Fifteen hours into the gathering in the remote Zapatista village of Juan Diego, which played host to the “meeting between rebel commandantes, youth and NGOs” in August 2005, speakers continued, one after the other, to take their turn at the stand and exchange local experiences. At three in the morning, it is Tito’s turn, a youth from a suburb of Mexico City suburbs, “I don’t know how to speak well in public. Actually, there are only two things that I know how to do well: graffiti and hip hop. So I am going to sing one of my songs; a rebel, a Zapatista song.” The atmosphere rose a notch and soon people were on their feet. The young singer took the opportunity to launch into a second song, “dedicated to Subcommandante Marcos”. Despite the lateness of the hour, the dozen Zapatista commandantes all remained to listen to this teenager, who expressed in his own way the difficulty of life in the poor suburbs, his disappointed hopes and his desire for a better world. As Tito broke into his third song, a Trotskyite activist, a long-time supporter of the Zapatista cause, came to see me and began to fidget, “This is all very well, but what use is it? What points can be drawn from these successive speeches? What text will come out of them?”

From the point of view of institutional politics, such meetings and actions appear indeed quite limited in their outcome. The multiple Zapatista mobilizations for constitutional reform in Mexico clearly failed at the politico-legal level. So how should these songs at the middle of the night in the remote mountains of Chiapas have any influence and help to improve the rebel indigenous situation? Similar questions arise from activists actions around the world. What is the political impact of tagging advertising in Mexico City, London or New York subways? It would be considered useless - or even counter-productive, in that it impairs the functioning of a public service. In which way could the very convivial “critical wines” meeting organized by Italian social centers (Toscano, 2010) have any political or economical impact? At worst, they see symptoms of declining participation in the mechanisms of political life or attitudes leading to a “dissipation of social movements” (Phelps-Brown, 1990). At best, they regard the characteristics of these movements as indicative of an early phase of the cycle or development of social movements, in which innovations multiply, creating “relatively open spaces for new collective experiments” (Tilly, 2003: 105).

Ethnographic-based research challenges this traditional approach. Ethnographic field research have indeed led social scientists to emphasize the energy and creativity of these activists, suggesting the emergence of a distinct culture of activism than the lack of maturity or strength of a social movement (e.g. McDonald, 2006; Juris, 2008; Osterweil, 2004; Ponniah, 2006; Pleyers, 2005). These actors actually don’t want to take their place as “challengers” in the political arena but, on the contrary, to escape the political sphere and to develop a resistance to corporate globalization centered on subjectivity, lived experience and concrete alternative practices. The ethnographic approach allow indeed to emphasize emerging elements that have been largely ignored by other methods. It is particularly true for feature concerning subjectivity and local practices. Through its lengthy time commitment, it allows “adjustment between hypothesis and evidence, especially in the form of interrogating activists about what they think they are doing” (Jasper, 2007: 97).

After a brief presentation of the main case studies we rely on, this paper explores the way experience and experimentation shape this activist culture. Sections 2 to 5 successively focus on four of its components: the centrality of experience and subjectivity, the conception of concrete alternatives emerging, through concrete experimentation processes, the idea of “spaces of experience” and similar conceptions of learning and knowledge. The last section opens a discussion on some limits and drifts these movements have been confronted to.

Pleyers PDF

Strikes have become so rare in the US, they have come to be seen as anomalous. In the past, the ‘exceptional’ feature of US industry that social scientists and activists confronted was the absence of labor strife. Today, labor passivity, most emblematically illustrated by the self-defeating givebacks of the erstwhile formidable UAW, has become so commonplace that it is the accepted norm. When workers do engage in collective militant action at the work site, when they strike for instance, it is an extraordinary event. Today, strikes are the anomalies that need explaining.

The classical Marxist formulation whereby class structure translated into a militant proletarian class formation—with its attendant organizational and ideological components—has failed to materialize in the US, especially in the post-war period. The unfulfilled expectations of Marx’s ‘class struggle’ thesis have been explained by an ideologically diverse array of analysts who point to an even wider range of factors that have inhibited his revolutionary predictions. Marxist scholars in particular have persuasively addressed this divergent outcome from many angles (Burawoy 1979, Moody 1997, Brenner 2008, Archer 2008). Every now and then, however, the disappointing American proletariat still rebels. Despite the theoretical claims to the contrary and despite the overwhelming evidence of labor’s acquiescence over the past forty years, American workers still mobilize against their employers. One example is offered by the Sole Rosso workers in the Bronx who struck for almost a year amid unquestionably inauspicious circumstances.

ROJAS PDF

“The income tax is too complex” is a familiar statement. However, the tax literature does not contain any qualified concepts to establish what kinds of occurrences for the taxpayer would merit the label “complex.” What taxpayer experiences might warrant this labeling, and what distinguishes those situations from taxpayers’ ordinary well-managing of their tax affairs?

