Abstract
Economic geography’s engagement with Marxism has been a chequered one. Despite a promising beginning in the late-1970s and the important theoretical contributions of David Harvey in reading Marx geographically, since the mid-1980s there has been a steady decline in economic geography’s interest in Marxism. This reflects both seemingly unresolved problems in Marxian analysis and the rise of more institutional and post-structural perspectives. For many economic geographers, the utility of Marxism to explain more micro or local-scale variegation is in doubt, and these include Storper (2001: 158), who dismisses Marxism for ‘never [having] been able to go beyond large-scale descriptions to cause-and-effect analyses of the detailed internal dynamics of capitalism’.
It is refreshing, then, to find that Jamie Gough’s Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered represents a robust defense of Marx and Marxist research which will be of great interest both within geography and the social sciences. Most notably, Gough deploys labour process theory to examine the restructuring of London manufacturing between 1976 and 1982. Using a longitudinal survey of London manufacturing firms, he examines the critical period in which the post-war crisis of British manufacturing reached its climax. One of Gough’s goals is to illustrate the dynamics of this restructuring in terms of in situ change and firm relocation. Gough uses his analysis to explore the insights of Marxist theory, especially regarding the labour process. Recent debates on restructuring and social change have largely by-passed the labour process which was the object of intense theorising in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Gough reinvigorates this concept not by revisiting the narrow and often fruitless discussions of whether labour control and deskilling are the principal features of the capitalist labour process, but as a critical lens to account for both the fragmented and collective nature of the working class under capitalism. While post-structural and other non-Marxian frameworks have emphasised difference, they rely on non-work identities and have either not viewed the labour process as significant in the creation of difference, and/or have not seen its possibilities in overcoming this between workers. One of the strengths of Gough’s analysis is that he does this by locating individual labour processes and their role in the construction of working-class difference and commonality as part of a nested hierarchy of capitalist accumulation.
Gough divides his study into three main parts. In Part I, he develops a theory of local economies and their relationship with global and firm scale processes. This section is abstract, and reviews debates on the dynamics of workplace change in the context of the accumulation of capital. Gough adds some new insights into value theory while differentiating Marxian political economy from other approaches. Thus he argues that innovation and increased product quality by firms represents a value productivity strategy as opposed to volume productivity, which focuses on intensifying labour output, and that these strategies, while strongly related, can come into conflict with each other. This emphasis on the dialectical nature of capitalist development contrasts with institutionalist and other approaches, since the latter have a more narrow focus on use-value, rather than on the necessary contradictions between use- and exchange-value. Similarly, he points out that while institutionalist geographers have valuable insights into the role of the often regionally based socialisation of labour and firms, they underestimate the vulnerability of regions to disruption by the under- and over-accumulation of capital.
Part II focuses on the experience of London manufacturing firms. Gough stresses the peculiarities, complexity and heterogeneity of London manufacturing. Manufacturing firms survived in London despite often high land and labour costs not only because of the development of different segments of skilled labour, but also because of the sector’s links to final markets of London’s core functions, such as luxury consumer markets and the city’s leading mercantile and transport role. He notes the presence of at least five manufacturing ‘cultures’ in London: craft production of consumer goods; craft production of capital goods; jobbing firms and service manufacturers; Fordist production; and plant process production. Each of these not has only its own competitive strategies, industrial relations and use of labour and capital, but also has complex local socialisation featuring links with other industries and local labour markets. He places these diverse industries into historical and geographic context through long waves of uneven accumulation and the long-term national decline of UK manufacturing, which accompanied a progressive decentralisation of industry within and from London.
Parts III and IV explore the spatial implications of restructuring more closely. London firms utilised a variety of strategies to increase productivity, improve their product and decrease unit costs, which were either carried out in situ or involved relocation. As Gough emphasises, labour process restructuring is simultaneously a material process and a social relation. Thus he notes that the first phase of his study period (1976-1979) was one of relative expansion and tightening labour markets, especially for skilled workers. Firms sought to maintain profit margins, strengthen labour control and have access to necessary skills principally by re-locating to labour markets outside of London for males, and within London for females. Conversely, during the recession (1979-82), firms were able to restore control, and improve access to necessary skills in situ, since higher unemployment and declining firm profits created the conditions for improved workforce discipline. In both strategies, Gough emphasises temporal and spatial scale relations. Thus shifts in long-wave cycles, global national and local class politics are all inextricably linked to patterns of accumulation.
Finally, Gough returns to assess the implications of restructuring for worker collectivity and fragmentation. As he stresses, workers confront capital initially as individuals, and this experience is reproduced through differences in job quality, and through their ability to fight capital and to recognise other workers’ situations and agreements with the state and capital that exclude other workers. There are possibilities for workers to overcome difference in part by emphasising issues of common concern, such as wage levels (especially for the lowest paid) and employment insecurity, rather than issues that are more hard to define and heterogeneous, such as technological change. Such strategies, however successful, would inevitably be met by a withdrawal of investment by capital, and thus any successful socialist campaign implies control by workers not only over the labour process, but also over investment. Such a policy has been largely avoided over the last two decades, in part because it would require the left, which has largely succumbed to a market ideology, to seriously re-consider planning.
To conclude, this book is highly recommended, especially for Gough’s re-assertion of Marxism and of the labour process as a critical arena for its potential in overcoming difference between workers. Yet Gough may also overstate his claims. As those arguing from a more post-structural and feminist position would stress, struggles in the domestic and community sphere, while related to the labour process, often have their own dynamics, and while not incompatible with workplace strategies, require careful analysis and negotiation. Also, because Gough’s data is based on firm surveys, he necessarily must infer the role of labour conflict and accommodation, and managers may not provide a complete picture of such relations. Thus Gough has to read off worker consciousness during this period from other sources, which, while not necessarily inaccurate, are less direct than might be desired. This being said, I think Gough’s book is a welcome one, and a clear exposition of the strengths of Marxist method that should stimulate a fruitful debate.