radical protest and social structure, michael schwartz

Chapter 6: Growth and Merger

(91): Alliance absorbing two different streams

1. large organizations of small yeomen/tenants, whose goal was to use local actions to reverse tenantization
   
2. small groups of large farmers/planters

(93): imp--expansion within country limits was natural; but further growth was 'unwieldy', required a statewide organizing apparatus (this becomes an important part of the story for the organization's failure -- this is probably the best explanation for why the org. starts to disintegrate. it needs larger-level organization to be effective, but this larger-level organization becomes the source of weakness, in turn)

(94): Clebourne --> Waco. at Waco, Macune's logic: exchange strategy + political strategy

(95): key at Waco was the institution of a program that offered the promise of successful reform (i.e. exchanges + political action)

(97, 100, see 102): infiltration of more prosperous farmers, landlords in mid 1880s [again, here there isn't much that explains, concretely, why they would accept the more prosperous elements, when their arguments about farmer misery are so pathetic. why accept elite leadership, if rational? why not retreat altogether?]

(98): again--as soon as Alliance programs required support above local level, real problems arose.

(100): planter class stronger in South Carolina and Mississippi, and there it had less need for the Alliance. it was where they need the support of less prosperous elements that they entered the Alliance.

(101): race--the Wheel accepted black members. quite advanced for the times -- "undertook to create unity"

(103): imp--graph of organization's evolution [here he speaks of the 'possibility of leadership domination', but in the narrative it seems more like the 'inevitability'. the counterfactual (revival of mass activity) is belied by his own presentation of the group's logic]

(102): imp--two factors explain the influx of elite elements into Alliance leadership

1. very rapid growth
2. state organizations became important centers of power and prominence (and previous point about limitations of local activism explains why they needed State organizations)
   

(103-104): here, a push and pull argument [this seems entirely inconsistent with what's argued later]

1. difficult to settle on practicable economic programs--made member less enthusiastic
2. elite leadership energetically built Populist party

(104): important graph of two leadership strategies [failure in both cases]

Chapter 7: Structure and Structural Tension within the Alliance

(105): structure of alliance a response to

1. structure of tenancy system
2. programs of the organization

(108): the Alliance was meant to exclude all 'enemies of the working farmer'; but some places it was stretched to allow merchant-landlords (NC)

(110): imp--activism took place at the level of the county, leadership at the level of the State

(113): strong in cottonized areas

(114-115): white and yeomen beginnings, but in 1887-1888 spread to Black Belt, after Clebourne

(118): roughly 1/3 non-elite in leadership (emergent possibilities in this split, which will get activated only when the differing interests get activated) [but isn't their activation inevitable?

(118): newspaper was a force for moderation

(124): key--outside aid hurt the organization, because it didn't have to undertake fundraising among the membership. this 'freed' the leadership from boosting/testing membership commitment

(125): key, in sum: Alliance responded to the tenancy system, but also contained the contradictions of the system from which it sprung. different groups were absorbed into the group, which has a result contained conflicting interests. the contradictions of the system resurfaced within Alliance. pressures for expansion led to promotion of elite individuals, and led to a centralized structure which made this possible. in short, "the class make-up of the leadership became more elite as the organization became more dependent upon leadership."

Chapter 8: Defining the Farmer's Alliance

(129): two features of protest organizations:

1. a basis in conflict
2. derivative of a parent structure

(130): institutional (the State, landlords) vs. noninstitutional power (tenants) (attempted shift from latter to former is the history of this movement, in Schwartz)

(132): begins as attempt to use farmer's non0institutional, structural power, for which 'mass organization' and 'organizational discipline' is indispensable

(133): seven point summary
Chapter 9: The Parameters of Organizational Behaviour

(135): rational doesn't mean correct; rational individuals can often be wrong. ('at least as rational as those who study them')

(136): 'social psychology' explanations

(139): vs. Smelser, who thinks that all action outside of moral and legal restrictions is 'irrational'; but this would require a whole group of people acting irrationally in unison, and would imply that people continually pursue strategies that damage their interests

(140-141): vs. Obserchal, and 'arationality' (certain things are beyond rationality); but clearly people don't act on these always, and people are not affected equally

(142): rationality is also not 'superrationality'. social systems obscure sources of problems, etc.

