bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Is there a future for a Labour Accord in South Africa?
Authors: Harcourt Mark , Wood Geoffrey
Published: January 2010

Foreign experience suggests that strong unions with close connections to the state can use political exchanges to mould social and economic policies to more readily reflect the needs of labour. South African unions could conceivably form a similar pact with the African National Congress by agreeing to moderate their demands for wage increases and to cooperate in the restructuring of the economy in exchange for pro-labour policies. Given persistent inequality and a rich tradition of social protest, it could be argued that neo-corporatism represents an unnecessary compromise in the South African situation. Nonetheless, neo-corporatism's track record underscores the role institutions can play in redressing social inequality, yet creating the conditions for economic growth. However, the key actors—labour, capital and government—may be neither able nor willing to strike a comprehensive deal.
Race, space and fear: imagined geographies of racism, crime, violence and disorder in Northern England
Authors: Webster Colin
Published: January 2010

This paper describes and analyses the wider mechanisms, processes and contexts of the riots that took place in Northern UK cities and towns in the Summer of 2001. It examines these events and the imagined fears that aided the hardening of boundaries between violently opposed groups. It is noted that a long-term entrenchment of various forms of racial discrimination and racist violence in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley areas was connected to the long-term economic decline of the textile industry. Localised deindustrialisation, it is argued, generated a community discourse of nostalgia and cultural decline that was articulated via twin motors of race and ethnicity. As a result geographical concentrations of fear, risk and insecurity aided the likelihood and intensity of racist violence and disorder.
Bolivia: between a rock and a hard place
Authors: Nicholls Peter
Published: January 2010

The election in Bolivia in June 2002 revealed the plight of South America's poorest country trapped between the needs of its own population and external pressures to ‘modernise’ its economy in-line with overseas interests.

After years of experiencing the impact of neo-liberal reforms, ‘anti-system’ sentiments are starting to challenge the ability of traditional politicians to represent their interests.

The success of an outsider Eva Morales, holding a broadly socialist stance, represents a new departure for indigenous peoples who appear impatient with traditional political slogans. It holds the potential to unleash a new social dynamic into the political landscape of Bolivia, a landscape often compromised by outside interference and internal corruption.
A note on Chris Arthur's ‘dialectics of negativity’
Authors: Carchedi G.
Published: January 2010

In the last few years, Chris Arthur has developed a ‘new’ concept of abstract labour and exploitation.2
Hidden forms of resistance among Turkish workers: Hegemonic incorporation or building blocks for working class struggle?
Authors: Yücesan-Özdemir Gamze
Published: January 2010

This article, based on ethnographic research in an automobile factory in Turkey, examines workers' politics in the construction and reproduction of ‘total quality management’. The central argument is that workers devise hidden ‘ways of making do’ with managerial strategies in their challenge to specific managerial regimes in their areas of weakness. These hidden forms of resistance form the building blocks of working class struggle as they create and nurture a counter-hegemonic discourse, resistant subcultures, and elementary forms of more conscious political activity.
On the TSSI and the exploitation theory of profit
Authors: Mohun Simon
Published: January 2010

In a recent article in this journal, Kliman (2001) has argued that only a temporal single system interpretation (TSSI) of Marxian value theory preserves the fundamental Marxian theorem (FMT) and hence finds the origin of profit solely in exploitation. This paper first outlines the TSSI in order to emphasise the particular and controversial definition of value on which it depends. Kliman's logical demonstration of the FMT is then shown to fail on exactly the same grounds for which he indicts rival interpretations.
A profit-rate invariant solution to the Marxian transformation problem
Authors: Loranger Jean-Guy
Published: January 2010

The proposed solution is based on the assumption of the invariance of the general profit rate and a money wage level determined simultaneously with prices. The labour cost is determined in the value space by a given exploitation rate (based on a historical cost as the other input coefficients) while it is determined endogenously in the monetary space. This solution diverges from the neo-Ricardian solution based on the invariance of a subsistence basket. It also diverges from the Dumenil-Foley-Lipietz solution based on the invariance of the labour cost while the general profit rate is endogenously determined with prices.
Building reciprocal community unionism in the UK
Authors: Wills Jane , Simms Melanie
Published: January 2010

