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Vertical versus Horizontal Economics

January 2010
Capital & Class

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King's College London

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BOOKS
CONTENTS
209 ‘Vertical’ versus ‘Horizontal’ Economics: Systems of Provision, Consumption
Norms and Labour Market Structures
A Review Article by Alfredo Saad-Filho in which he discusses thefollowing books
Ben Fine: Labour Market Theory: A Constructive Reassessment
Ben Fine: The Political Economy of Diet, Health and Food Policy
Ben Fine, Michael Heasman andJudith Wright: Consumption in the Age of
Affluence: The World of Food
Ben Fine and Ellen Leopold: The World of Consumption
215 A Triple Review by Nigel Lee in which he discusses the following books
Ariel Salleh: Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern.
Mary Mellor: Feminism and Ecology.
Nancy CM. Hartsock: The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays.
217 Richard Huggett: Catastrophism: Asteroids, Comets, and Other Dynamic Events in Earth
History. (David Harvie).
219 Andrew Collier: Being and Worth. (Jonathan Joseph).
221 Geoffrey M Hodgson: Economics and Utopia Why the learning economy is not the end of
history. (Pete Clarke).
223 George McKay (ed.): DiY Culture: Party and Protest in Nineties Britain. (Keir Milburn).
227 Bob Russell: More with Less: Work Reorganization in the Canadian Mining Industry.
(Luis L.M. Aguiar).
229 Jeffrey Broadbent: Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest. (Paul
Burkett).
232 Akhtar A. Badshah: Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability.
(Luis L.M. Aguiar).
234 David E. Camacho (ed.): Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles, Race, Class, and
the Environment. (lan MacMillan).
236 George Robertson et al (eds.): Future/Natural. nature/science/culture. (Bettina Lange).
238 Ben Watson: Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play. (Karl Haselden).
239 David Harvey: Spaces of Hope. (Neil Curry).
240 Joe R. Feagin: The New Urban Paradigm: Critical Perspectives on the City. (Derek Kerr).
Capital & Class #72
Review
Section
edited by Derek Kerr

When I started reading these books I

thought, rather sombrely, that their choice

of themes was a reﬂex of Fine’s desperation

at the sterility of value debates, and of his

decision to focus on more tractable and

rewarding problems instead. I am glad to

report that I was wrong. Fine remains as

committed as ever to his intellectual roots,

and one of the main purposes of his work

is ‘to press the case for an appropriately

constructed labour theory of value that

incorporates a full understanding of the

Book Reviews 209

‘Vertical’ versus ‘Horizontal’ Economics:

Systems of Provision, Consumption Norms and

Labour Market Structures

An extended book review by Alfredo Saad-Filho

BEN FINE IS WELL KNOWN in Marxian and radical cirdes for his research,his

teaching at Birkbeck College and SOAS, and his involvement with the CSE.A

superﬁcial look at Fine’s publications gives the impression that his intellectual

trajectory is badly fragmented. Fine seems to have abandoned his highly acclaimed

(by Marxists) work on value theory in the mid-80s (especially Fine and Harris,1979,

and Fine 1980,1982, 1986; see,however, Fine,1989 (1st ed. 1975),1990a, 1992a),in

order to pursue a disparate collection of ‘softer’ themes such as the South African

industrialisation (Fine and Rustomjee, 1997),the contemporary British economy (Fine

and Harris, 1985), the history of the British coal industry (Fine, 1990b), female

participation in the labour market (Fine, 1992b), and labour market theory and

the political economy of food and consumption (in the books discussed below).

Books reviewed in this artide

Ben Fine

Labour Market Theory: A Constructive Reassessment

Routledge, London, 1998. ISBN 0-415-16676-4 (hbk) £50.00

Ben Fine

The Political Economy of Diet: Health and Food Policy

Routledge, London, 1998. ISBN 0-415-16366-8 (hbk) £45.00

Ben Fine, Michael Heasman and Judith Wright

Consumption in the Age of Affluence: The World of Food

Routledge, London, 1996. ISBN 0-415-13155-3 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-13579-6 (pbk)

Ben Fine and Ellen Leopold

The World of Consumption

Routledge,London,1993. ISBN0-415-09588-3 (hbk) ISBN0-415-09589-1 (pbk)

complexities of the dynamics of the

capitalist economy’ (Labour Market

Theory: 264). This ambitious exercise is

necessary, first, on analytical grounds,

because conventional (Marxian)

economics is unable to shed light on many

complex and concrete problems (see

below). Second, it is politically urgent,

because Fine (1997) believes that Marxian

(and, more broadly, alternative)

approaches are at risk of disappearing

because of the onslaught of neoclassical

economics. This approach has been force

fully consolidating its monopoly within

economics while, at the same time,

‘colonising’ the other social sciences with

its peculiar methodology based on individ-

ualism (treating individuals as optimising

agents and the source of social structures)

and equilibrium (both as an organising

principle and as the ‘natural’ state of the

world, from which deviations should be

explained).