The statement that the income tax is too complex expresses the concern that taxpayers experience a welfare loss as a result of managing their tax affairs. Something negative might be happening as a result of taxpayers’ usage of the tax law, forms, and the like when they manage their tax affairs. There are some real occurrences in this use which could damage the taxpayers’ welfare. To be able to illuminate taxpayers’ welfare loss, a concept is required which is able to encapsulate such real occurrences. The term complexity is not helpful for interpretation of such occurrences.

A concept for studying the extent of well-managing in use, and thus whether any occurrences are damaging taxpayer welfare, does in fact exist. It is termed usability. The concept of usability precisely addresses the measurement of how well management or use is occurring, thereby presenting an answer to the question of whether the use is adequate or warrants criticism. The most widely acknowledged concept of usability is the one promoted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Instead of applying the term “complexity” for the result of an evaluation, the usability concept frames the question as concerning a higher or lower level of usability. Usability is measured in relation to whether users are able to complete their tasks, how many resources they have to spend, and whether the use is straightforward or causes frustration. Incomplete or abandoned tasks and excessive cost and discomfort are evidence of lower levels of usability.

Scholars have not previously applied this usability concept in a legal context. Hence, this Article introduces the ISO concept of usability to the income tax. The Article argues that the usability concept complements existing tax concepts and can contribute to the clarification of principles that are relevant to existing concepts, as well as elucidating the application of the term “tax complexity.”

The usability concept thus demonstrates general principles for assessing outcome of use. These principles are also valid for other concepts that measure real taxpayer occurrences, most notably compliance cost studies. Moreover, illuminating these principles reveals an important distinction between rules or other static phenomena, on the one hand, and on the other hand, real occurrences that happen to taxpayers, that is to say, outcomes of use. A higher level of complexity in the tax rules should not be conflated with a lower level of usability or thought necessarily to imply such lower usability level. Consequently, it is possible that the income tax can develop high levels of complexity in static phenomena such as the rules while simultaneously increasing levels of usability, allowing taxpayers to enjoy a higher level of well-managing of their tax affairs.

This paper analyzes Marx’s account of the relation between social class and freedom. I detail five limitations on freedom that capitalism and its class relations pose: the despotism of the workshop, the dull compulsion of the market, incapacity-freedom, classlessness in ideology but not in fact, and the heteronomy of antagonistic interests. In turn, the politics associated with each of these limitations is addressed. Attentiveness to these forms of unfreedom, then, clarifies the challenge Marx’s thinking on class poses to the liberal tradition of political philosophy, addresses some common doubts about class posed in the social science (objectivitism vs. subjectivism, for instance), and differentiates Marx’s use of class from a more common use that focuses on evoking sympathy for the oppressed class and condemning all-powerful oppressors. Marx’s account of what I call “structural unfreedom” is highlighted throughout, with the limitations it entails for both the proletariat and the ruling class. The end of the necessarily antagonistic relations of classes to one another–and the unfreedom that that represents–is the vision of politics for which Marx sets his sights, and one of the reasons he does not stop at reform. Finally, the paper briefly considers why sociologists should be concerned with considerations of freedom when they think about class.

In 2008, workers in North America and the United Kingdom reached across a chasm of several thousand miles to form the world’s first transatlantic trade union. And not without good reason: globalization is engulfing workers and unions. As global trade heats up, workers around the world come increasingly into competition with one another. Historically, on the national level, workers formed unions to overcome such competition. This same logic has compelled many labor activists to call for an internationalization of labor struggles. Yet, despite this apparent consensus, some of the few examples of cross-border unions have collapsed in recent decades. Why? If unions need to internationalize, why have some internationalized unions moved in the opposite direction? Research on cross-border unionism points to the importance of organizational culture, ideological harmony, social networks, shared identities, and common ‘political opportunity structures’ in sustaining solidarity, yet a comparative perspective suggests these approaches fall short. Drawing on a comparison between two Canada-US unions between 1965 and 2000, I argue that cross-border unions are more likely to experience tension and conflict where members work in markets that are globally integrated, not locally or nationally distinct. Workers in globally integrated markets find it harder to sustain cross-border solidarity for three reasons: 1) inequality among workers in global markets is greater than in local or national markets, making the harmonization of interests and action more difficult; 2) workers are prevented from moving across borders to pursue job opportunities, making them more vulnerable to job loss and therefore more likely to support protectionist policies that harm foreign comrades; and 3) exchange rate fluctuations introduce burdensome turbulence by altering relative labor costs across countries, thereby triggering between-country job redistribution and the protectionist battles that ensue.

Though existing scholarship analyzes how ideas affect policy-making, there is an absence of theoretical elaboration on why some ideas have more historical efficacy than others. This article advances a set of propositions on the dynamic links between ideas and policy by investigating the logic of ideological struggle in the field of economic policy. It introduces a theoretical framework that relates competition between different ideological carriers to the power struggles and relations of domination that enable access to authority in policy-making. This framework is used to compare and explain the efficacies of radical neoliberalism (promoted by the Chicago Boys) and pragmatic neoliberalism (advocated by the CIEPLAN Monks) in shaping two distinct regimes of openness to international capital inflows in Chile between 1975 and 1994. Using historical data, macroeconomic aggregates, and interviews with key Chilean policy-makers, the analysis shows how particular constellations of ideological, economic, and political power underlay the authority of the Chicago Boys and the CIEPLAN Monks, and how and why such power struggles produced different capital mobility regimes.