British trade union renewal has focused on the twin strategies of organising and partnership. Drawing on experience from North America, and fledgling developments in Britain, this paper argues that reciprocal community unionism could provide another weapon in the union movement's armoury for reversing decline. The paper provides a brief historical overview of the intersection between unions and community in Britain before addressing reciprocal community unionism in more detail. The final part of the paper then looks at the work of Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council's Organising Centre in South West London during 2000 and 2001. The case study highlights the ways in which trade unionism can develop when focused on a particular locality, and the advantages of having extra-workplace organisation in any place. The case also illustrates some of the barriers preventing this model of trade unionism being translated to other boroughs, towns and cities in the UK. In the conclusion, the paper then calls for further experimentation in the development of reciprocal community unionism.
A critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change: neo-Gramscian perspectives in International Relations
Authors: Bieler Andreas , Morton Adam David
Published: January 2010

Situated within a historical materialist problematic of social transformation that deploys many of the insights of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break emerged, in the 1980s, in the work of Robert Cox from mainstream International Relations (IR) approaches to hegemony. This article provides a comprehensive ‘state-of-the-discipline’ overview of this critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change. It does so by outlining the historical context within which various diverse but related neo-Gramscian perspectives emerged. Attention subsequently turns to highlight how conditions of capitalist economic crisis and structural change in the 1970s have been conceptualised, which inform contemporary debates about globalisation. Significantly, the discussion is also responsive to the various controversies and criticisms that surround the neo-Gramscian perspectives whilst, in conclusion, directions along which future research might proceed are elaborated. Hence providing a thorough survey of this historical materialist critical theory of hegemony and thus forms of social power through which conditions of capitalism are reproduced, mediated and contested.
Renewal or resilience?
Authors: McBride Jo
Published: January 2010

This article provides empirical data from the Tyneside Maritime Construction Industry (TMCI) to contribute to the union renewal/resilience debate. The aim of the study is a focus on the effectiveness of shop steward organisation in the industry, levels of activity in membership participation and its significance for union democracy, all of which are important factors in the debate. The paper supports the resilience argument and adds a further development to the debate by presenting evidence which suggests resilient renewal.
From the mass worker to the multitude: A theoretical contextualisation of Hardt and Negri's Empire
Authors: Bowring Finn
Published: January 2010

This article examines Hardt and Negri's Empire in the context of the radical tradition of Italian Marxism from which it developed. It discusses the influence of previously untranslated writings by Marx on the Italian New Left, and the way this prompted a new political analysis which, in studying the interpenetration of capital and labour, treated capital as the dependent variable in the class struggle. The essay considers how faithfully this analysis is sustained in Negri's later work, and suggests that the inconsistencies apparent in Empire derive in part from the continuing influence of Marx's prescient but ambiguous text: the so-called ‘Fragment on machines’.
Farewell Johannes
Authors: Bonefeld Werner
Published: January 2010

Johannes Agnoli's death in 2003 deprived us of one of the most important thinkers of the categorical imperative of human emancipation.
Counter-hegemony, anti-globalisation and culture in International Political Economy
Authors: Worth Owen , Kuhling Carmen
Published: January 2010

This article argues that studies of counter-hegemony and resistance in International Political Economy (IPE) have often ignored the cultural dimensions of anti-globalisation. We argue that a greater understanding of the elements needed for the articulation of counter-hegemony within IPE can be achieved through an engagement with the traditions inherent in the Birmingham School, and with the elements of Situationism contained within the anti-consumerist movement.
Satirising the bourgeois worldview: Patrick Hamilton's Impromptu in Moribundia
Authors: Maycroft Neil
Published: January 2010

As well as being a cultural product itself, literature provides a means for the critical interrogation of the processes of cultural production and consumption in class-structured capitalist society. Realist narrative, utopian speculation and dystopian conjecture have all been used to good effect. So, too, have satire and fable, and these come together in a neglected and largely forgotten novel from 1939, Impromptu in Moribundia,1 written by the bourgeois Marxist Patrick Hamilton. Though dated in many ways, and clearly rooted in a particular social and political context, this fabulous tale, nevertheless, retains interest for those wishing to critique the production of the bourgeois cultural worldview.2
The National Childcare Strategy: The social regulation of lone mothers as a gendered reserve army of labour
Authors: Grover Chris
Published: January 2010

This paper analyses the introduction of the National Childcare Strategy. It argues, in the context of workfarism and through a new evaluation of the ‘women as reserve army’ thesis, that the National Childcare Strategy can be understood as one of a number of administrative mechanisms in New Labour's welfare reform agenda that aims to release lone mothers from social reproduction, in order to increase their effectiveness at competing for paid employment. This approach to the provision of childcare means that the state is heavily involved in subsiding childcare markets, benefiting capital through socialised reproduction, and through the rewards of what can be lucrative childcare markets.
Social policy, social exclusion and commodity fetishism
Authors: Kennedy Peter
Published: January 2010

This article provides a political economy of social policy and its current emphasis on social inclusion/exclusion. It considers this in terms of three interrelated processes: the rise in a population surplus to capital; the rejuvenation of a reserve army of labour power; and the decline of the commodity form of labour power. On the basis of a critical examination of the work of Bauman (1998) and Byrne (1999), the article begins by looking at the way social exclusion/inclusion is understood in terms of a reserve army of labour and/or surplus population.

