Capital & Class

The miners’ strike of 1984-85 was a brutal clash between the miners’ union, which was defending jobs, and the Thatcher government, committed to destroying ‘militant’ trade unionism. This article argues that due to the divisions within the miners’ union about the way the strike was started, the Thatcher government was able to exploit this disunity to mobilise criminal sanctions against the miners. This was a ‘lucky accident’, since the government’s preparation for an eventual showdown with strong trade unions had been based on civil legislation. The article combines a range of primary and secondary sources to analyse the extent to which fear over the erosion of civil and trade union liberties was brought to fruition by the strike.

In itself, the term ‘social dialogue’ signifies that the historical conflict between social classes has been replaced with ‘compromise’. In this paper, compromise discourse is first hesitantly approached, and then critically evaluated. In the first instance, it is clear that contrary to what the term ‘social dialogue’ might imply, in reality it is used as a curtain with which to cover hegemonic power relations. Secondly, the question as to whether the term ‘social dialogue’ can describe Turkish industrial relations is raised. As a result, it is argued that social dialogue is not a suitable word with which to discuss the current industrial relations climate in Turkey.

This article employs the methodology of the Parisian regulation approach to periodise Australian capitalism into distinct models of development. Within such models, labour law plays a key role in articulating the abstract capitalist need to commodify labour-power with the concrete realities of class struggle. Given the differential ordering of social contradictions and the distinct relationship of social forces within the fabric of each model of development, such formations will crystallise distinct regimes of labour law. This is demonstrated by a study of the two successive models of development that have characterised Australian political economy since the post-Second World War era: antipodean Fordism (1945 to mid-1970s) and liberal-productivism (late-1980s to the present). The result of this examination is a model of legal analysis that, although tailored to the Australian experience, is capable of application in other contexts.

The recent expansion of the global wine industry, especially in developing countries, has brought to light the apparent phenomenon of conspicuous production. This form of economic activity is characterised by investment decisions that seek status and reputation alongside or, in many cases, ahead of profits. This paper examines the wine industry and uncovers examples of conspicuous production occurring at different scales, from celebrities and individual investors through to national strategies. Although the empirical evidence is somewhat scattered, we argue this is a source of capital of significance in the wine industry, and possibly in other sectors of the economy.

This paper questions whether the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) 2014 independence campaign offered an alternative to Westminster’s neoliberalism. This doubt arises because the SNP’s social justice and Nordic model discourse promised a departure from existing UK policies, but this seemed contradicted by the SNP’s guarantee of European Union (EU) membership. The paper explains this contradiction by identifying the SNP’s commitment to a neoliberalising rather than collective Nordic model, and the neoliberalisation agenda of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy and Europe 2020. Consequently, the SNP evoked the language of radical economic, political and social change, but was committed to maintaining a neoliberal capitalism similar to Westminster’s.

Iceland’s journey from rags to riches in the 20th century is related, in the dominant discourse, to its gaining independence in 1944. This discourse played a significant role in both the legitimation of the finance-dominated growth model in the 1990s and 2000s and in the latter’s defence as it came under scrutiny before its collapse in October 2008. It is therefore ironic – or perhaps, in some sense, logical – to find dominant analyses of the crisis arising from the neo-mercantilist tradition. Drawing on Marxist critiques of neo-mercantilism, we challenge these interventions and thus seek to redress the neglect of social struggle in the dominant discourse.

In the article ‘Indian public-sector trade unionism in an autocratic political climate: The distinctive case of Gujarat’, by David Beale and Ernesto Noronha (Capital & Class [2014] vol. 38, no. 3, p. 517), an erroneous statement was introduced into a sentence during the production process to the effect that Mumbai, rather than New Delhi, was the capital of India.  

The sentence in question, on page 520, reads, ‘Gujarat borders Pakistan and the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, the latter containing India’s capital Mumbai,’ and should have read, ‘Gujarat borders Pakistan and the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra with its capital Mumbai.’ Apologies to all concerned.