Systems of Provision and the Theory of

Consumption

In these books, Fine develops the ‘systems

of provision’ (SOP) approach, as the basis

for a reconstruction of Marxian economics

and its synthesis with history, sociology,

anthropology, and other neighbouring

sciences. Its potential is demonstrated by

the light it sheds on such complex

problems as the causes of eating disorders,

the determinants of fashion changes, the

impact of advertising on consumer choice,

and the relationship between the Common

Agricultural Policy and our diet. Other

‘economic’ puzzles are also considered,

such as the origins of the industrial

revolution, the impact of minimum wages,

and the reasons why the concepts of

human capital and non-accelerating

inﬂation rate of unemployment should be

rejected. Value theorists will be interested

in Fine’s innovative analysis of use value,

the value of labour power, commercial

capital, and consumption (which has been

badly neglected vis-à-vis production,

exchange and distribution). As I do not

have the space or the expertise to discuss

everything I found interesting in these

books, I will focus mainly on a narrow

range of methodological and economic

questions. I hope that this will not unduly

distort Fine’s results, and that it will

motivate the readers to consider carefully

the potential relevance of the systems of

provision approach to their own work.

In order to evaluate the usefulness of

the systems of provision approach I will,

first, examine Fine’s criticism of

conventional (‘horizontal’) approaches.

Horizontal analyses are usually contained

within individual sciences, and they

typically investigate specific problems—

for example, the determinants of

consumption—by applying one single

explanatory factor across all goods

(whether motor cars, fur coats or bananas)

and all societies. These key ideas may

include, for example, utility maximisation,

status, ritual, or, alternatively, the pressures

from the system of production, culture, or

advertising. Paradoxically, these concepts

are generally incompatible across

disciplines, which limits the range of

phenomena they can explain, and seriously

weakens their claim to generality. For Fine,

horizontal approaches are invalid for three

reasons; they over generalise the analytical

signiﬁcance of certain explanatory factors,

they are blind to the (shifting) role of other

determinants of consumption, and they

cannot appreciate that the consumption

of each good at each point in time should

be explained by a (potentially shifting)

combination of factors. Consequently,

horizontal approaches inevitably lump

together commodities produced and

consumed in distinct ways, and whose

social signiﬁcance is widely different. Their

210 Capital & Class #72

distinctiveness is sacriﬁced in a futile quest

for analytical simplicity, which makes it

impossible to explain meaningfully what is

consumed and why.

Awareness of the insufficiencies of

horizontal approaches has led to the

development of ‘middle range’ theories

such as consumption and food studies

(and, more famously, regulation theory).

Middle range theories draw on the

strengths of several disciplines, but eschew

‘grand’ (basic) theories because this would

unduly constrain their analytical freedom.

Instead, they depart from a set of stylised

empirical observations, and transform

them into structures which are used to

explain these stylised facts (The World of

Consumption: 43-4; Labour Market Theory:

137). Fine is heavily critical of middle range

theories, because this procedure smacks

of tautology, and it is scientiﬁcally unsound

because the theory is not grounded by a

wider structure that supports its elementary

concepts and contextualises its

conclusions. Imprecision and ambiguity

at critical junctures allows middle range

theories to be potentially compatible with

several ‘grand theories,’ and to appeal to

writers of widely distinct persuasions.

However, this is also the cause of their state

of perpetual crisis, and continuous lack of

direction.

In contrast, SOP is a ‘vertical’ approach.

Its starting point is the claim that each

group of commodities is materially

produced, and has its cultural signiﬁcance

determined, within a separate chain of

activities that comprises its production,

circulation, distribution and consumption.

These chains, or systems of provision (e.g.,

the housing, energy, transport, fashion and

food systems), express the distinct

combinations of socio-economic forces

(such as the class relations of production,

competition, state power, ideology, etc.)

that determine the level of output, demand,

and the meaning of each element of the

consumption bundle. The study of SOPs is

necessarily interdisciplinary because,

within each SOP, ‘horizontal’ and other

explanatory factors combine and acquire

significance in potentially very different

ways. The analysis must be ﬂexible enough

to determine correctly the limits of each

SOP, and to appreciate how the causal

factors are integrated in practice, rather

than pretending that they are mutually

exclusive, and homogeneous across all

goods. In sum, rather than emphasising

homogeneity and stasis, this approach

focuses on the tensions and displacements

underlying the production and consump-

tion of distinct commodities.

