Book Reviews
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1979.tb00634.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
BOOK
REVIEWS
Sabotage:
A
Study in Industrial
Conpicr,
by Geoff Brown. Spokesman Books,
1977,
396
pp,
f8.50
Industry
and
Labour: Class
Siruggle
at
Work
and Monopo1.y Capitalism.
hy Andrew
L.
Friedman.
hardcover.
Macmillan,
1977,
313
pp.
flO.OO
hardcover.
f4.95
paperback.
THE
development
of
managerial control systems has been strangely neglected by both Marxist and
non-Marxist writers. Sociologists and labour historians have concentrated on work groups and
trade unions. and often ignored the role
of
the employer. Braverman’s recent work is a powerful
attempt
to
shift the focus,
but
it
lacks two things: there is hardly a mention of shop-floor resistance
to
the processes he describes. and no discussion at
all
of
trade union responses; second. Braverman
is talking about the U.S.A. His argument cannot
be
directly
translated to Britain.
These two books by Brown and Friedman help
to
plugthese gaps. and because
of
that both books
should be warmly welcomed as useful additions to an otherwise empty shelf. Are they important
additions?
It
is not easy to summarise Brown’s arguments and ideas. His book is vast and sprawling,
it
lacks
any conclusion. and the initial lead into the work is misleading rather than helpful. The first three
chapters on ‘Sabotage and the Syndicalists’
fit
uneasily into the rest
of
the story and are never
referred to again.
In essence Brown implies that there are various forms
of
sabotage action, and that only when
work is tightly determined by technology need
it
take the form
of
machine-breaking. In many cases
workers can ’sabotage’ the
joh
by systematic output restriction or ‘ca’canny’.
Brown then sees industrial history as a dialectical process in which widespread ca’canny occurs,
employers respond by the development and institutionalisation
of
new structures
of
direct control
whichworkers resist and have sometimes succeeded in ‘capturing’ and turning
to
thcir own ends, as
in the case
of
P.B.R. schemes in the
1950s
and
’60s.
This in turn promotes the development
of
new
control systems.
In
order
to
suggest this historical intcraction Brown surveys the industrial history
of
Britain from
the 1780suptotherecentcoiiflictsoverM.D.W. in thecar industry.Thus there isalongchapteron
work discipline in the 19th century, a discussion
of
Taylorism.
a
description
of
the inter-war period
and the Bedaux system, and
of
P.B.R. and M.D.W. in the post-1945 period. Brown has ploughed
through a vast amount
of
historical material. some
of
it
unfamiliar, and often has something
interesting to say.
Nevertheless, the book is seriously flawed by a lack of unity, and the associated fact that Brown
has no clear theory
to
offer. The work is given a spurious thematic unity by the label ‘sabotage’,
which is broadly defined as any form
of
non-cooperation. This seems
to
me
to
be unhelpful. If all
acts
of
non-cooperation, individual and collective. are defined as ‘sabotage’, then one loses all
ability to distinguish degrees
of
resistance.
If
one calls all fat women ‘pregnant’. one is likely
to
make serious social and sociological errors.
Given that Brown has no overall theory
to
offer he tends
to
be at the mercy
of
his sources. Indeed
several chapters
(e.g.
Chapter 4 on the 19th century) tend
to
be
a
rapid scurry from source to source
with little added in the way
of
analysis
or
integration.
Brown’s work raises a number
of
substantive problems about British industrial and labour
history:
(1)
How much resistance to developing managerial control systems occurred in Britain.
especially in the crucial
1890-1939
period?
(2)
If
more than
in
other Western societies, then
why
was this the case?
(3)
What were the sources
of
the resistance? (4) What were the patterns
of
resistance?
If
one faces Brown’s work with these questions, it only yields the vaguest
of
answers. This more
than anything else reveals its limitations. Overall one yearns
for
some theoretical integration.
Friedman offers
us
one.
Friedman’s starting point is that Marx and Marxists have failed
to
examine worker resistance and
123
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