(143): important--for rational people, many different options are open -- many different solutions can be reationally defended in any given context (this is why informational exchange is very important, can lead to convergence of opinion)

(148-149): important-- complexity to structure that is reflected in complexity of reactions of rational individuals to the structure. it's not (just) excessive misery that gives rise to protest organizations.

(151-152): important-- this problem is compounded by the phenomenon of "structured ignorance" -- social systems obscure problems, many different interpretations (and corresponding programs) seem plausible. these typically have a 'pro-elite' character ('ideology'), because of differential access to antidotes.

Chapter 10 and 11: Determinants of Organized Protest

(155): seven factors

1. the class makeup of the organization (155-159): class refers to the role that members play in the social structrue; class interest does not mean that all will have the same opinion; this also means that orgs will suffer from internal contradictions
   
2. the internal structure of the organization (159-162): vs. Michels, saying you need to look at 'outside' interests/structure, which he doesn't do--this is what will determine patterns of oligarchization; depends on whether group uses leadership organizing or membership organizing
   
3. the nature of active and potential opposition (162-164): success of org will depend on the structural position of opposition -- rigidity of contending forces, their capacity to escalate, and the organizability of the opposition
   
4. the nature of active and potential support (164-169): will depend on demographic variables (its size, its physical arrangement), its experience and understanding, its organizational discipline (vs. Olson--you can discipline people to combat the 'free-rider' problem. but not much of an objection), the nature of its potential support
   
5. structural position of the organization's membership in the structure to be challenged (171-177): talking about the basis of power of its base--the question of structural power (given by the routine operation of the system), and leverage (organized use of this specific power--this is why protest organizations are critical). additional claims here, most important of which is that 'effective protest will rely on 'noninstitutional power' (not institutional power) [always?]
   
6. the prevailing analysis (177-188): the development of a realistic, accurate analysis of the situation is critical (again, here vs. Smelser et. al.); this is tested by how well the tactics/strategy that follow from this address grievances (mistaken perspectives do not usually survive; receive feedback). this is made more complicated by the fact that leadership is usually the agent of hypothesis testing/promulgation of new ideas, which Schwatz calls 'structured inefficiency'. this also determines who the organization manages to attract.
   
7. previous actions and outcomes (189-192): organization's subject to demoralization of their members if they don't successfully address grievances, evolve to face challenges; they need to maintain the loyalty and discipline of their membership. leadership will prefer to use 'past membership discipline'.

Chapter 12: The Life of Protest Organizations

(193): four conditions for success

1. changes must be beneficial to membership
2. group must use its latent structural power
3. group must activate enough people to give its activism a mass character
4. group must develop organizational discipline

(197): imp--the question of origins is actually a 'process' question (why do small groups grow/not grow)

Later Chapters

(202): different groups have different orientation toward marketing programs

(203): crop lien system gave unique power to boycott

(210): escalation of wholesalers defeats supply scheme

(213): imp--escalation defeats most local initiatives

(218-219): Alliance Exchange (at State level)--had two successful years (as a response to the failure of more local schemes) and then was escalated against, successfully.

(220): Waco as crossroads, after local failures--which is when AE was forged

(223): counterinstitutions require a different kind of activism (routinized) than pressure tactics (which require nonroutine acts). [this is an advantage for leaders, but not really for the group as a whole--seems to contain the seeds of membership disaffection, in that they are relatively passive]

(229): in short--the ultimate counterinstitution was defeated by the ultimate escalation

(231): a failure of analysis, in explaining rise/fall of AE[?]

(233): would have needed to create a 'countereconomy'

(240): boycott vs. exchange (boycott requried more 'effort'

(244): key--oligarchy of the alliance defeats the 'jute boycott'

(262): NC leadership learning from difficulties the AE had in Texas -- creation of 'structured ignorance', among members

(266): local groups getting sidelined as leadership -- who were needed for economic coordination -- confront failure of Exchanges, move towards politics

(269): shift into politics as the "utlimate expression" of its complex structural logic [degree of contingency here--much more than Michels, for sure]

(270, 276): key, counterfactual-- it was an attempted escalation, but through institutionalization [the alternative, for Schwartz, would have been a revival of local action--but it's not clear that this would have saved them?]

