Abstract
Richard Hyman’s Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction is a seminal work in the study of labour unions, the employment relationship and industrial relations within Britain and western capitalist societies, and extant radical and Marxist approaches to the analysis of those selfsame topics. This article is both an appreciation and a critique of it, assessing its strengths and contribution, its longevity of salience and influence, and its weaknesses.
Introduction
Published in 1975 by Macmillan, Richard Hyman’s Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction (hereafter, IRMI) can, it is argued, be categorised as a seminal work in a number of arenas – those of the study of labour unions, the employment relationship and industrial relations within Britain and western capitalist societies, and extant radical and Marxist approaches to the analysis of those selfsame topics. This is in spite – indeed, possibly because – of its being explicitly presented as a general introduction to the subject matter, albeit ‘an integrated [one] rooted in more general Marxist theory’ (IRMI: ix). Written by a then young and politically engaged academic, 1 it is a considerable achievement, building upon his earlier important works, which had a narrower focus and were slimmer volumes. The obvious examples are the books Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism (Pluto, 1971) and Strikes (Fontana, 1972), although there were also important papers on wide-ranging issues like his 1974 piece in the British Journal of Industrial Relations on inequality, ideology and industrial relations.
One key component of the seminality of IRMI is to be found in its majestic sweep across the whole terrain of industrial relations and its systematic and powerful approach in doing so. 2 IRMI presents a clear and forceful analysis of the interests, dynamics and ideologies of workers, employers and the state under capitalism as well as the power relations between them. Thus the pursuit of profit as the raison d’être of capitalism and the structured antagonism to which this gives rise in capital–labour relations is accorded full centrality. But another component of the seminality of IRMI is to be found in the fact that there have been no attempts before or since to provide such a holistic, synthesised and overarching single, unitary work on the application of a Marxist approach to the employment relationship and industrial relations. The one exception is John Kelly’s Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves (Routledge, 1998; hereafter RIR). This seminality allowed IRMI to not only set a benchmark for Marxist scholarship in the study of the employment relationship and in the field of industrial relations, but also to become a standard bearer for Marxism and radicalism within these arenas. Not to put too fine a point on it, IRMI provided a rallying call for the radically minded who were sympathetically concerned with insurgent industrial relations at a time of worker insurgency in workplace relations and wider society. As such, IRMI has provided a number of generations of activists, union officers, students and scholars with a robust foundation in Marxist ideas as they pertain to the sociological study of work, employment and the employment relationship. 3 Looking back on Hyman’s full and extensive body of work, IRMI is undoubtedly the pinnacle of his overall contribution to the Marxist study of industrial and employment relations, and a sizeable one at that. It is arguably also one of his most longlasting and powerful gifts to scholarship in the field of industrial relations per se.
None of this is to consciously or unconsciously set up a scenario of a ‘straw man’ thesis which is then to be carefully but painstakingly and consistently knocked down – and where criticisms and differences of opinion are held to outweigh purchase and contribution – for this essay is both an appreciation and a critique of IRMI, comprising four sections assessing the book in terms of a) its strengths and contribution, b) its longevity of salience and influence, c) its weaknesses, and d) a concluding overview. 4 But before this, two tasks need to be undertaken. The first is to justify the examination of IRMI as a standalone piece of work. The second is to substantiate the initial assertion of its seminality.
Stand-alone study
Treating IRMI as a piece of work separate from Hyman’s other voluminous work on similar and related topics per se (or even just that of the early 1970s) has several justifications. The most obvious one is a practical one, namely that doing so is a more manageable and achievable project, and this comprises several aspects. That IRMI is a single piece of work in book form, which is relatively short while also being holistic in scope, means that the challenge of trying to measure and assess its impact and contribution is that bit easier, especially when considering the world outside academia. By contrast, examining the impact and contribution of all of his (primarily academic) work in any of the particular subject areas contained within IRMI is a task of a different nature, because it would necessarily conform to a compartmentalised view of his contribution and impact, and its location most often in journal form would inevitably focus upon examining its contribution and impact amongst academics and in academia. 5 The second is that IRMI is his greatest piece of grand theory, as argued above, and on this basis a wider impact is more identifiable. Moreover, in some ways, any of the subsequent contributions he made could be said to always, thus, remain at the foothills of this mountain (notwithstanding the point made below on the deficiency of the approach of treating IRMI separately). Third, because of the size and nature of the breadth of the contribution represented by IRMI, and the period in which it was published, unlike other pieces individually or collectively, it is possible to cast one’s gaze over both the periods of upswing and downswing in working-class and oppositional insurgency and to try to discern its contribution in both academic and the outside world.