The second part of the article demonstrates the relevance of Marx's concept of commodity fetishism to a more fundamental understanding of the implications of a society in which labour power is becoming increasingly surplus to capital“.
A precarious balance: Neoliberalism, crisis management, and the social implosion in Jamaica
Authors: Weis Tony
Published: January 2010

This article examines the process of structural adjustment in Jamaica, and the various ways in which the contradictory tensions embedded in the current order are being contained. Although political, economic and social realities are deeply inequitable and potentially unstable, there are serious barriers to understanding, dialogue, organisation and optimism among the poor, which have produced implosive intra-class dynamics.

Assessing these barriers provides insight into the challenge of re-inspiring alternative imaginations and collective opposition to class structures in Jamaica, as well as in other adjusted and heavily-indebted countries where a neoliberal fatalism is contributing to social atomisation, rather than to mobilisation.
Foundation and Empire: A critique of Hardt and Negri
Authors: Thompson Paul
Published: January 2010

Hardt and Negri's Empire has become hugely influential, not only in theorising contemporary societies, but as a guide to the politics of the Left and the anti-globalisation movement. The book's sweep and ambition is indeed huge, but is not matched by the clarity of its concepts or the credibility of the evidence presented. Neither the book's analysis of regimes of global governance and the hidden abode of production, nor its articulation of a potential agency of resistance—the multitude—are convincing. In this article, Thompson complements other critiques through the use of the tools of labour process theory to critique the political economy of Empire, and to note its unfortunate similarities to conventional theories of the knowledge economy.
Preface
Authors: Suddick Anne
Published: January 2010

The women's forum at the Miners' Strike Twenty Years On: Challenges and Changes conference brought together women activists from the Durham area and national officials from the Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC), to discuss the history of mining community activism by women since the strike, and the present and future hopes and desires for ex-mining communities.
Like taking coals to Newcastle: A new era for trade unionism in the North East of England?
Authors: Fitzgerald Ian , O'Brien Peter
Published: January 2010

Behind the News focuses on trade unionism in the North East, discussing changes in employment and skill levels and the detrimental impact this has had on the workplace and on trade union membership. Developing the discussion, it identifies recent activity undertaken by unions and the Northern TUC to strengthen both the effectiveness of regional trade union institutions and grassroots participation and membership. The catalyst for this has been the (re) emergence of union interest in learning and skills, and the innovative way that union learning reps and the learning and skills agenda have been used to provide an opportunity to renew workplace and governance engagement.
There is no alternative: Exploring the options in the 1984-5 miners' strike
Authors: Darlington Ralph
Published: January 2010

This article critically reassesses the predominant argument that the 1984-5 miners' strike was inevitably doomed, and examines the potential for alternative courses of action and a different outcome.
Shoulder to shoulder: An analysis of a miners' support group during the 1984-85 strike and the significance of social identity, geography and political leadership
Authors: Beale David
Published: January 2010

Drawing on the extensive archive of a support group in the 1984-5 British miners' strike, this study considers the process of establishing such a group, its primary welfare and fund-raising role, its attitude to picketing, women's role and activity, and the role of a particular Marxist group within it. Three interrelated explanatory themes are emphasised: the process of social identification with the strike, geography and political leadership. Some qualification to this analysis is suggested in conclusion, as is the potential for applying and developing the approach more generally in explaining the success of support groups in the 1984-5 miners' strike, in spite of their diverse forms and membership.
British anarchisms and the miners' strike
Authors: Franks Benjamin
Published: January 2010

This paper distinguishes some of the main currents in British anarchism at the time of the miners' strike. It explores the influence of these libertarian movements on the conflict in the coalfield, and assesses how the strike influenced the development of British anarchisms.
Value production and struggle in the classroom: Teachers within, against and beyond capital
Authors: Harvie David
Published: January 2010

To the extent that their labour produces value and surplus value, teachers are productive labourers. This paper discusses teachers' labour in relation to the production of new labour power, explores the extent to which it is alienated, and explains how it produces surplus value. But the classroom is also a site of struggle. The paper explores some of the ways in which teachers and students may both refuse capitalist work and create space in order to pursue alternative projects that better meet their own needs. To this extent, teachers and students are productive, not of value, but of struggle.
State, labour and market in post-revolution Serbia
Authors: Upchurch Martin
Published: January 2010

