The concept of abolition of labour ( Aufhebung der Arbeit) appeared in some of Marx’s posthumously published works. Few of his notable successors highlighted this concept as key to opposing the Fordist stage of capitalism. Marcuse viewed this stage as a new peak in the repression of imagination and free instincts, bound to ‘the performance principle’. However, the rise of neo-liberalism presents unforeseen challenges to the criticism of labour. While the Keynesian welfare state is collapsing, its universal services are (...) commodified and inequality rates are skyrocketing – some factors of the abolition of labour are surprisingly uplifted. This article will examine the evolution of some factors of abolition of labour that thrive with the spread of neo-liberalism and the erosion of other vital factors; we will elucidate the diminishing role of Marcuse’s performance principle, unravel the reality principle replacing it and discuss the relevance of the concept ‘abolition of labour’ today. (shrink)

To highlight the promise of Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour, my comments concern the diagnostic and prescriptive dimensions of the book’s excellent intersectional critique of dependent labour relations. The diagnostic dimension of Pascoe’s critique establishes that the organisation of dependent labour relations is a neglected problem of Kantian justice. The prescriptive dimension offers solutions to this problem but is underdeveloped. To enhance the book’s prescriptive dimension, I draw on the noted Africana philosopher W. E. B. Du Bois for guidance. (...) For Du Bois, a constitutional republic ought to strive for the abolition of a ‘second’ slavery following the abolition of de jure black chattel slavery with the end of the American Civil War. Given Du Bois’ call for meaningful Emancipation, I argue that philosophers should reinterpret the Kantian normative ideal of freedom as universal independence to uproot the postbellum conditions of second slavery. (shrink)

To highlight the promise of Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour, my comments concern the diagnostic and prescriptive dimensions of the book’s excellent intersectional critique of dependent labour relations. The diagnostic dimension of Pascoe’s critique establishes that the organisation of dependent labour relations is a neglected problem of Kantian justice. The prescriptive dimension offers solutions to this problem but is underdeveloped. To enhance the book’s prescriptive dimension, I draw on the noted Africana philosopher W. E. B. Du Bois for guidance. (...) For Du Bois, a constitutional republic ought to strive for the abolition of a ‘second’ slavery following the abolition of de jure black chattel slavery with the end of the American Civil War. Given Du Bois’ call for meaningful Emancipation, I argue that philosophers should reinterpret the Kantian normative ideal of freedom as universal independence to uproot the postbellum conditions of second slavery. (shrink)

COVID-19 has magnified intersecting inequalities that are central to the functioning of capitalism. At the height of the crisis, the value of an economy based on the exchange of goods and services faded away to expose the importance of care across the public and private spheres. Undervalued and underpaid labour suddenly became critical to the survival of many. Drawing on Abolition Feminism, we argue for the need to seize this revaluation of labour to centre nurture and pleasure within our (...) post-pandemic recovery. We apply an Abolition Feminist framework that conceptualises the prison as part of a network of violence that deflects attention from the root causes of harm. We reflect on the development of our Abolition Feminist web platform, Read and Resist!, a space where theory meets reflection on praxis. We consider how activist strategies within Abolition Feminism may support us in reimagining our relationships with law and justice post-COVID-19. (shrink)

In recent years, rather than addressing the needs of sex workers themselves or of trafficked persons, international anti-trafficking law has been mobilised towards an ideological end, namely the abolition of sex work. The vulnerability of ‘third world’ female sex workers in particular has provided a potent image for justifying state intervention backed by the full force of the criminal law. Moral legitimacy has been afforded to this by a radical feminist discourse which views sex workers as nothing but hapless (...) victims. Drawing on the work of Martha Fineman and legal realists like Robert Hale, this article redeploys vulnerability in trafficking debates to depart from its narrative of victimhood and to offer a renewed critique of liberal legalism, which has in the trafficking context been characterised by legal strategies of criminalisation and the attendant rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked persons. Specifically, it examines how three Indian social legislations regulating bonded labour, contract labour and inter-state migrant labour, and targeted at the domestic trafficking of men, conceptualise vulnerability in substantially different ways when compared to the 2000 Palermo Protocol on Trafficking (at least as it has been enforced to date). To the extent that these Indian laws construe the vulnerability of labour as systemic, trafficking is understood as a problem of labour migration to be addressed primarily by labour law. As such, this view of vulnerability, I argue, not only helps to de-exceptionalise trafficking as always equivalent to the trafficking of women for sex work, and therefore sex work, but also to substantively address the vulnerability of both male and female workers in other labour markets. (shrink)