A detailed analysis of the systems of

provision of food and fashion (in The

World of Consumption), and of sugar, meat

and dairy products (in Consumption in the

Age of Affluence) provides the back ground

for more detailed empirical analyses and

policy recommendations (in The Political

Economy of Diet). Remarkably, in these

studies Fine and his collaborators argue

that consumption norms and demand are

structured vertically through the chain of

activities linking production and

consumption, and that consumer choice is

determined historically within each SOP. In

other words, concepts such as supply and

demand are reconstructed, and receive a

new meaning and signiﬁcance, as integral

parts of each system of provision, rather

than being distinct forces which confront

one another only on the market. Let me

give you a taste of the explanatory power of

this approach. In The Political Economy

of Diet, Fine argues that the Common

Agricultural Policy determines not only

how much is produced of each food, but

(broadly) how much is consumed, and

that education and advertising campaigns

for ‘healthy eating’ are mostly unable to

change that outcome. He also claims that

the forces underlying the food and fashion

systems of provision generally work

Book Reviews 211

harmoniously for capital, as is demons-

trated by the proﬁtable co-existence of the

food and diet industries. However, at the

individual level they may induce potentially

fatal eating disorders, such as obesity,

bulimia and anorexia nervosa. These are

not simply disorders of the individual

psyche, but alternative forms of resolution

of the conﬂicting pressures to eat and to

diet, which have affected women in

particular because of their prominent role

in the fashion SOP.

Labour Market Structures

Theories of the labour market, such as the

neoclassical theory, are heavily criticised in

Labour Market Theory because they are

unable to recognise the inextricably human

aspect of the wage relation (and, therefore,

to distinguish adequately this from other

markets), and because they presume that

labour markets are essentially symmetrical

and can be analysed at a highly abstract

level. In contrast, Fine argues that the

opposition between capital and labour is

essential, but that it is structured differently

in each labour market. These markets can

be distinguished through the commodities

being produced and through their

(historically contingent) internal structure,

which determines how the capital relation

is (re)produced, how the value of labour

power is determined and, more speciﬁcally,

how the wages, career structures, working

conditions, and the consumption norms of

the workforce are deﬁned.

Unfortunately, there is no direct

relationship between labour market

segments and systems of provision. Labour

is generally structured vertically in the

sectors where it is employed (e.g., in the

mining or steel industries, or in service

activities such as teaching); however, it is

also mobile across the economy, while

goods are not mobile across SOPs. If

occupation mobility predominates (such

as in low-skill service activities, or in the

market for company chief executives) the

labour market may even be structured

horizontally. The vertical and horizontal

structures which define each segment of

the labour market, and that distinguish

them from one another, are the result of

complex social processes which have to be

identified analytically (Labour Market

Theory: 175-9).

This has an important implication for

value theory, which I will consider in some

detail because of my own interests. The

value of labour power is usually

understood either as the value of a standard

bundle of goods that the (presumably

homogeneous) workers can buy, or as the

share of the net product which is

commanded by the working class (which

presumes that the workers are paid the

maximum wage that they can get, and

spend it in ways that do not have to be

examined). Fine departs from these notions

to argue that the value of labour power,

the wage, and the workers’ composition

norms, are part of the conditions of

(re)production of the work force. They

vary systematically across the segments of

the labour market, and have to be

distinguished in order to avoid ‘averaging

out’ across the working class in spite of

differences in occupation, income, gender,

age, and household composition. This is

complicated further by Fine’s

incorporation of a wider set of

determinants of the value of labour power,

such as the state, the household and other

social relations, structures and processes.

Moreover, the determinants of changes in

the value of labour power should also be

explained, in order to avoid the deﬁciencies

associated with equilibrium analyses. These

patterns are established, and evolve,

differently between systems of provision

and segments of the labour market,

primarily because productivity increases

212 Capital & Class #72

affect them differently, which may lead to

substantial inequality in pay and conditions

across the workforce.

Another important implication of

Fine’s analysis of systems of provision and

labour market structures is his un-

compromising rejection of the concept of

‘human capital.’ This concept was, until

recently, either ignored or rejected by left

wing writers and most conventional

academics across the social sciences (except

in economics). This has changed

remarkably over the past two decades.

Partly as a reﬂex of neoclassical economics’

colonisation, ‘human capital’ is now widely

used by historians, sociologists, and

anthropologists, and others. This is

unacceptable, because this concept

synthesises much of what is wrong with

neoclassical thought. It is ahistorical, and

reifies the capital relation. Worse still,

‘human capital’ treats the individual

capacity to work as the unproblematic

result of a well-deﬁned production process.

This harmonious view is at odds with

Fine’s analysis, which presumes that there

is no ‘horizontal’ norm underlying the

harmonious creation and rewarding of

‘human capital’ across the economy.

Conclusion

These books can be evaluated at two

different levels. In spite of my general

appreciation of the argument (see below),

and admiration at the breadth and depth of

Fine’s research, I think that his case would

have been stronger (especially among

Marxists, presumably one of his main

constituencies) if he had incorporated

explicitly the recent developments in the

Marxian literature. For example, it is

impossible to discuss the value of labour

power without reference to Lebowitz (1992)

path-breaking work, or to Moseley’s (1992,

1997) analysis of the relationship between

labour market structures and the profit

rate. It would also have been important to

relate Fine’s work to similar efforts

elsewhere (e.g., Cockburn, 1996; Gereffi

and Korzeniewicz, 1994, and the analysis of

supply and value chains in the business

literature). Finally, Fine should have

confronted in further detail the post

Keynesian argument that the labour market

simply does not exist (e.g., Arestis, 1992;

Reynolds, 1987).

