Until quite recently, industrial relations was1 usually regarded as one of the least exciting areas of social analysis. It normally took some major breakdown between employers and unions — and these were far from common — before press and television showed much interest in the processes of collective bargaining. Leaving aside those professionally involved in industrial relations, serious students of the subject were few and far between, and often regarded with some puzzlement by their academic colleagues.
What is meant by the term ‘industrial relations’? The subject has become an accepted area of academic study, with its own professors and university departments; and some clear definition of its scope and content might therefore be expected. Yet such definitions are surprisingly rare; and if those with unquestioned expertise in the field were to seek to specify its nature precisely, they would be likely to disagree in significant respects.
The main theme of the previous chapter indicates why collective action by employers is central to the study of industrial relations. The subject has been defined in terms of processes of control over work relations; but in seeking to exercise control over their jobs, their conditions of employment and their day-to-day work practices, workers inevitably come into conflict with the aims and interests of their employers. Because the economic power of capital — reinforced by a battery of legal sanctions — is so great, the amount of control which can be exercised by employees as individuals is extremely limited. Only when they band together in common action can they begin to make serious inroads into the dominance of the employer.
The central argument so far can be briefly summarised: the study of industrial relations is in essence a study of processes of control over work relations. The employment relationship — which is encapsulated in the terms of the ‘free’ contract of employment — gives overriding authority in day-to-day work relations to the employer and to his or her managerial agents. The concentrated economic power of capital, buttresed by the various sanctions of the law, lies at the root of this right of managerial initiative through which the employer commands while workers are expected to obey. Hence there exists a ‘natural’ structure of one-way control over production and thus over the work activities of ordinary employees.
It is no accident that Capital was the work to which Marx devoted the bulk of his mature life. After his early grounding in classical and German philosophy, the young Marx immersed himself in the study of economic history and political economy. This intellectual reorientation both reflected and reinforced a conviction that theories and philosophies cannot be seriously discussed or understood in the abstract, but must be treated as products of the social conditions in which they arise. ‘The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life’ (Marx and Engels 1970: 47). Social life in turn is shaped by the most basic of human activities: the organisation of work, the manner in which men act upon the material world and satisfy their material needs. ‘By producing their means of subsistence, men are indirectly producing their actual material life … The “ history of humanity” must always be treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange’ (ibid.: 42, 50).
‘The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. This famous remark of Marx and Engels (1958: 36) is an essential starting point for any analysis of the role of the state in industrial relations; but it is only a starting point. Marx insisted on the need to fight for democratic political institutions, but was equally insistent that political democracy could not be properly achieved without economic and social democracy. A class which held economic sway in a society could not coexist with genuine popular control of the state, for if it did not subvert democracy then it would be dispossessed. There is no simple ‘Marxist theory of the state’; but central to all that Marx and Engels wrote is the argument that the state has historically always served class interests, and necessarily so.1 The elaboration of state institutions has been closely associated with the development of antagonistic class interests, and their functions have always included the reinforcement of the system of class rule enshrined in the existing social order by suppressing acts of resistance and revolt by subordinate classes.
The previous chapters, commencing with the grievances and aspirations of workers in their immediate work relations, have moved through an analysis of the official organisations of trade unionism to consider the role of the state and the general process of capitalist development. It was seen that the main obstacle to attempts to contain the trade union challenge to capitalism stems from the rank-and-file trade unionists themselves: thus in this chapter, the focus shifts back to the shop and office floor.
To conclude this introductory discussion of industrial relations from a Marxist perspective, it is now possible to take up again some of the general issues of interpretation which were raised in the first chapter. What is the central character of industrial relations? Academic theorists, it will be recalled, tend to define their subject as a study of the institutions of job regulation. Yet this is far removed from the viewpoint of the average layman, whose immediate understanding of the term would almost certainly involve notions of industrial conflict in general and strikes in particular.