Higher education is increasingly unable to engage usefully with global emergencies, as its functions are repurposed for value. Discourses of entrepreneurship, impact and excellence, realised through competition and the market, mean that academics and students are increasingly alienated from themselves and their work. This book applies Marx’s concept of alienation to the realities of academic life in the Global North, in order to explore how the idea of public education is subsumed under the law of value. In a landscape of (...) increased commodification of higher education, the book explores the relationship between alienation and crisis, before analysing how academic knowledge, work, identity and life are themselves alienated. Finally, it argues that through indignant struggle, another world is possible, grounded in alternative forms of organising life and producing socially-useful knowledge, ultimately requiring the abolition of academic labour. This pioneering work will be of interest and value to all those working in the higher education sector, as well as those concerned with the rise of neoliberalism and marketization within universities. (shrink)

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar (...) workers, laundresses and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

Given racialized chattel slavery’s significance to the US economy, the abolition of slavery necessarily raised a profound question for the nation after the Civil War: How would the United States structure its economy when, for the first time in its history, it could no longer unapologetically exploit the stolen labor of millions of enslaved people? This essay examines a set of radically democratic possibilities for reconstructing the US economy that were unleashed by abolition in the second half (...) of the nineteenth century and that continue to be relevant in the twenty-first century. It analyzes a set of experiments in economic democracy that were catalyzed by emancipation and its economic consequences, examines the twentieth-century legacies of these initial endeavors, and concludes by discussing the ongoing relevance of abolitionist economic democracy in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

There is something prophetic about abolition; some element of the elsewhere that marks its practice, and its discourse. In the work of undoing, there is a crack. In the refusal, a moment of imagination. Abolition is driven by definitive demands as much as by what is yet to come and what is still unfinished.

Despite the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery is not confined to the past. Many forms of slavery exist worldwide today, as highlighted by increased recent awareness of trafficking. International, and some national, legislation to combat contemporary slavery and trafficking exists, yet these practices continue. As important as legislation is its effective and sensitive implementation. With trafficking, we need to recognise the complexities of forced labour within a global context and move policy beyond its current restricted and potentially (...) harmful focus on immigration. This includes providing support for those leaving forced labour and generating a thorough understanding of causal factors in order to reduce future vulnerability. (shrink)

Amy Wendling contends in this book that Marx’s concern with alienation is not restricted to his early, more explicitly Hegelian writings, and that it can be seen to evolve throughout his work in tandem with his interest in technology. This evolution, according to Wendling, is marked by his transition between two successive scientific paradigms, both of which pertain to the status of labour and machinery within society. Wendling claims that Marx uses the distinction between them as a means of conducting (...) an immanent critique of capitalist ideology. Consequently, although it is primarily a work of intellectual history, this book offers an interesting contribution to the hermeneutics of Marx’sCapital. In addition, it also bears relation to contemporary discussions concerning real subsumption and the abolition of labour. The book’s general argument raises questions as to the degree to which a conception of alienation must rely upon notions of human essence, and upon an idea of a ‘natural’ and ‘authentic’ humanity. Wendling’s responses to those questions are described as problematic within this review, but they are also acknowledged to be both pertinent and intriguing. (shrink)

What is abolition? What is the logic of its movement, the character of its kinesthetic signature? By exploring abolition’s debts to Foucauldian genealogy, the messianism in Derridean deconstruction, and the affective resistance among queer/trans communities, this essay argues that abolition is a kite-idea. It moves by flying overhead, shimmering in the sun, and tugging at the hand. Abolition is a practice of history, a dream of the future, and an affective struggle lived today. This is its (...) fragile promise. (shrink)

Nurses are the closest healthcare providers to patients and emotional labor is the most invisible part of nursing work. However, the management of emotions to promote organizational goals and to ensure patient satisfaction may have both positive and negative impacts on nurses' working life. The purpose of this cross‐sectional, descriptive study was to examine the emotional labor behaviors of nurses and their opinions on emotional labor. Two hundred nineteen nurses working at public hospitals in Ankara between September (...) and December 2018 participated to this study. Data were collected using the sociodemographic characteristics form and “The Scale of Emotional Labor Behavior for Nurses.” Nurses had higher scores on the deep and sincere emotional acting subdimensions of the emotional labor scale than the surface acting subdimension. Findings suggest that nurses act deeply and intimately, instead of surface acting. Most of the nurses expressed that nurses were emotionally affected when caring for patients; however, nurses had to control their feelings toward patients and behave professionally to meet the expectations of their managers, which may lead to an implicit emotional dissonance. Based on the results of this study, we suggest to support nurses emotionally and to incorporate the topic of emotional labor into educational programs. (shrink)

