Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/261007 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2019-01
Publisher: 
The University of Utah, Department of Economics, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract: 
Marx discussed institutional innovations in the context of a complex dynamic between inter versus intra-group opportunism, which contains clues for understanding how capacity for class agency develops. His lengthy discussion of the English Factory Acts in his Vol. I of Capital is an important case in point, which the paper revisits for its broader lessons not only for how institutions solve collective action problems but also how they become self-enforcing when third party enforcement is ineffective. The paper gives an account of how the Acts could have become self-enforcing at a time when the state enforcement capacity was rudimentary at best. The argument focuses on the dynamic between inter versus intra-class opportunism, shedding analytical light on how organized labor could help capitalists bolster their capacity for class agency.
Subjects: 
institutions
collective action problem
opportunistism
common's problem
JEL: 
B14
B55
C72
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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