Of course, treating IRMI in this way carries the deficiency that others of Hyman’s works that potentially complement, augment and develop the arguments and analysis in IRMI are neither considered nor appraised. For example, and in regard of an argument made below vis-à-vis the relationship between the book’s ‘theory and practice’ (i.e. praxis understood as theoretically informed practice), consideration is not given to, for example, his article called ‘Workers’ control and revolutionary theory’ in Socialist Register (1974,
Seminality
For many works, it can be claimed that they are seminal in terms of their content and their intellectual contribution. This is a matter, ultimately, for a consensus on the validity of the claim to be reached or rejected through evidence, argument and debate – and, in this regard, a case is made for IRMI being such a work. However, it is worth noting at this point that in their introduction to the symposium in honour of Richard Hyman in the June 2011 issue of British Journal of Industrial Relations, Frege, Kelly and McGovern commented that IRMI was among the small number of books that ‘encouraged generations of students, researchers, and activists to view the employment relationship in its wider social and political context’. Part of this argument concerning seminality will effectively be made in subsequent sections of this essay, but one likely – if not necessary but in itself insufficient – aspect of seminality that is less open to interpretation and contention is some sense of the extent of influence of IRMI with regard to citation and reference, readership, and sales.
Before moving to examine the evidence of these, several caveats must be made. First, it is impossible to provide an assessment of the readership for IRMI for while we assume, as with most books, that each book is read by more than one person (especially library copies), we do not know by how many, by whom in particular, and how often. Nor do we know for what purpose they are read or with what effect. What can be suggested, however, in the case of IRMI is that it is likely to have been more often – if not better – read outside the standard and conventional (higher education institution and university) academic environments than many other books on industrial relations since 1975. Notwithstanding that IRMI was publisher longer ago than many other such texts and in a more favourable political and educational environment, this is because it is likely to have been read by a) students who were also union activists and union members, given the kinds of courses it was used on, such as those in further education, adult education, some (non-skills based) trade union education and specific courses like Masters of Arts in industrial relations at the likes of Keele, the LSE and Warwick; and b) union activists who were not students, for not only were there greater numbers of these back in the day, but they were more politically engaged and of a higher level of oppositional consciousness. From both groups, many individuals are likely to have gone on to play increasingly important roles in the labour and union movement in Britain, especially as employed union officers and as senior lay activists. This would seem to be a particularly notable outcome in that those within the union movement in Britain, outside the far left groups, have often rejected theory and praxis in favour of pragmatism and practice. Second, and following from this, especially given the nature of the political project contained within IRMI, it is not possible to provide a concrete assessment of the specific effect of the reading upon the readership and then (indirectly) upon others. For example, it cannot be said that a group of activists or officers was more militant and oppositional, and more effective in this militancy and oppositionalism, because of the experience of reading IRMI. But, it can be sensibly and reasonably ventured that because the time and place of Britain was more opportune in the 1970s, IRMI had the opportunity to have more influence amongst union activists and officers than most other comparable books. Of course, whether IRMI was read because it reflected existing dispositions or whether it influenced or changed existing dispositions (and the balance between the two) must remain an open question.