Workers played a key role in the October 2000 revolution in Serbia that overthrew Milošević and his Socialist Party regime. Since then, the trade union movement has begun to consolidate itself into three separate union federations, each with its own distinct orientation. Serbia's economic problems have persisted, leading to heavy dependence on privatisation, foreign direct investment and loans and grants from international financial institutions. This environment has both constrained and shaped the strategies of the unions. This labour experience is difficult to compare with those of advanced western democracies, and is still conditioned by legacies from the past.
Rethinking labour markets: A critical-realist-socioeconomic perspective
Authors: Fleetwood Steve
Published: January 2010

There are currently two main accounts of labour markets: the mainstream labour market (MLM) account, which avoids serious analysis of social structures; and a rather unsystematic SOCIOECONOMIC account, which recognises that labour markets are embedded in social structures, but remains ambiguous vis-à-vis the nature of this embedding. Augmenting the latter with a critical-realist approach serves to reduce that ambiguity, and allows us to break completely with the idea that there are phenomena called ‘labour markets' that are embedded in other phenomena called ‘social structures'— and to move, instead, towards the realisation that labour markets just are, or are exhausted by, the very social structures that constitute them.
Putting social capital in its place
Authors: Das Raju J.
Published: January 2010

This paper launches a class-based critique of social capital, and goes on to develop an alternative approach to it. In particular, it unpacks the nature of ‘working-class social capital’. There cannot be a social-capital theory of society. Within a class theory of society, social capital can play some role—perhaps a minor role, given the enormously constraining effects of class on its production. How minor that role will be depends on the issue at hand, and is geographically contingent. A class critique of social capital is necessary in order to counter its growing popularity and its potential to serve neoliberal ends.
Rethinking critical realism: Labour markets or capitalism?
Authors: Fine Ben
Published: January 2010

Earlier debate on critical realism has suggested the need for it to situate itself more fully in relation to both economic theory in general, and Marxist political economy in general. This is borne out in the following critique of Fleetwood's contribution on the subject of labour markets, which, it is argued, is insufficiently attentive to recent developments in mainstream labour-market theory, considerably undervalues the contributions made from within the Marxist tradition, and offers an alternative that fails to specify the extent to which labour markets are inextricably linked to the political economy of capitalism.
Global capitalism, the anti-globalisation movement and the Third World
Authors: Thomas Neil
Published: January 2010

This paper identifies three defining features of globalisation that have been habitually misrepresented by the anti-globalisation movement. First, that globalisation entails a universal shift towards economic liberalisation, rather than a selective liberalisation with particular disadvantage to the Third World. The movement also bewails the erosion of traditional economic functions in Northern governments, thus diminishing their agency in globalisation and largely absolving them of responsibility for it. Instead, the focus of protest should shift from international financial institutions (IFIS) to the state-IFI interface. Finally, the movement fails to engage with the ever-changing nature of capitalism's structural search for expanding profits.
Neither pragmatic adaptation nor misguided accommodation: Modernisation as domination in the Chilean and British Left
Authors: Motta Sara C. , Bailey David J.
Published: January 2010

This article contests prevailing academic conceptions of the modernisation of parliamentary Left parties. According to these accounts, ‘modernisation’ is viewed either as a pragmatic adaptation to international socioeconomic change, or as a misguided accommodation of ascendant neoliberal values, norms and practices. In both of these accounts, Left parties are perceived as passively reacting to the structures that contextualise their actions. Developing a neo-Gramscian perspective and using the Chilean Socialist Party and the British Labour Party as examples, we argue that modernisation can be more adequately conceptualised as the process by which Left parties operate within the contemporary neoliberal historical bloc, actively contributing to the (re)production of neoliberal hegemony.
The incoherence of the TSSI: A reply to Kliman and Freeman
Authors: Mohun Simon , Veneziani Roberto
Published: January 2010

In this paper, we examine the substantive arguments proposed by Kliman and Freeman (2006) in their reply to Mohun (2003). We find them seriously deficient.
Misconceptions of power: From Alchian and Demsetz to Bowles and Gintis
Authors: Palermo Giulio
Published: January 2010