However, these observations are largely

irrelevant, and they may be unfair because

my emphasis on value theory is at odds

with the structure of Fine’s books, which

focuses on literature reviews, empirical

analysis and policy recommendations. It

is much more relevant to say that I have

been persuaded by Fine’s argument that

‘horizontal’ theories should be rejected,

and that the systems of provision approach

may provide the basis for the inter-

disciplinary synthesis I that have been

looking for. I am also convinced that the

SOP can contribute to my own work, for

example in the analysis of industrialisation

and development finance. In sum, the

signiﬁcance of these books goes far beyond

their (deserved) impact on the study of

consumption, food, or labour markets.

They should be read widely primarily on

methodological grounds. For they offer a

fresh perspective with which to analyse

issues that have troubled Marxists for many

years, as well as problems which have, until

now, escaped our attention because of their

complexity or concreteness, or because of

our inability to engage with the orthodoxy

in its own terrain.

Book Reviews 213

214 Capital & Class #72

Arestis, Philip (1992) The Post-Keynesian Approach

to Economics. Edward Elgar, Aldershot.

Cockburn, Alexander (1996) ‘A Short History of

Meat’, in New Left Review 215, January-

February.

Fine, Ben (1980) Economic Theory and Ideology.

Edward Arnold, London.

__________ (1982) Theories of the Capitalist

Economy. Edward Arnold, London.

__________ (ed.) (1986) The Value Dimension:

Marx versus Ricardo and Sraffa. Routledge &

Kegan Paul, London.

__________ (1989) Marx’s Capital, 3rd ed.

Macmillan, Basingstoke.

__________ (1990a) ‘On the Composition of

Capital: A Comment on Groll and Orzech’, in

History of Political Economy, 22 (1): 149-55.

__________ (1990b) The Coal Question: Political

Economy and Industrial Change from the

Nineteenth Century to the Present Day.

Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

__________ (1992a) ‘On the Falling Rate of Proﬁt’,

in G.A. Caravale (ed.) Marx and Modern

Economic Analysis. Edward Elgar, Aldershot.

__________ (1992b) Women’s Employment and

the Capitalist Family. Routledge & Kegan Paul,

London.

__________ (1997) ‘The New Revolution in

Economics’, in Capital&Class 61, Spring: 143-8.

Fine, Ben, and Laurence Harris (1979) Rereading

Capital. Macmillan, London.

__________ (1985) The Peculiarities of the British

Economy. Lawrence & Wishart, London.

Fine, Ben, and Zavareh Rustomjee (1997) South

Africa’s Political Economy: From Minerals-

Energy Complex to Industrialisation. Hurst,

London.

Gereffi, Gary and Miguel Korzeniewicz (eds.) (1994)

Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism.

Praeger, Westport, Conn.

Lebowitz, Michael A. (1992) Beyond Capital: Marx’s

Political Economy of the Working Class.

Macmillan, London.

Moseley, Fred (1992) The Falling Rate of Proﬁt in

the Postwar United States Economy. St. Martin’s

Press, New York.

__________ (1997) ‘The Rate of Profit and the

Future of Capitalism’, in Review of Radical

Political Economics, vol 29/4: 23-41.

Reynolds, Peter, J. (1987) Political Economy: A

Synthesis of Kaleckian and Post-Keynesian

Economics. Edward Elgar, Aldershot.

References

FEMINISM HAS PROVIDED one of the

most interesting areas of critique of

Marxist theory in recent times. Yet

feminist development of Marxism has been

largely neglected within mainstream

(malestream?) Marxism. The three books

reviewed here all provide

different critiques of

Marx from a feminist

perspective. Salleh and

Mellor consider them-

selves ecofeminists.

Hartsock and Mellor employ a feminist

standpoint. All write from an explicitly

materialist perspective which is described as

‘embodied’ and ‘socially embedded’

(Salleh: ix; Mellor: vii; Hartsock: 77). This

review focuses on some of the lessons which

these authors have for Marxist theory.

All three support a dialectical approach

but challenge Marxian ambivalence on the

relationship of people to nature. Salleh goes

straight to the heart of this problem. Do

we follow the Marx and Engels who see a

dialectical interplay of Humanity and

Nature? Or do we follow the Marx and

Engels who embrace ‘the old dualism of

Humanity versus Nature'? (Salleh: 70-3).

Marx in the Grundrisse comments on

how humans evolve with nature and so are

an intrinsic part of it. But this ecological

understanding was undermined by an

Enlightenment conviction that reason with

technology might shape the ‘forward

march’ of history. Salleh

rejects Marx’s transcend-

ent ego which seeks the

instrumental mastery of

nature. She insists that the

attempt to control nature

as Other gives rise to class society as men

harness the labour power of Others to help

subdue the wild. Alienation of workers is

rooted in alienation from nature.

