Pub Date : 2024-04-05DOI: 10.1177/00905917241226670
Eero Arum
This article argues that Machiavelli’s chapters on the Decemvirate ( D 1.35, 1.40-45) advance an internal critique of the juridical discourse of sovereignty. I first contextualize these chapters in relation to several of Machiavelli’s potential sources, including Livy’s Ab urbe condita, Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s Roman Antiquities, and the antiquarian writings of Andrea Fiocchi and Giulio Pomponio Leto. I then analyze Machiavelli’s claim that the decemvirs held “absolute authority” ( autorità assoluta)—an authority that was unconstrained by either laws or countervailing magistrates. I proceed to argue that Machiavelli’s account of the decemvirs’ election contains a web of allusions to the lex regia, the “royal law” by which the Roman people were thought to have conveyed their sovereign power to an emperor. By modeling the decemvirs’ election on the lex regia, Machiavelli reveals the political limitations of the doctrine of popular sovereignty; moreover, he illustrates that even free and fair elections can easily give rise to tyranny.
{"title":"Machiavelli Against Sovereignty: Emergency Powers and the Decemvirate","authors":"Eero Arum","doi":"10.1177/00905917241226670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917241226670","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that Machiavelli’s chapters on the Decemvirate ( D 1.35, 1.40-45) advance an internal critique of the juridical discourse of sovereignty. I first contextualize these chapters in relation to several of Machiavelli’s potential sources, including Livy’s Ab urbe condita, Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s Roman Antiquities, and the antiquarian writings of Andrea Fiocchi and Giulio Pomponio Leto. I then analyze Machiavelli’s claim that the decemvirs held “absolute authority” ( autorità assoluta)—an authority that was unconstrained by either laws or countervailing magistrates. I proceed to argue that Machiavelli’s account of the decemvirs’ election contains a web of allusions to the lex regia, the “royal law” by which the Roman people were thought to have conveyed their sovereign power to an emperor. By modeling the decemvirs’ election on the lex regia, Machiavelli reveals the political limitations of the doctrine of popular sovereignty; moreover, he illustrates that even free and fair elections can easily give rise to tyranny.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140739636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-30DOI: 10.1177/00905917241241510
Bruno Godefroy
In the last years, a theological turn had a pervasive influence in the reception of Carl Schmitt’s writings. According to this view, his thought has a strong, substantial religious foundation. With regards to understanding not only Schmitt’s position but also his current influence in authoritarian countries, this essay argues that this interpretation is misleading and proposes a different and comprehensive analysis of Schmitt’s concept of political theology that replaces it in a political-legal framework. Against the theological reading, it argues that Schmitt’s concept of “political theology” refers to his own conception of legal theory as an attempt to relegitimize authority in a secular context. As “political theology,” this legal theory is designed to overcome normativism and parliamentarism by “substantializing” the legal form. Using Schmitt’s post-1933 works as an example, the essay shows that, as theology translates faith into a written doctrine, legal theory must, according to Schmitt, substantialize the legal form by translating the political idea into jurisprudence. Hence, this article concludes that Schmitt’s theory might be described as “political theology” but only in a formal, ideological sense. It is part of an authoritarian theory that is not religious but uses theology to revive an appearance of absolute legitimacy.
{"title":"Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: Legitimizing Authority after Secularization","authors":"Bruno Godefroy","doi":"10.1177/00905917241241510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917241241510","url":null,"abstract":"In the last years, a theological turn had a pervasive influence in the reception of Carl Schmitt’s writings. According to this view, his thought has a strong, substantial religious foundation. With regards to understanding not only Schmitt’s position but also his current influence in authoritarian countries, this essay argues that this interpretation is misleading and proposes a different and comprehensive analysis of Schmitt’s concept of political theology that replaces it in a political-legal framework. Against the theological reading, it argues that Schmitt’s concept of “political theology” refers to his own conception of legal theory as an attempt to relegitimize authority in a secular context. As “political theology,” this legal theory is designed to overcome normativism and parliamentarism by “substantializing” the legal form. Using Schmitt’s post-1933 works as an example, the essay shows that, as theology translates faith into a written doctrine, legal theory must, according to Schmitt, substantialize the legal form by translating the political idea into jurisprudence. Hence, this article concludes that Schmitt’s theory might be described as “political theology” but only in a formal, ideological sense. It is part of an authoritarian theory that is not religious but uses theology to revive an appearance of absolute legitimacy.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140361741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-29DOI: 10.1177/00905917241239032
Rose A. Owen
After #MeToo, academics have become increasingly focused on the liberal concept of consent. Either problematized as a means of distinguishing between sex and rape, or vaunted as a tool for having better sex, consent remains central to discussions of sexual violence. Returning to Andrea Dworkin’s thought, this article argues that contemporary feminists must move beyond consent and recenter the problem of violence to theorize rape. Dworkin, alongside Catharine MacKinnon and Carole Pateman, critiques consent for disguising the violence of rape, sex, and pornography. By defining violence as a process of objectification, Dworkin exposes rape, pornography, and most controversially, consensual heterosexual intercourse as “a new kind of death.” She, in turn, calls for the feminist exercise of violence as a tactic of disclosure that promises to make visible patriarchal violence hidden by consent and sexualization. Moving beyond consent to recenter the problem of violence, I conclude, opens up new avenues for feminist action and brings into view the seemingly unthinkable possibility of a world without rape.