Since the early 1970s, the number of transnational bodies with mandates to maintain global financial stability has increased dramatically. Yet, this vast, and growing, institutional apparatus appears powerless to exert any kind of order over global financial markets. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998 and, most pressing, the global financial crisis that unfolded in 2008 highlight the weakness of the transnational institutional apparatus for regulating global finance. This weakness, I argue, stems from the neoliberalization of the institutions of transnational economic governance. In this paper I follow those scholars who understand neoliberalization as a process of institutional reconfiguration under the weight of a powerful discourse that is distrustful of the state, and other forms of regulation over the economy. Faced with these ideological pressures, institutions of economic governance have had to find new ways to regulate economic activities that are obscured, depoliticized, and highly technocratic. I advance this claim through a detailed, and critical, comparison of the Basel Capital Accord–one of the most significant efforts at transnational economic regulation that has been put in place over the last thirty years–and the Bretton Woods system. Drawing on new archival materials from the OECD I emphasize key differences in the institutional structure of the two systems. Drawing on new archival materials from the OECD I emphasize key differences in the institutional structure of the two systems.

Alavi and Shanin correctly point out that Vladimir Lenin and Karl Kautsky have had an enduring impact on the theorization of the relationship between capitalism and peasant production (Alavi and Shanin: 1988, p. 1). This paper serves as a literature survey on why and how the South African peasant production was destroyed and/or conserve by colonial capitalism, and how Lenin and Kautsky’s theories influenced answers to these questions.

I will show that the radical political economy literature, which significantly drew its theoretical insights from Lenin and Kautsky texts, has placed a huge emphasis on the role of white colonial business acting through the state in destroying and conserving the peasant production to generate economic growth. That is to say, they contend that the peasant production had been structured and conditioned by the needs of capitalist economic growth.

Over the last century, homeownership rates have climbed steadily in the United States. Motivated, in part, by the belief that civic benefits accrue to homeowners, federal policymakers have helped push these rates upwards through a vast array of tax expenditures subsidizing homeownership. But while political leaders oftentimes refer to citizenship benefits of homeownership, the historical origins of this association remain unclear. Why are homeowners thought to be better citizens than non–owners? When did homeownership emerge as an act of citizenship in the United States?

How has this association been reinforced over the course of the twentieth century? This essay attempts to unravel the historical linkage between homeownership and normative beliefs about American citizenship. It contextualizes the discussion in the rhetoric of nineteenth–century housing reformers who linked the American home with particular notions of morality and family life. In showing the distinctive place of the American home in the nation’s history, the chapter then argues that homeownership only emerged central to conceptualizations of the American home in the late– nineteenth and early–twentieth century. The sustained period of post–Civil War industrialization and urbanization drew countless rural Americans and new immigrants into American cities. Reformers and political leaders believed that homeownership would help quell the restlessness and disorder of urban life. At the same time, growing threats to the democratic, capitalist order from abroad led both political and business leaders to imagine homeownership as an antidote to radicalism. Under the twin threats of urbanization at home and radicalism abroad, political leaders began to extol the virtues of homeownership as the bedrock of civic responsibility, national engagement and American patriotism.

The arguments in this chapter rely largely on two major housing movements – the Own Your Own Home campaign and the Better Homes in America movement — to illustrate how the twin threats of radicalism abroad and urbanization at home turned the American home into a place for the enactment of citizenship and patriotism. Variously sponsored by private organizations, civic groups and government leaders, these campaigns capitalized on important ideas and rhetoric linking homeownership to citizenship, patriotism and nationalism. Building off of reform efforts from the nineteenth century, the campaigns reached beyond simply the design and architecture of the home. The tenure status of the American homes began to play a critical political function in American ideology.

Scholars of China’s post-1978 economic reforms have virtually unanimously argued that the reforms of the past thirty years have been at the expense of the state. It has become a stylized fact that China’s economic growth – and in particular its industrial growth – has followed from China’s policies of decentralization and privatization. Most argue that the state has played a virtuous role in this process by allowing private actors greater freedom, fostering competition, and implementing these changes in a gradual fashion. In this dissertation, I contend that this narrative is convincing from the period from 1978-1998, but invalid since. I propose that since the late-1990s, China’s central government has attempted to forge a ‘developmental state,’ by recentralizing economic controls, expanding the state’s capacity to coordinate and discipline firms (both state and private), and establishing key bureaucratic agencies that can carry out economic interventions with the goal of rapid industrial growth. I will trace the outline of this project and evaluate its implementation. Special attention will be paid to post-1998 state-capital relations, in particular the state’s strategy to impose discipline on capital, and firms’ reaction to this discipline.