Book Reviews
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1979.tb00965.x |
| Date | 01 November 1979 |
| Published date | 01 November 1979 |
BOOK
REVIEWS
The
Case
for
Worker
Co-ops,
R.
Oakeshott, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, 272 pp., f7.75.
Socialism
and
Shop
Floor
Power,
by A. Fox, Fabian Tract
no
338,
1978, 20 pp., 70p.
IN
the past worker control has been viewed either as a radical
or
as a managerial solution. The
former arises from an ideology based
upon
an analysis
of
the less visible forms
of
power mediated
through institutions and economic arrangements. It perceives society
in
terms
of
class interest
which are incapable
of
resolution within the present societal structure, and contends that the abuses
encountered by workers in their employment can
be
overcome by a process of gaining crucial areas
of
control from management. The latter arises from a pluralist ideology which accepts the basic
power structure and stresses the responsibility
of
management in terms
of
maintaining and
improving living standards within the context of a rapidly changingeconomy. This it suggestscan
be
achieved by voluntary reform
of
industrial relations which converts disorder into order since it is
argued that all groups in industry have a common interest in the survival
of
the whole
of
which they
are part.
The
Case
for
Worker Co-ops
is firmly rooted in the liberal managerial tradition for which Robert
Oakeshott appears an ideal spokesman. He has a background in financial journalism, was a
founder-member of a profit sharing enterprise, participated in a study group founded by the
Anglo-German Foundation for the study of society which, in 1977, produced a report
on
the
Basque co-operatives
of
Mondragon, and recently became a founder member
of
‘Job
Ownership
Limited’, an organisation which assists and encourages the setting-upof profit sharing enterprises.
Oakeshott provides detailed surveys of producer co-operatives in Britain, France, Italy and
Spain, and less precise accounts of similar enterprises in other parts
of
the world including Eastern
Europe and Poland. He documents the uneven development
of
producer co-operatives in Britain
by identifying three distinct groups: ‘traditional’, ‘paternalist’ and ‘Benn-type’ co-operatives. The
first category arises from the co-operative movement in the footwear, printing and clothing
industries and displays a definite capacity to survive the test
of
time. The second group emanates
from the Industrial Common Ownershop Movement, a product
of
paternalistic management when
Ernest Bader gave
90
per cent
of
his own stock to the ‘community
of
the workforce’, in effect
setting-up a holding company which launched the ‘Scott Bader Commonwealth’ which proceeded
to increase its sales twentyfold in as many years. The third category includes Meriden, Kirkby and
the
Scoftish
Daily
News
which were supported to the tune
of
f10 million of public money
after Benn, then the Secretary
of
State
of
Industry, had defied expert advice against the
funding.
Oakeshott considers other European examples
of
worker co-operatives and draws attention to
the long tradition of producer co-operatives in France which currently employs some
30,000
workers. Further, he points to the way the Italian Communist Party influences that country’s
co-operative sector which caters for some 110,000 workers
on
the civil engineering and building
industries. However, the high-point
of
Oakeshott’s work is his account
of
the Basque co-operatives
centred around the small town
of
Mondragon. He details its distinctly Basque nature and provides
an interesting account
of
its development from a worker priest’s dream to a highly successful
complex of twenty-seven industrial units spread throughout the Basque country, employing some
17,000 workers. Mondragon has its own technical schools and bank, the Caja Laboral Popular,
which, among other things, concerns itself with raising small savings from workers for investment in
local industry and provides managerial leadership for all the co-operative enterprises.
The strength of Oakeshott’s work lies in its absence
of
pretentiousness: he aims to provide ‘a
rough and ready but reasonably up-to-date account of producer co-operatives’. This he has
achieved and thus provides students with a valuable data source
on
which to build.
In
the
introduction Oakeshott states that he
is
‘undeniably partisan’ and as a consequence offers
no
co-ordinated analysis at the levels of legislation
or
trade union activities. He therefore side steps
crucial questions concerning the feasibility
of
worker encroachments
upon
managerial preroga-
tives as a necessary condition for the socialisation
of
society. That the book
is
biased in favour
of
403
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