Is there any difference between Alchian and Demsetz's ultra-liberalism and Bowles and Gintis's radicalism? My answer is that, ontologically and methodologically, there is none. Their common neoclassical methodology results in the same conception of power as incompatible with Walrasian competition, and the sole difference between them concerns the extension of power and competition in reality. Notwithstanding Bowles and Gintis's labelling as ‘radicals’, their conception coincides with the liberal view that sees competition as a natural and universal mode of social interaction, rather than as the historical product of the process of commodification that characterises capitalism.
Co-option or resistance? Trade unions and neoliberal restructuring in Europe
Authors: Bieler Andreas
Published: January 2010

The purpose of this article is to engage critically with recent scholarship that accuses European trade unions of having been co-opted into neoliberal restructuring within the EU. The article first demonstrates, through a focus on British and German unions, that even if they have accepted economic and monetary union as such, trade unions still reject its underlying neoliberal rationale and demand changes to its operation. Then an analysis at the European level shows how trade unions have potential strategies at their disposal that allow them to counter restructuring, with specific reference to the European Metalworkers' Federation and the European Federation of Public Service Unions.
The British left: For and against Europe? A historical survey
Authors: Mullen Andrew
Published: January 2010

Employing a neo-Gramscian approach, and more specifically, Coxian historicism, this article argues that the European policies of the British left underwent three significant shifts during the post-war period: the first during the period 1945 to 1970 (from indifference to support), the second in the period between 1971 and 1987 (from support to opposition), and the third during the post-1988 period (from opposition to support). It further argues that these changes resulted from transformations in the balance of power between antiand pro-EU forces, themselves linked to competing social forces at the global, European, national and institutional levels.
Workers and their alter egos as consumers
Authors: Fleetwood Steve
Published: January 2010

While socialists hardly need reminding that employers often mistreat their workers, we tend to overlook situations in which workers mistreat other workers. This tendency is exacerbated by discourses that urge us to act as consumers, and to treat cheap commodities as ‘bargains' rather than, for example, as the result of someone else's poor working conditions. This paper uses arguments from political and moral economy to illustrate some of the ways in which workers, in their alter egos as consumers, are causally implicated in the poor pay and conditions of other workers, and uses Marx's notion of commodity fetishism to explain why we tend to overlook this.
The road not (to be) taken—Why there is no Linkspartei in the USA: The American Sonderweg and the structural barriers to popular third parties in the US political system
Authors: Solty Ingar
Published: January 2010

The decline of neoliberal hegemony has by now spread from the periphery of the imperialist chain to some of the core capitalist countries themselves. The rise of new political formations such as Die Linke is evidence of this. But the defeat of the new imperialism that neoliberal globalisation has revealed itself to be requires a shift in the relationship of forces in the belly of the beast—in the USA. The US left has been undecided as to which strategy to adopt. It is therefore crucial to recollect the specific economic, political and ideological barriers that have historically and to this day frustrated the efforts of subaltern third-party class politics in the USA, and which will continue to do so, particularly given the present moment of class fragmentation and the Christian fundamentalists' ‘hijacking’ of the issue of class.
Genomic information and the public-private imbalance
Authors: Çoban Aykut
Published: January 2010

This paper investigates the extent to which public-private relationships produce unbalancing effects in the case of the generation and use of genomic/genetic information. To this end, it focuses on two interconnected issues. The first is the purported importance of genomic information, which is used to justify public spending on its production. The second is the problem of ownership and accessibility. By examining the ‘balance’ rhetoric together with the information/molecule separation, the patentability of DNA, university-industry-government relations and the role of extended public networks for proprietary genetic products and technologies, it suggests that the supposed balance between private interests and public benefits is in fact an unbalancing act in favour of private interests under the capitalist social formation.
No measure for culture? Value in the new economy
Authors: Böhm Steffen , Land Chris
Published: January 2010

This paper explores articulations of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and academic commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period, discourses around the value of culture have moved from a focus on the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to their indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed here under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability, and social inclusion. These are in turn analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, the government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such, we must turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value and resistance to it.
Exploitation of the self in community-based software production: Workers' freedoms or firm foundations?
Authors: Moore Phoebe , Taylor Paul A.
Published: January 2010

Free and open-source software (FOSS) communities constitute an arena in which thousands of users voluntarily explore design codes, spot bugs in codes, and make contributions to the code in a fashion at odds with the otherwise hugely competitive software market. This computerisation movement emerged as a challenge to the domination of such behemoth firms as Microsoft and IBM, and is portrayed as having a revolutionary ultimate goal: ‘to provide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want to do’ (Free Software Foundation, 2008). We ask to what extent FOSS actually challenges the orthodoxy: does ego-less programming of the information bazaar really free participants from the stuffy pews of the cathedral, and challenge the essence of capitalism?
Class and capital in peer production
Authors: Bauwens Michel
Published: January 2010