Moving to citations and references in academic work, it is not possible to easily determine the nature of citations (i.e. whether they are positive/negative, agreed/disputed, major or centrally important or not). Notwithstanding this, and examining the main industrial relations journals, 7 by early 2011 IRMI had been cited 131 times in the British Journal of Industrial Relation, 88 times in the (Australian) Journal of Industrial Relations, 78 in the (British) Industrial Relations Journal, 53 times in the (US) Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 37 times in the (British) Work, Employment and Society, and 21 times in the (US) Industrial Relations. 8 Other than Work, Employment and Society (which began in 1987), all these journals have existed since before 1975. Another measure is to use the Web of Science, which primarily (for our purposes) covers some 10,000 of the highest impact journals in the worldwide and across disciplines. 9 By this count, IRMI registers 154 citations by late-2010. Meanwhile, using Google Scholar, which covers the wider terrain of book and journals, shows, again by late-2010, 405 ‘hits’ for IRMI. These figures may or may not seem significant or impressive, since no basis of comparison has been given for similar Marxist or non-Marxist texts in industrial relations. But for a piece of work within academia or used by academics, these figures are quite impressive. However, by comparison and for the purpose of illustration, John Kelly’s RIR of 1998 is a good means of benchmarking IRMI. This is because although RIR was published later (which has implications, as will be discussed below), was written more as an academic work, and has, arguably, a wider remit in terms of subject and disciplinary scope compared to IRMI, it is also a non-research Marxist industrial relations text written by a well-regarded and high-profile British academic, has found an audience within the union movement, 10 and is an intellectual call to arms. Thus, by comparison and up to the same end points in time, RIR had been cited 119 times in the British Journal of Industrial Relation, 86 times in the Journal of Industrial Relations, and 90 times in the Industrial Relations Journal. In terms of the Web of Science, RIR registers 153 citations and 652 ‘hits’ on Google Scholar.
There are two ways of reading these figures. One the one hand, this suggests that the case for IRMI being seminal relative to RIR in this regard is not as strong as had been suggested. Or if it is, it is less strong than in comparison to RIR. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that the journals above have appeared more frequently since the 1990s than they did in the 1970s and 1980s in terms of parts per volume, and that journals also publish more articles per volume because of increased pagination per part. Moreover, and given that most books citations are probably skewed towards the first few years after their publication (as opposed to ten or twenty years after their publication) because of a sense of becoming stale and part of the worn furniture, RIR probably also benefited from the growth in the number of journals (with more parts per volume and more pages) as well, and the move towards the emphasis on inter- and cross-disciplinary study in academia. In terms of ‘hits’ on Google Scholar, it is likely that RIR has benefited disproportionately by comparison with IRMI from the worldwide web taking off from the early 1990s. Thus, many – though not all – books from 1975 until the rise of Google Books and the like do not have a presence on the worldwide web.
In terms of sales of IRMI, it was not possible to gain an exact or official figure from the publishers given the length of time, changes in company ownership and changes in recording methods and technologies since publication. Unfortunately, Richard Hyman was not able to give a figure either, for he did not keep a record or keep royalty statements (having had a clear-out in moving from Warwick to the LSE in 2000). However, in an email communication of late-September 2010, and in response to a suggestion of 10,000 copies sold, Richard commented ‘if it went through 10 printings, I suppose that is a fair guess’ and that ‘There was a Spanish edition in 1981 and a Chinese one (Taiwan) in 2008’. Although it is obviously not known how many sales there were per year or per printing, the sale figure of 10,000 would seem to be potentially all the more significant for a text that was neither revised nor updated. In this connection, Hyman commented, ‘I was never asked to write a new edition and would not really have wanted to: it was a product of its times’. 11 By comparison, RIR has sold just over a fifth of this estimate for IRMI. In an email from late-2010, John Kelly stated that sales up to the year end 2009 had been 2,084. 12 For neither book has it been possible to supplement these figures with those for photocopying registered through the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society but it should at least be acknowledged that this exists in regard to both books. RIR’s sales are impressive given that the normal sales for academic books that sell well – and which are not course textbooks – are around 1,000 copies. Moreover, RIR’s sales have been more than just within academia. Making a very rough computation based on the above figures over the lifetime of their existence, RIR has sold on average 200 copies per annum, while IRMI has sold 300 copies per annum on average. Two comparative contextual points are needed here. One is that IRMI was launched in a more fertile period for Marxist texts, while the other that IRMI is more aimed at a readership outside of academia. Although IRMI was far from becoming a best seller in any conventional sense, it has sold well on a comparison with RIR.
Overall, the conclusion drawn from this discussion of sales, readership and citation is that unlike the overwhelming majority of other books on the employment relationship and industrial relations, IRMI – as a Marxist text – was able to make a significant impact within academia as well as cross the bridge from academia into the practitioner world in a way that few have been able to do before or since. Although a book of a different nature because of its research-based and case-study nature, perhaps only Huw Beynon’s Working for Ford (Penguin, 1973) in Britain also realised this possibility in the period at hand that was available to IRMI.
