BOOK REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 November 1987 |
| Date | 01 November 1987 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1987.tb00731.x |
BOOK
REVIEWS
Review
Article
ZEITLINISM
Stephen Dunn*
Shop floor bargaining and the state: Historical and comparative perspectives,
edited
by Steven Tolliday and Jonathan Zeitlin. Cambridge University Press, 1985,
261
pp.,
f
INTRODUCTION
Iconoclasm is a great stimulant. This intriguing book provides a fair dose. It consists
of seven essays, six of which are case studies: Reid on dilution in the British
shipbuilding industry during the First World War; Whiteside on decasualisation
in
the British docks (1910-1939); Tolliday on the British motor industry (1939-69);
Harris
on
federal labour relations policy in the USA (1915-1947); Contini on post-
war Italy; and Bryn Jones on the aerospace industries
of
Britain and the USA. Each
offers a slant on the state’s involvement
in
industrial relations.
For
their collective
impact, however, they rely
on
Jonathan Zeitlin’s opening chapter to provide a
theoretical binding and to assail
our
most cherished beliefs.
ZEITLIN’S ANALYSIS
Zeitlin suggests that the major theoretical perspectives
-
liberal and
Marxist
-
are unable to account adequately for the contradictions apparent
in the relationship between the state and shop floor workers. They may
agree, for example, that antagonism arises where government economic
objectives appear incompatible with the results
of
workplace bargaining.
They may also agree that among the policies that states adopt is one of
collaboration with trade union officials to meet the challenge
of
rank and
file
militancy: hence both liberals and Marxists have identified corporatist
trends in recent years. But, argues Zeitlin, neither is comfortable with
evidence, of the kind offered in this volume, that states policies have
genuinely enhanced workers’ shop floor control at the expense
of
manage-
rial prerogative. The reason for this discomfort, according to Zeitlin, lies in
‘their shared vision of the state as a passive respondent to pressures and
*Lecturer
in
Industrial Relations. London School
of
Economics
452
imperatives within civil society’ (p.
16),
and their shared belief that, in
responding, its actions are ‘fundamentally determined by the underlying
logic of modern market society’ (p.
4).
They ‘fail to recognise that states are
potentially autonomous entities with their own interests and historically
specific capacities for action’ (p.
36).
In elaborating this argument, Zeitlin
looks beyond the society-centred approaches characteristic of Anglo-Saxon
observers to the theoretical traditions of continental Europe where more
intrusive states arose than in Britain and the
USA.
Specifically he borrows
from the
realist
school of German history as well as the more recent work of
Theda Skocpol with their implication that ‘states pursue interests distinct
from, and potentially opposed to, those of
all
the contending groups which
make up civil society’ (p.
27).
Foremost among its interests ‘are those which
directly affect its external and internal security.
.
.
.
These overriding
concerns in turn impose others; and state officials are continually preoccup-
ied with the supply of
.
.
.
resources needed to sustain their coercive and
administrative apparatus’ (p.
28).
Here is the crux
of
the contradiction.
While the state frequently allies itself with business in conflict with the shop
floor, its leaders sometimes perceive their interests to be best served in
collaboration with workers, even when conflict with business
is
involved.
That is the bare essence
of
Zeitlin’s argument. However, he hedges it with
a number of important qualifications. One derives from the realist approach
itself. It emphasises that the challenges a state faces at any point are shaped
by its social, economic and geo-political environments, and its responses
depend significantly on the autonomy and coherence it has achieved through
past experiences of challenge and response. Hence, the statekhop floor
relationship is contradictory not just because their interests overlap only
partially, but also because state leaders act myopically
or
in error,
or
are
incapable of action,
or
their policies fail,
or
misfire
or
backfire. A second
caveat is Zeitlin’s. He is prepared to accept that the realist insights ‘do not
themselves constitute a full-blown alternative theory
of
the state’ (p.
29).
He
stresses that he does not reject existing theory root and branch. Their
‘central emphases, such as the role of interest group pressures, business
confidence, and debates about the public interest would,’ he acknowledges,
‘certainly occupy a prominent place in any revised account’ (pp.
25-26).
Zeitlin’s method is familiar enough and is carried through with a high
degree
of
skill. First, he gives himself room by clearing aside existing theory.
Next, he assembles his own contribution. Finally, he retrieves the useful
parts of the previously dismantled old theory to stick on his new construct as
a protective shell, like the ceramic tiles on the underbelly
of
a Space Shuttle.
What is slightly unusual, however, is the vigour with which he sets about the
initial demolition job. Not content merely to chip away at liberal and
Marxist reductionism and determinism (the latter in three varieties:
intentional, functional and structural), he uses a bulldozer on their most
cherished possessions. Liberals and Marxists, he insists, and that presum-
ably covers most of us, offer ‘a misleading analysis of the nature of trade
unions and collective bargaining’ (p.
5).
Such temerity is quite pleasing. Yet,
British Journal
of
lndustrial Relations
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