The aim of this paper is to make the case that peer production offers a unique chance to transcend capitalism, and that peer-to-peer movements represent the succession of industrial-society based socialisms. The paper describes the salient characteristics of peer production before going on to explore whether it is ‘transcendent’ or ‘immanent’ to the market system, concluding that it is both in that it creates a new form of capitalism and also points out how that new form might be overcome. Following a review of the hybrid economic forms emerging today, I formulate the hypothesis that peer production is actually a hyperproductive mode, forcing for-profit entities to adapt to its characteristics, thereby further integrating it into the existing political economy, but not without the transformative effects of its market transcending aspects. After examining the possible expansion of peer-production modalities to physical manufacturing, I also examine the class aspects of commons and sharing-based platforms and hypothesise the emergence of a new section of capital, netarchical capitalists, who enable and empower participation, but also monetise it and attempt to control it.
The Alienated Heart: Hochschild's ‘emotional labour’ thesis and the anticapitalist politics of alienation
Authors: Brook Paul
Published: January 2010

Arlie Russell Hochschild's influential emotional labour thesis in The Managed Heart (1983) exposes and opposes the harm wrought by the commodification of human feelings as customer service, and complements contemporary anticapitalist writing with an enduring influence and political relevance that is underpinned by Hochschild's application of Marx's alienation theory. Critics have sought to blunt the politics of her thesis by rejecting as absolutist her condemnation of workers' alienation. But her application of alienation theory is not thorough, since her explicit usage of it is limited to only two of Marx's four dimensions, and thus it stops short of theorising alienation as generic to society. This undermines Hochschild's argument on emotional labourers' resistance, since she inadequately captures the way workers are shaped by alienation but not blinded to the reality of capitalism. The continuing political potency of her thesis requires that it should be defended and strengthened.
Working in the tracks of state socialism
Authors: Burawoy Michael
Published: January 2010

Michael Burawoy revisits the forgotten world of state socialism by reflecting on his experiences as an industrial worker in Hungary (1983-1988) in the twilight of the Soviet Union (1991), and in its market aftermath (1992-2002). From the standpoint of the shopfloor, he examines the peculiarities of socialist production and how it shaped working-class consciousness, leaving workers unprepared for the catastrophe that befell them during the capitalist transition. More broadly, he grapples with the limitations of his extended case method and with the challenges state socialism posed for Marxism.
Trade Unionism and the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa
Authors: Henson David
Published: January 2010

The political and industrial organization of the black working class in South Africa has always been central to the struggle against exploitation and racial oppression. This paper examines the relationship between mass strikes, trade unionism, and revolutionary strategy in the liberation struggle. The 'stay at home’ strategy of the 1950s has grown in the period of mass resistance to apartheid into mass strikes and insurrectionary action by workers and students. While black trade unionism is not openly revolutionary, trade unions are essential in defence of black workers, in supporting strike action, and in advancing the demands of the workers.
Labour Power and the State
Authors: Aumeeruddy Aboo T. , Lautier Bruno , Tortajada Ramon G.
Published: January 2010

The Marxist theory of the state has developed in three main directions: the study of the relation between the bourgeoisie and the state; the study of the functioning of the state; and the study of its role in the valorisation of capital. However, it seems to us that the essential question is that of the foundation of the state under capitalism. This foundation must be sought in the wage-relation, whose reproduction is never given a priori. Hence the necessity for a study of the relation between the state and labour-power.
State and Capital in Dependent Social Formations: The Brazilian Case
Authors: Munck Ronaldo
Published: January 2010

The economic intervention of the state has been particularly important in Brazil, and is an integral element of the so-called “economic model” which has been initiated by the bourgeoisie of other semi-colonial countries. This paper explores the issues posed by the ”associated-dependent” form of development in Brazil, with particular attention to the role of the capitalist state in the economic process. It then takes up the political implications of this debate, particularly the notion that state intervention is in some way “progressive”.
Education for Emancipation: The Movement for Independent Working Class Education 1908–1928
Authors: Phillips Anne , Putnam Tim
Published: January 2010

“Class prejudice and ignorance of elementary economics has a firmer grip upon the working class than ever before … Unfortunately, almost the only agency is the Labour Colleges, which are imparting instruction in false economics.”[1]
Behind the News
Authors: Fine Bob
Published: January 2010