(274): State structure/leadership favored activities that didn't require active membership activity--just the threat of their existence (lobbying, etc.)

(277-278): summary of oligarchization

1. local boycotts meet escalations, state structure needed
2. resources available for state structure
3. elite elements enter state leadership
4. leadership-membership conflict
5. state leadership grows stronger
6. 'solution' of reviving membership off cards for leadership -- they have different class perspective
7. favore entry into politics
8. leadership pursues its own interest

(282-284): crushing of populism integral to Jim Crow, 1890 as key year

(285-286): using Moore--planters' pact with weaker industrialists, that black tenants would be kept on farms by being prohibited from industrial employment. so planters weren't defeated, and authoritarianism was a result

war comes to long an, jeffrey race (1972)

(40): key to the resistance to the French had been the economic revolution -- what it had meant for peasants, in daily life

(42): in 1956, gov't advantages: (1) operate openly; (2) military force; (3) foreign resources; (4) nationalist heritage vs. Party advantages: (1) strong local organization, based resolutely in broad social base

(52): elections too dangerous because communists would win , 1957-1961

(55-60): imp--failure of gov't sponsored land reform, 1956-1968 (compare with Taiwan/Japan!). high threshold, very little implementation, etc.

(70): revolutionaries' land reform much more impressive -- distribute it 'fairly'

(98): not advocating 'collectivization', but property

(99): 1959 marked the darkest period in Long An, after serious repression (but this, he argues, actually laid the foundation for their revival)

(109-110): an armed struggle did not mean guerilla warfare--its principal purpose was to make politics possible, in essence [this is helpful, in guarding against some elementary peacenik criticisms of 'violence']

(112): Mao on fireflies

(119): against adventurism -- being careful with the new policy, calling for a general uprising can be 'speculative adventurism'

(121, 125): important--need for a national front was a product of careful strategic thinking and historical reflection (on the Nghe An soviets, from the 1930s). a need to form temporary alliances with intermediate classes. the Party as brain, Army as muscle, and Front the way of fracturing the society...

(128): the National Democratic Revolution -- demands were, as befit the balance of forces, more moderate in the South than in the North

(133): 1961-1963 reprieve for gov't

(140): by 1965, though, the revolutionary forces had won

(141): three kinds of differences, between communists and the Gov't

1. (141-159) strategic -- because they saw revolution as a stage-by-stage process, involving the (a) concept of class (society founded on classes); (b) concept of contradiction (classes fight); (c) concept of force (need to muster willing base, that is willing not b/c it's coerced); (d) concept of balance of forces (be wary of adventurism/reformism; (e) concept of security (sympathetic environment is critical); (f) concept of victory (through overwhelming balance of forces). the sum total of this is that a purely military strategy is unworkable. critical: Party's strategy was preemptive (i.e., a line that prevented the gov't from coopting other classes--the crux of this is the Front, which seeks not to alienate middle/rich peasants--see p. 157), and thus entailed a social strategy, while gov'ts strategy was reinforcement-based (a military defense of the existing distribution of 'values'). the take-away is that--had the gov't been communist!--they might not have lost]
   
2. (159-165) organizational -- the gov't's polcies were (1) conflict-aggravating; (2) based on numerical weakness; (3) critical: implemented through highly centralized bodies. revolutionaries were the opposite.
   
3. (165-174) policy -- revolutionaries pushed policy that (1) redistributed wealth; (2) redistriubted status/power; (3) provoked gov't, protected people (?)
   

(174-176): critically (what he calls another way of thinking about the above, through three summary themes: (1) contingent incentives -- people would only have access to certain benefits (land, upward mobility) that depended upon their participation in the movement. the gov't, through its idiocy, produced this contingency (because the only way to have land was to join the revolution).

