189 Book Reviews

BOOKS
The greatest pleasure in reading a book
like this lies in what can only be called its
nuggets. A detailed trade-union history
(or indeed, a social history of almost
anything) cannot help but reveal, amid
its chronological intricacies, a kind of
underhistory of class truth and
experience. So it is with Never on Our
Knees.
One such nugget occurs early on in
the book, when the )n8z exible
rostering dispute is described in
crystalline detail, confirming the vague
impressions I had at the time of a
wounding failure of solidarity between
those ever-contending rail unions, the
(then) Ncn and asLcr (the National
Union of Railwaymen and the
Associated Society of Locomotive
Engineers and Firemen). While the two
unions had initially threatened to hold a
joint all-out national strike in response
to attempts by British Rail (nn) to
deregulate the standard eight-hour
working day, the Ncn withdrew its
opposition, leaving asLcr to go ahead
alone with a two-day national strike in
January )n8z.
Mike Berlin
Never on Our Knees: A History of the RMT,
19792006
Pluto Press, zoo6, 6 pp.
ISBN o---z6o--6 (pbk) )6.nn
Reviewed by Sheila Cohen
Not everyone in the NUR agreed with
the position of its then leader, Sid
Weighell: as Mike Berlin writes, Ncn
members were extremely reluctant to
cross asLcr picket lines some inside
the Ncn felt that Weighell was wrong
to sign up to exible rostering in the first
place he faced angry meetings of
London-based Ncn guards (p. ).
Perhaps the anger of the London
guards was justifiable, in retrospect,
when we learn that In the aftermath of
the exible rostering strikes the Tory
attitude to the rail unions hardened and
their real intentions became clear (p.
). It is with such small defeats and
betrayals that the steady drip of erosion
of union rights and organisation is
enabledan erosion that had turned
into an onslaught, of course, by the time
of the miners strike in )n8-.
Taking us through that magnificent
but miserable episode, Berlin rightly
notes the heroic role of both NUR and
NUS activists on the ground, in solidarity
with the miners. Nor can the leadership
of either union be faulted: each
instructed its members to block the
R e v i e w
S e c t i o n
edited by Adam D. Morton
Capital & Class #92 190
movement of coal, in contrast with the
caution of the 1cc, whose policy of new
realism was expressed in its refusal to
endorse sympathy action. Unfortun-
ately, the courage of rail workers across
the country, many of whom were
threatened with the sack for their refusal
to move coal, was scotched by the Tories
strategic focus on road transport.
Nevertheless, Never on Our Knees
produces more nuggets from the period,
among them the impressive unity of rail
workers in the Nottinghamshire area
who, despite their family connections to
working miners, followed the Ncn
instruction to block the transportation
of coal: I appealed basically to the
loyalty of our members. In the )n8os
you cant take that for granted; but the
amazing thing is that it did happen,
recalled Ncn leader Jimmy Knapp (p.
-). This action itself triggered a
management lockout, which in turn
provoked threats of industrial action
throughout the summer of )n8.
It was against this background that
the NUR began to conduct its own pay
negotiations, which were initially met
with the predictable low pay oer, tied
to productivity strings. This time,
however, the Tories directed nn to
backpedal and mollify the rail unions.
A leaked letter revealed the govern-
ments view that it was critical to avoid
the risk of militants being strengthened
in their attempts to block the movement
of coal and to make wider common
cause with the miners (p. --). nn duly
improved its oer, and the rail unions
threatened action was called o.
The Ncn leadership could now be
reproached for, in Berlins words,
failing to open up a second front to
help the miners win; and so it was. A
)n86 conference resolution argued, At
a time when we could have stood side
by side with the miners and others, a
better deal could have been obtained
not only for us but for the miners too.
An activist, gutted by the defeat of the
miners, agreed: I think had our leader-
ship done what it should have done,
along with the leaders of the other main
trade unions, we wouldnt be sat here
with all the problems we have today.
For rail workers, this view was
confirmed by the grim reality that After
the miners strike, management strutted.
There was no doubt about it. And in
the railways sister industry, seafaring,
a series of draconian assaults took place,
culminating in late-)n8 when the head
of P&O announced wholesale layos and
weekly shifts of )68 hours for ferry
operators.
The strike that resulted ranks as one
of the many famous lost cause strikes
of the )n8os; and indeed, the strikers
caustically referred to their dispute as
the seamens Wapping (p. 6). Despite
their heroic stand in defence not only of
their own conditions but of passenger
safety, and despite Ncns General
Secretary McCluskies defiant pledge to
live in a tent on Clapham Common
rather than give in to pressure from the
courts, the seafarers dispute was sunk
by a mixture of company chicanery and
blatantly class-based legal judgements.
This depressing episode seemed to
echo the general demoralisation of the
movement in the late-)n8os. But within
barely a year, rank-and-file militancy was
backand scoring some resounding
successes. On the London Underground,
managements attempt to push ahead with
a restructuring programme called Action
Stations was met by a massive vote for a
dierent kind of actionof the industrial
variety. And at BR, an attempt to introduce
the decentralisation of collective bargain-
ing met with overwhelming support from
191 Book Reviews
the membership for a series of one-day
strikes. These parallel actions produced
near panic in the same management that
had so recently been strutting in the wake
of the miners defeat; and both forced
significant retreats, on the parts of BR and
London Underground respectively.
As the author comments, the events
of the summer of )n8n signalled
something more profound than purely
instrumental gains: what the )n8n
strikes did was to demonstrate that
collective action and solidarity were not
a thing of the past. The demoralisation
that had followed the miners defeat
was well and truly over.
These themes of resurgence and
renewalconfirmed by press reactions
to the signalworkers strike of )nn:
The dinosaurs are not extinct!
screamed the Sunday Timesare
nuggets in the analysis of trade unionism
that appear to endorse an optimistic
renewal thesis of resistance sparked by
management aggression see Peter
Fairbrother, e.g. Trade Unions at the
Crossroads, (Mansell zooo). At London
Underground, A mood of militancy
arose in response to [managements]
new regime that would feed into a
wider, nationwide strike wave (p. 6).
And even in the wake of its failure to
halt privatisation, the RMT paradoxically
began to rediscover a new found sense
of strength by means of locally targeted
industrial action aimed at winning
improved pay and conditions there
was a rising tide of militancy amongst
train crews (pp. )8, )).
Meanwhile, some of the weaker
aspects of the n:1, internally, were being
challenged by the rise of a dissident
caucus, the Campaign for a Fighting and
Democratic Union, and by a new
national leadership in the person of
awkward squad member Bob Crow,
elected in zooz. The union now moved
swiftly in pursuit of a decisive organising
strategy, which secured something of a
renaissance of representation (p. )6-).
The n:1 is currently the fastest-growing
union in Britain.
In a period of still-lacklustre union
renewal, whats the secret? There isnt
one. As one RMT organising ocer puts
it, We are not inventing any great new
theories You just have to roll your
sleeves up and graft as hard as you can.
There are not a lot of great new scientific
models (p. )6). This is an interesting
echo of the kind of comments I have
heard from other organisers in the
faster-growing sectors of the movement,
in the course of my current research
into organising strategies: remarks such
as Theres no magic bullet, and Its
not rocket science.
In the case of the RMT, however, there
was one magic bullet: the unions
involvement in the fight against apart-heid
in South Africa. The Ncn had consistently
expressed its opposition to apartheid, but
resolutions turned into action after an
activist from sannwc (the South African
Railway and Harbour Workers Union)
visited the union in )n86. This prompted
the formation of Rail Against Apartheid
(naa), a rank-and-file, workplace-based
campaign that used vigorous direct action
to oppose visits to BR hotels by South
African sports organisations.