Strengths and contribution
At its most basic level – that of providing conceptual definition and consequent analysis – IRMI provides a veritable ‘A-Z’ of integrated Marxist analysis of industrial relations. In a field of study which was marked (and remains marked) by under-theorisation and dominated by empiricism, it ‘speaks truth to power’ as well as to the vested interests of the status quo. It also represents a searing and excoriating work of critique that exposes the unspoken and hidden conservative assumptions of other writers and analysts. Essentially, IRMI provides an exposition of ‘their truth and ours’, where Hyman’s politics and intellectual values are not so much worn on his sleeve as explicitly imbedded and integrated into the text. This is all done in a style of writing that is readily accessible and comprehensible (far from what is often described as the form of turgid and opaque ‘academic Marxism’), whilst at the same time being sufficiently robust and nuanced to capture complexity and dynamism. The reader is presented with a general and illuminating version of the central tenets and propositions of Marxism which both avoids unnecessary detours into the terrain of debates within Marxism and over-simplification.
Consequently, IRMI is very strong on, inter alia, demonstrating and explaining the dialectical interplay of agency and environment (sometimes referred to as
But IRMI does more than merely this, on two counts. First, it breaks new ground by being a sophisticated overarching theoretical synthesis of much existing Marxist analysis of industrial relations and the employment relationship. Thus, it provides a singular exposition of, and work of reference on, Marxism. In presenting a synthesis of then extant research and writing 13 in order to produce a work of scholarship (rather than research, and which is no less powerful because of this), IRMI deploys a wealth of materials ranging from rich contemporary critical studies and analyses and historical and theoretical treatises. Some examples are Vic Allen’s Militant Trade Unionism (Merlin, 1966), Perry Anderson’s essay on the limits and possibilities of trade union action (in The Incompatibles: Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus, edited by Robin Blackburn and Alexander Cockburn, Penguin, 1967), Huw Beynon’s Working for Ford (Penguin, 1973), Tony Lane’s The Union Makes Us Strong (Arrow, 1974), Ralph Miliband’s Parliamentary Socialism: A Study of the Politics of Labour (Allen and Unwin, 1961), and The State in Capitalist Society (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), as well as historic works of Gramsci, Lukács, Marx, and Lenin and insightful contemporary industrial relations research (by Hugh Clegg, Alan Flanders, and Alan Fox). In this sense, and especially for students outside higher education, IRMI provides a compendium of Marxist analysis of all the institutions and processes that are often described as ‘fact’ in other industrial relations texts. Second and following from this, for students of industrial relations IRMI necessarily articulated a critique of existing ideas and work within the field, especially of the ‘Oxford School’, pluralism and institutionalism. This took on an added significance in the light of a hostile critique from Clegg (see below). In others words, IRMI simultaneously critically deploys and critically engages with important literatures with the effect, overall, that it is much more than the sum of its (derivative) parts whilst at the same time using these resources to speak to the considerable milieu of politically engaged left intelligentsia (traditional and organic) of the time. Thus, IRMI makes a more valuable and full contribution to a Marxist understanding of the employment relationship and industrial relations than many other works by contemporaries of Hyman, such as those based on ethnographical research or which tackled narrower topics.