This article on Zimbabwe is the first of a new section of C&C, which is intended to provide background information and analysis on current affairs. Our aim is that these articles should be short (no more than 3,500 words), as snappy as C&C contributors can make them, and free from constraints of detailed research and lengthy footnotes that characterise our usual offerings. They can address any matter of topical concern, whether it be the headline variety (like Afghanistan or the Leyland strike), or those issues normally expunged from the newspapers (like the effect of Tory cuts on women's employment or the development of Britain's nuclear arsenal). We are hoping in this way to build a further link between our regular in-depth theoretical and empirical articles, and immediate political and economic issues. These contributions will not go through the normal C&C refereeing procedures; but for the sake of speed and currency will be considered by the EC alone (at the last minute before publication, if necessary). It would be useful if short bibliographical guides could be appended to the text. We should very much welcome contributions and comments on this new venture.
Left Orthodoxy and the Politics of Health
Authors: Carpenter Mick
Published: January 2010

‘I conceive of a millenium on earth-a millenium not of riches, nor of mechanical facilities, nor of intellectual facilities, nor absolutely of immunity from disease, nor absolutely of immunity from pain, but a time when men and women all over the earth shall ascend and enter into relation with their bodies-shall attain freedom and joy.’ (Edward Carpenter, Towards Democracy.)
Confusions Concerning Sraffa (and Marx): Reply to Critics
Authors: Savran Sungur
Published: January 2010

‘… the complete body is easier to study than its cells. Moreover, in the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace both. But for bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour, or the value-form of the commodity, is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but so similarly does microscopic anatomy.’ ( K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Preface to the first edition, pp. 89–90 of Penguin, 1976 edition. Emphasis added).
The Brandt Report: A programme for survival
Authors: Elson Diane
Published: January 2010

The aim of this article is to develop a critique of the Brandt Report. It explores the way in which the recommendations of the Report are related to the assumptions and concepts from which the Report begins; and examines why these assumptions and concepts seem plausible to many socialists. The conclusion reached is that the Brandt Report conflates the danger to human survival with the danger to the survival of capitalism, and produces a strategy which is adequate to neither. Rather than campaigning for its implementation, British socialists should be concerned to develop an alternative strategy for changing relations between people in the North and people in the South. This should not be geared to attempts to increase financial flows from governments in the North to governments in the South, nor towards negotiations for a New International Economic Order. Its guiding perspective should be that of organising a New International Division of Labour, and it should be built upon the grass-roots initiatives already existing for such structures as combine committees and workers' plans.
Housing provision and the economic crisis
Authors: Ball Michael
Published: January 2010

The recent cuts in state housing expenditure are reviewed and placed in the context of the economic crises and growth of owner occupation. It is suggested that owner occupation does not even provide a capitalist solution to the housing crisis and a radical transformation of both council housing and owner occupation is argued for through programmes associated with nationalisation of land and the building industry.
Steel: The South African connection
Authors: Bush Ray , Cliffe Lionel , Sketchley Peter
Published: January 2010

Prepared for a November 1982 UN/ Sheffield City Council conference on Transnationals and South Africa, this paper shows how British dependence on apartheid's ‘strategic raw materials' is avoidable and trade sanctions would sustain rather than destroy UK steel jobs.
Capitalism and nuclear power: A reassessment
Authors: Rüdig Wolfgang
Published: January 2010

Nuclear power is not a technology of the kind which, harmful under capitalism, can be made benign by socialism. It is a dead-end technology that should be rejected altogether. The state however is deeply implicated in its development, marxism is compromised by acceptance of super-industrialism and the trade union movement is largely pro-nuclear. The new green movements will be endangered by seeking incorporation into a traditional socialist programme.
Bricks in the Wall: The Youth Training Scheme
Authors: Allum Cliff , Quigley Jo
Published: January 2010

From a base of active trade union involvement, the authors in this piece take an historical look at Job Creation, YOP, the rise of the MSC and the culmination of these in YTS (the new Youth Training Scheme launched in September). They describe and critically appraise YTS and look at the difficulties and contradictions of trade union involvement. They try to meet head-on the controversial issue of whether or not YTS should be rejected outright by the unions or if there is a case for its acceptance in the hope of changing it from within. Their conclusions provide food for thought for many people currently working on the left.
Competition in the Marxist tradition
Authors: Wheelock Jane
Published: January 2010

