Alex Gourevitch

Labor Republicanism and the Transformation of Work

In the nineteenth century a group of “labor republicans” argued that the system of wage-labor should be replaced by a system of cooperative production. This system of cooperative production would realize republican liberty in economic, not just political, life. Today, neo-republicans argue that the republican theory of liberty only requires a universal basic income. A non-dominated ability to exit is sufficient to guarantee free labor. This essay reconstructs the more radical, labor republican view and defends it against the prevailing the neo-republican one. It argues that neorepublicanism lacks an adequate conception of structural domination, which leaves it without theoretical resources to address certain forms of economic domination. The concept of structural domination allows us to comprehend the coherence of the nineteenth century, labor republican view and identify its relevance to modern labor markets. Labor republicanism takes us beyond a universal basic income to a concern with control over productive assets and workplace organization. As such, it shows us how the republican theory of liberty can support an argument for the transformation of work, not just the escape from it.

Are Human Rights Liberal

This paper provides a liberal critique of paternalistic tendencies in the contemporary human rights concept. In contrast to familiar arguments that the paternalism of human rights comes from a false universalism, concealing a culturally specific normativity or gender inequality, I critique what I take to be the way contemporary human rights thinking reconceives of the rights-bearer. First, the theory reconceives of the rights-bearing subject not as a self-willing moral agent but as a needy individual whose vital interests need protection. Second, this reconceptualization of rights opens the door for a paternalistic political practice, in which an external, third party “exercises” the rights rather than the rights-bearing subject himself. Together, these moves are at odds both with the emphasis in earlier liberal thought on the self-willing moral agent as the foundation of rights, and with the antipaternalistic politics connected to this view of the rights-bearer. The thrust of the argument is not that universal human rights embody a false universalism or have an inherent tendency to violate their own pretensions to liberty and equality, but rather that there is something problematic in the generalization of a recent, but predominant, view of the rights-bearer. This critique bears some similarity with a radical criticism of human rights common today, but, in contrast to these anti-liberal critics, I wish to show why a liberal should be concerned with the ascendant way of thinking about the rights-bearer. In the first two sections of this paper I discuss the modernity of rights and outline the classic liberal view. In the third section I analyze the way contemporary human rights depart from earlier liberal conceptions of the dignity of the rights-bearing subject. In the fourth, I discuss how this reconceptualization has paternalistic implications that liberals should find troubling.

Quitting Work but Not the Job: Liberty and the Right to Strike

During the plebeian secessions in Rome, the plebs retreated from the city but they did not leave it. According to Livy’s account of the first secession, they gathered at the Sacred Mount (Mons Sacer), created a new religion of the plebs, and swore an oath not to fight the patricians’ war until their demands were met (Livius 1905, 8.28). After Menenius Agrippa’s failed arbitration, which included his famous appeal to the organic integrity of the body politic, the plebs won a newfound presence in the political community: the tribunes. They stood not just as parts but as members, as the members they already claimed themselves to be. They had become citizens and had inscribed their status on the public consciousness of Rome through the office of the tribunes. Many of the most characteristic institutions of the Roman republic followed the same course. Plebeian secessions gave birth to the Twelve Tables, the formal legislative supremacy of the plebs and the abolition of the debt-bondage (Lintott 1999, 38-40, 199-213; Millar 2002, 27-36; Raaflaub 2005, 185-222). Livy called the post-secession dictatorial decree that abolished debt-bondage, the Lex Poetelia (326 BC), “the dawn, as it were, of a new era of liberty for the plebs” (Livius 1905, 8.28).

Liberty and its economies

The revival of classical liberal thought has reignited a debate about economic freedom and social justice. Classical liberals claim to defend expansive economic freedom, while their critics wish to restrict this freedom for other values. However, there are two problems with the role ‘economic freedom’ plays in this debate: inconsistency in the use of the concept and indeterminacy with respect to its definition. Inconsistency in the use of the concept ‘freedom’ has mistakenly made a certain kind of ‘left-wing’ critique of poverty, and of markets generally, appear to be a concern with inequality in means to enjoy freedom, not with freedom itself. Indeterminacy about which beings and doings the basic liberties protect misrepresents the left-wing position as about something other than economic freedom. Inconsistency and indeterminacy lead to artificial narrowness in current debates and to a failure to see that disagreement is based not just on moral differences but also on conceptual confusion. This confusion leads both classical liberals and their critics to claim more than they may legitimately do, and to ignore a position that accepts the standard of definition of freedom but arrives at different institutional conclusions about what secures that freedom.

Republican Political Thought

“Republican political thought” comes from the Latin word respublica, which means public thing or common property. A respublica is a government that serves common rather than private ends. It is usually assumed that a republic must be self-governing and that republican liberty is only possible in a free republic. While various traditions of political thought are built out of these simple ideas, “republican political thought” refers to a late modern scholarly paradigm that interprets or draws inspiration from earlier periods of reflection on the classical Roman and Greek republics. Neo-republican scholars have rewritten the history of political thought in terms of the development and defeat of a classical, republican view of liberty. They have also attempted to revive some idea of “republican liberty” as an alternative to liberal theories of freedom and politics. Though a vital research program, republican political thought has not yet shown how its institutional program is strongly different from liberalism and it has been relatively quiet about economic questions. Keywords: civic virtue; freedom; liberty; republicanism

WILLIAM MANNING AND THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE DEPENDENT CLASSES

This article reappraises the political ideas of William Manning, and through him the trajectory of early modern republicanism. Manning, an early American farmer writing in the 1780s and 1790s, developed the republican distinction between “the idle Few” and “the laboring Many” into a novel “political theory of the dependent classes.” On this theory, it is the dependent, laboring classes who share an interest in social equality. Because of this interest, they are the only ones who can achieve and maintain republican liberty. With this identification of the interests of the dependent classes with the common good, Manning inverted inherited republican ideas, and transformed the language of liberty and virtue into one of the first potent, republican critiques of exploitation. As such, he stands as a key figure for understanding the shift in early modern republicanism from a concern with constitutionalism and the rule of law to the social question.