Mainstream economics denies workers political agency beyond job choice
Evidence
Zini critiqued the abstract, indirect concept of political freedom: in short, he said that political freedom is impossible in the presence of “economic unfreedom,” the state of market dependence in which the majority of people are forced to sell their labor power in order to survive. Th e theories from bourgeois economists oft en concealed such forms of economic coercion, but these were nonetheless felt by workers: “Today all men, if they want to live, if they don’t want to die of hunger and of cold, are obliged . — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 533 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The gold standard’s wage flexibility presupposed excluding democratic labor from politics — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 492; Political freedom is impossible when economic dependence forces people to sell their labor — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 533; Mainstream economics denies workers agency by modeling them as substitutable production inputs — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 513
Related
- Political freedom is impossible when economic dependence forces people to sell their labor (similarity 0.90)
- Citizens’ political equality is undercut by their economic dependence on employers (similarity 0.84)
- Mainstream economics denies workers agency by modeling them as substitutable production inputs (similarity 0.82)
- Economic dependence on wage labor hollows out political citizenship. (similarity 0.82)
- Political freedom is impossible without economic freedom (similarity 0.82)
- The gold standard’s wage flexibility presupposed excluding democratic labor from politics (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalism confines political contestation to demands that leave wage labor intact (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Political freedom is impossible when economic dependence forces people to sell their labor
#expands(0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 533