The series of conversations between Angela Y. Davis and Eduardo Mendieta entitled Abolition Democracy is a powerful investigation of the failed moral imagination of imperial democracies. After examining their discussion of how truncated political discourses enable abuses in both war and imprisonment, I look to the “exceptional” status of war prisons such as at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. I argue that domestic prisons, like international war prisons, are means for the paradigmatic functioning of the exception in modern democracy, as (...) described by Giorgio Agamben, and thus constitute no less of an “ultimate carceral threat.” Within the domestic prison, the legal status of inmates is virtually suspended and they are reduced to bare life. I conclude that we may yet share the hopes of Davis and Mendieta for an abolition democracy, and that such a democracy would bear the echoes of the unconditional sovereignty “to come” theorized by Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice explores the intersections of the carceral in projects of oppression, while at the same time providing intellectual, pragmatic, and undetermined paths toward abolition. Prison abolition is at once about the institution of the prison, and a broad, intersectional political project calling for the end of the social structured by settler colonialism, anti-black racism, and related oppressions. Beyond this, prison abolition is a constructive project that imagines and strives for a transformed (...) world in which justice is not equated with punishment, and accountability is not equated with caging. Composed of sixteen chapters by an international team of scholars and activists, with a Foreword by Perry Zurn and an Afterword by Justin Piché, the book is divided into four themes: - Prisons and Racism - Prisons and Settler Colonialism - Anti-Carceral Feminisms - Multispecies Carceralities. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, activists, and scholars working in the areas of Critical Prison Studies, Critical Criminology, Native Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Black Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Critical Animal Studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as, Feminist Legal Studies, Animal Law, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, and Transnational Feminisms. (shrink)

What’s Labor Got to Do with It? Capitalism and the Counterprojec.

State policy in the field of law enforcement during the Khrushchev's period wasn't a stabile. The first wave of changes was associated with the abolition of some legislative acts of the Stalinist period, a significant softening of punitive line, narrowing of the scope of capital punishment, empowerment convicted people etc. On the one hand, these steps are partially rehabilitating the Soviet law enforcement. On the other hand, government actions were unreasoned and populist, designed for quick political effect. The next (...) wave of change was due to the spread of the idea of the gradual withering away of the state in terms of building a communist society. As a consequence of this ideology was the reduction of employees in the field of law enforcement and attracting a variety of civic organizations, labor groups and citizens to fulfill a variety of law enforcement functions (voluntary civil police, civil judges, civil assistant investigator, civilian prosecutors, civil lawyers, etc.). And finally, the soviet leadership made steps in the field of law enforcement toward stricter penalties for serious crimes, as well as expanding the scope of the death penalty. The country's leadership was actively intervened in the work of law enforcement. Communist Party took control the law enforcement agencies due to the appointment to senior positions along party lines and managing work of party members through the party cell. One of the major controversies of the time was mixing the steps to improve of law enforcement sphere (increased attention to the frames, structural changes, strengthening analytical work in the study of crime statistics), with a desire to demonstrate the advantages of the socialist way of life (which was manifested in the silencing of certain criminal manifestations, artificially lowering their significance by reducing the liability on them, outright ignoring problems and their causes, etc.). Contradictions were observed in the conduct of state punitive line too. On the one hand, it was a significant step up from the Stalinist penal system by expanding the rights of prisoners, procedural rules, which led to a softening of the repressive pressure on the population. On the other hand, the state retained its attitude to dissent; applying the new forms social exclusion of dissidents, for example, applying to them the impact of psychiatric measures. These moments hampered consolidation of the new format of normative behavior in the minds of ordinary citizens, and gave rise to "double standards", the imbalance between what is declared and what actually happened. (shrink)

Medical schools, like all institutions, are conservative since they seek to maintain and expand on their accomplishments. Stakes are high in carceral medicine given the risks of replicating the inhumane social conditions that exist within prisons and allow prisons to exist. Given the increasing number of partnerships between state and municipal carceral systems with academic medical centers, medical schools must consider which guiding theory they will use to teach carceral medicine. The interdisciplinary theory of prison abolition is best fit (...) for the task of training medical students to think about the long term goals of societal change and public health. (shrink)