In regards of its intellectual tools, IRMI creates Marxist analysis using both a Marxist orientation and a Marxist method of analysis based on concepts of totality, change, contradiction, and practice. The benefit of using this method is to allow an analytical picture to be built up of the holistic, dynamic and fractious nature of the employment relationship and the superstructures to which it gives rise (although IRMI is weaker on this latter component – see later). Consequently, IRMI is a deep – rather than superficial – analysis of both surface and underlying intentions, processes, exchanges and outcomes contained within the employment relationship. It is these tools that allow, in the main, the accomplishment of the integration of aforementioned analysis and insight into something that is altogether more than the sum of its parts. This can be better understood by comparing IRMI to Hugh Clegg’s The System of Industrial Relations in Britain (Blackwell, 1970) and its revised follow-up, The Changing System of Industrial Relations in Britain (Blackwell, 1979). These two books by Clegg represented the high tide of conventional and conservative industrial relations wisdom at the time. In both, Clegg deals with his explicit theorisation of industrial relations – such as it is – in some four pages at the outset, although in the 1979 edition he adds a final brief chapter. But little of this new chapter concerns theorisation until Clegg makes a response-cum-rebuttal to IRMI. Putting both editions together, one is struck by two points. The first is the continuation of the form of basic descriptive analysis, where there is the marked tendency to regard a hundred ‘facts’ as being worth more than an ‘ounce’ of theory. This means that the underpinning social values of the writing are seldom elaborated upon, even though they form a distinctive worldview of a kind of social-democratic pluralism upon which the analysis sits. The second is that in responding to Hyman, Clegg argues that although Marxism and pluralism have differing goals, in effect, as analytical tools and as applied to industrial relations in Britain, they are very similar, having more in common than separates them. Against this backdrop, IRMI stands out as a clearly, deeply and openly theorised work which augments its case by doing so. Marxism provided its anchor and guiding light. IRMI’s contrast to Clegg’s aforementioned work can be deepened by considering a range of subsequent standard works and textbooks on industrial relations by Beaumont, Blyton and Turnbull, Edwards, Farnham and Pimlott, Gopsel and Palmer, Jackson, Kessler and Bayliss, Rose, and Salamon. In few of these do the authors provide a comprehensive and integrated analysis of any perspective, let alone a radical or Marxist one. This again makes IRMI stand out and constitute a substantial contribution.
Longevity of salience and influence
The starting point for understanding the longevity of the salience and influence of IRMI is to comprehend the economic, social and political conditions in which it was first published, and then those conditions under which it existed. The crisis of the 1970s in Britain and the western world comprised essentially, on the one hand, a significant decline in the ability of capitalists to make profit, and, on the other hand, the rising potency of the strength of organised labour, where the two were far from being unconnected. Whilst the ascendant challenge from organised labour receded, the other half of the phenomenon did not, bringing forth a resurgent attempt by capital in its perennial search for the elusive means to maintain its levels of profitability. Under the rubric of what then became known as neoliberalism, the drive to intensify and extensify the wage-effort bargain was one of the key means to do so and provided the basis for further contestation with organised labour over the terms of its exploitation – and in doing so, gave substance to the view that at the heart of the employment relationship under capitalism was a ‘structured antagonism’. The point being made here is that despite changes in the way in which capitalism is organised and the way it which it organises itself, it remained the case that within western capitalism, and Britain itself, a weighty number of the key macro issues and challenges facing radicals and Marxists of activist and academic bent continued to be the same ones IRMI sought to address upon its publication in 1975.
Indeed, the demand for the intellectual sustenance and accompanying analytical tools that IRMI has been able to dispense – and can still dispense – has arguably increased after 1975. The reason for this is that as working-class struggle has either experienced huge defeats and/or been pacified into quiescence, the search for understanding in the absence of action (or presence of inaction) amongst certain academic and non-academic milieus has increased even though much of IRMI reflects many of the concerns of a period of labour militancy. Here, the concerns have been the hardy perennials and the emerging desire to understand the antecedents of ‘Where did it all start to go wrong?’ prior to 1979. 14 But there are particular aspects to this. One is that IRMI was written in and about the ‘golden years’ of successful and rising workers’ industrial and political struggles, so that emotionally and intellectually it speaks to the unmet desires for something of a return to those days amongst many who are favourably disposed to those times from a left and worker perspective. Another is that Hyman subsequently further cemented and developed his stature and reputation as a key radical thinker on unions in both academia and the wider left and labour movement after the book’s publication, so that he was a figure whose presence and influence continued thereafter, with the effect that IRMI was maintained as a key work of reference. And here there has been a little added frisson in that IRMI could be taken to be the work of the early, more radical Hyman when set against the later Hyman of, for example, Understanding European Trade Unionism (Sage, 2001).
