Overt state force is ineffective because labor contracts cannot stipulate every profitability requirement
Evidence
Part of the answer to maintaining the dominance of the employer over workers lies in the direct application of force: the passage of antilabor laws and the use of the police power of the state. It is precisely against this “solution” that workers have fought their major battles and won some significant victories over the past century. The direct application of force by no means insures the maintenance of capitalist power relations, how ever, in part because its unlimited and undisguised use may be counter productive, and in part because the labor-capital contract cannot stipulate all, or even most, of the requirements to insure the profitability and stabil ity of the enterprise. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 587
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Labor subordination is enforced by lack of alternatives, not contracts — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 604; Political freedom is impossible when economic dependence forces people to sell their labor — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 533; Reliance costs can be impossible to estimate at contract formation. — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 228 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Labor subordination is enforced by lack of alternatives, not contracts
#responds-to(0.85) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 604 - Contract-based economic trust fails where state enforcement and market calculation are absent.
#corroborates(0.78) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2427 - Political freedom is impossible when economic dependence forces people to sell their labor
#complicates(0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 533 - Reliance costs can be impossible to estimate at contract formation.
#expands(0.75) — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 228