Involuntary commitment links the healthcare, public health, and legislative systems to act as a “carceral health-service.” While masquerading as more humane and medicalized, such coercive modalities nevertheless further reinforce the systems, structures, practices, and policies of structural oppression and white supremacy. We argue that due to involuntary commitment’s inextricable connection to the carceral system, and a longer history of violent social control, this legal framework cannot and must not be held out as a viable alternative to the criminal legal system (...) responses to behavioral and mental health challenges. Instead, this article proposes true alternatives to incarceration that are centered on liberation that seeks to shrink the carceral system’s grasp on individuals’ and communities’ lives. In this, we draw inspiration from street-level praxis and action theory emanating from grassroots organizations and community organizers across the country under a Public Health Abolition framework. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an original interpretation of Marx's conception of unalienated labor, which I frame as a response to Aristotle's view of work, or technē. Both Aristotle and Marx share a particular conception of freedom as “normative self-determination,” according to which an activity is free insofar as it does not depend for its value on externally valuable things. For instance, when my activity is a mere means for satisfying some need separate from it, it comes to depend (...) for its value on the externally valuable effect—the “needs-meeting”—it achieves. Or, when my activity is only causally—but not normatively—enabled by the cooperative contributions of others, it comes to depend for its value on those externally valuable contributions. On Aristotle's view, work is unleisurely (ascholos) and servile (doulos) because it is normatively dependent in both of these ways. For Marx, by contrast, work possesses the capacity to “internalize” these external determinants of its value. Unalienated work does this, first, by satisfying “internal” needs, or needs whose satisfaction does not constitute a normatively external effect of the work that satisfies them. The satisfaction of internal needs is valuable because of the manner or way in which they are satisfied. Second, unalienated work would not only be causally, but also normatively, enabled by the contributions of others, in that those contributions would help to make it the distinctively valuable act that it is. Unalienated work would be valuable because, and not despite, its cooperative character. In both of these respects, then, cooperation is essential to make work fully free. (shrink)

The movements for prison and police abolition today are not only analogous to but extensions of antebellum and postbellum movements for the abolition of slavery and segregation. Dreams of transformative justice, resistance to government, and the creation of alternative practices have been vital to abolitionist efforts to dismantle various US anarchies. This essay examines the political and theological debates of antebellum abolitionists about the US government, the Constitution and law more broadly, civil disobedience, anarchy, and revolution, arguing that (...) these remain vital debates for abolitionists today. (shrink)

This article discusses critical comparisons between the human and nonhuman abolitionist movements in the United States. The modern nonhuman abolitionist movement is, in some ways, an extension of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ongoing human Civil Rights movement. As such, there is considerable overlap between the two movements, specifically in the need to simultaneously address property status and oppressive ideology. Despite intentional appropriation of terminology and numerous similarities in mobilization efforts, there has been disappointingly (...) little academic discussion on this relationship. There are significant contentions regarding mobilization and goal attainment in the human abolitionist movement that speak to modern collective action on behalf of other animals. This article will explore the human abolitionist movement and discuss possible applications of movement organization, tactical repertoires, and goal attainment to the current nonhuman animal rights movement. Specifically, the utility of violence and legislative activism in the antislavery movement are discussed as potentially problematic approaches to abolishing nonhuman animal exploitation. Alternatively, the nonhuman animal rights focus on consumer resistance and nonviolence represent an important divergence in abolitionist mobilization. (shrink)

This article uses the concept of a progressive jail assemblage to think about the focus on jails as both a target of social justice organizing and a tool for advancing social justice goals. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among formerly incarcerated organizers and their allies in Western Massachusetts (New England), I explore how the sheriffs who operate jails in this region, along with their collaborators, have increasingly sought to redefine the figure of the criminal as not just a danger to (...) others but also a danger to themselves, someone in need of rehabilitative treatment and even care. In doing so, these sheriffs have attempted to reinvent their role, from the quintessentially American crime fighting figure, to one who is also a provider of care. Social justice activism has helped to expand the “caring” role of the jail, through increased addiction treatment, re-entry support, and community outreach – even to the extent of incarcerating individuals dealing with addiction who have not been charged with a crime. As progressive jails have been reconfigured as providers of care, abolitionists are confronted with the ongoing dilemma of how to remain a figure opposed to the use of prisons and jails without being seen as against care. (shrink)