This leads to a more fundamental

critique of Enlightenment notions of

‘freedom’ than are provided by either

Marxism or postmodernism. The tran-

scendent ego of the Enlightenment seeks

freedom from necessity. Ecofeminists like

Salleh and Mellor reject such freedom.

Transcendence can’t be achieved without

an Other to do the work of embodiment

(Mellor: 101). Salleh supports Engels’

observation that ‘freedom is the appreci-

ation of necessity’ (Salleh: 76). But that

Book Reviews 215

Ariel Salley

Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern

Zed Books Ltd, London, 1997. pp.208.

ISBN 1 -85649-400-4 (pbk) £14.95

Mary Mellor

Feminism and Ecology

Polity Press, Cambridge, 1997. pp.221.

ISBN 0-7456-1418-3 (pbk) £12.95

Nancy C.M. Hartsock

The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays

Westview Press, Oxford & Boulder, Colorado, 1998. pp.262.

ISBN 0-8133-1558-1 (pbk) £.12.50

A Triple Review

by Nigel Lee

should have led to a greater respect for the

sort of knowledge which has been gendered

female than Marx and Engels were prepared

to accept.

It is not just Enlightenment liberalism of

the eighteenth century which is questioned

here, but more fundamentally the Cartesian

dualism of the seventeenth century which

separated mind from matter. This dualism,

which is fundamental for Western science,

claims that only the human mind has

agency (Mellor: 113). Ecofeminism

counters that mind as well as body is

embedded in the material world, and that

mastery is not the only model of agency

(Salleh: 190). Mellor extend this argument

to develop a critique of Roy Bhaskar’s

transcendental critical realism. She argues

instead for an immanent critical realism

(Mellor: 186). Ecofeminism is both realist

and critical in the sense that

Humanity’s immanence will always mean

that any knowledge about the natural

world is bound to be partial … This

requires recognition of the essentially

dialectical and non-dualist nature of the

relation between humanity and the

dynamic ecological whole. It would also

recognize the independent agency of the

interconnected whole. This does not deny

human agency, but human agency would

always need to show ecological reﬂexivity

and humility. (Mellor: 186-7)

The ecofeminist distinction between

immanent and transcendental forms of

knowledge echoes Hartsock’s distinction

between two different conceptions of

power—power as energy, and power as

domination—which she has been develop

ing for the last 25 years (Hartsock: 21 ) . She

argues that women tend to conceptualize

power in the immanent sense of power

within, while men (including Marxists)

tend to conceptualize power in the tran-

scendental sense as power over. (This is

developed in more detail in her previous

book on feminist historical materialism—

Hartsock, 1985). Building on this under

standing of power, Hartsock develops the

idea of a feminist standpoint explicitly as a

variation of the idea of a standpoint of the

proletariat, recognizing that it can only be

produced by a collective subject (Hartsock:

81-2), but expanding the Marxian account

to include all human activity rather than

focusing on

‘

activity more characteristic of

males in capitalism’ (Hartsock: 105). As

Hartsock says,

The Marxian category of labor, including

as it does both interaction with other

humans and with the natural world, can

help to cut through the dichotomy of

nature and culture, and, for feminists, can

help to avoid the false choice of

characterizing the situation of women as

either ‘purely natural’ or ‘purely social.’

(Hartsock: 106)

Ecofeminism can be seen as expanding

Hartsock’s account further to include

recognition of non-human agency and not

just human activity.

An immanent definition of power

becomes important in questions of

political organization. A topical question

is whether unity is possible without

dominance. If we start from a

transcendental definition of power, it is

easy to conclude that all forms of unity

are coercive. Both standpoint feminism

and ecofeminism lead us to conclude the

opposite. If we proceed from an immanent

definition of power and agency then unity

need not threaten diversity. The challenge

is to develop our own forms of co

operation which are not coercive while

understanding the coercive nature of the

forms of organization we are opposing

(Hartsock: 50).

All three of these books are critical of

postmodernism. As Salleh notes,

216 Capital & Class #72

First, its anti-realism becomes defeatism

by assuming the relation between words

and actions to be unknowable. Second,

its micro-political focus on texts distracts

attention from the New World Order and

its materiality. Third, as a discursive

pluralism it has no way of grounding an

alternative vision. (Salleh: xi)

Mellor supports Maria Mies and Vandana

Shiva in maintaining that there is a basis for

a common global politics which is neither

‘totalizing’ nor denying of difference. ‘It is

not universalism per se that is at fault, but

the false universalism of western hegemony’

(Mellor: 67). As Hartsock reasserts, ‘The

understanding available to the oppressed

group must be struggled for and represents

an achievement that requires both

systematic analysis and the education that

grows from political struggle to change

social relations’ (Hartsock: 236-7).

If Marxism is to reinvent itself, we

should take seriously the work of feminists

like Hartsock, Mellor and Salleh. They can

be said to have taken some aspects of Marx

more seriously than many Marxists.