(177-178): (2) assimilation of forces -- rural Vietnam as decisive area, broad social base of support

(179-180): (3) building nationalism through 'communalism'/local -- it was through harnessing the local interests of the population that the Party succeeded in building a larger organization.

---

[1] the framing of the counterfactual -- had the gov't been communist! -- belies his own approach to social classes/social conflict. groups work from their interests. not terribly important, but worth noting (see p. 159, p. 267)

[2] take-home: organizations are not superior by virtue of 'organizing better' in some abstract sense, but because--in a definite social context--they speak to the individual interest of those that they are trying to organize. this is why, I think, Olson's account was so unhelpful. without some understanding of who you're trying to organize and the context in which you're operating, you can say very little about what is likely to make 'free-riders' contributors, etc. (see p. 165)

britain ascendant, crouzet

(346): 'free trade policy' no sure recipe -- protectionism as absolutely necessary to the survival of most Continental industries (mistake is to carry it to extreme lengths, as did the French)

(349): between 1815 and 1850, the gap between England and the Continent had enormously widened and was formidable

(351): development by 1850 in W. Europe (w/ exception of England) had a 'dualistic' character. pockets of growth, and pockets of backwardness.

(351-352): sort of catching up with Britain by 1914 was result of Britian's slowing down, also

(353): growth was not a problem of 'diffusing innovations'

(355): key--it was not a question of availability of innovations/technology, but a question of incentives. the problem is economic -- the thinness of markets

(356-358): key--constraints on demand side were (1) thinness of home markets (which was a result of agrarian backwardness, citing P. Barioch as explaining agricultural revolution starting in 1820s); and (2) external markets, could not develop a strong export trade because of Britain's dominance

(359): existence of advanced industrial countries is a problem

(360): neither transport nor banking systems are primary barriers

(360-361): imp--on supply side, factor endowments were a problem--resources, capital, labour (derivative of agrarian structure), and socio-cultural framework (which seems related to agrarian structrue)

(364): Continental countries had to look for niches -- they adapted to particular sectors of industry (manufacture of high quality fashionable luxury goods, where mechanization was not forthcoming)

(366): they 'succeeded to the extent that they were different'

(368): imp--lessons?

1. necessity of widening the market (critically, this depends on transformation of agrarian structure)
   
2. successful industrialization is not a slavish imitation of what went before

(379): French backwardness in 'big industry'

(380): origins of differences between English and French agrarian systems go to the heart of the middle ages [what does this mean for a theoretical understanding of why England developed?]

(380): French technical change did happen, in agriculture [how, if peasants had no incentives?]

(381): imp--the retention of a large agricultural population in France was responsible for the slow redistribution of labour towards industry

strategic factors in economic development, nicholas kaldor (1967)

(vii): economic constraints are critical (labour supply being central) -- not efficiency of management, what have you

(6): the major explanation for industrial take-off is going to be an economic one (response of supply to demand, response of demand to supply)

(7): fast rates of growth are centrally dependent on fast rate of growth of manufacturing (this characterizes the transition from 'immaturity' to 'maturity')

(12): it's not productivity or rate of technological change that explains why the secondary sector is central

(15): the fundamental reason is a dynamic relationship between changing rates of productivity and output (not static)

(21): mining and agriculture, on the other hand, are 'diminishing returns' industries -- growth of productivity outpaces growth of output

(22): services sector will also be insufficient [though reason given here is a bit hurried]

(23): sum

(29): three sources of demand, driving growth

1. real income/consumer demand -- the more consumers make, the more they'll spend on manufactured goods
2. capital investment -- growth of manufacturing sector generates own demand
3. changing structure of foreign trade -- here story of Phase I (where country substitutes home production in light industries, ISI) --> Phase II (where country starts exporting consumer goods) --> Phase III (where country starts to do ISI in capital goods) --> Phase IV (where country starts to export capital goods)

(33): two constraints on supply, inhibiting growth

1. domestically--when industrial sector grows, it needs to absorb goods and services; externally--will need increased imports, which can threaten balance of trade
2. manpower -- a country will need 'employment' growth, which in the early stages will come from the 'disguised unemployment' on the land.