The thought of the South African
unionists resistance remained with n:1
organisers. As one activist put it, In
South Africa if they didnt organise they
would starve. The intensity of their work
was inspirational What I learned from
sannwc was the importance of the
rank and file element to everything we
do (p. )66).
Commenting on this seminal
experience in Never on Our Knees, Mike
Capital & Class #92 192
Berlin notes that There were some who
questioned whether trade unions should
concern themselves with struggles that
were not immediately linked to bread
and butter issues [or felt that] trade
unionists should not get involved in
political campaigns (p. )o). Clearly,
the message is that they should and they
can. But this history also shows how the
experience of organisation and
resistance around bread-and-butter
issues itself opens up the consciousness
of rank-and-file trade unionists to a
wider political world.
Andreas Bieler
The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and
EMU in Times of Global Restructuring
Manchester University Press, zoo6, z88 pp.
ISBN o-)no-z-z-z (hbk) --
Reviewed by Chris Howell
The neoliberal project of capitalist
restructuringwhich began in the fight-
back against labours gains across
western Europe in the late )n6os and
early-)nos; was formalised in the
election of Thatcher and Reagan; and
has extended today into what were once
social-democratic, socialist, and even
communist partiesis now entering its
second quarter-century. The landscape
of capitalist political economies is sca-
rcely recognisable as the same landscape
of that earlier period, and the industrial,
political and ideological inuence of
labour has declined everywhere, even
in those rare countries in which its
organisational strength remains high.
Nonetheless, in the absence of an
alternative mass oppositional force, the
labour movement is still the pivotal
social actor in resisting the hegemonic
neoliberal project. In this context, there
is no more urgent question than that of
whether labour retains the capacity and
the willingness to contest neoliberalism.
It is this question that Bieler addresses
in this important book.
The book surveys the way European
unionsnational union confederations,
national unions, European union
confederations and European sectoral
unionsresponded to Economic and
Monetary Union (c:c), which can be
understood broadly as a particular,
regionalised incarnation of neo-
liberalism. Bielers focus is on policy,
strategy and ideology, and he poses a
series of questions in order to examine
those areas of interest. In policy terms,
do European unions oppose or promote
EMU? In strategic terms, do they engage
in European-level cooperation with
other unions or with institutions of the
proto-European state, or do they limit
their actions to the national arena? In
ideological terms, have unions broadly
accepted the neoliberal project, or do
they still challenge it, albeit with
diminished capacities and resources?
The empirical core of the book is
heavily based on interviews conducted
with union ocials between zoo) and
zoo, and on primary source material
in the form of union statements and
193 Book Reviews
other documents. Bieler has examined
unions in Britain, Sweden, France,
Germany and Austria, along with
European-level sectoral unions and
confederations. The book is carefully
researched, and we are in Bielers debt
for his painstaking work in identifying
the positions of such a wide swathe of
European unions as he has undertaken.
Bielers empirical investigation of
trade union responses to c:c is built on
a theoretical approach that bridges the
literature of the fields of International
Political Economy and Comparative
Political Economy in order to theorise
the role of labour as an international
actor. The approach is a neo-Gramscian
historical materialism, familiar to
readers of this journal, in which ideas,
material capabilities and institutions all
play a role. Bielers primary theoretical
contribution is to identify three class
fractions within the labour movement
workers involved in transnational
production; in national production for
export; and in national production for
domestic consumptioneach of which
can be expected to have dierent mat-
erial interests in globalisation in general,
and in c:c in particular. This division
within the labour movement has become
increasingly more important as global-
isation has progressed. This theoretical
insight produces the first hypothesis of
the book: that the more exposed a
group of workersand the union to
which they belongis to global
competitive pressures, the more likely
the workers are to favour EMU, while
workers engaged in national production
for domestic consumption will be less
amenable to the neoliberal package
embodied in c:c. The second hypo-
thesis of the book follows from the
importance of state institutions in
Bielers theoretical architecture. He
argues that when unions retain a high
degree of inuence within national
political institutions, they tend to focus
their actions and strategies at the
national level, while unions that have lost
national inuence will instead look to the
European level, and to cooperation with
other union movements in order to exert
some policy inuence.
One of this books many strengths is
in its eective critique of the arguments
of those who downplay the significance
of globalisation; and another is the way
it avoids clutching at straws in its pes-
simistic analysis of the potential of
various European Union institutions
and policies to counteract the neoliberal
tendencies of c:c. Bielers assessment
is sobering, and it makes all the more
stark the choice facing unions as they
decide how to respond to the challenge
of c:c. Using foreign direct investment
as the primary measure of the trans-
nationalisation of production, Bieler
identifies a rough hierarchy in his five
case-study countries, with Britain and
Sweden the most heavily characterised
by transnationalisation and Austria the
least. France and Germany are inter-
mediate cases, characterised more by
internationalisation (trade), while
transnationalisation is of more recent
vintage for them compared with their
northern European neighbours. With
this hierarchy in place, the remainder
of the book investigates the position of
national union confederations and of
both transnational-sector and domestic-
sector national unions towards EMU, in
order to see how well those positions
map onto the actual size and importance
of those sectors in each country.
The empirical chapters that lay out
the results of this investigation are
closely argued, and rely on a wealth of
evidence. Summarising Bielers
Capital & Class #92 194
conclusions is dicult because of the
attention to nuance and detail that he
demonstrates; but crudely speaking,
three factors stand out in explaining the
position of European unions towards
EMU and European cooperation. First,
the materialist case underlying Bielers
first hypothesisthat the degree of
involvement in transnational and
international production shapes views
of EMUdoes have broad explanatory
power, and can explain the bulk of
dierences within each country between
the views of pro- and anti-EMU unions.
Second: ideology matters, and on
occasion overwhelms the materialist
argument. This is shown most clearly in
French unions, where opposition to
neoliberalism runs much deeper, in
most of the unions, than one would
expect based on their sectoral location.
Third: timing also matters. Opposition
to EMU during the period covered by
Bielers interviews was weaker among
unions in countries that had already
signed up for EMU than it was elsewhere.
For German unions, EMU was a done
deal, so that opposition made little
senseunions were more likely to call
for various forms of social compen-
sation; whereas for British and Swedish
unions, the question of whether to join
EMU remained a live issue.
This is a powerful book, and its
overall conclusion serves as an eective
critique of the notion that European
unions have ideologically capitulated to
neoliberalism. The concluding chapter
also oers some (faint) grounds for
optimism based upon the emerging
dialogue between labour movements
and new social movements in the
European Social Forum meetings.
An intellectual project as wide-
ranging as this is bound to generate a
few questions. Bieler does not address
the dierent degrees of democratic
participation within union decision-
making across his cases. In order for the
material position of union members in
production to shape union policy, union
organisational structures must transmit
the interests of members to policy
makers. Union confederations and
sectoral unions dier widely in their
internal structures, and it is surely worth
investigating whether these dierences
explain some of the anomalies in union
policy that Bieler uncovers. The role of
ideology may also be exaggerated in this
book. The primar y evidence for
occasions on which ideology trumps
material position comes from France;
but it is not clear that French unions are
functional equivalents to unions in
Britain, Sweden, Germany or Austria.
Outside the public sector, they are not
mass membership organisations, and
they function instead as interlocutors to
and for the French state in times of
social crisis. As such, one would not
expect a material argument to have the
same purchase here.
Finallyand this is as much an
observation as a criticismthe book
displays a striking theoretical
defensiveness towards its materialist
claims. Repeatedly, and even using the
same phrases, Bieler rejects the charge
of economic determinism and any claims
that union policy positions can be read
o from their location in the production
process. True; but on the evidence of
this book, economic determinism has a
remarkable amount of explanatory
powercertainly a great deal more than
other factors, and as such is worth
showcasing. The American writer Bob
Fitch is reputed to have said that vulgar
Marxism can explain about no per cent
of the social world, but that social
science is only interested in the
195 Book Reviews
remaining )o per cent. It is not clear who
or what is being warded o by repeated
invocations of the talisman that material
interests are not a sucient explanation
of social action; but when exemplary
scholarship of the kind displayed in this
book demonstrates the power of
historical materialism, it should be
noted, even celebrated, and certainly
not hidden from view.
