Rules, Contract, and Institution in the Wage-Labor Relationship: A Return to Institutionalism?

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 1137-1171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laure Bazzoli ◽  
Thierry Kirat ◽  
Marie-Claire Villeval
Author(s):  
Tony Smith ◽  

Hegel conceptualized the capitalist economy as a system of needs, with commodities and money serving as means to human ends. While anticipating Marx’s criticisms of certain tendencies in capitalism, Hegel insisted that higher-order institutions, especially those of the modern state, could put them out of play and establish a reconciliation of universality, particularity, and individuality warranting rational affirmation. Hegel, however, failed to comprehend the emergence of capital as a dominant subject, subordinating human ends under its end (“valorization”). The structural coercion, domination, and exploitation inherent in the capital/wage labor relationship illustrate that point, as does the depoliticization of inherently political matters in capitalist market societies. The reconciliation of universality, particularity, and individuality Hegel endorsed requires a form of socialism incorporating deliberative democracy in local workplaces and communities, conjoined with representative bodies on regional, national, and ultimately global levels.


Author(s):  
Katherine Paugh

The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade by the British government in 1807 was prompted by a confluence of geopolitical developments and concerns about reproduction. Shifts in the Atlantic world sugar economy had led to a glut on the British sugar market, and boosting production was therefore less of an economic concern than safeguarding reproduction. After 1807, demographic and financial calculations regarding the future of the plantation system intensified with the institution of a registry system designed to track slave populations. By 1823, British politicians, both abolitionists and West Indian planters, agreed to further radical reform: they hoped that encouraging Christian marital mores would finally bring about economically beneficial population growth. Acts legalizing Afro-Caribbean marriage were subsequently passed throughout the Caribbean. The outcome of this new emphasis on family life was ironic: as slavery gave way to wage labor, the costs of reproduction were shifted to Afro-Caribbean parents.


Author(s):  
Yiying Pan

Abstract This article investigates the collective responsibility organizations among boatmen in nineteenth-century Chongqing, when the city became one of the most important metropolises on the southwest Qing frontier. It also introduces two successive turning points in self-organization that were associated with two different classes of boatmen – skippers and sailors. First, in 1803, skippers gained the authority to institutionalize their organizations through their negotiations with the local state regarding official services and service fees. Second, when similar service and fiscal tensions emerged between skippers and sailors in the mid-nineteenth century, the skippers facilitated and supervised the institutionalization of collective responsibility organizations that were run by the sailors themselves. By contextualizing this expansion of collective responsibility organizations within the multilayered interactions between skippers and sailors, this article proposes that the perspective of interclass networks is crucial for deepening the study of state−society interactions, the capital−labor relationship, as well as the tension between imperial integration and regional diversity in early modern China.


2020 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 81-108
Author(s):  
Yahya Araz ◽  
İrfan Kokdaş

AbstractThis article focuses on children taken by Istanbulite families for upbringing and employment in the Ottoman capital during the 1800–1900 period. It suggests that domestic child labor which was shaped by the concept of ‘charity’ and economic interests during the first half of the nineteenth century progressively turned into wage labor during the second half of the century. The study claims that the nineteenth century witnessed a transformation of labor relations in the domestic service market, implying the transition from reciprocal to commodified labor. The labor of children employed in domestic services underwent a monetization process throughout the nineteenth century. Parallel to this monetization, the status of children under foster care or in domestic service came to be determined by standardized legal contracts.


Ethnohistory ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Thomas Belmonte ◽  
David I. Kertzer
Keyword(s):  

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