____________________

Reference

Hartsock, Nancy C.M., (1985) Money, Sex

and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical

Materialism. Northeastern University

Press, Boston.

Book Reviews 217

Richard Hugget

Catastrophism: Asteroids, Comets,and Other Dynamic Events in

Earth History

Verso, London & New York, 2nd edition 1997 (1st ed. 1990), pp.xix+262.

ISBN 0-85984-129-5 (pbk) £14.00

Reviewed by David Harvie

‘Catastrophism’, as a paradigm, is exciting.

How could a theory (or collection of

theories) which suggests that major events

in the world—changes in the landscape or

climate, the emergence of a new species or

extinction of an existing one, say—are

violent and sudden, be anything but

exciting, even if ‘sudden’ means taking

place over tens of thousands of years? It is

this paradigm which Richard Hugget’s

book aims to survey, placing it in context

against its ‘uniformitarian’ rivals.

Catastrophism, the book, is divided into

three parts. Part I sets out definitions of

what a catastrophe is and explains the

various classifications of understanding

the history of the world. Competing

theories of Earth change can be

distinguished on three criteria. First, the

rate of change, with the polar extremes

being gradualism (constant rate) and

catastrophism (changing rate). Second, the

characterisation of the underlying state,

with non-directionalism or steady state

being opposed to directionalism (changing

state). Third, the mode of change. For

organic history, mode of change refers to

whether change is believed to be driven

externally (‘environmentalism’) or

internally? For inorganic history, it refers to

the question: have the same kind of

processes or laws been operating through

out the Earth’s history (‘actualism’) or have

these processes changed over the four

billion years (‘non-actualism’)? The various

combinations of these criteria give rise to

eight possible systems of both inorganic

Earth history and organic history.

Discussion of the historical development of

each of these systems is the subject of Part

II. In Part III the author comes up to date

and surveys modern theories of Earth

history, both organic and inorganic.

The book’s scope is incredibly

ambitious, far too ambitious. The author

attempts to give the reader an insight into

both the historical development and current

thinking of all major schools of thought of

both organic and inorganic history.

Unfortunately, in a book of less than 250

pages this means there is little depth. Too

many arguments are presented as ‘so-&-

so thought this, such-&-such believed that’,

but the positions are not really explained or

critically examined, nor related to their

other rivals or developments in other areas

of research. For example the fossil record is

central to assessing many competing

theories, especially in organic history, one

of the subjects of Hugget’s book, but

although the author of course alludes to it,

he never explains or emphasises its

importance. In this respect, the book tends

towards being a mere catalogue of theories.

Many of the hypotheses mentioned are

fascinating, but none is developed over

more than a few pages. One (catastrophist)

idea is that the Earth might be tumbled

upside down, so called pole shift, perhaps as

a result of the external gravitational torque

produced by a close encounter with a large

extra terrestrial body. Such a shift or tumble

would cause an apparent inversion of the

stars and (possibly—it depends on the type

of shift) an apparent reversal of the motion

of the sun. Moreover, this tumble might

be completed in only 24 hours! Another

idea is that new crustal plates are created,

but old ones are not destroyed. As a result

the Earth might be expanding. I ﬁnd both of

these propositions incredible. But are they

serious, or simply crack-pot ideas? Who

says so and, more importantly, why? And if

they can be taken seriously, then what are

the implications? The neglect of these

questions left me often frustrated.

Moreover, the author rarely gives

suggestions for further reading for the

interested lay reader.

Much of Hugget’s explanation is

inadequate. Usually this is simply a result

of technical terms not being defined, or

their explanation being deferred for several

paragraphs or pages. In the ﬁrst chapter,

where the author is discussing what a

catastrophe is, he mentions the so called

‘cusp catastrophe’ and gives an example

from river-channel dynamics. But neither

the mathematical terms— ‘control variable’

and ‘state variable’—nor the example-

specific terms are defined. Given that I

don’t know what ‘channel sinuosity’

means, given that I don’t know what an

‘alluvial fan’ is and am equally ignorant of

‘fan-head trenching’, the author might as

well talk in terms of x, y and z! Throughout

the book, the use of similarly ill-defined

rather specialist terms—‘etchplanation’,

‘Pangean’, ‘static “D” layer’, ‘Oort cloud’,

‘epeirogeny’, ‘orogony’, etc., etc.—besides

thwarting my own understanding, made

me wonder who the intended audience is. I

also found curious the numerous directions

(as opposed to simple references) to papers

published in specialist journals or

conference proceedings for readers wishing

to follow up arguments or counter-

arguments.

In the final chapter, Hugget offers a

synthesis of the paradigms of Earth history.