Roger V. Seifert and Tom Sibley
United They Stood: The Story of the 20022004
Firefighters Strike
Lawrence & Wishart, zoo-, o pp.
ISBN )-no--oo)8- (pbk) )8.n-
Reviewed by Richard Leitch
Public-sector reform has become a key
political battleground in recent years.
In the UK, it has been the centrepiece of
New Labours domestic policy since
zoo). Elsewhere, struggles have marked
the neoliberal restructuring of health,
education and the provision of other
basic amenities (especially water) across
the globe. Seifert and Sibleys analysis
shows how the ck firefighters dispute
of zoozzoo clearly belongs within this
overarching dynamica regular
industrial clash over pay, hijacked by the
government and used to further its
project of public-sector modernisation
in opposition to organised labour.
In terms of the books methodology,
the authors oer a time-line of the events
that punctuate this lengthy dispute, plus
an analysis of its political context. This
leads to certain imbalances in the book.
Extensive coverage is given to the
recollections of people who were
involved in each stage of the dispute, at
the expense of a more structured
approach; and particular issues are
covered again and again as they surface
at dierent points in the proceedings.
Other key eventsespecially the nego-
tiations of late-November zoozare
covered in such detail, since we hear
from all those involved, that the minutiae
of the dispute gains precedence over the
underlying concerns for the Left. Most
significantly here, the authors show too
little concern for the importance of the
Lefts having an eective strategy against
the public-sector reform programme in
general.
They certainly appreciate the wider
ambitions of New Labour policy, since
their framing of the dispute within this
larger dynamic of public-sector reform
is one of the best aspects of their work.
Here, the Blairite neoliberal equation of
modernisation with marketisation is
laid bare. Its re-creation of market
constraints and conditions within public
services involves their reorganisation as
business units operating under local
management control, which is in turn
subject to tightly drafted, centrally
determined performance indicators
(targets, budgets, etc.). The resulting
conict with public-sector workforces
around issues of working practices and
industrial relations is followed all too
often by a marked deterioration in
working conditions and union inuence.
In the case of the fire service, this
modernising agenda came face-to-face
with an alternative, developed by the
Capital & Class #92 196
union (the Fire Brigades Unionrnc).
Seeking to preserve existing systems of
national joint consultation and industrial
relations alongside a substantial increase
in investment, the union wanted to frame
any moves towards locally determined
working patterns and resources within
the development of local fire-risk
plansplans that would be agreed on
by both sides, rather than being left to
local management diktats. Saving lives
and property and encouraging fire
prevention through educational prog-
rammes were the FBUs priorities, rather
than cost-cutting and exible working.
As for the dispute itself, it was
triggered by the pay claim made by the
union in spring zooz, which moved
outside the National Pay Formula in
order to recoup declining relative
wagesa move that was recognised by
both sides as significant, say Seifert and
Sibley. The employers knew that this was
their opportunity to trade substantial
pay increases for radical changes to
working practices in the Fire Service,
previously denied to them by the
operation of the pay formula (and by
successful rnc action at local level to stop
changes being imposed). The rnc,
aware that New Labours overall drive
for public-sector reform would not leave
the Fire Service unscathed, broke cover
from its established position (which had
kept it relatively secure during the
Thatcher years), and felt that central
government would look favourably upon
its claim for pay justice and its
willingness to negotiate over moder-
nisation.
As the authors point out, this would
prove to be a significant miscalculation.
Although employers were prepared to
trade pay for new working practices,
central government refused any rise that
would break its self-imposed cash limits
and its wider economic policy. Anything
above these limits was to be self-
financingpaid for through savings
made by modernisation, including job
cuts. Unable to meet the rncs pay
demands, employers were eectively
tied to the governments position; and
as the protracted negotiations unfolded,
New Labour came to play an increas-
ingly directive role. Indeed, in eect the
dispute became a test case for its prog-
ramme of public-sector reform and its
desire to act tough with the unions.
Strategically, the rnc adopted a dual
approach of action plus negotiation,
balloting its members for discontinuous
strike actiona tactic previously used
successfully to block management-
imposed changes at local level. By the
end of zooz, however, this had not
delivered any meaningful shift in the
employer/central government position.
Calling for an independent review of
the Fire Service as the solution to the
dispute, stalling in negotiations, and
refusing to talk while the threat of future
strike action lay aheadall of these were
clearly delaying tactics, used by the
employers to see if the union would
falter or lose membership support. On
the ground, rnc actions were successful
to a degreesolidly supported, with
wider labour-movement sympathybut
there was no appetite for escalating the
struggle and launching a continuous
stoppage to force the hand of central
government, according to Seifert and
Sibley. Central government intentions to
impose a settlement through the
provisions of a new Fire Bill, announced
in zoo, further signalled the balance of
forces in play.
The avenue of negotiation remained
blocked for the FBU until the intervention
of the head of the Fire Service National
Joint Council, Frank Burchill, in early
197 Book Reviews
zoo. His compromise proposals,
oering the FBU some leverage over the
implementation of changes put forward
by the employers at local level, were
accepted by the union and formed the
basis of the settlement reached in
summer zoo. Crucially, the union had
managed to secure an agreement that
locally-initiated changes would be placed
within the context of local fire-risk plans
jointly agreed on by both sides. However,
as the authors note, the success of this
move would depend on what happened
when these plans were rolled out.
In terms of its pay demands, the rnc
secured a substantial rise in firefighters
pay, a new improved pay formula, and
greater equality of pay for control-room
sta and retained firefighters. This fell
short, however, of the rncs original
claim for a o,ooo wage, leading to
significant discontent within union
ranks. Seifert and Sibley strongly
support the position of the union
leadership throughout the dispute.
Though internal factions within the
rnccentred around the ok website
and the Red Watch bulletinwere
critical of the limited strategy of discont-
inuous strike action and the outcome of
the pay claim, Seifert and Sibley main-
tain that this was about the most that
could be done or expected when the
membership had no appetite for
anything further.
More ominous are the events
surrounding the implementation of the
settlement, as recounted by Seifert and
Sibley. rnc leaders gravely
underestimated the employers and
central governments resolve to
demonstrate their increased powers
along the frontier of control within the
Fire Service. Blocking and delaying
tactics were repeatedly used in order to
frustrate the union and weaken its
resolve and unity, with stages of the pay
deal failing to be delivered on time;
control-room reorganisation being
imposed without agreement; and
working conditions whittled away. At
each stage of this lengthy saga, which
lasted fourteen months, the rnc could
oer only limited action in response
unocial, local stoppagesresisting
further management attacks on working
conditions, but unable to reverse the
overall direction of change.
For Seifert and Sibley, the rncS
campaign was a success, extracting
significant gains for its members and
retaining some say over the future
modernisation of the service. I consider
that to be an optimistic judge-ment, and
one that in fact contradicts the substance
of their analysis of the implementation
of the disputes settlement. Further-
more, as the events of the post-dispute
period show, the union remains unable
to reverse the general thrust of
modernisation. Both central govern-
ment and the employers have pressed
on with attacks on shift patterns, stang
levels, pay and job re-grading, pension
provision, and on union representation
on the National Joint Council. Local fire-
risk plans have become mere vehicles
for the cuts agenda, and public safety
has been put further at risk by moves
towards a regionalised emergency
control-room structure, reliant on
customarily dodgy private-sector i1
systems, and in hock to iri rents. (The
rnc online magazine carries extensive
coverage of these ongoing attacks.)