What effects are produced in an encounter between what Gilles Deleuze calls Spinoza’s ‘practical philosophy’ and abolition? Closely following Deleuze’s account of Spinoza, this essay moves from the reifying and weakening punitive moralism of carceral state thought towards a joyful materialist abolitionist ethic. It starts with the three theses for which, Deleuze argues, Spinoza was denounced in his own lifetime: materialism (devaluation of consciousness), immoralism (devaluation of all values) and atheism (devaluation of the sad passions). From these three, it (...) derives three parallel abolitionist theses: (1) Spinozan materialism undermines the reifications of carceral state thought; (2) Spinozan ethics undermines the punitivism of the carceral state; and (3) Spinozan joy is inversely proportional to the power of the carceral state. While Spinoza’s corpus may not give us an adequate account of the complex dynamics of the carceral state and racial capitalism today, this essay argues that in the infinite streams of the Ethics we nonetheless find some vital strategies through which we might compose an anomalous alliance between this condemned philosopher and abolition. (shrink)

Social scientific evidence suggests that labor migration can increase resilience to climate change. For that reason, some have recently advocated using labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. This paper engages with the normative question of whether, and under what conditions, states may permissibly use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. I argue that states may use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation and may even have a duty (...) to do so, subject to two moral constraints. First, states must also provide acceptable alternative options for adaptation so that the vulnerable are not forced to sacrifice their morally important interests in being able to remain where they are. Second, states may not impose restrictive terms on labor migrants to make accepting greater numbers less costly for themselves because doing so unfairly shifts the costs of adaptation onto the most vulnerable. (shrink)

Critical posthumanism as a philosophical, antifascist nonhierarchical imagination for nursing offers a liberatory passageway forward amidst environmental collapse, an epic pandemic, global authoritarianism, extreme health and wealth disparities, over‐reliance on technology and empirics, and unjust societal systems based in whiteness. Drawing upon philosophical and theoretical works from Black and Indigenous scholars, Haraway's idea of the Chthulucene, Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic thought, and Kaba's abolitionist organizing among others, we as activist nurse scholars continue the speculative discussion outlined in prior papers. Here (...) we further imagine how we can engage a radical philosophical mission of care for all beings human and non, walking and working alongside the people and communities nurses accompany, connected as we are on this dystopian celestial orb. Discussion is centred on critical analyses of traditional justice framing in nursing, and on the praxis possibilities found within rhizomatic thought, making kin, and just episteme while knitting filaments of nursing theory and history, humming song lyrics from collective memory, and critically dismantling received wisdoms to stumble toward a more emancipatory present future. (shrink)