The type of Marxism espoused by IRMI is of a sufficiently ‘broad church’ nature to transcend sectarianism and eclecticism. One aspect of this is that it is not the intellectual property of any one organisation or current of thought. Indeed, although it can be seen to reflect some of the politics of the Trotskyist International Socialists (which Hyman left in 1976), the International Socialists were themselves a broad church of revolutionaries (unlike the organisation’s main successor, the Leninist SWP). This meant, in turn, that IRMI was neither the embodiment of a ‘party line’ nor its application to a delimited situation for a certain party purpose. As such, it has no corresponding ideological or intellectual hostages to fortune and can – and has been – used by a broad range of Marxists. But more importantly than this, IRMI is sufficiently broad and robust to be considered credible and worthy of engagement with and of use by a range of non-Marxist radicals (such as radical pluralists) and even non-radicals (mainstream pluralists). There are several dimensions to this. As has been the case with other radical and Marxist seminal texts like John Kelly’s RIR or Paul Edwards’s Conflict at Work (Blackwell, 1986), fellow academics and students have primarily used a ‘pick and mix’ approach to using IRMI whereby bits of it – rather than its whole or overall purpose – are deployed as sources of authority and explanation. The dearth of development in Marxist and radical thought subsequent to IRMI (notwithstanding Kelly’s RIR) can be attributed, in part at least, to this highly selective, non-advance-making approach.
But probably more important is the paradox of Marxist analysis: namely, that many (non-Marxists) can and do agree with Marxist analysis and find it useful in their writing, teaching and pronouncements, but are not moved or convinced by its conclusions, much less its invocation to social revolution or some form of corresponding action. Assuming that there are clear conclusions offered that can stimulate subsequent forms of action (which, of course, is not always so with Marxist analysis but was arguably the thrust of IRMI), this situation comes about for a number of reasons. Prime amongst these is the predominant separation of the conception and execution of ideas within social science in academia, and especially where this concerns counter-hegemonic ideas. Evidently, this is not just a phenomenon of non-Marxists, for there are many Marxists who act similarly and, in turn, help create the normalisation of such a practice. Yet there is also a larger issue at hand. The defence of unions, the critique of unions as reactive bodies and the advocacy of democratic, participative unions are necessarily but not exclusively Marxist. In and of themselves, they are not Marxist per se. Here, Clegg can be seen to have hit upon something important, although he ignores, inter alia, the force of the argument in Marxism that the social relationship between capital and labour is not merely confined to the arena of industrial relations. Putting the import of these aforementioned features together helps gives some basis to an understanding of why IRMI has the wider purchase it does. 15
It is for all these reasons that IRMI went to its tenth reprinting (the last in 1990) as an unaltered, unchanged piece of text. And, although superseded by other of Hyman’s subsequent work like The Political Economy of Industrial Relations (Blackwell, 1989) 16 in terms of grappling with historical and contemporary challenges for the workers’ movement, IRMI maintains its pivotal role because it transcends the immediate 17 while always still pointing, if too vaguely, to the future of another alternative. Nonetheless, and not a reflection upon IRMI itself, while the conceptual and theoretical tools for Marxist analysis were provided by IRMI, this availability did not lead to their extensive usage by industrial relations scholars in general or those that professed to be Marxists and radicals. This indicated the continuing hold of the often implicit intellectual perspective within industrial relations that the key task is to analyse problems and phenomena, often through case studies or surveys, within their own narrow remit, thus eschewing grand(er) theory. 18
Weaknesses and shortcomings
No seminal text is without its weaknesses and shortcomings, and invariably if the authors of such texts were able to re-write or revise them, they would with the benefit of hindsight and collective critique make alterations around the margins. 19 Yet in making the following criticism of IRMI, it is simply not enough to state this criticism without also trying to offer an explanation of why this phenomenon can and does exist alongside the palpable aforementioned strengths in terms of the system of thought underlying IRMI. Thus, it cannot just be blandly stated that ‘nevertheless’ and ‘notwithstanding’ the strengths, there are also weaknesses in a manner that does not seek to understand the relationship of the strengths to the weaknesses and vice versa. Indeed, some allusion has already been made to the relationship between the two. Related to this, the argument of the essay here is that the central weakness of IRMI is that it is not a full-blown work of either Marxist theory or analysis. This is even though a) Hyman makes it patently clear that the book intends to be a Marxist work with a Marxist focus on class struggle and workers’ self-activity, as behoves such a Marxist project; and