In addition, the sheer scale of New
Labours modernisation programme
across the whole of the public sector
clearly calls for more than the isolated
and limited actions the FBU was able to
take during zoozzoo. Four years on
from the end of thi s di spute, the
Capital & Class #92 198
marketisation juggernaut is sweeping
through ever more areas of public-
service provision, and confronting trade
unions with broadly similar problems
and issues to those the FBU faced. In
response, a number of these unions
have launched a joint campaign
Public services not private profit
including the FBU itself, now under new
leadership. What the outcome will be is
unknown as yet. What is clear, however,
is that the ultra-Left critics of the rncS
leaders during the zoozzoo dispute
were correct then and correct now in
their argument for joint action in order
to eecti vel y resi st publ i c-sector
reform. In ignoring the need for this
strategy, in their defence of the old FBU
leadership, Seifert and Sibley have
provided us with little of use to the
ongoing struggles against capitalist
modernisation.
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello
The New Spirit of Capitalism
Verso, zoo6, 6-6 pp.
ISBN )-8-6)6--8 (hbk) -.oo
Reviewed by Paul Blackledge
When the original French edition of The
New Spirit of Capitalism was published in
)nnn it immediately established a
reputation as a centrally important
contribution to recent anti-capitalist
literature. For this reason alone, both
Verso and Gregory Elliott, its translator,
are to be congratulated for producing
such a fine edition in English.
From a broadly Weberian pers-
pective, Boltanski and Chiapello argue
that capitalism, because of its frankly
absurd naturethey define it minimally
as a system based on the imperative to
unlimited accumulation of capital by formally
peaceful meansmust employ ideologies
through which the commitments to it of
individuals are realised. These ideologies
must necessarily include a more localised
justification for action than is to be found
in Adam Smiths general conse-
quentialist defence of the welfare benefits
of the free market. In particular, the
authors insist that capitalism needs to
appeal to those managers who play a
pivotal role in its reproduction so as to
provide them with, first, an exciting
model of their own potential to ourish;
second, an account of how their security
will be realised; and finally, a moral
justification of their position through
some model of capitalisms fairness. They
argue that belief systems that synthesise
these three elements can act as spirits of
capitalism, and claim that capitalism has
known three such spirits. The core of the
book is an analysis of the third of these
spirits, which, they argue, emerged in the
wake of the events of )n68. Moreover,
through a rejection of Marxs
redundant base-superstructure meta-
phor, the authors insist that spirits of
capitalism are not simply apologetic
ideologies, but that they do in fact help
shape the accumulation process.
According to Boltanski and
Chiapello, the first, entrepreneurial,
spirit of capitalism was best described
199 Book Reviews
by Sombert, and characterised that
period in which capitalism was primarily
familial in form. This spirit emerged in
the nineteenth century, and lasted until
the Great Depression of the )nos. The
second spirit of capitalism took as its
ideal not the entrepreneur but the
salaried director of the large firm, and it
was this spirit, which grew out of the
crisis of the inter-war years, that
confronted the generation of )n68. The
new spirit of capitalism evolved as this
older spirit mutated as a result of its
engagement with the critiques of the
)n6os and )nos. It is Boltanski and
Chiapellos contention that the defeats
suered by radicals in the )nos and
)n8os can, in part, be explained by the
ability of the new spirit of capitalism to
subvert those critiques and thus to
disarm the Left in the face of neo-
liberalism. Their aim is to overcome this
weakness by mapping the new spirit of
capitalism, so as to provide the tools with
which a new critique of capitalism can
be forged.
Concretely, Boltanski and Chiapellos
thesis is sustained through a close
reading of changes in French
management-theory texts between the
)n6os and )nnos. They argue that
management discourse constitutes the
form par excellence in which the spirit of
capitalism is incorporated and received,
and claim that if the new management
discourse is to act as a successful spirit
of capitalism it must be isomorphic with
globalised capitalism. However, the
new spirit of capitalism should do much
more than simply reect the changed
form of capitalism: it ought also to supply
answers to the critiques levelled at earlier
forms of capitalism through which the
previous spirit of capitalism was found
wanting. Boltanski and Chiapello locate
two general types of critique against
which capitalism has perennially been
judged: the social and the artistic; arguing
that the former draws upon the claims
that capitalism is a source of both poverty
and egoism, while the latter draws upon
the contention that capitalism is a source
both of inauthenticity and oppression.
Boltanski and Chiapello argue that
French capitals initial response to the
radicalism of the late-)n6os and early
)nos was to introduce a series of
programmes that were aimed at
answering the social critique by
endeavouring to assuage the material
consequences of capital accumulation.
However, in the wake of its failure, this
strategy was quickly dropped in favour
of an alternative that responded to the
appeals for freedom associated with the
artistic critique. Whereas the first
response to the crisis of capitalism was
articulated from within the existing
spirit of capitalism, Boltanski and
Chiapello contend that a new spirit of
capitalism emerged out of the
incorporation of the egalitarian and
anti-hierarchical rhetoric of )n68 into
subsequent management discourse. It
was this discourse that helped stymie the
radicalism of the )nos, and that
consequently contributed to the
reshaping of capitalism over the next
two decades.
At the centre of this new spirit was
the idea of lean firms working as
networks with a multitude of part-
icipants, organising work in the form of
teams or projects, intent on customer
satisfaction, and a general mobilization
of workers thanks to their leaders
vision. Indeed, it was through the
metaphor of the network, itself a
response to the artistic critique of the
)n6os, that capitalism was both
transformed and legitimised as an
egalitarian project. Through this
Capital & Class #92 200
metaphor, capitalism usurped the far
Lefts rhetoric of workers self-manage-
ment, and turned it from an anti-
capitalist to a capitalist slogan.
Despite the initial success of this new
spirit of capitalism, Boltanski and
Chiapello claim that a revived social
critique emerged in the )nnos as a
response to the increases in inequality
that followed in the train of advancing
neoliberalism. However, while the
social critique has thus been rejuve-
nated, the artistic critique has been
undermined by a Leftist discourse that
has tended to dismiss the concept of
authenticity. Against this trend,
Boltanski and Chiapello call for a
renewal of both sides of the critique of
capitalism with a view to informing a
transformation of the system in such a
way as to ameliorate the excesses of
neoliberalism. This reformist pers-
pective is rooted in the authors view
that critique can either be corrective
or radical in its intent. They suggest
that in starting from trends inherent to
the system, the former type of critique
is the more realistic; and they reject
Marxism through a (caricatured)
suggestion that Marxs theor y of
alienation undermines the search for a
normative basis within the system from
which capitalism could be challenged.
Lacking such a basis, Marxism, they
argue, tends towards Leninist elitism
through which science is imparted to the
masses from outside. By contrast, they
claim that their approach overcomes the
problem of elitism associated with
Marxism, and thus provides a sound
basis for a challenge to the spirit of
capitalism that is itself intrinsic to
capitalism.
As I noted at the outset, this study is a
formidable work, and will serve as a
standard reference on the evolution of
French thought from the )n6os to the
)nnos. Moreover, its aim of informing a
reinvigorated anticapitalism is one that
can only be welcomed in these pages.
However, there are a number of
weaknesses in Boltanski and Chiapellos
book that even sympathetic readers of
the French edition have noted. First, it is
overlong and at times repetitive: it would
have been a better and sharper book had
its length been reduced significantly.
