Book Review: Theo Nichols and Huw Beynon,Living with Capitalism: Class Relations and the Modern Factory

Living with Capitalism: Class Relations and the Modern Factory written by Theo Nichols and Huw Beynon is a study that focuses on four aspects of an industrial life, namely, working arrangement, lives of workers, class relations with respect to the company, and the utility of human talent as a consequence of the former three aspects. The context of this book is set in a chemical factory in England and the authors have tried to present an alternative view of work and work relations. This book is an honest attempt to put forward an alternative view of the various relations not only in work atmosphere but also in society itself. Three different groups of employees are considered in detail and they are workers, foreman and managers. The dynamics of work relations among these groups as well as inside these groups are explained in detail. Interviews were extensively used as a method to understand the perception and participation of various groups of employees towards work arrangement. The book becomes interesting in the wake of the new work agreement that the parent company brings in to increase productivity and improve human potential.

Before the release of this book, manufacturing industries had been subjected to detailed study many times, but mostly concerned with the technological or manufacturing-process-related problems. Theo Nichols and Huw Beynon earn a unique reputation as pioneers who used the context of a chemical manufacturing industry for examining the dynamics and the character of work relations and work organization. Despite the focus on the new work agreement brought in by the parent company, this book is clearly a deviation from the usual trend of celebrating the management for its proactive and long-sighted vision towards progress. Instead, Nichols and Beynon illustrate the work and work politics in an attempt to communicate a new perspective of the theoretical arguments related to work relations. The biographical and experiential profiling of few selected workers is done so neatly that any reader could understand the underlying theme of this book without much effort and in an extremely simple manner.

The book starts with a description of labour and its relation to the idea of capital accumulation. The authors depict the various forms of manual labour, danger and problems associated with the jobs, and the mental and behavioural issues that jobs can give to the employees. The conclusion that can be drawn from these depictions is that management strategies to increase profitability involve optimizing the three critical resources, namely land, labour and capital. In addition, it could be inferred that the capitalist is interested in deskilling workers and eliminating the dependency that capital might have on labour. Labour process, unlike the general perception, is not a happily accepted facet for the labour. Instead, a labour process has its own intricacies and paradoxes that make it difficult to be manipulated. This book undoubtedly gives a head start to an alternative perspective to capitalism and work relations. The authors go further to explain that a labour process or the existence of work organization does not guarantee the avoidance of conflict or the emergence of financial growth. In the initial section, the authors discuss in detail the effect that the new work agreement proposed by the parent company has on the workers, foreman and managers. The effect was similar in terms of control, accountability and performance, but the relations and work nature changed post the implementation of the new work agreement. Managers were more involved in cost controlling and work planning and seldom worked with the foremen or workers. Higher management became far more inaccessible to the managers. Foremen had a more friendly relationship with the shop floor. The transition for managers were relatively easy compared to the foreman. For workers, the changes in work nature were very little compared to foreman and managers. They continued to do the same work, but the pay increased at the same rate as the foreman. Lesser enthusiasm from younger workers also troubled the foreman to a large extent.

The initial part of this book deals with the impact of corporates’ drive to accumulate capital on workers, foreman and managers and the third part talks about the relationship between man and management. Connecting these two dimensions is the discussion of the social class as described in the second part of this book. Explained in detail are the forces that influence the social class, the prominent one being the capital itself. Capital is introduced as a driving force that can rope in other resources, which can destroy or create opportunities, and even expand or erase technology from the face of manufacturing or the society itself. Social class and social relationship in the light of exploitation are also examined in this section. Along with social class is the concept of class consciousness, which is addressed not as an abstract theory but explained as a way that people use to understand themselves and their position in society. This section is more about narration of the lives of many employees, and also includes the verbatim of the conversation that employees had. Here, people are presented as people to examine the various forces that influence the social class. The criticism of mistaking culture and opportunity as the essence of the capitalist society is addressed at the beginning of this section. The authors assert that people are not just the product of the forces but they are, at the same time, cause and effect of what they produce out of their lives.

The next part of the book starts with a rebuttal of the claim made by Robert Blauner that technology and economic prosperity enjoyed by workers have led to a secular decline in the class consciousness and militancy that once used to be the face of industrial relations. Nichols and Beynon argue that management seeks to incorporate the union both nationally and locally and in actual practice, the liberal progressiveness of managerial corporatism is very limited. Despite the organization ideology and practice, most workers act against work and organization, even to a good level of formality. Also, informal organization is a subtle acceptance of the fact that ideological differences exist between trade unions and dichotomy exists between what trade union should be and what trade union is. Based on the experience of the workers, the book also goes into arguments and counterarguments on the check-off system and closed shop that were introduced in the riverside plant. The management supported the growth of trade unions and promotions were given to stewards. Explaining the profit figures to workers for obtaining the motivation of workers is no child’s play and cannot be achieved through a parent–child relationship between managers and workers.

