GA Cohen, Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty (1977)

(5) Nozick vs. Socialism: (1) Liberty is justice; (2) Socialism is incompatible w/ liberty [Cohen is going to agree w/ (1) and reject (2), whereas most take the tack of rejecting (2) but accepting (1)]

(7) for Nozick, 'voluntary self-enslavement' is not unjust [which has an appeal on our intuitions]

(8) key, the desires have to be somewhat sensible--the person can't be making an uninformed or coerced decision; it's disturbing if the decision is being made on false pretenses

(9) this begins to undermine the applicability of Nozick's principle to market-generated state of affairs [important, I think, also to stress the conditions under which the cdecision is being made]

(14) arguing re: change in human nature, under socialism [not the way to go]

(16) Nozick's argument prohibits any and all limitations on freedom (it's not a maximizing freedom argument). Justified via Kant

(19) Nozick: a person is not forced if all other people ar not focing [can't conceive of compulsion by circumstance]

(20) Farmer's fence and the villager example (the question, again, is whose freedom/liberty is being supported/maximized)

(21) if Z is unfree, then justice and freedom actually come apart (in other words he has to acknowledge, then, he's defending the freedom of a particular class as 'justice')

GA Cohen, LTV and explotiation

(338, thesis): don't need LTV ("mutual irrelevance"

(340) the substantive thesis of volume 1 is that (3) socially necessary labour time determines 'equilibrium price' (whether or not the definitional claim is (1) socially necessary labour time is value; or (2) value is equilibrium price)

(340) LTV does not give you LT of surplus-value

(341) nice, pithy statement of the 'origin of non-wage income'--""the difference between the value of labor power and the value produced by him/her in whom it inheres. it is the difference between the amount of time it takes to produce what is needed to keep a producer in being for a certain period and the amount of time he spends producing during that period"

(343) Traditional Marxist Argument leaves its moral premises unstates: (1) that one is entitled to the fruits of one's labour; (b) that one is 'forced' to enter into this relation

(344) You can drop the LT of SV from the account, because all you need is for the capitalist to accumulated some of the value produced by the worker for the TMA to be coherent

(346) strict vs. popular doctrine of LTV (hinging on whether labour is source of all value--can't be, if 'past labour' is involved)

(349) the objective here is to puncutre the 'pop idea of creating value', to show that, even according to LTV, labour does not create value

(352) Marx vs. Ricardo is a 'popular' distinction,

(354) exploitation is not about appropriation of value, but about the appropriation of the product

(354-355) Recall only labour is a producer (which is different from saying that labour is responsible for the production of all value) (take lending you a knife, as an example--productive activity vs. producing activity)

(356) Simpler Marxist Argument drops claims about (a) all value being created by labour; (b) value being what's appropriated

sachs and shatz, "trade and jobs in US manufacturing" (1994)

(3,4) sum of findings is that trade matters, but doesn't explain most of the job loss

(5) macroec summary (good data)

(5) Krugman and Lawrence say the 'trade --> decline in manufacturing' argument is spurious; for them, it's a success of productivity story [use]; this is generally correct, but the 70s and 80s were particularly sharp declines--an 'unexplained gap' of about 3 million jobs. the final estimate is that about 1.2 million of these job losses are explained by trade. 

(7) growing inequality between skilled and unskilled is an 80s phenomenon

(9) international trade would matter through putting pressure on output prices

(11) consistent with timing of trade with developing countries

(15) did lead to job losses [though this is rooted in what seems to me to be a particularly naive view of the labour market]

(16) capital flight (remember, trade model assumes immobile capital)

(17) table of skill deciles (ranked by ratio of productive/nonproductive workers)

(18) the US' basic relation with developing countries--the US exports h-skill, imports l-skioll

(21) w/ low wage countries trade is interindustry, w/ high wage countries intra-industry

(21) and because of this, lower job losses expected according to skill intensity [don't quite grasp logic]

(23) '78-'91, tarriffs were more intense on l-skill than high-skill industries; this pattern became slightly stronger in '91 than in '78

(25) decline in employment was clearly greatest in 'low-skill' secotrs

(23) skill-intensity of production rises in every decile

(26) employment fell most in (a) low skill sectors; (b) capital-intensive sectors [collinearity problems?]; fell least in (a) high-skill sectors

(28) c-factual model: rise in net imports resulted in 7.2 and 2.1 % job loss from developing countries

(30) certain industries experience declines unrelated to trade shifts (steel, in particular)

(34) Wood: "understating job loss by using average skill-intensity". but showing that this is not borne out by data

(34) manufacturing trends can't explain income inequality in US (mainly because of hos small a fraction of LF is in manufacturing)

(36-37) effective prices in low-skill goods fell vs. not fell (Sachs vs. Lawrence/Slaughter)

(40-41) Biased technical change--increase in proportion of skilled to nonskilled [v. strange assertion that this might raise the relative wage of low-skilled  workers--assuming full employment + all gains to worker?]

