community, and the pursuit of desirable social forms from a humanistic perspective. We conclude by contending that business management practice would benefit from understanding the role of class tensions and social order in stakeholder relations. Specifically, management and organization scholarship should focus on philosophical examinations of the influence of social order on economic activities in an organization in a way that is far more appreciative of the social relations of individuals as being the primary, rather than a secondary, concern. (shrink)

There is a growing commitment by different parts of the alternative food movement (AFM) to improve labor conditions for conventional food chain workers, and to develop economically fair alternatives, albeit under a range of conditions that structure mobilization. This has direct implications for the process of intra-movement building and therefore the degree to which the movement ameliorates economic inequality at the point of food labor. This article asks what accounts for the variation in AFM labor commitments across different contexts. (...) It then appraises a range of activist perspectives, practices, and organizational approaches. The answer emerges through a comparative analysis of three California social movement organizations enmeshed in the particularities of local contentious food politics. The cases include a labor union representing grocery store and meatpacking/food processing workers, a food justice organization working to create green jobs and independent funding models, and an organic urban farming and educational organization. Commitment to fair labor standards varies due to differences in organizational capacity, the degree of dedication to ending economic inequality in local activist culture, and the openness of local political and economic institutions to working class struggles. The article concludes with a discussion of how these findings inform our understanding of the process of cooperation and division in the AFM, particularly regarding the complexities and contradictions of using food labor to combat economic inequality. Movement building in the midst of varying institutional, organizational, and cultural contexts reinforces the value of a reflexive approach to this imperfect politics of process. (shrink)

Post-Marxism emerged in the 1970s and 80s as a way to retain certain insights from Marxism while disposing of its indefensible and destructive elements, especially the tendency to reduce all social change to the economic base. This book offers a new and critical reading of post-Marxism, arguing that whilst it convincinly deconstructs the prevalent economism in Marxism as the necessary logic of social reproduction, it nonetheless still retains an ontology of a closed capitalist economy, inhabited by a set of (...) necessary logics. Through a careful symptomatic reading of the works of influential post-Marxian thinkers, Ernesto Laclau and Étienne Balibar, the book argues that while post-Marxian positions have constructed a theory of social contingency, it has failed in different ways to dislodge the constitution of class and capitalist reproduction from essentialist narratives. (shrink)

For Marx, capitalism depends upon and perpetuates a system of relationships whereby members of one class of persons, capitalists, enjoys extensive and pervasive social and economic advantages over others. But on Marx’s analysis, this system of being-taken-advantage-of—this system of economic exploitation—is not to be understood by appeal to discrete incidents of fraud, bad deals, theft, or under-remuneration. Rather, the central contention of Marx’s analysis, the contention analyzed, developed, and evaluated here, is that economic exploitation is (...) class='Hi'>class exploitation, a phenomenon that occurs only within and because of the complex system of capitalist production. And it is because this system presupposes a set of oppressive social and economic ownership relations that are not freely chosen and yet govern the terms of participation in the economy and polity that it can be appropriately described as wrong or unjust. (shrink)

Now more than ever it is clear that the global economy needs to be assessed and governed from a moral point of view. Such moral assessment can, however, come in at least two quite different forms. Political philosophers have tended to focus on a range of issues (e.g. poverty, human rights, or general distributive justice) whose basic moral importance is “external” to and wholly independent of how the global economy is socially organized. The result has been relative neglect of a (...) quite different class of “internal” moral issues, which do in various ways depend on the complex legal and social relations that now organize the global economic scene. These include a dizzying array of politically important but poorly understood fairness concerns—concerns such as “non-discrimination,” “special and differential treatment,” “fair trade,” “fair play,” “fair competition,” “level playing fields,” “equitable growth,” “fair wages,” and “exploitation.” My aim in this discussion is to suggest a framework for understanding how several such fairness notions might be systematically connected and have an internal rather than external character. Specifically, I suggest that the content and internal nature of several such fairness notions can be explicated in terms of a more fundamental idea of “structural equity.” From the point of view of political philosophy, the issue turns on the sorts of principles that might ground moral assessment of the global economy. External principles are justified and apply quite independently of what the global economy and its social organization happens to be like. Humanitarian principles are a natural example: in asking whether or not the current global economy is set up so as to bring as many people as possible out of poverty, the assumed goal of poverty reduction can be seen as important and morally necessary quite independently of how the global economy is institutionally organized, and indeed independently of its very existence. Internal principles, by contrast, are not justified, and do not apply, independently of the global economy and its organizing institutions.. (shrink)

In times of current crisis, the voices of women are needed more than ever. The accumulation of war and environmental catastrophes teaches us that exploitation of people and nature through violent appropriation and enrichment for the sake of short-term self-interest exacts its price. This book presents contributions on the currently most relevant and most urgent issues: reshaping the economy, environmental problems, technology and the re-reading of history from the non-western and western tradition. With an outlook into the problems of (...) class='Hi'>class, race and gender in its intersectional framing, the collection offers a unique overview of current research in these fields and contributes to the renewal and contemporary presentation of feminist thought from partly concrete perspectives with regard to factual issues. (shrink)

A situation, in which a finite set of players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation can be described by a cooperative game with transferable utility, or simply a TU-game. A (point-valued) solution for TU-games assigns a payoff distribution to every TU-game. In this article we discuss a class of equal surplus sharing solutions consisting of all convex combinations of the CIS-value, the ENSC-value and the equal division solution. We provide several characterizations of this class of solutions on variable (...) and fixed player set. Specifications of several properties characterize specific solutions in this class. (shrink)

Recent debates over the persistence of family farms have focused on the importance of “naturalistic” obstacles to the capitalist development of agriculture. According to these arguments, the existence of these barriers in some realms of agricultural production precludes the development of wage labor. I argue, however, that in many instances these obstacles are based primarily on political factors. To demonstrate this thesis I illustrate how the tobacco program until recently has proved to be an obstacle to consolidation and structural change (...) in tobacco production. The tobacco program has conditioned the extent of technological development and structural change in tobacco production. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the tobacco program maintained a system of small-scale producers and discouraged technological change in the industry. Changes in the program in the 1970s and 1980s, however, have contributed to the rapid mechanization and structural change among tobacco producers. Many of the “obstacles” to consolidation were overcome not by technological change, but by weakened political support for the tobacco program. These results suggest that in addition to economic and technological considerations, we need to assess more carefully the political foundations of the capitalist development of agriculture. (shrink)