The third section describes the dynamism between stewards and supervisors, and even cites situations where stewards cover for supervisors. Evident and visible actions to incorporate trade unions and encourage membership among workers and granting special privileges for stewards are also discussed. Unions became a tool of management and as a consequence, antagonism grew among workers against the privileged stewards. The new work agreement is illustrated in the light of the workers’ struggle and emphasizes on the practices of devolution of decision-making, job enrichment and participatory management. Interesting to read are the psychological tricks that the managers play on the workers and the sabotage that the workers enact to counter it. Nichols and Beynon also talk about the dominating ideology of the trade unionism, that is, obtaining a fair deal in wage bargaining. The concept of steward, which may not be in prominence today, is also discussed in detail. They are elected to handle grievances and are often involved in negotiations. At the same time, the authors also emphasize on the idea that workers are not just membership, but rather are human who can be changed and may change on their own through a collective process. This section also examines in detail the various strategies used by managers and stewards to persuade workers. Summarizing this section, the authors express grief by saying that the political tragedy that our society has accepted is the fact that reason is a property of the controller and fair deals produce inequalities of power. The society needs decent and unselfish people who believe in reason and discussion, with a good sense of concern for the other person’s point of view. Institutional integration happened to a limited extent only and that could not end the class struggle. The scientific work was established within the parameters of bureaucratic power and has produced a managerial technocratic class. This new class has pushed the working class to the fringes, and to understand the political and social consciousness requires a wider perspective of the society and myopic views within the context of a factory may be just misleading.

The last part of the book starts with two terms that may seem to be oxymoron in a pragmatic context—politics and trust. The politics of trust and lack of trust in politics is a strong sub-context taken to convey the theme of lack of independence for the workers. This chapter brings in the idea of making the labour predictable by making it programmable. Investment needs to be socialized to get more participation from labour. Going one step further is the idea of worker control of factories, and the authors have clinically negated the need of this concept. Bureaucratic capitalism and metropolitan capitalism as against the utopian ideas of work are discussed with the help of worker reactions and situations. The authors go on to describe the dependency of actions and that of the success and failure of actions on the society, and the disapproval, which the workers have to face, of what they do and aspire to do. When work becomes too mechanical, the dignity that all workers get is the control on their actions and this happens mostly outside the scope of work. In the chapter, the ideology of sacrifice, the authors distinguish between doing mechanical work and human machines. The authors claim that the malaise that inflicts the society is structurally deep-rooted and humane considerations are lesser. Wastage of talent and human potential happens irrespective of the myriad talks about meaningful work that happens in society.

Centralization was the core idea behind the new agreement and work culture. It was not just confined to manufacturing operations but also to work relations. The authors averred that the company also tried to bring the idea of centralization into trade union for a better and amicable relationship. The company encouraged membership as well as centralized bargaining. The objective was to have a predictable and controllable work relation and environment in the company. Centralization gives a sham sense of satisfaction, but the reality lies somewhere else. Workers and union leaders equally felt dissatisfied, not just because of the mundane work that they do but also due to the stagnant and relatively low wages. Unpredictable work schedules, precarious working conditions and safety concerns also augmented the dissatisfaction. Many union leaders find such problems as rectifiable and call for more focused attention. But for many in the industry, such trends of dissatisfaction are negligent or non-existent. Similar to these conflicting observations of dissatisfaction are also the diverging observations on the quality of work. Non-quantifiable parameters like quality need standard and foolproof methods for understanding and evaluation. One lacuna of this book would be the absence of any such method for understanding the quality of work. Standard and comprehensive methods would be replicable and Nichols and Beynon, for obvious reasons of anonymity, have kept the details of the plant and the company a secret. The authors gave lesser importance to standardizing the work and more importance was given to personal and individual experience. The exact words of workers need to be interpreted in the larger and standard context of work environment prevailing in England at that point of time. Despite such lacunae, the authors throw light on the governance and hierarchical politics that prevail in organizations. If not educative, the book definitely has an informative and inquisitive dimension that can inspire more works in this direction.