The current legal and political practice of human rights invokes entitlements to freely chosen work, to decent working conditions, and to form and join labor unions. Despite the importance of these rights, they remain under-explored in the philosophical literature on human rights. This article offers a systematic and constructive discussion of them. First, it surveys the content and current relevance of the labor rights stated in the most important documents of the human rights practice. Second, it gives a (...) moral defense of these rights arguing that their support involves an appropriate response to important human interests and to the human dignity of workers. Finally, it explores central normative issues about the relation between labor rights and human dignity. It responds to some objections about the importance of work, explains why labor human rights may not exhaust the demands of dignity regarding labor and arbitrates a common tension between independence and solidarity within our practical affirmation of human dignity. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta presentación es establecer una relación entre el ciclo de la labor, conceptualizado por Arendt en La condición humana, y el campo de concentración. Se parte de la clara alusión de Arendt, en donde argumenta que lo que se busca en el campo de concentración, es la construcción de un animal que sólo tenga la “libertad” de “reproducir su especie”. Dichas características están insertas en el animal laborans que también pareciera ser la cifra del homo sacer (...) de Giorgio Agamben. Esa institución del derecho romano arcaico, según los desarrollos de Agamben, permite entender al interno del campo de concentración. El animal laborans se puede encontrar en las prácticas que se desarrollan en el campo. La labor y el consumo forman parte fundamental de una estrategia de supervivencia y modulan, en forma definitiva, la diferencia entre el futuro sobreviviente y el musulmán. Vida y muerte son moduladas por lalabor y por el consumo. El ciclo de la labor crea sujetos, crea posibilidades. Esas estrategias, a través de la labor y del consumo, permiten visualizar que la supervivencia puede ser leída con la grilla de inteligibilidad del homo oeconomicus, es decir, un sujeto de interés empresario de sí mismo, que se gobierna a sí mismo como una posesión, y que, por ende, puede ser entendido como un sujeto gobernable. El sobreviviente hace un trabajo sobre sí mismo para poder sobrevivir, educarse para subsisitir y no caer en la selección. El homo oeconomicus del neoliberalismo puede permitirnos entender la vida dentro del campo y, por ende, puede ser la cifra del homo sacer a través de su condición del animal laborans. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mill on Capital Punishment-Retributive Overtones?Michael ClarkI.In his famous parliamentary speech of 18681 Mill defends the retention of capital punishment for the worst murderers on the Benthamite grounds of frugality and exemplarity.2 Punishment being an intrinsic "mischief," it should be no more severe than it needs to be to achieve its desired effect, principally that of deterring others from crime. That effect can be achieved more economically if the suffering (...) appears greater than it really is. Execution, Mill thinks, is less cruel than the alternative of life imprisonment with hard labour,3 for the offender would have died anyway sooner or later, probably in greater pain. It is also the most impressive way of punishing murder, since it closely resembles the offence. The more a penalty impresses itself upon people's minds the more likely it is to deter. And, as Bentham said, "exemplarity tends to increase the apparent, frugality to reduce the real [suffering]."4But the language Mill uses has seemed to import non-utilitarian, quasi-retributive elements into his thought. Thus Tom Sorrell says, "He brings in the appropriateness of execution to certain offences. The argument from appropriateness, if it is not retributivist, is at least consistent with retributivism, and has whatever intuitive appeal attaches to punishing purely on account of guilt."5 Is this perhaps another of those non-utilitarian elements in Mill's philosophy that many commentators have, rightly or wrongly, claimed to detect, like the supposed tension between the Principle of Utility and Mill's regard for the value of liberty? I shall argue, however, that it is a mistake to interpret Mill's remarks in a retributive way. [End Page 327]The critical passage is:[I]t appears to me that to deprive the criminal of the life of which he has proved himself unworthy—olemnly to blot him out from the fellowship of the living—is themost appropriate, as it is certainly the most impressive, mode in which society can attach to so great a crime the penal consequences which for the security of life it is indispensable to annex it.6The italicised phrases are those responsible for the retributive impression, particularly "the most appropriate." Is Mill here falling back on the idea that the criminal should receive a penalty which fits the crime because he has made himself worthy of it?Originally, Mill had opposed capital punishment, and, though he did allow that there might possibly be "atrocious crimes" against which it was the only effective deterrent, he doubted whether there were any such cases. "I have therefore always been favourable to the entire abolition of capital punishment, though I confess I do not attach much importance to it in the case of the worst criminals of all," he wrote in an 1841 letter to Robert Barclay Fox (CW XIII: 474). It is evident that he is making the usual assumption that the death penalty is more severe than life imprisonment. As a utilitarian, he could countenance the death penalty only if it were "the only effective deterrent" against aggravated murder.By the time of the Parliamentary Speech he had changed his mind about the relative severity of execution and life imprisonment. Execution was swift and generally less painful than the death the murderer would otherwise eventually face. The alternative was to immure "him in a living tomb, there to linger out what may be a long life in the hardest and most monotonous toil... cut off from all earthly hope" (CW XXVIII: 268). Life imprisonment seemed milder only because the suffering was at no time "of terrifying intensity."Indeed Bentham had made the same point about the exemplarity of capital punishment, which was "of all punishment, of the greatest apparent magnitude, the most impressive and the most exemplary" while being "less rigorous than it appears to be," and he noted that it was "often more gentle than natural death."72.Mill, of course, inherited his theory of punishment from Bentham, whom he regarded as leaving the theory nearly complete,8 and the consequentialist stance is clear from his early writings:The only right by which society is warranted in inflicting pain upon any... (shrink)

In this article I defend an account of beauty labor as a form of resistance that can enable individuals and communities to combat body oppression. Focusing on the “Fuck Flattering!” movement, a social-media-driven movement in which fat people purposefully wear unflattering clothing to resist antifat fashion and oppressive body standards, I first set three criteria necessary for an act of beauty labor to count as one of resistance. I argue that (1) the agent in question must be situated (...) as a less ideal candidate for attributions of beauty, (2) the agent must have some level of knowledge or awareness of the norms (defined in light of dominant groups) and their harms, and (3) that knowledge or awareness of the harms of said norms must inform the agent's act of beauty labor. Based on this account of beauty labor as resistance, I argue that beauty labor can combat larger systems of oppression and incite meaningful change insofar as it enables individuals to claim and reclaim space (both digital and physical) from which fat people have been historically excluded, while affording an opportunity for education and unpacking of oppression and bias, and expanding the fashion industry. (shrink)

