Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics : Festschrift in Honor of John Stachel

2) the globalization of capital has far outstripped the ability of current labor movements, organized at best on a national level, to conduct an effective defense of the interests of labor within capitalism, let alone to seriously challenge the cap­ italist system. To develop some form-or forms--of international organization of labor, long an ideological challenge ("Workers of the World Unite") has now become an urgent matter of survival for the labor movements of the world. Here is a challenge, on which I think broad agreement is possible: Even those who think capitalism is capable of indefinite survival must agree that it has functioned best in the past-for example, during the long period of post-World War II expansion­ when the power of capital has been effectively limited by the countervailing power of labor. Effective exercise of that power has always depended on overcoming the seg­ mentation of labor due to such factors as locality, race, gender, occupation, etc. , which stilIremain important. Above, I have singled out the two factors that today seem key to me: the split between mental and manual labor, and segmentation by nationality. Let all concerned about the current state of capitalism work to build up the countervailing power of labor, and let time show whether this results in nothing more than the better functioning of capitalism, or whether a new challenge to the system ultimately emerges. Front Matter....Pages i-xxii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Prehistory of Relativity....Pages 3-12 Interpretations and Equations of the Michelson Experiment and its Variations....Pages 13-25 The Trouton Experiment, E = MC 2 , and a Slice of Minkowski Space-Time....Pages 27-54 The N-Stein Family....Pages 55-67 Eclipses of the Stars....Pages 69-92 The Varieties of Unity: Sounding Unified Theories 1920–1930....Pages 93-149 Indiscernibles, General Covariance, and Other Symmetries: The Case for Non-Reductive Relationalism....Pages 151-173 On Relative Orbital Rotation in Relativity Theory....Pages 175-190 Front Matter....Pages 191-191 The unique nature of cosmology....Pages 193-220 Time, Structure and Evolution in Cosmology....Pages 221-274 Timekeeping in an Expanding Universe....Pages 275-280 Gravitational Lensing from a Space-Time Perspective....Pages 281-304 Rigidly Rotating Disk Revisited....Pages 305-316 DSS 2+2....Pages 317-347 Geometry, Null Hypersurfaces and New Variables....Pages 349-360 On Vacuum Twisting Type-N Again....Pages 361-373 Quasi-Local Energy....Pages 375-382 Space-Time Defects: Open and Closed Shells Revisited....Pages 383-395 Dimensionally Challenged Gravities....Pages 397-401 A Note on Holonomic Constraints....Pages 403-419 Front Matter....Pages 191-191 Towards an Action-at-a-Distance Concept of Spacetime....Pages 421-436 Front Matter....Pages 437-437 Inevitability, Inseparability and Gedanken Measurement....Pages 439-450 The Concept of Quantum State: New Views on old Phenomena....Pages 451-478 Elementary Processes....Pages 479-497 On Quantum Non-Locality, Special Relativity, And Counterfactual Reasoning....Pages 499-521 Coherence, Entanglement, and Reductionist Explanation In Quantum Physics....Pages 523-542 Front Matter....Pages 543-543 Physics and Science Fiction....Pages 545-554 Can We Learn from History? Do We Want To?....Pages 555-568 Patterns of Appropriation in the Greek Intellectual Life of the 18th Century....Pages 569-591 Darwin, Marx, and Warranted Progress....Pages 593-613 Albert Einstein and the Founding of Brandeis University....Pages 615-640 Back Matter....Pages 641-649 2) the globalization of capital has far outstripped the ability of current labor movements, organized at best on a national level, to conduct an effective defense of the interests of labor within capitalism, let alone to seriously challenge the capƯ italist system. To develop some form-or forms--of international organization of labor, long an ideological challenge ("Workers of the World Unite") has now become an urgent matter of survival for the labor movements of the world. Here is a challenge, on which I think broad agreement is possible: Even those who think capitalism is capable of indefinite survival must agree that it has functioned best in the past-for example, during the long period of post-World War II expansionƯ when the power of capital has been effectively limited by the countervailing power of labor. Effective exercise of that power has always depended on overcoming the segƯ mentation of labor due to such factors as locality, race, gender, occupation, etc., which stilIremain important. Above, I have singled out the two factors that today seem key to me: the split between mental and manual labor, and segmentation by nationality. Let all concerned about the current state of capitalism work to build up the countervailing power of labor, and let time show whether this results in nothing more than the better functioning of capitalism, or whether a new challenge to the system ultimately emerges