{"title":"“A New Kind of Death”: Rape, Sex, and Pornography as Violence in Andrea Dworkin’s Thought","authors":"Rose A. Owen","doi":"10.1177/00905917241239032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917241239032","url":null,"abstract":"After #MeToo, academics have become increasingly focused on the liberal concept of consent. Either problematized as a means of distinguishing between sex and rape, or vaunted as a tool for having better sex, consent remains central to discussions of sexual violence. Returning to Andrea Dworkin’s thought, this article argues that contemporary feminists must move beyond consent and recenter the problem of violence to theorize rape. Dworkin, alongside Catharine MacKinnon and Carole Pateman, critiques consent for disguising the violence of rape, sex, and pornography. By defining violence as a process of objectification, Dworkin exposes rape, pornography, and most controversially, consensual heterosexual intercourse as “a new kind of death.” She, in turn, calls for the feminist exercise of violence as a tactic of disclosure that promises to make visible patriarchal violence hidden by consent and sexualization. Moving beyond consent to recenter the problem of violence, I conclude, opens up new avenues for feminist action and brings into view the seemingly unthinkable possibility of a world without rape.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140365395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-28DOI: 10.1177/00905917241239910
Jana Cattien
This essay facilitates a critical dialogue between Freud’s early “cathartic method” and Fanon’s notion of a “neurotic situation.” Although Fanon does not explicitly develop this concept as a counterpoint to the Freudian understanding of neurosis, we can nevertheless glean from his work a robust understanding of the kind of psycho-political suffering it designates. To be in a “neurotic situation,” I argue, is to experience neurotic symptoms that are idiosyncratic to oneself and yet also a reflection of social and political structures of oppression that affect all members of an oppressed group. It is a situation that contains both idiosyncratic psychic disturbance and non-idiosyncratic political truth. As such, addressing a neurotic situation requires overcoming the strict separation between therapy and consciousness-raising that some activists espouse. Specifically, in a neurotic situation, therapy and emancipatory consciousness-raising come to shape and condition each other’s objectives: an emancipatory consciousness becomes a condition for the therapeutic alleviation of neurotic symptoms, and therapeutic relief for neurotic symptoms becomes part of what it is like to attain an emancipatory consciousness in a neurotic situation.
{"title":"Neurotic Situations: A Critical Dialogue between Freud and Fanon","authors":"Jana Cattien","doi":"10.1177/00905917241239910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917241239910","url":null,"abstract":"This essay facilitates a critical dialogue between Freud’s early “cathartic method” and Fanon’s notion of a “neurotic situation.” Although Fanon does not explicitly develop this concept as a counterpoint to the Freudian understanding of neurosis, we can nevertheless glean from his work a robust understanding of the kind of psycho-political suffering it designates. To be in a “neurotic situation,” I argue, is to experience neurotic symptoms that are idiosyncratic to oneself and yet also a reflection of social and political structures of oppression that affect all members of an oppressed group. It is a situation that contains both idiosyncratic psychic disturbance and non-idiosyncratic political truth. As such, addressing a neurotic situation requires overcoming the strict separation between therapy and consciousness-raising that some activists espouse. Specifically, in a neurotic situation, therapy and emancipatory consciousness-raising come to shape and condition each other’s objectives: an emancipatory consciousness becomes a condition for the therapeutic alleviation of neurotic symptoms, and therapeutic relief for neurotic symptoms becomes part of what it is like to attain an emancipatory consciousness in a neurotic situation.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140372632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-07DOI: 10.1177/00905917231225493
Dongxian Jiang
Conventional narratives hold that parties are “the orphans of political philosophy” and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a “progressive antipartyism” that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic “machines.” In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the “progressive” type was relatively absent, as there weren’t any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy.
