mancur olson, the logic of collective action (1967)

(2): it doesn't follow from the premise of self-interested individuals that a collective will act in its collective self-interest, given that collective action can be understood as a 'public good'. people will have incentives to shirk their obligations, because they know that the work is likely to get done even if they neglect to incur the costs associated with action [this is the crux of his book's argument]

(16): large organizations that can't make membership compulsory will need to offer some noncollective goods to members, to induce participation

(20): the traditional theory is functionalist -- when there is a need for a group, small or large, it will emerge

(21): but Americans aren't joiners, argues Olson

(25): sum of the mathematical section

(28, 35): the provision of collective goods, in groups, is suboptimal [has to do with all people not putting in equal amounts of effort for similar gain]

(34): people will contribute to collective action if they find that their personal gain will exceed the cost of providing it. this makes it less and less likely, of course, that collective goods will be provided in large groups, or in groups where people stand to benefit in equal measure (inequality will help)

(39-41): inclusive vs. exclusive groups -- in the latter, people have an incentive to be holdouts, which makes group-oriented action less likely

(44): there is some ground between small groups and large groups where the possibility of collective action is intedeterminate

(45): noting three factors

1. size
2. the more unequal members' interest is
3. collective goods which are extremely valuable in relation to cost

(46): the larger a group is, the more organization will be needed to obtain collective goods (because the less incentive any individual will have to pursue the collective good unilaterally)

(48): three costs for large groups

1. less reward for taking group-oriented action [doesn't this assume that the collective good is finite; so not something like 'building a public lake']
2. (seems to be the same)
3. the larger the group, the more the organizational costs
   

(50): privileged (where one person has considerable interest such that collective good will be provided) vs. intermediate (indeterminate) vs. latent (nope) groups

(51): in latent groups, separate and 'selective' incentives will be needed.

(60): even in cases where there is consensus that a particular course of action would be best, collective action does not follow

(64): 'rational' does not mean 'selfish'

(64): imperceptibility [hmm]

(66): labour unions started small [doesn't this have anything to do with the size of early industries?]

(68): the 'closed shop' has an early history

(71): all workers have serious incentives to cross picket lines [unless there is threat of some form of sanction]

(72): trade unions had to also provide certain noncollective benefits, in order to attract members

(75): compulsory membership is critical

(76): Perlman's silly 'job consciousness' argument

(86): you see people decline to participate in the union, but willing to vote for it

(89): inveighing against the inconsistency of liberals shouting coercion when they see 'closed shop,' but saying nothing about other public goods

(95): flipping the argument about public corporations and public goods on its head [this is all curious, but not very interesting, really]

(105): imp--Marx as a 'rationalist', but wrong about what follows from that -- "class-oriented action will not occur if the individuals that make up a class act rationally" [he was a polemicist too, Mr. Olson]

(106): Lenin/Trotsky as the small vanguard necessary to move a class to action [see below]

(115): Commons' argument for pressure groups -- to counter the disparities wrought by the market mechanism

(121): criticizing Bentley for saying that groups have power in correlation to their size [this is strange, of course -- but it resembles the mistake that he will make, at the end]

(126-127): crux of his critique of the orthodoxy -- it does not follow, again, from the fact of interest that groups will form.

(131): the anarchistic fallacy

(133): lobbies as 'by-products' of groups' being organized in some other way -- some other function that gives them a captive membership. and to do that, they'd have to already be offering positive benefits to their individual members.

(137): compulsion is a feature of all professional organizations (so why only rail on the unions, Olson reminds us)

(142-144): key failing--business is very well-organized, allegedly because of its small #'s (as oligopolies)

(146): large business will have the same problem [um, the Chamber of Commerce seems to have no such problem)

- - - -

[1] there's an evasion here -- it might be the case that the vast majority of people are unwilling to lead 'collective action' on a day-to-day basis, but characterizing 'class action' as something that's led entirely and always by a small minority is a mistake. what about exceptional moments of history, where it is quite clearly the fact that the masses burst onto the scene ? NB: it might be possible to recast this in terms of his argument--the 'potential gains' of collective action have gotten enormous, such that most everyone has an incentive, and/or that 'costs' aren't seen as costs anymore

[2] argument about business being well-organized because it exists in small groups is obviously quite inane. why don't we see powerful organizations of scrabble-players? there needs to be a way to think about the prior endowments of groups when they try and get organized. business has at least two: (1) greater resources; (2) structural privilege. Olson is, effectively, accepting a pluralist premise -- the State is neutral with respect to all groups, but business is better organized so it cedes to them. but this is insufficient. if we think about that the power that business actually wields in a capitalist economy (namely, that the State has to take care of them because it has to think about the level of investment), we see that his position scratches the surface.