b) Hyman makes clear his revolutionary socialist intellectual foundation (pages ix-x) and socialist ambition (p. 6). Rather, IRMI is far more a work of academic Marxism. By this, it is meant that IRMI is notably less concerned with the application of Marxism to the workers’ movement and the practical problems contained therein. This tendency is all the more pronounced given that more than in many other fields of study, industrial relations is for the workers’ movement a very practical and hands-on subject. A work that was less ‘academically’ Marxist would have a higher level of engagement with these issues, albeit without necessarily specifically addressing particular problems of the time in a way that would easily become dated, as is the case with Tony Cliff’s key work of the time, namely, The Employers’ Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them (Pluto, 1970). 20
This seemingly strange paradox of intention, expected outcome and actual outcome arises because IRMI does not address in anything more than a fleeting and superficial manner the tasks of Marxism, either in terms of pure practice or the form of praxis. Marxism, as Marx stated, concerns creating and augmenting social revolution – recall the famous injunction, ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it’ in the eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach. It is in this regard that IRMI is singularly lacking, for it keeps itself confined to a study of what is and not what is wanted and what should be, and the means by which to advance from one to the other. Thus, despite its stated intention, IRMI does not have an obvious Marxist purpose because Marxism is necessarily about creating revolutionary social agency. Consequently, any brief discussion of revolutionaries, worker consciousness and revolution is barren and unrewarding. There is no insightful interrogation of the maxim that class struggle is a motor of history. Neither is there the counter- or alter-factual method of interrogation of what it would take to make such and such an advance in the collective consciousness and organisation of workers. This is particularly stark in the discussion of sectional consciousness that pervades throughout IRMI. Within an extensive discussion, there is nonetheless a lack of attention to self-activity of transformative, pre-figurative or putative projects and activities, and consideration of how advanced consciousness develops in terms of the where, when, how and why. Indeed, for a Marxist, consideration of the issue of vanguard action and organisation is noticeable by its absence. The same can be said of the discussion and any conclusions reached over strategies of Broad Leftism versus ‘rank-and-filism’. So too can this be said of the tensions facing unions when they can be stuck between the poles of reform and revolution, or those of getting better terms for wage labour and abolishing wage labour.
So the argument here is that IRMI is like the veritable and endearing Tony Benn – strong and passionate on pointing out the problems, issues and challenges, but notably much weaker on outlining proposals, alternatives and solutions and how to go about creating and developing them. Very rarely does IRMI edge towards a proposal of praxis or what activists should attempt to do (for example, see pp. 172, 176 and 202), but, rather the identification and exposition of problems far outweighs any glimmers of potential corrective hope and advance, highlighting the absence of the espousal of (relatively) concrete suggestions. This is not to argue that IRMI should have been written to also be a handbook, charter or blueprint for action. Rather, it is to argue that instead of falling back into the realms of conventional academic treatise, IRMI could and should have been far more of a work of theory as a guide to action. It is in this sense that IRMI cannot claim to be a total work of Marxist theory, because there is an insufficient integration of the principles of Marxism with the analysis. Following from this, IRMI is a work which is of a critical, radical and materialist analysis and approach, but it is not necessarily one that can be described as having a full Marxist perspective. In this sense, the analysis is of a similar nature to that of Edward’s Conflict at Work (1986). Here, in particular, Edwards identified himself as a materialist but not a Marxist.
What explains this crucial weakness in and of IRMI? There is a marked unwillingness among some schools and currents of Marxism as well as some Marxist thinkers to lay out the concrete practical conclusions that emanate from their work. Sometimes, this is because there is no obvious connection that is Marxist and merely stating that ‘this shows the need for a socialist revolution’ is an inane and unconvincing point of departure. Sometimes, this is because analysis with such conclusions can quickly become dated and superseded by events. But neither can be said for IRMI, which is concerned with very practical matters at a point of historically very high levels of industrial class struggle in Britain. Thus, this choice to not do so would seem to be a characteristic of Hyman’s version of Marxism, 21 and a subscription, knowingly or unknowingly, to the predominant academic convention that stipulates that academic work cannot or should not fuse analysis with instruction and proselytising for this would become too partisan, breaching some aspect of the notion of academic impartiality and objectiveness.