There is a strong theme in contemporary Marxism which argues that the monopoly stage of capitalism requires a different analysis from that provided by Marx, who is seen as essentially examining a competitive stage. Such a view leads to a questioning of the law of value as a law of regulation of capitalism, operating through the formation of an average profit rate. It is important to ask how far modern Marxists have been able to return to, develop and make use of Marx's analytical ideas. This is something that has to date not been comprehensively done (although Semmler in his article in Capital and Class 18 raised many pertinent issues, so providing the inspiration for this article). Using a history of economic thought approach, this piece will examine the concepts of competition and monopoly in the Marxist tradition.
The great world crisis and Japanese capitalism
Authors: Itoh Makoto
Published: January 2010

The first half of this article summarises and applies Itoh's overaccumulation thesis to the current world depression. The second half gives a detailed account of instabilities within the Japanese economy since the early 1970s, and argues that Japan should not be seen as immune to the world crisis nor responsible for it due to disruptive trade policies. It is a salutory reminder to socialists to resist the drift towards nationalistic arguments.
A historical approach to the question of abstract labour
Authors: Gleicher David
Published: January 2010

Few topics in political economy have enjoyed as much attention, or have been the center of such controversy as the “labour theory of value” – a theory which gained prominence in the writings of the classical school of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which continues to be a major topic of Marxist political economy into the present period. The object of this paper is to outline a coherent approach to the labour theory of value by addressing one central problem that has long plagued Marxist theoreticians, and whose various solutions underlie the stances that have been adopted by different schools toward virtually all of the other important topics of Marxist thought. That problem is the sense in which what Marx termed the “abstract labour” representing the value of commodities, is an extant social phenomenon in capitalist economies; in short, the problem of the “ontology” of abstract labour.
The Current Crisis in Israel
Authors: Yuval-Davis Nira
Published: January 2010

The resignation of Prime Minister Begin triggered the collapse of Israel's ‘Correct Economy’, adding an economic crisis to the chronic military and political problems facing the Israeli state. This article outlines the regional and internal contexts of the Israeli crisis showing how the continuities of Zionist history prevent the existing political parties finding a resolution either for internal problems or for Palestinian resistance.
The international centralization of capital and the re·ordering of world capitalism
Authors: Andreff Wladimir
Published: January 2010

The search for a new international economic order has become a fashionable issue. But even the idea of an economic order has scarcely been spelt out clearly. Usually the present crisis is identified as a ‘disorder’ of the world economy. This hypothesis hides the reality, analysed in this article, that on the contrary, the crisis is a restoration of capitalist order.
The national economy: a Keynesian myth?
Authors: Radice Hugo
Published: January 2010

This article argues that the capitalist world economy is now so thoroughly integrated across national boundaries that an autonomous national economic strategy is no longer possible.
A regulation approach interpretation of contemporary crisis
Authors: Vroey Michel De
Published: January 2010

Drawing upon the French tradition of regulation theory – most notably associated with Aglietta – the author describes the ‘forms of regulation’ that have characterized the various stages of capitalism. He argues that while the current crisis consists of a disruption of the whole structure of monopoly regulation, it is not a deathknell for capitalism itself. A way out of the crisis would involve the development of a new form of regulation, a new regime of accumulation as a given historical and central institution of capitalism.
The internationalisation of bank capital
Authors: Coakley Jerry
Published: January 2010

The City of London plays a central role in the internationalisation of bank capital. This internationalisation is based on a specialist type of banking called euro-banking which has focussed on lending to Multinational Corporations and Sovreign States, and which has enhanced the integration of the Newly Industrialising Countries and oil exporting countries with the Advanced economies. Different degrees of state regulation between countries has been important in the evolution of Euro-Banking and is likely to remain so for the future internationalisation of bank capital.
Coming to terms with owner occupation
Authors: Ball Michael
Published: January 2010

The debate over housing has tended to be confined to tenure choices and hence to consumption issues. The left has failed to confront the problems of owner occupation partly because it has accepted this limited terrain of debate and partly because it has adopted an economistic view of the link between tenure and voting behaviour. The author argues that an adequate strategy can only begin to be developed if we challenge structures of housing provision and the institutions involved.
Economic crisis and the sexual division of labour: the case of Brazil
Authors: Humphrey Helena Hirata and John
Published: January 2010

Against the backdrop of economic crisis in Brazil, this article looks at patterns of dismissal and rehiring in an electrical factory there. It shows how management maintained intact the established division of labour and discusses the extent to which women were discriminated against. The paper raises interesting questions about the impact of crisis and unemployment on women workers.
Otto Bauer: towards a marxist theory of nationalism
Authors: Munck Ronnie
Published: January 2010

As the author of this article demonstrates, much of the work on nationalism of the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer is best understood in relation to its historical context, but his theory of nationalism remains an essential starting point in the development of a non-reductionist theory of nationalism today.