This paper analyses the demands for abolishing passports after WWI. The international regime of obligatory passports, as it exists today, is a legacy of the Great War. After the Armistice, two Passport Conferences organized by the League of Nations considered its abolition. Before the second conference, a resolution of the Sixth Assembly of the League of Nations stated that "public opinion is certainly waiting for at least one step towards the most generalized abolition of the passport system ". (...) Was this just a diplomatic figure of speech, or is there really such an "expectation" to be found, for instance, in the press? If there was such an expectation in the press, what was the political orientation of the newspapers in favor of abolishing passports: was it left-wing? This article analyzes a corpus of over 600 articles published in the French press between the World Wars to show, firstly, that interest in the "abolition of passports" was not circumstantial. It's not because the League of Nations is discussing it that the press is discussing it - the opposite is true. The issue of the "abolition of passports" gave rise to a greater number of articles than the League’s "passport conferences". secondly, and more surprisingly, the newspapers that published the most articles on the abolition of passports were center-right and mostly regional. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effects of time spent in household labor on the gender gap in earnings. We identify that part of the gender gap in earnings directly attributable to women's greater household labor time. After controlling for years of work experience, hours worked per week, occupation, industry, union membership, and education, we find that household labor time can directly account for 8.2 percent of the gender gap in earnings. In addition to the direct effect (...) of women's household responsibilities on earnings, they also may affect occupational location, work experience, and number of hours worked per week, and through these variables, their earnings. These findings indicate that we cannot truly understand women's earnings relative to those of men without considering the impact of their unpaid labor on their paid work. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the neo-republican principle of non-domination. Neo-republicans argue that domination is a capacity for one to intentionally use arbitrary power to interfere in someone’s life. Critics of neo-republicanism argue that this definition of freedom as non-domination precludes a structural analysis of domination, which would explain and critique the ways in which societies produce structural domination unintentionally. The article focuses on capitalism’s labor process and its labor markets. It argues that (...) critics are correct to think that the neo-republican principle of non-domination has an insufficient scope, but that an alternative account of structural domination should still support the neo-republican idea that agency must be involved. Otherwise, we might simply fail to explain the social processes that reproduce structural domination. What is needed is to explain how the labor process creates incentives for agents to intentionally produce structures that have unintended, yet dominating effects, and in turn, how the intentions of agents are conditioned by their social positions. Domination is thus agential and structural. (shrink)

This symposium Article describes how prison abolitionist arguments also support the hypothesis that a defining goal of health law should be the abolition of hospitals. Like prison abolitionism, the hospital abolition hypothesis can provide a constructive way to shift the focus of legal analysis from substantive dimensions (in health law — cost, quality, access, and equity) to the dimension of power.

China’s export-led manufacturing model has been built on extensive exploitation of its migrant workforce under a despotic labor regime, but the methods of control have shifted considerably during the past decade and a half. This article examines new modes of domination over Chinese factory workers, based on fieldwork conducted while the author was living with workers at a foreign-invested garment factory in southern China. The article shows how mechanisms to control the workers are embedded today not only in directly (...) coercive practices but also in a new shop floor culture with affective personal ties and implicit bargaining in wage systems. Against the scholarly literature of management controls that emphasizes rupture and discontinuity between labor regimes, this article argues that China’s emerging labor regime, here referred to as “conciliatory despotism,” inherits despotic features of the labor regime exercised in the 1990s but adds new normative measures of soft control that seek to conciliate worker resentments. This hybrid form of management control represents a stage in China’s evolving labor-management relations in which workers possess more implicit power and can push management into greater concessions than previously. (shrink)

This study used the latent profile transition analysis to analyze whether emotional labor profiles change across time and how these profiles relate to occupational well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, quality of work life, psychological distress, and work–family conflict). A total of 155 full-time Chinese employees completed the questionnaire survey at two time points. Three latent profiles were identified at Time 1 and the same profiles were replicated at Time 2. We determined that the majority of the participants retained the original (...) profiles. Lastly, occupational well-being differed significantly across the identified profiles. The limitations and implications of this study were also provided. (shrink)