In making this criticism, a point of defence for IRMI would be that many works of Marxism do not comprise route maps and proposals for praxis, and they are correct to do so. Thus, the argument would be that important works of Marxist analysis are no less valuable or incomplete (indeed, Marxist) if they limit themselves to diagnosis and do not enter the terrain of prognosis. This is undoubtedly the case, whether the works be Marx’s Das Kapital or Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness. However, to make such a criticism of particular works is both legitimate and worthwhile where two conditions pertain. The first is that the work concerns, in the main, such practical contemporary matters of how best workers can collectively advance their interests through unions, and the relationship of this to the struggle for workers’ power. This, it can be argued, necessarily lends itself to the laying out of the practical implications – though not tasks – of the proffered analysis (without going as far as stipulating the need for the building of a revolutionary party). The second is that there is invariably a need to have such Marxist analysis of workers’ industrial struggles relate to – by way of informing or illuminating – contemporary workers’ industrial struggle, because workers are the weaker party in the employment relationship and in society. This could mostly easily take the form of some ‘lessons from history’. For example, any analysis of unions as organisations with tendencies towards being socially conservative bureaucracies – which IRMI might be seen as endorsing – would then be expected to draw some conclusions concerning the need to combat this and the ways in which this might be achieved. This would not necessarily require determining a definite (but not definitive) position on the purchase of the main approaches of the left inside the unions, namely, the Broad Left versus ‘rank-and-file’ strategies. However, what is most pertinent to this second point is that there are certain periods – say of rising levels of workers’ industrial struggles – in which the possibilities of realising such ambitions of Marxist praxis are relatively more within reach than in other periods, and this requires the personal and intellectual boldness to attempt to intervene in these struggles with such ends in mind. While it could not be known of what was to come in terms of the employer and state offensive, whether in terms of the SWP’s ‘downturn analysis’ (see Darlington, this issue) or the ‘Unions in a cold climate’ of Hyman’s The Political Economy of Industrial Relations, it remains the case that the period from 1975 to the end of the miners’ strike in 1985 was a period of intense industrial and wider class struggle. To not have sought to draw out the practical conclusions and implications is not to accuse IRMI, in the way of Trotskyist invective, of an abdication of responsibility. Rather, it is to state that it represents a once in a generation – even lifetime – opportunity to make a significant and critical intervention.
Conclusion
As Richard Hyman commented above, IRMI ‘was a product of its times’. This undoubtedly was the case but it was also, as this essay has argued, a text that transcended these times as well. IRMI is a work, in terms of its nature and quality, that many radical academics in our field might aspire to write. It is an exposition of eloquent and forceful politically open and committed radical writing. It stands amongst the most influential texts of the ‘fathers’ of radical industrial relations/industrial sociology like Allen, Edwards and Kelly. Indeed, it handsomely contributes to and develops this intellectual tradition. Its impact upon the field and the wider left amongst the union movement was very much helped by the favourable nature of the times in which it was first published. Political tumult and an insurgent workers’ movement provided a relatively large and expanding market and audience. The combination of the quality of the book and the period it was inserted into allowed IRMI to both popularise Marxism and make Marxism credible to an array of non-Marxists.
Despite all this, it has been argued in this essay that IRMI has a crucial weakness as an attempt to be a Marxist work (notwithstanding that it seeks to be an introductory text). Fundamentally, it is on much weaker ground on how to bridge gap between where ‘we’ are and where ‘we’ want to be and how to move from the specific instance of battle to the general (class) war and vice versa. IRMI recognises the tensions contained therein, but does not discuss how they might be resolved. This key weakness outweighs a minor tendency to be overly mechanistic, because that weakness is embedded within a largely sophisticated analysis. But as argued, it is this weakness which is important in explaining one of the key reasons why IRMI has, paradoxically, played such a vital service to radical, critical and materialist thinking in the field of industrial relations and industrial sociology, and for so long, too. In the overall vein of this essay, the most fitting tribute to IRMI for the 21st century would be for the writing of an updated version capable of convincingly demonstrating the continued purchase of Marxist concepts and analysis, where the challenges for workers are fundamentally the same as before but with a different configuration due to the rise of neoliberalism, the decay of social democracy, and the advance of the managerial prerogative. In such an updated version, the one preferable revision would be to focus more, like Lenin, on ‘What is to be done?’ This new version of IRMI would, thus, see the application of Marxism to a field of study that is intensely practical and policy-orientated. This would be entirely fitting, for Richard Hyman noted in his Preface (p. x) to IRMI that he hoped it would ‘become redundant: first by stimulating more, and better, Marxist scholarship in industrial relations [and] second … [by witnessing] … the abolition of “industrial relations” as it exists today though working-class struggle’.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Ralph Darlington, John Kelly and John Stirling for their help and comments in revising this article.