(39): the labour-intensiveness in services means that productivity growth causes it to 'mop up' a significant proportion of the w-force

(41, 45): this can be a problem, if it prevents people from working for industry (because of decent wages in services), given manufacturing's centrality to growth (Kaldor using example of the UK)

(46): advanced vs. mature -- an advanced country is one in which the supply of labour to industry is elastic, whereas a mature country experiences a shortage of labour to industry when demand calls (all countries headed towards maturity)

(54): agriculture, even if highly productive, cannot drive growth (when highly productive it can only absorb a fraction of the working population)

(55): key--one general cause explaining underdevelopment is 'backwardness of agriculture' -- you can't grow secondary and tertiary sectors without an 'agricultural surplus'

(56): key--agricultural growth does not take 'external stimuli', but presupposed endogenous changes in the social framework of agriculture

(57): low productivity (despite low wages) make industrial development for many countries in age of 'free trade'

(59): key--the growth of domestic industry is dependent on the growth of internal purchasing power, which will demand robust growth in agriculture (suggestion that ISI was done in by the failure of the agricultural sector to respond to the stimulus adequately)

(61, 62): key-- it is important to keep developing unless one raises export potential by improving the growth of domestic output to be competitive--but this presupposes a robust internal market, which will help productivity rise to the point at which one can be competitive

(62-63): you cannot devalue/tweak exchange rates and become competitive. there is no substitute for productivity/lower costs

(65): advanced countries protect their industries, thus posing obstacles for underdeveloped countries

(66): protectionism as 'luddism'

(67): the existence of advanced countries has not been a 'bad' thing for underdeveloped countries, all things considered [hmm]

industrialization in nineteenth-century europe, tom kemp

(2): world market --> forces of change and disturbance (as solvent) [too much of this, in kemp's argument]

(4): Britain was unique because development was not part of a preconceived program ('organic' or 'autonomous')

(5): the 'advantages' of lateness -- ability to 'leap over' stages

(7): key--existence of a free labour force as a vital condition of industrialization

(7): merchants becoming industrialists [a bit too much of the orthodox narrative, again]

(8): key--traditional agrarian structure as block

(9): considerable unnevenness--wide regional differences across parts of Europe

(10): resource endowments were quite important, when you look at regions that were developing across the continent

(10-11): pithy answer to 'Why Europe?' is the nature of European feudalism ('looser, more individualist, etc.')

(11): key--it was the productive relations which were decisive (not trade)

(12): key--the creation of a class of landless wage-earners was critical

(13): suggesting that the political revolutions were crucial, in preparing the environment (political-juridical) [but how does this sit with his other arguments?]

(14): again, market forces as a 'dissolvent'

(15): emancipation from customary restrictions in the 1700s was important [how do we make sense of this? didn't take a 'State', but it did take a 'political revolution'? was this the inevitable outcome of the transformation of the agrarian structure?]

(16): the limitations of putting-out became clear by the 1700s -- couldn't realize further economies of scale, needed the factory

(17-18): imp--core of innovations took place in textiles, but this was driven by what was happening to demand and supply outside of textiles (important to note that inventive capacity was equally well-developed in other parts of Europe, but they suffered because they lacked England's reformed agrarian structures)

(20): development of credit networks was important; the Continent had them, but there the power of banks/finance was overweening (in England, most investment was from profits)

(21): sluggishness after a time, b/c of headstart?

(22-23): imp--protectionism was a widespread response -- but a more successful response was to search for niche markets, where Britain was not a competitor

(24): slow progress was not due to 'cultural preferences'/luddism

(24): they had to figure out a strategy to fit the period of British dominance

(25): capital goods industries were more important to late developers, than they were to British at comparable stages

(26): there were also differences in firm patterns (size, integration, etc.) (though he recommends against exaggerating this)

(27): imp-- rural artisans are understood as 'feudal relics', dead once the mass market emerges

(28) int--stressing the importance of links to the international division of labour, without which industrialization in Britain would have been slowed down

(29): 1848-1873 was a period of liberalizing markets, but 'free trade' was dealt a blow by the depression (industrialists sided with agrarian interests demanding protectionism)

(29): Britain didn't need protectionism, though, partly on account of her large formal and informal empire ('colonial development' as a substitute) [though presumably the dominance of her industry was sufficient?]