Moreover, as Sebastian Budgen has
pointed out (New Left Review, z:), zooo),
the text lacks a com-parative dimension
by which its peculiarly French content
might have been compared to
developments of a more universal
significance: the fact that French
neoliberalism was inaugurated by
Mitterrands socialists obviously gave it
a dierent avour to the Anglophone
version. So while Cary Cooper (1ncs, z
November zoo6) is probably right to
suggest that Boltanski and Chiapellos
thesis will have a resonance in other
European countries, the book itself has
little to say about such possible
resonance. Additionally, as Michael Lwy
has argued (Thesis Eleven, no. 68, zooz),
the authors tend towards an overly
schematic presentation of the reception
of the new spirit of capitalism, which acts
to obscure the very real breaks that
occurred between the artistic critique of
)n68Lwy prefers to label the critique
romanticand the later managerial
discourse that incorporated some of this
earlier language. Finally, Alex Callinicos
has suggested (Resources of Critique, zoo6)
that despite the obvious power of
Boltanski and Chiapellos work, a
consequence of their rejection of Marxs
basesuperstructure metaphor is that
their analysis of management texts is ill
equipped to judge the gap between
societys real structure and its ideological
201 Book Reviews
representation of that structure. He
points out that while The New Spirit of
Capitalism therefore provides a rich
resource for an Ideologiekritik of modern
capitalist civilisation, it falls short of
providing one itself.
Notwithstanding these criticisms, the
importance of Boltanski and Chiapellos
work cannot be denied, and it is for this
reason that it should command the
attention of all readers of Capital &
Class.
Peter Linebaugh
The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the
Eighteenth Century
Verso, zoo6, nz pp. (second edition)
ISBN )-8-n8-6-z (pbk) )).nn
Reviewed by Trevor Bark
Coming as it does at a time of
international and domestic conict and
disputes over lawover competing
definitions of justice and rightthe
reprinting by Verso of this exemplary
work of historical materialism in the
British Marxist historian tradition is most
welcome. Peter Linebaugh, a student
and comrade of E.P. Thompson, has
revisited here the political and economic
transformations that were necessary to
change feudalism into capitalism, which
were not simply a question of regime or
law and enforcement substitution, since
these alterations happened on a
piecemeal basis over centuries. The
main story in the history from below
approach is the protest and resistance
that the proto-working class was engaged
in during its struggles for survival.
The book begins with an exploration
of the relationship between the organised
death of living labour (capital punishment)
and the oppression of the living by dead
labour (the punishment of capital). This
is not merely a sartorial literary ourish: it
describes state terror at crucial times of
economic change. A hanging at Tyburn in
eighteenth-century London was never
only punishment, just as death by lethal
injection in the twenty-first century USA
is an active part of the war between classes.
The life histories of the ),)z men
and women who were hanged on the
gallows at Tyburn form the basis of this
book. A handful were selected to be
hung every six weeksa legal
massacrebecause they had been
found guilty of breaking the death
statutes written by the ruling and
propertied classes. Their lives and class
experience are portrayed here through
the exploration of the wage form,
working practices, and the new
international division of labour.
It portrays the interrelations between
dierent peoplesAfro-American,
Irish, Jewish and otherwhose class
consciousness was informed by slavery
and imperialism (e.g. by the plantations
in the West Indies), and who were active
in resistance in London and beyond.
Londons black population alone
formed approximately 6 per cent of
the general population in )8o. Britains
empire was formed by its predominant
maritime operations, and the empire and
capitalism grew through super-
Capital & Class #92 202
exploitation, as sailors came from all
over the world and helped to form
London into the worlds leading
cosmopolitan city. This in turn formed
its nemesis: the proletariat.
Highwaymen formed a part of this
class composition; and these former
artisans driven into highway robbery by
hard times provide an example of a major
theoretical innovation famously
provided by Thompson et al. ()n-): the
social crime thesis. Here we see these
former butchers using knowledge from
their tradethe provisioning routes into
London, often across commonswhich
would be the location in which they
relieved merchants and gentlemen
farmers of their money.
A further crucial point is that the
social-protest aspect of this kind of
action is sometimes blurred, with the
activity being regarded as straight-
forward crime, since others apart from
the rich may be involved, such as
passengers and coach drivers. However,
Thompson et al. ()n-) responded to
this when they argued that there is not
nice social crime here and nasty crime
over there. A focus on legality merely
leads to a cul-de-sac. Instead, it is the
social relations in action that are impor-
tant as they develop; and therefore social
crime is always becoming. Indeed, it is
possible to speculate that contemporary
carjacking is analogous to highway
robbery. The sources Linebaugh uses
bring his subjects alive, and this is
instructive for the present period.
Gangsta rap uses imagery of the states
power to punish with prison and
execution, just as the eighteenth-century
picaresque proletariat celebrated drink,
glorious robberies and robbers, and
cursed the police.
Albions Fatal Tree (E. P. Thompson
et al., )n-; now out of print, regret-
tably) recorded how those who were
criminalised could not be separated
from the other ordinary men and women
who formed the working masses as a
whole, so that they were not marginal
to the class experience of dramatic
economic change. The imposition of the
wage form was enabled through the
enclosure of land and the ending of
customary appropriation by the masses,
which ended peoples ability to rely on
the land for subsistence. The criminal-
isation of custom on the land was
accompanied by a redefinition of crime
in the workplace, as the new capitalism
sought to end the feudal tradition of
artisans and others rights to a
proportion of their labour. Old social
relations were displaced and new ones
introduced; and descriptions included
in The London Hanged are of watch-
making, shoemaking, hatting, tailoring
and service.
Quakers were once thought odd for
insisting on a fixed price at market, but
the non-negotiable price gradually
became normalised. Shops too, grad-
ually replaced markets, although
throughout the nineteenth century,
informal marketing was still the norm in
London at least, as costermongers (fruit
and vegetable sellers) traded through its
streets. Londons extensive dockyards
and their labourers are examined in
detail in the book: the class struggle over
the wage form here lasted for decades,
and was not decisively won until )8o),
when the right to the customary
appropriation of chipsspare wood
used as furniture, energy, housing, and
for salewas finally replaced by a wage
allowance. Wages previously might be
paid six-monthly, if they were paid at
all.
The criminalised population was not
dierentin fact, it was the general
203 Book Reviews
population, and its criminalisation
represented expropriation and exploit-
ation by the ruling class. The technical
recomposition of the work process
through for tification, Benthams
panopticon, new laws and new policing
practices; and, ultimately, by the criminal
sanction, all disciplined the proto-
working class to the factory. The means
by which it protested included the
Gordon riotsfor the first time an
international proletariat directly
attacked the imperial ruling class at its
major institutions (p. o)and other
disturbances. Many other methods were
used too, and Linebaugh cogently
argues that theft is essential to
understanding class conict and
Empire, in the sense of Negris use of
the word, as a strategy that recouped
unpaid wages, compensated for minimal
pay, protested against mistreatment, and
re-established some dignity.
The British Marxist historians work
as a whole, of which The London Hanged
is a part, enables readers to develop a
historical understanding of the way the
informal economy was built. History has
not only happened; it is also a recurring
tragedy and a possible future. Vast areas
of the globe have never experienced full
employment; instead, semi-proletarian-
isation is the historical norm alongside
other informal economic practices, and
an observation of the planets slums
currently only confirm this. The growing
trend for capital punishment around the
world started during the capitalist crisis
of the mid-)nos; and capital means, at
the very least, discipline and punishment
for the lost souls and others yet to
depart.
Luis Enrique Alonso and Miguel Martnez Lucio (eds.)
Employment Relations in a Changing Society:
Assessing the Post-Fordist Paradigm
Palgrave MacMillan, zoo6, o pp.
ISBN o--no- (hbk) -o
Reviewed by Andrew Smith
There can be little doubt that Western
societies have undergone major
economic, political and social changes
over the last thirty years. It has been
argued that this is reected in the
transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist
employment model. Fordism was assoc-
iated with mass production and mass
consumption, hierarchical control,
centralised collective bargaining, and
state intervention in employment
regulation. Economic globalisation,
deregulation, privatisation, the
reorganisation of production and the use
of exible employment are all features of
post-Fordism. This edited collection
brings together academics from the UK
and Spaintwo countries that have
experienced major changes in
employment practices, which have
brought about heightened job insecurity
and work intensification. The book
questions whether the movement to post-
Fordism is a stable development, and
highlights the contradictory nature of
these transitions.
