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From International Socialism, No.14, Autumn 1963, pp.35-36.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Changing Patterns of Industrial Conflict
Arthur M. Ross & Paul T. Hartman
John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NY. $6.50.
As with so much contemporary ‘academic’ work in the social sciences this book defines its terms of reference so narrowly that it is of little value except for the collection and tabulation pf a mass of statistics. A statistical comparison of ‘strike-experiences’ in 15 countries, ranging from India and Japan to USA and UK, is used to validate the thesis, within two hundred very expensive pages, that strikes are ‘withering away’, and that industrial conflict diminishes as societies become more ‘affluent’; that strike activity as the main expression of this conflict is bound up with a particular stage of societal development which is rapidly fading into the distance. The authors attempt no consideration of industrial conflict which expresses itself in forms other than the strike, and of course would not entertain the Marxist view which regards the conflict as a permanent one while capitalism and alienation remain. The root causes of conflict lying within the system are ignored: the question – why is there a conflict? is hardly posed, let alone answered. For the authors of this book capitalism works, so socialism and socialist solutions to society’s problems are irrelevant; the class struggle is as dead as the dodo; labour and capital have common aims, and any temporary divergence can be ironed out through the sacred channels of negotiation, conciliation and arbitration. Not for nothing has the main author been Vice-President of the National Academy of Arbitrators (sic), for the caver-blurb claims he ‘has performed valuable services in the field of industrial and labour relations for both private industry and Federal and state governments ...’ The authors, while forecasting a rosy future for negotiated capitalism can’t help being a little sorry that ‘... as the long-standing objective of industrial peace is increasingly achieved, some of the values of conflict will undoubtedly be missed’.
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Last updated on 24 March 2010