{"title":"“Parties Are the Supreme Mentors of the Nation”: Appreciations for Parties and Partisanship in China, 1895–1920","authors":"Dongxian Jiang","doi":"10.1177/00905917231225493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231225493","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional narratives hold that parties are “the orphans of political philosophy” and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a “progressive antipartyism” that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic “machines.” In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the “progressive” type was relatively absent, as there weren’t any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139794656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-07DOI: 10.1177/00905917231225493
Dongxian Jiang
Conventional narratives hold that parties are “the orphans of political philosophy” and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a “progressive antipartyism” that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic “machines.” In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the “progressive” type was relatively absent, as there weren’t any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy.
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Pub Date : 2024-01-31DOI: 10.1177/00905917231213663
Katrina Forrester
As political theorists explore work beyond traditional workplaces, how should we understand the vast class of insecure, informal, and unsalaried workers whose existence defies traditional categories of employment? In asking this question, I revisit the political theory of the Marxist feminist and cofounder of the International Wages for Housework movement, Selma James, to explore her “internationalism of the unwaged” and her writings on wagelessness. An example of political theory in service of struggle, James’s internationalism was widely circulated in anticolonial, Black radical, and autonomous Marxist circles in the 1970s. In this article, I argue that it was grounded in three intertwined and mutually reinforcing arguments: an account of how capitalist life is spatially divided into distinct workplaces; an anticapitalist theory of identity that explains social difference as maintained by the international division of labor and labor market hierarchies; and a diagnosis of work organization viewed from the perspective of the wageless worker. I trace how James developed these arguments about the spatial division of labor, hierarchies of identity, and internationalist political struggle and how her view of the common exploitation and division of workers formed the basis of a class-struggle identity politics. Her political theory was an important contribution to women’s international thought and transnational feminist critiques of global forms of domination and exploitation. It also offers a critique of capitalism’s organization of the displacement of work and workers and an account of wagelessness as a work situation, both of which illuminate capitalist organization of work and wageless life today.
{"title":"Capitalism and the Organization of Displacement: Selma James’s Internationalism of the Unwaged","authors":"Katrina Forrester","doi":"10.1177/00905917231213663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231213663","url":null,"abstract":"As political theorists explore work beyond traditional workplaces, how should we understand the vast class of insecure, informal, and unsalaried workers whose existence defies traditional categories of employment? In asking this question, I revisit the political theory of the Marxist feminist and cofounder of the International Wages for Housework movement, Selma James, to explore her “internationalism of the unwaged” and her writings on wagelessness. An example of political theory in service of struggle, James’s internationalism was widely circulated in anticolonial, Black radical, and autonomous Marxist circles in the 1970s. In this article, I argue that it was grounded in three intertwined and mutually reinforcing arguments: an account of how capitalist life is spatially divided into distinct workplaces; an anticapitalist theory of identity that explains social difference as maintained by the international division of labor and labor market hierarchies; and a diagnosis of work organization viewed from the perspective of the wageless worker. I trace how James developed these arguments about the spatial division of labor, hierarchies of identity, and internationalist political struggle and how her view of the common exploitation and division of workers formed the basis of a class-struggle identity politics. Her political theory was an important contribution to women’s international thought and transnational feminist critiques of global forms of domination and exploitation. It also offers a critique of capitalism’s organization of the displacement of work and workers and an account of wagelessness as a work situation, both of which illuminate capitalist organization of work and wageless life today.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140470942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-26DOI: 10.1177/00905917231217133
Steven Klein
Within democratic theory, electoral competition is typically associated with minimalist and realist views of democracy. In contrast, this article argues for a reinterpretation of electoral competition as an important element of an egalitarian theory of democracy. Current relational egalitarian theories, in focusing on the equalization of individual power-over, present electoral institutions as in tension with equality. Against this view, the article contends that electoral competition can foster equality by incentivizing the equalization of cooperative power. The article develops the normative category of equal opportunity to access cooperative power and shows how it can generate an egalitarian defense of electoral competition. Yet this ideal is not an affirmation of the status quo. Rather, it points to the need to reform electoral systems to make them more competitive and so more likely to foster cooperative power, as well as reforms to provide direct support to associations like unions that equalize cooperative power.