Of course, all the systems of thought are

to some extent mixtures of gradualism and

catastophism; actualism and non-actualism;

directionalism and steady-statism;

218 Capital & Class #72

internalism and externalism. The contrasts

are not as stark as some polarised accounts

might suggest. Moreover, Hugget suggests

that many disagreements and misunder-

standings can be put down to semantics: is

‘rapid gradualism’ the same as ‘slow

catastrophism’, for example? He also notes

a reluctance amongst many researchers to

let go of the term ‘uniformitarian'; as a

result both its meaning has been perverted

and understanding has suffered. Hugget

suggests that gradualist and catastrophist

theories might be reconciled through the

theory of non-linear dynamics (‘chaos

theory’), which allows both slow, small

changes and rapid, big ones within the same

system. This ﬁnal part of the Catastrophism

I found stimulating and accessible. But, the

lack of both depth and clear explanation

elsewhere has left me both frustrated with

this book and without a very much clearer

understanding of how the Earth is (might

be) changing and has (might have) changed

in the past.

Book Reviews 219

Andrew Collier

Being and Worth

Routledge, London, 1999, pp.ix+125.

ISBN 0-415-20736-3 (pbk) £14.99

Reviewed by Jonathan Joseph

This interesting little book has been

published as part of Routledge’s new

Critical Realism Interventions series.

However, after reading the opening few

pages with their many references to

Spinoza, Augustine, Macmurray and

Heidegger, we might start to wonder

whether this really is critical realism.

The aim of the book is to establish an

objective conception of worth, or more

particularly, the worth of beings, based

on values that are independent of human

kind. Rather than accepting the Sartrean

view that things can only have a worth for

us, Collier attempts to argue that

things/beings have an intrinsic worth in

themselves.

Even lower organisms have needs and

active tendencies to fulfil them. Collier’s

use of Spinoza’s notion of conatus (a

tendency of a thing to persist in its being)

will already be familiar to followers of

critical realism. It can be argued that even

an outcrop of rock has a conatus. For higher

entities the conatus, in terms of a tendency

to persist, includes values appropriate to

this persistence. We may therefore conceive

of a scale of values based on the nature of

beings. (p.3)

This links Spinoza to Augustine and

the claims 1 ) that ‘being as being is good’

and that everything that exists is, to a

degree, a value and 2) that there is an

objective order of beings of greater or lesser

good. Hence value and goodness are

attributes of beings in themselves.

The book makes use of Spinoza’s

ethics and the existentialism of the

Scottish philosopher John Macmurray

(don’t be put off by Tony Blair’s reputed

admiration of him!) to argue that morality

is about emotions and that (contrary to

the traditional separation of reason and

emotion) emotions are rational in that

they include representations of other

beings. Emotions should therefore be

assessed on the basis of how adequately

they correspond to the way that other

beings are. (pp.33-4)

Collier also combines the Spinozist

notions of conatus and extension with

Marx’s view that nature is our inorganic

body and Heidegger’s notion of Dasein or

Being-in-the-world. Through our relation-

ship with the wider environment this

environment becomes, in effect, a part of

our body. Our extension is to have relations

with our wider environment and our

rationality is based on the adequacy of our

ideas and emotions. This is related to the

notion of our caring for our environment.

To take the Spinozist view of human beings

as composite individuals invites us to

examine, not only the interactions of the

‘organic’ or bodily parts, but also the

inorganic parts as extended over our wider

environment.

An aspect of our conatus is the drive

for more interaction with our environment.

This gives a grounding for our beliefs and

their authenticity. Thus: ‘If we consider

belief under the attribute of extension, we

see that true beliefs, insofar as they are not

accidental but constitute knowledge,

correspond to a high degree of interaction

between the organism and its environment,

the capacity to affect and be affected by

many things in many ways.’ (p.75) True

beliefs imply an extension of the organism

into the world underlying knowledge which

is lacking in false ideas. Thus false belief

can be seen not just as a lack of true belief,

but as a real lack.

It is now possible to see the relevance of

these ideas to critical realism. They

continue recent attempts to establish an

objective dimension for morality, one

which it is up to us to discover, not

something we merely invent. This develops

the critical realist distinction between the

transitive processes of human knowledge,

and the intransitive or independent objects

of this knowledge so that historical

moralities are the transitive dimension of

morality while the intransitive dimension

refers to the intrinsic worth of beings,

independent of human valuations or utility.

(p.62) Again, to reinforce the critical realist

aspect of this argument Collier argues: ‘If

nature exists independently of our

knowledge of it, then there is at least a

chance that it has worth independently of

our valuation of it.’ (p.85)

A theory that argues that our beliefs

and moral values should be assessed

according to intransitively existing worth

has important consequences for a Marxist

approach to environmental issues. Nature

is part of our inorganic body, but this is

not because it is ours, but because we are

out there in it. This moves away from a

simple anthropocentrism and causes us to

rethink why our relations with nature are an

issue for us and why we should express a

concern for nature.

While an extension of the arguments

of this book to study our relations with

nature would make interesting reading, a

yet more difficult task would be to extend

our understanding of worth to go beyond

nature itself. The book does not really get

beyond living being, yet it would be useful

to examine on what basis we can asses the

worth of all entities in order to rescue the

Marxist concept of use-value.

