by Rockero
Thursday, Feb. 04, 2010 at 4:52 PM
rockero420@yahoo.com
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
CLAREMONT - The scholar and labor historian Aviva Chomsky gave a talk titled "Rethinking Labor and Environmental Histories" at Pitzer College, a private college 35 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles. The lecture was part of the series "Capitalism in Question (Because it is)," which continues through May.
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Chomsky began with an analysis of the contradictions prompted by the current crises, which are predicated on the assumption that in order to recover, we need more and better jobs, access to cheap goods, and environmental sustainability.
She gave a brief summary of the evolutions of "jobs" as we know them (they didn't really exist until the 19th century), and detailed the interrelatedness of labor histories of the world's regions. It is this interrelatedness, she argued, that is used to manipulate labor markets through three tactics: migration, capital flight, and labor-management collaboration.
She ended with praise for a group of economic theories known as décroissance, or "de-growth," currently gaining influence in Europe, and then took a few questions.