{"title":"On the Egalitarian Value of Electoral Democracy","authors":"Steven Klein","doi":"10.1177/00905917231217133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231217133","url":null,"abstract":"Within democratic theory, electoral competition is typically associated with minimalist and realist views of democracy. In contrast, this article argues for a reinterpretation of electoral competition as an important element of an egalitarian theory of democracy. Current relational egalitarian theories, in focusing on the equalization of individual power-over, present electoral institutions as in tension with equality. Against this view, the article contends that electoral competition can foster equality by incentivizing the equalization of cooperative power. The article develops the normative category of equal opportunity to access cooperative power and shows how it can generate an egalitarian defense of electoral competition. Yet this ideal is not an affirmation of the status quo. Rather, it points to the need to reform electoral systems to make them more competitive and so more likely to foster cooperative power, as well as reforms to provide direct support to associations like unions that equalize cooperative power.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139155477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-06DOI: 10.1177/00905917231196832
Timothy Brennan
Rousseau’s account of the “legislator” or “lawgiver” is commonly regarded as one of the most far-fetched, ominous, and baffling parts of his teaching in the Social Contract. In brief, Rousseau’s lawgiver seems to be a proto-totalitarian figure whose self-appointed mission is to found a political community by “denaturing” people at a single stroke and who may be a mere figment of Rousseau’s overheated imagination. Accordingly, this part of the Social Contract threatens to make a mockery of Rousseau’s claim to be “taking men as they are and laws they can be,” as well as his claim that the combination of “ freedom and equality” is “the greatest good” in the civil state. Following and extending Rousseau’s own method of teaching by examples, however, this essay argues that Benjamin Franklin’s influence over the American republic—especially through his posthumous Autobiography—offers a prosaic example of the apparently fantastical phenomenon sketched by Rousseau. In fact, I argue that Franklin’s case corresponds more fully to Rousseau’s description than do any of Rousseau’s own examples (such as Moses, Lycurgus, and Numa) and that Franklin showed in practice what Rousseau suggested in theory: that a lawgiver can succeed without relying on coercion and without undercutting the equality that underlies a just society. Franklin’s denaturing influence, I suggest, has been crucial for the durability of republicanism in the United States, given the country’s size and diversity.
{"title":"Teaching by Examples: Rousseau’s Lawgiver and the Case of Benjamin Franklin","authors":"Timothy Brennan","doi":"10.1177/00905917231196832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231196832","url":null,"abstract":"Rousseau’s account of the “legislator” or “lawgiver” is commonly regarded as one of the most far-fetched, ominous, and baffling parts of his teaching in the Social Contract. In brief, Rousseau’s lawgiver seems to be a proto-totalitarian figure whose self-appointed mission is to found a political community by “denaturing” people at a single stroke and who may be a mere figment of Rousseau’s overheated imagination. Accordingly, this part of the Social Contract threatens to make a mockery of Rousseau’s claim to be “taking men as they are and laws they can be,” as well as his claim that the combination of “ freedom and equality” is “the greatest good” in the civil state. Following and extending Rousseau’s own method of teaching by examples, however, this essay argues that Benjamin Franklin’s influence over the American republic—especially through his posthumous Autobiography—offers a prosaic example of the apparently fantastical phenomenon sketched by Rousseau. In fact, I argue that Franklin’s case corresponds more fully to Rousseau’s description than do any of Rousseau’s own examples (such as Moses, Lycurgus, and Numa) and that Franklin showed in practice what Rousseau suggested in theory: that a lawgiver can succeed without relying on coercion and without undercutting the equality that underlies a just society. Franklin’s denaturing influence, I suggest, has been crucial for the durability of republicanism in the United States, given the country’s size and diversity.","PeriodicalId":47788,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138596627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-30DOI: 10.1177/00905917231205624
U. Aytac
Shirking, the act of avoiding the demands of one’s job, is generally seen as unethical. Drawing on empirical evidence from the sociology of work, I develop a normative conception of shirking as a form of worker resistance against illegitimate managerial power. In doing so, I present a new approach to the political theory of the firm, which is more adversarial and agent-centered than available alternatives. It is more adversarial as it recognizes the political value of counterproductive and disruptive behavior in capitalist firms. It is more agent-centered because it theorizes the firm from the perspective of workers, asking what pro tanto reasons they have to shirk. I show that shirking under the structural domination of capitalism has diagnostic, agential, and epistemic values. The paper contributes to the wider methodological ambition to tailor political theorizing to the positionality of social actors by shifting attention from the institutional design of the firm to the methods of worker resistance.
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