(44) TNC-based trade declined w/ developing countries, raised w/ developed countrieds

(46) factors that drive trade (can't trade w/ poor countries)

(52) China-US trade details

(54) wage gap at outset of trading ties was enormous! (1.9% of US wages)

Anderson, "Why Partition?" (2012) 

(2) Gandhi and 'Das Kapital'

(6) useful description of ML Weakness

(7) Nehru arrogance re: unity of India (when Congress was only 3% Muslim)

(8) from Muslims as trouble-makers (post-Mutiny), to Hindus (during nationalist movement), to Muslims (under Mountbatten) [this seems somewhat exaggerated, given the dividends of the ML posture during WWII]

(9) Labour committed to United India, for strategic reasons

(10) Jinnah couldn't sqaure the circle: how could a Muslim-majority 'secede'/be autonomous while also protecting Muslim minorities in the other provinces

(11) League talked of partition, prepared for confederation; Nehru talked of unity, prepared for secession (motivated by commitment to presiding over central State)

(11) Menon and Commonwealth

(12) NWFP was the only place that held a referendum

(12) Jinnah was willing to accept a United Bengal

(14) Redshirts boycotted referendum, angry at Congress' willingness to consider Partition

(14) great quote, re: partition from above: 'never did so few divide so many, so needlessly'

(15) more violence in Punjab than Bengal, though huge numbers crisscrossing inboth

(16) Partition as 'the single most contempible act..'

(16) 550 out of 560 of the native princes were Hindu potentates

(17) Kashmir as obscurantist feudal tyranny--death to Muslim peasants that killed cow, etc.

(17) Sheikh Abdullah regarded Jinnah an athiest

(20) Patel waving accession document, 'As if the fate of five million were a lottery ticket'

(20) Indian case rests on Sheikh Abdullah working w/ Nehru

(20) NWFP referendum [Anderson mentioning Pakistan won, but not at all mentioning the extremely reactionary ways in which ML persuaded poor villagers to vote]

(21) Gandhi treachery--Kashmir belongs to the Maharajah, etc., etc.

(22) 'Condition of Ambedkar's sanity was breaking with Hinduism', which Nehru didn't do [going a bit Dawkins on me?]

(23) 27,000 to 40,000 Muslims killed after Hyderabad invasion [!]

(23) Ratio of natives to colonials was highest in Raj (1:3,650 vs. 1:475 in Vietnam)

(24) Punjab was the British model--not 'divide-and-rule', but unite-the-reactionaries

(24) Gandhi 'injected' religion [but this is precisely how Jinnah built the base you're extolling]

(26) Congress' was a 'fatal partisan arrogance'

(27) [way too forgiving towards the ML]

(27) religious revivalism was inevitable--something to do with the 'deep culture' of this place [WTF is that about, Perry?]

Bruce Western, A Comparative Study of Working-Class Disorganization (1995)

(179, 197) institutions matter -- these countries were experiencing a common structural transformation, but they had divergent experiences -- > the transformations of institutions that protected class identities (centralized wage bargaining, SD parties) produced declining union density

(180) increased dispersion of union densities in post-war period

(180) strike wave of 1960s --> increase in union density of 15 pts (Western dismisses this, summarizing other arguments)

(181) Table of union densities [Graph this]

STRUCTURAL FACTORS

(181) [Assuming that trade is the context of the change in economic conditions that set the stage--there are echoes of Brenner here, but this narrative could be better, regardless]

(182) Freeman shows union decline rooted in employer resistance (recognition of elections, etc.)

(182) Flexible work --> decline in union density (except in Germany?)

LABOR MOVEMENT EXPLANATIONS


(182) where unions were strong, they stayed strong-- this is where they most successfully organized service sectors [though, as per the other article, service sector growth was not as important as it was in other countries]

(183) strike waves in Sweden and Denmark, 1979-1985, encouraged unionization [again, Western will dismiss this, partly on grounds that these don't distinguish between lockouts and strikes]

WESTERN'S INSTITUTIONAL EXPLANATIONS

(183) two-fold (a) decentralization of labor-market institutions; (b) decline of SD parties

(184) Table 2 --> decentralization of bargaining across much of Europe

(185) 'wage drift'

(186) Aroux laws under Mitterand, strengthening power of labour [hmm]

(186) four reasons decentralization leads to declining union density
(a) extends union wages to the unorganized, muting employer oppositoin (so, in the US, the higher the union wage premium, the more employer's will oppose unions) [good support for the Henwood line]
(b) weakens demand [?]
(c) weakens central confederations, in turn reducing movement's power to influence economic policy and increasing corporation-friendly policy
(d) interunion rivalry peaks

(187) SD lost power in Scandinavia, throughout the 1976-1991 period, as well as changing its character

(187) in US and UK, 'active union constraint'

(190) modeling 'first differences'/hazard rate

(192-194) finding that 'everything matters' (except strike rates)

(195) Sweden and Finland defy model's predictions

(196) institutional factors could be tied up with economic conditions, of course

(194) openness --> decline in density

Lee, "International Migration..." (2005)

(argument) Deindustrialization --> Decline in union density; Immigration --> Decline in union density

(72) end of centralized wage bargaining --> decline in union density

(75-76) reasonable summary of the debates on deindustrialization

(78) inflation --> unionization (spurs people to protect wages)

(79) 'Ghent system' has protected union density, in Scandinavian countries, etc.

(79) Immigration is significant

(80) Industrial employment is significant (but not trade)

(82) Institutional arrangements matter, of course [and this is where it would make sense to discuss the state of the labour movement, etc; as well as the question of why the Scandinavian countries have seen an explosion in union density despite deindustrialization]

Zolberg, Response to Tilly (1995)

(30) 'Demobilizing' effect of affluence

(31) Only place workers were a numerical majority was Belgium, 1900-1930 (Pzeworski argument, here)

(31) End of blue-collar worker --> End of electoral socialism (French, Italian CP's)

(32) No 'rebellion in the air' b/c of affluence

(34) Luebbert on 30s as key critical juncture for social democracy (farmer-labour alliances, etc.)

(35) 'Globalization' --> Institutional/political factors -->Effect on labour

(36) Capital flight was a game changer (US had experienced this internally, eralier, what with the consequences of federalism and race to the bottom in taxes)