Employment Relations in a Changing
Society consists of fourteen chapters
Capital & Class #92 204
divided into four distinct sections. Part
I is the introductory section, containing
a chapter by each of the editors. In
chapter ), Martnez Lucio contextual-
ises the debates over post-Fordism and
the changing economic and social
nature of work. He emphasises the fact
that change is multilayered, with
unstable systems of production and
consumption, as new forms of conict
emerge. In the following chapter, Alonso
discusses the totalitarian paternalism of
Fordist production, which was marked
by standardisation and uniformisation.
He argues that post-Fordism continues
to utilise Fordist-style methods of
production and control, as Fordist
consumption patterns remain, albeit in
a more fragmented way.
Part ii examines the extent to which
labour markets and organisational forms
have changed. In chapter , Lasierra
articulately states that there has been a
decentralisation of production due to
economic pressures, combined with a
centralisation of power and decision-
making. The rise in non-standard
employment contracts and capitals urge
for greater exibility mean that labour
is increasingly regarded as a mere cost
of production, and Lasierra points out
the weaknesses in this short-termist view
of employees. In the chapter that
follows, Prieto continues the debate
about businesss need for more exible
employment. He argues that this has
resulted in the degradation of
employment in Spain; yet that such
changes have not been passively
accepted by the working population,
since there has been a series of general
strikes in opposition to them. In chapter
-, MacKenzie and Forde examine the
rise in subcontracting and the use of
temporary employment agencies. While
this is a major redefinition of the
employment relationship, they argue
that it is laced with contradictions. They
eloquently demonstrate the way in
which, rather than generating
decentralisation, bureaucracy recon-
figures itself as firms attempt to regain
control over the supply of labour.
Part iii focuses on the role of the state
in inuencing changes in employ-ment.
Albarracin, in chapter 6, examines the
role of the Spanish government and the
European Union in inuencing moves
towards full employment. He argues that
many of the jobs on oer are of poor
quality and that, while unemployment
has fallen, fear of it places many workers
in a particularly vulnerable position.
Leading on from this in an excellent
chapter, Greenwood and Stuart critic-
ally investigate the neoliberal inuence
on the politics of lifelong learning in
the EU. They argue that learning is
becoming a form of social control, in
which business needs have placed the
responsibility for training on the
individual. The authors call for training
to be more inclusive and for it to be
reframed as learning for life, in order
to meet the broader needs of the
community. In chapter 8, Kirkpatrick
assesses the commercialisation of the
public sector. The transition from public
administration to new public manage-
ment shares some of the features of
post-Fordism, since it also involves
decentralisation and exibility. Paradox-
ically, this has created a neo-bureaucrat-
isation, with heightened centralised
control and proceduralism.
Part iv covers changing working
relations, family structures, consump-
tion patterns and forms of collectivism.
Gardiner and Martnez Lucio, in
chapter n, critically examine post-
Fordist claims that individualisation and
exibility are positive developments for
205 Book Reviews
employees. In a well written and well
researched chapter, they show how the
labour force continues to be gendered,
with new forms of exclusion and
segregation emerging. In the next
chapter, Alonso analyses both social
developments in consumption and
growing inequalities, calling for
democratic consumption and co-
existence. In chapter )), Landwerlin
discusses changes in family structures
together with the gendered nature of the
labour market, in keeping with Gardiner
and Martnez Lucio, and also looks at
the challenges facing the welfare state.
The two chapters that follow oer a
more positive account of social change,
with possibilities for a re-collectivisation
of labour under a new politics of
production. In chapter )z, Paul Stewart
convincingly argues that labour-process
analyses must refocus on the collective
worker, rather than on the individual.
He advances critical social-relations
theory in order to help understand
changing forms of collectivism, along
with formal and informal workplace
struggles. Martnez Lucio, in chapter ),
attempts to unravel the complexities of
the changes facing trade unions. He
emphasises that the demise of unions is
not inevitable, and that there are
increasingly more rights at work; and
therefore, he argues in this refreshing
analysis, there are opportunities and
possibilities for trade unions within new
arenas. In the final chapter, Hyman calls
for a new moral economy in the
construction of a progressive Europe.
Employment Relations in a Changing
Society is an impressive book that
critically challenges the assumption that
there has been a paradigm shift from
Fordism to post-Fordism; but this is not
to assert that Fordism was all-encom-
passing. The contributors successfully
demonstrate the unevenness in the
outcome of recent developments, which
consist of some worrying trends
involving work intensification and
insecurity. They also highlight the
instabilities and internal conicts within
capitalism, together with new potential
opportunities for organised labour.
Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh and Thea Lee
The Field Guide to the Global Economy (revised
edition)
The New Press, zoo-, zo8 pp.
ISBN )--6--8n-6-6 (pbk) )).nn
Reviewed by David Layfield
This new edition of The Field Guide to
the Gl obal Economy comprises an
excellent introduction for anyone
interested in globalisation and in the
various oppositional movements that
have grown in response to it. It makes
ideal background reading for students
on courses concerning new social
movements, globalisation or inter-
national political economy, and is an
ideal introductory text since its authors
assume no prior knowledgeonly an
interest in and concern with our
contemporary global economic
predicament.
The book is, according to the
authors, structured to help nurture
both the debate around the global
Capital & Class #92 206
economy and the actions that people
take to get involved (p. ). It contains
chapters on the history and status of
global ows of goods and services,
money and people; it explains what is
new about globalisation today; it lists the
ten principal claims of globalisations
backers; it sketches the institutions and
policies driving globalisation; and, of
course, describes peoples eorts to slow
down or change the course of
globalisation (p. ). This is an ambitious
list but the book lives up to it admirably,
covering a lot of ground in an accessible
format, supported by a wealth of very
useful statistics and graphics.
The opening chapter presents a
necessarily brief historical sketch of the
contemporary global economy. In its
coverage of the period from )nz to )n-,
we learn how the European powers built
their empires and, in the process,
systematically undermined the ind-
igenous economies of the people they
colonised. It was this colonial expansion
that produced important antecedents to
globalisation, as colonies became sources
of cheap labour, raw materials and
markets for mass-produced goods.
Moving on to the present day, the
authors discuss trade patterns, showing
that the principal goods traded today are
petroleum products (8. per cent of
world trade); textiles (6.z per cent of
world trade) and motor vehicles (8. per
cent of world trade). The authors also
highlight the scale and significance of the
three most lucrative forms of illegal trade.
These are the drugs trade (whose
monetary value is estimated at $oo
billion per year); weapons (monetary
value unknown); and the tracking of
people. Of this last form of illegal trade
there are, say the authors, four million
people who fall victim to tracking
networks that coerce people into the sex
trade, sweatshops and domestic
servitude, generating profits of $- to $
billion (p. )). Surprisingly lucrative is
the illegal trade in animals, worth $6
billion a year and providing raw materials
for jewellery, medicines and handbags.
Subsequent chapters contain a
wealth of detail about the current
politicaleconomic state of the world.
Through these chapters, the authors
demonstrate the human costs of
globalisation in both the First and the
Third World. Chapter z draws attention
to the migration of manufacturing jobs
from the North to the South, globally.