(30): lack of State in Britain was quite exceptional

(30-31): advantages of lateness need to be put in perspective -- they derive advantages only really in interindustry comparisons, but until 1914 nationally are inferior

(34): weakness of central powers in European feudalism [how to make sense of 'absolutist reaction' to declining seigneural revenues after the crisis of the 14th and 15th centuries, then? surely this disrupts the attempt to read European development back into a 'weak feudalism'?]

(35): towns as 'dissolvents'

(36): village cultivation as a 'collective effort'

(37): external forces --> disintegration

(38): critical -- reforms/revolution of basic agrarian structure was required, in order to give peasant cultivators incentives to pursue technical improvements

(39): emergence of a landless class

(40): labour force starting to develop in England by late Middle Ages; in France by 1700s; in Germany by 1700s; in E. Europe and Russia by late 1800s. this marks the development of capitalism.

(42): the old agrarian structures prohibit accumulation, imposing a brake upon the rate of economic progress

(43): consolidated power of the village community was also a block

(45): reciprocity in agrarian and industrial spheres [how to make (theoretical) sense of this more precisely, given the primacy of the impetus given by agrarian transformation?]

(46): importance of the potato, which was introduced in the 1700s

(47-48): imp-- French Rev was successful in safeguarding the rights of the French peasantry, which would act as a block on French development

(49): two pressures on French peasantry, after revolution: (1) modernization; (2) Napoleonic 'reform from above'. but this didn't change the basic story.

(50): imp-- story about the encroachment of the market breaking down old rural self-sufficiency, and bringing peasant/farmer into the market economy [again, this needs interrogation. how can this happen, if not 'from above'?]

(51): necessity of extra-European supplies of food

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.

robert brenner, property and progress

(58): nice definition of s-p relations: "relations among direct producers, relations among exploiters, and relations between exploiters and direct producers that, taken together, make possible/specify the regular access of individuals and families to the means of production and/or the social product"

(59): evolution of a society of a given type versus transition from a society of one type to another are qualitatively different phenomenon. this is the 'closed rules of reproduction' point.

(61): the key condition is that people be subject to the competitive constraint. this is only the case if people are dependent upon the market. being involved in the market is insufficient.

(62): pre-capitalist MoP as a 'single broad type' of social-property relations

(65): ruling classes needed to organize to extract surplus (organized force). this typically required endowing subordinates with politically constituted private property, or 'rights to an income' derived from peasant wealth

(67): Smith's fatal flaw is to fail to think about the potential 'losses' incurred by new participants on a market. he sees only gains.

(70): the key pt re: Lordly rules of reproduction is not that they don't have the incentive to increase their product, but that they don't have the capacity to innovate/specialize in pursuit of that goal (there's no workforce compelled to work for them, the costs of constructing one/supervising it are prohibitive) . they can pursue extensive growth.

(76): towns, for Brenner, weren't external to feudalism -- but politically constituted communities that also shielded producers from the market [this is the source of their political conservatism, in the revolutions. cue the revisionist challenge to the Marxist orthodoxy].

(85): re: the transition, Brenner's argument doesn't allow for the accretion of micro-level intiativies/action. Smith, he's saying, doesn't understand the constraints imposed by feudal s-p relations

(86): market can consolidate a feudal mode of production (as it did E. of the Elbe)

(92-93): absolutist State as a result of the seigneurial reveneue crisis of the late 1200s (in Fr. and W. Germany, at least), because lords were to weak to stand up to monarchs. absolutist State didn't mind free peasantry (sometimes), as long as it could guarantee centralized taxes [hmm]

(96-98): in aftermath of Black Death in England English lords didn't construct a tax office State, in response, but to use their political organization (and the monarchical State) to seize ownership [here the story could be clearer; in particular the contrast with France and W. Germany]