The migration of manufacturing to the
South and East has opened up great
dierentials between the condition of
workers in the United States and in
China, for example. Where cs factory
workers receive $z) per hour, according
to The Field Guide, Chinese factory
workers receive no for essentially the
same job (p. )). It is not only manu-
facturing work that is at risk of jobs
migration: there are, the authors say,
),o6,)o service-sector jobs in the cs
that are at risk of outsourcing. The
occupations most at risk include
administrative support workers, finan-
cial support workers, and computer
professionals. The kind of work that is
likely to replace those jobs in rich
countries is also a concern so that, for
example, of the ten occupations
projected to have the highest growth
rate in the coming years, five have
median pay that is below the poverty line
for a family of four (p. ).
Discussion of these changes leads
naturally to the two problems that form
the centre of the authors concern. The
first of these is the level of economic
inequality both within and between
countries. The second is the size and
power of transnational corporations.
207 Book Reviews
In relation to inequality between
individuals, the extent of the inequity
the authors uncover is breathtaking. In
zoo, for example, the wealth of the
worlds -8 billionaires ($).n trillion) is
greater than the combined incomes of
the poorest half of humanity (p. --).
During the )nnos, moreover, inequality
within countries grew worse; or at least,
it grew worse if those countries adopted
the IMF, World Bank and WTO neoliberal
policy agenda of privatisation, liberal-
isation and free trade. The number of
people living on less than cs$z per day
increased everywhere, except in East
Asia, between )n8) and zooo (pp. -o
-).
In relation to the power of cor-
porations, the authors contend that
leading firms have increased their
economic and political clout while
contributing less to society in jobs and
tax revenues (p. -8). In order to de-
monstrate this, the book contains
detailed discussions about several firms,
with Wal-Mar t, Nike and General
Motors being given particular attention.
We learn, for example, that manufact-
uring corporations produce more goods
and earn higher profits with fewer
workers than they did twenty-five years
ago (p. -8). We also learn that Nike has
moved its production from the cs to
Japan, then to South Korea and Taiwan,
then to China and finally to Vietnam, in
pursuit of cheap, compliant labour. We
also learn that General Motors moved
much of its production from the cs to
Mexico in order to take advantage of
lower wages and compliant labour
forces there. It is here that a potential
problem begins to emerge. Reading this,
a question came to mind: the question
of whether Nike and General Motors
are simply bad cor-porations, run by
particularly ruthless executives doing
the work of spectacularly greedy share-
holders; or whether there is a wider
context. That is, whether there is
something about free markets, and
about capitalism in general, that rewards
such behaviour.
This question comes into sharper
focus when the authors discuss the
background to globalisation. Here, their
principal concern is with the size of
corporations. On page 6n, for example,
they list the worlds hundred largest
economic entities. Of these, only 8 are
countries, and the other -z are corpor-
ations, of which Wal-Mart is the largest
with a turnover of $z6,-z-,ooo,ooo in
zooz. This places Wal-Mart between
Belgium and Sweden in terms of
economic size. This is very interesting;
but the reader is left less than certain of
what the comparison demon-strates.
The political context suggests, in fact,
that the authors might not be comparing
like with like. Corporations do not (yet)
possess sovereign power over the
geographical territories in which they
operate. They do not, consequently,
have law-making powers or a monopoly
on the use of force in those territories.
The nations in which the corporations
operate could demand that the
corporations leave; the corporations
cannot demand that the people of those
same nations leave. Again, there are
specifically capitalist reasons for the
growth of giant corporations that the
authors do not consider. There is little
discussion of how or why corporations
reached the size of contemporary
oligopolies.
The authors of The Field Guide hint at
a solution to these problems when they
move on to talk about the political forces
behind globalisation. They discuss the
broken promises of privatisation, and also
the growth of monopolies and duopolies
Capital & Class #92 208
alongside deregulation of business
activities. These poisonous results follow
from policies that were developed in
economic and business-led think-tanks,
and which have been adopted around the
world over the last thirty years or so. If
the description that the authors oer of
this process were taken a little further,
then we could see something like class
action behind globalisation, as the ruling
class captures government, dispossesses
public services, and silences labour
unions. Once again, the question could
be raised as to whether this is a result of
the system being run by bad people, or
whether such excesses of inequality and
power always follow as accumulation
proceeds and crises develop.
The final chapter oers a brief sketch
of movements against globalisation in its
current form. The authors include a
short paragraph on everything from
politically aware pop music to labour
unions and anarchist groups. The
strength of this approach is to
demonstrate the wide variety that
opposition can take, and to show that it
is potentially as global as capital itself.
None of the material contained in
this book is entirely new. What the
authors do is to bring it together in a
new and accessible format. As such, it
forms an excellent basic introduction,
and I am already using it with some of
my Japanese Engl i sh-l anguage
students.
Penny Green and Tony Ward (eds.)
State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption
Pluto Press, zoo, z-) pp.
ISBN o---)8- (pbk) ).nn
Reviewed by Maria Markantonatou
The study of state crimecrimes
committed by statesconstitutes one of
the most crucial fields of criminology,
for it reveals and examines various
aspects of the modern states structure
and its legitimating power in relation to
crimes committed by governments.
Although crimes committed by states are
the most serious ones, research about
them has so far not been able to provide
a concrete and profound sociological
analysis on the topic. This is exactly
where Penny Green and Tony Wards
contribution lies, in the form of State
Cr ime: Gover nments, Viol ence and
Corruption.
An important issue relating to state
crime is that of its very nature. If a crime
is an act defined by the state and its
institutional mechanisms, then who is to
define state crime? The epistemological
problem of defining state crime has
probably been one of the reasons why
the research category state crime has
been marginalised by contemporary
criminology. The authors oer a new
approach to state crime, defining it as
state organisational deviance involving
the violation of human rights (p. z), and
they underline the role of civil society in
defining state actions as illegitimate
where they violate legal rules or shared
moral beliefs (p. ). In their Gramscian
perspective on civil society, they argue
that civil society can label state actions
as deviant (p. ) and can therefore push
209 Book Reviews
such actions to the centre of the public
agenda.
In order to explain the concepts
involved in their definition of state crime,
they focus on three aspects. First, they
discuss the state not only in Marxist
termson the basis of Engelss notion of
the state and of Gramscis concept of
hegemonybut also with reference to
Webers monopoly of the legitimate use
of force (p. z). As they note, All states,
from the most autocratic to the most
liberal, share one crucial characteristic:
they claim an entitlement to do things
which if anyone else did them would
constitute violence and extortion (p. ).
Second, using the term organisational
deviance they categorise state crime as a
form of crime along with corporate crime,
organised crime, and the neglected area
of crime by charities, churches and other
non-profit bodies (p. -). According to
the authors, basic criminological concepts
such as control, motivation and
opportunity structures can be applied to
organisational deviance just as well as to
individuals (p. -). Third, they use the
concept of human rights, as ratified by
the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights ()n8) and by the International
Covenants on Civil and Political Rights
()n66) and on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights ()n66), and seek to explain
the enormous gap between the
normative ideal of human rights and
the selective and hypocritical promotion
of such rights by powerful states and
transnational institutions such as the
World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. The role that human
rights play in the strategies of such states
and institutions can in our view be
understood in terms of the concept of
global hegemony (p. n).
Green and Ward explore various
forms of state crime, and use case
studies from dierent parts of the world.
Corruption, a form of so-called white-
collar (and state) crime, which
victimises people indirectly and without
their knowledge (p. ))), includes the
form of simple bribery, of an exchange
of favours between state and non-state
actors, or of the embezzlement which is
tolerated as an informal perk of an
ocial position (p. ))). After theorising
corruption as a means (p. )) and as an
organisational goal (p. )6), they analyse
aspects of clientelism and
patrimonialism (p. z)). While
clientelism is related to a pattern of
social exchange between patrons,
normally the holders of political
administrative ocers, and clients (p.
z)), patrimonialism is the antithesis of
bureaucratic government: it is the form
clientelism takes where a rationallegal
bureaucracy does not exist (p. z)). As
examples of clientelism and
patrimonialism, the authors use the
pattern of Iraq under Saddam Hussein,
and also the genocide in Rwandaa
crisis triggered by falling coee prices
and the World Banks structural
adjustment programme, which led to an
increasing concentration of power in the
shadowy and corrupt Akazu network
centered on the family of the Presidents
wife (p. z).
Also, in order to explore the political
economy of statecorporate crime,
which they consider to be a second form
of state crime, they focus on three cases:
the case of the shrimp industry in Latin
America; that of the oil industry in
Nigeria; and the US and British arms
trade. They show how, after the rapid
boom in shrimp aquaculture in the
)n8os, multinational aquaculture
corporations developed large-scale
shrimp farms in countries like Honduras,
Guatemala and Ecuador, displacing
Capital & Class #92 210
local communities; and how these local
communities were policed and
repressed by the state, resulting in the
murder of several fishermen (p. o).
Similarly, Nigerian oil installations
causing massive environmental
devastation displaced local com-
munities, and were policed both by the
private security employed by
corporations and by the Nigerian state
(p. o). In the case of the US and British
arms trade, the authors give examples
of statecorporate crime where states
and corporations have colluded covertly
to breach embargoes on repressive
states, or trade in weapons or equipment
which have devastating consequences
for the civilian populations upon whom
the arms are employed (p. )).
Although their study includes an
empirically and theoretically substantial
analysis of classical forms of state crime
such as police crime, state-organised
crime, state terror and terrorism, torture,
war crimes and genocide, Green and Ward
also introduce new perspectives on state
crime. Their innovative conceptualisation
of natural disasters as state crimes drives
them to the analysis of criminal actions
and negligent practices (p. -z) of the state
in cases of natural disasters: Examples
such as the )n-8)n6) Chinese famine,
the Northern African famines in the
Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia in the latter
half of the twentieth century, the )n6
Guatemalan earthquake and subsequent
landslides and the )nnn Turkish
earthquakes illuminate the direct links
between gross human rights violations,
corrupt practices and natural catas-
trophes (p. 6).
With analytical tools from the theory
of human rights, criminology and
political science, Green and Ward
succeed in elaborating one of the most
controversial subjects in social science.
Thus, their study on state crime provides
not only a fundamental contribution to
the political economy and the sociology
of state crime, but also an important
contribution both to modern state
theory and to Marxist social theory.
Books available for review
Ackerman, B., A. Alstott & P. van Parjis
(eds.) (zoo6) Redesigning Distribution:
Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as
Alternative Cornerstones for a More
Egalitarian Capitalism (Verso).
Anderson, B. (zoo6) Imagined
Communities: Reections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism, new edition
(Verso).
Anderson, P. (zoo-) Spectr um: From
Right to Left in the World of Ideas
(Verso).
Badiou, A. (zoo6) Polemics (Verso).
If you would like to review any of the books listed below, please contact the
book reviews editor, Adam D. Morton, by email: Adam.Morton@nottingham.ac.uk
Beynon, H. & T. Nichols (eds.) (zoo6)
Patterns of Work in the Post-Fordist Era:
Fordism and Post-Fordism, vols. i & ii
(Edward Elgar).
Br yan, D. & M. Raerty (zoo6)
Capitalism with Derivatives: A Political
Economy of Financial Derivatives,
Capital and Class (Palgrave).
Checchi, D. (zoo6) The Economics of
Education: Human Capital, Family
Background and Inequality (Cambridge
University Press).
DAdesky A-C. (zoo) Moving Mountains:
The Race to Treat Global AIDS (Verso).
211 Book Reviews
Hunt, K. & K. Rygiel (eds.) (zoo6)
(En)Gendering the War on Terror: War
Stories and Camouaged Pol itics
(Ashgate).
Kannepalli Kanth, R. (zoo-) Against
Eurocentrism: A Transcendent Critique of
Modernist Science, Society and Morals
(Palgrave).
Kostoris, F. & P. Schioppa (eds.) (zoo-)
The Principle of Mutual Recognition in
the European Integration Process
(Palgrave).
Lippit, V. D. (zoo-) Capitalism (Routledge).
McDonald, J. F. & D. P. McMillan
(zoo) Urban Economics and Real
Estate: Theory and Policy (Blackwell).
Mangabeira Unger, R. (zoo-) What
Should the Left Propose? (Verso).
Miville, C. (zoo6) Between Equal Rights:
A Marxist Theory of International Law
(Pluto Press).
Negri, A. (zoo) Political Descartes:
Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois
Project (Verso).
Patibandla, M. (zoo6) Evolution of
Markets and Institutions: A Study of an
Emerging Economy (Routledge).
Philip, B. (zoo-) Reduction, Rationality
and Game Theory in Marxian Economics
(Routledge).
Pontusson, J. (zoo-) Inequality and
Prosperity: Social Europe vs. Liberal
America (Cornell University Press).
Rhode, P. W. & G. Toniolo (eds.) (zoo6)
The Global Economy in the )nnos: A
Long-Run Perspective (Cambridge
University Press).
Robespierre, M. (zoo) Virtue and Terror,
introduction by S. (Verso).
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (ed.)
(zoo6) Another Production is Possible:
Beyond the Capitalist Canon (Verso).
Strathern, A., P. J. Stewart & N. L.
Whitehead (eds.) (zoo6) Terror &
Viol ence: Imagination and the
Unimaginable (Pluto Press).
iek
De Giorgio, A. (zoo6) Re-Thinking the
Political Economy of Punishment:
Perspectives on Post-Fordism and Penal
Politics (Ashgate).
Davis, M. (zoo6) City of Quartz:
Excavating the Future in Los Angeles,
new edition (Verso).
Eagleton, T. (zoo6) Criticism & Ideology:
A Study in Marxist Literary Theory,
new edition (Verso).
Elbaum, M. (zoo6) Revolution in the Air:
Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and
Che, new edition (Verso).
Flyvbjerg, B. (zoo) Megaprojects and
Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition
(Cambridge University Press).
Freeland, R. F. (zoo6) The Struggle for
Control of the Modern Corporation:
Organisational Change at General Motors,
)nz)no (Cambridge University
Press).
Gall, G. (zoo6) Sex Worker Union
Organising: An International Study
(Palgrave).
Gough, J., & A. Eisenschitz with A.
McCulloch (zoo6) Spaces of Social
Exclusion (Routledge).
Grieg, A., D. Hulme & M. Turner (eds.)
(zoo) Challenging Global Inequality:
Development Theory and Practice in the
z)st Century (Palgrave).
Gruber, H. (zoo-) The Economics of Mobile
Telecommunications (Cambridge
University Press).
Gupta, S. (zoo6) The Theory and Reality
of Democracy: A Case Study in Iraq
(Continuum).
Harron Akram-Lodhi, A., R. Chernomas
& A. Sepehri (eds.) (zoo-) Globalisation,
Neo-Conservative Policies and Democratic
Alternatives: Essays in Honour of John
Loxley (Arbeiter Ring Publishing).
Henwood, D. (zoo-) After the New
Economy (The New Press).
Hyton, F. (zoo6) Evil Hour in Colombia
(Verso).
Capital & Class #92 212
iek
Aggregate Demand in a Capitalist
Economy (Routledge).
Tse-Tung, Mao (zoo) Mao on Practice
and Contradiction, introduction by S.
(Verso).
Wright, M. W. (zoo6) Disposable Women
and Other Myths of Global Capitalism
(Routledge).
Therborn, G. (ed.) (zoo6) Inequalities of
the World: New Theoretical Frameworks,
Multiple Empirical Approaches (Verso).
Trebilcock, M. J. & R. Howse (zoo-)
Regulation of International Trade, third
edition (Routledge).
Tri gg, A. B. (zoo6) Marxi an
Reproduction Schema: Money and