This has recently been subject to attack

in Derrida’s Specters of Marx where he

argues that the social world has a spectral

character which is based, in part, on the

phantom form of the commodity or

exchange-value. Derrida argues that

Marx’s talk of use-value is an essentialist

left-over that falsely presumes that a

commodity may come to the stage after

220 Capital & Class #72

having already been an ordinary thing or

use-value. As Derrida challenges us: ‘But

whence comes the certainty concerning

the previous phase, that of this supposed

use-value, precisely, a use-value purified of

everything that makes for exchange value

and the commodity form?’ (Derrida,

1994:159)

I have always found the term use-value

problematic in that it suggests a kind of

past utopia, as if some sort of pre- or non-

capitalist form of measurement is possible.

Perhaps it is better to talk of use rather

than use-value—although this returns us to

the Sartrean problem of anthropo-

centricity (to talk of use implies that we

see the object, not in itself, but as an object

for us). But perhaps again, the notion of

value as intrinsic worth—as something

qualitative as opposed to the quantitative

connotations that use-value still implies—

might provide the solution to this dilemma

and counter those like Derrida who would

wish to deprive the concept of any

ontological status. Here lies the next

challenge for critical realism, an extension

of the concept of worth beyond living

being. Although this is quite clearly a

different project to the one outlined in

Being and Worth, this book, in developing

the concept of conatus and the idea of the

inorganic body, has already begun the

process.

____________________

Reference

Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx. Routledge,

New York & London..

Book Reviews 221

Geoffrey M. Hodgson

Economics and Utopia: Why the learning economy is not the end

of history

Routledge, St. Ives, 1999, pp.337.

ISBN 0-415-07506-8 (hbk)£55.00

ISBN 0-415-19685-X (pbk)£17.99

Reviewed by Peter Clarke

This is a book that deserves to be widely

read, and should be by anybody with an

interest in the discipline of economics. It is

an ambitious work that seeks to question

the current state and direction of the

subject, and raises questions which the

current mainstream of economics does

not even consider. In some ways it is a

return to topics that have been the concern

of economists in the past, but it is a book

that is very much concerned with the

future. It challenges the Fukuyama ‘End

of History’ hypothesis and suggests

economies are not static but dynamic.

History then, does not end. Hodgson is

concerned with the processes of change,

and considers future possible social

organisation.

The main theme of the book is that the

‘desired utopias of both the traditional left

and of the neo-liberal right are unfeasible’

(p.9). The claim is that both of them fail to

understand the role of knowledge and

learning in a modern economy. ‘History

has no pre-ordained path’ (p.10) and there

are a number of directions in which

evolution could take capitalism. So

Hodgson does suggest that capitalism will

evolve into something else and then goes

on to explore the possibilities.

Clearly mainstream economics with its

equilibrium analysis cannot analyse

dynamic change. The starting point for

this book is Marx, and the preface to the

book states, ‘Capital remains one of the

greatest achievements in economic theory

since Adam Smith’ (p.xviii). However,

although influenced by Marx, this is an

institutionalist rather than a Marxist

analysis. The ambitious aim is to transcend

Marx. Clearly this aim will not appeal to

the committed Marxist, but even they

should find the book challenging and

thought provoking.

The book is split into three parts. Parts

one and two are a critique of the tradit-

ional approaches of both left and right,

and an introduction to institutional

economics. In part three possible future

directions are considered. The left will ﬁnd

much more to agree with than the right,

but a major point of disagreement is likely

to be the definition of socialism that is

used. Hodgson sees ‘traditional’ socialism

as being synonymous with central

planning, which is perhaps questionable,

especially in a book entitled Economics

and Utopia. It seems ta confuse a method

of attempting to achieve a socialist utopia

with the vision of that utopia. The writer

does quote Polanyi in the book and so he

must be aware of his more elegant

definition of socialism as a system that

seeks the primacy of thc social system over

the economic system, rather than vice

versa, as occurs under capitalism. How

ever, equating socialism with central

planning does make it an easier target.

It is the attempt to transcend Marx

though, that is particularly interesting. The

analysis has much in ccmmon with that

of Marx, but departs from it in two

important ways. The ﬁrst is concerned with

Marx’s belief that ‘commodity and market

relations could grow to the eventual

exclusion of all non-capitalist features’

(p.147). Hodgson argues that no pure

socio-economic system can ever exist.

There are, in this analysis, different types of

capitalism because different ‘impurities’

existed in the different pre-capitalist

societies. It further argues that the existence

of non-capitalist structures within

capitalism is a functional necessity. So, for

example, will the family ever come to be

dominated by market relations? For Marx

this would be the case, but for Hodgson

such areas that are outside of such relations

will and must exist for the continuation of

capitalism. If capitalism does destroy such

non-market relation ships, then it destroys

itself. Hodgson suggests that they will

always exist, and ‘some degree of variety

will always be with us’ (p.147). In defence

of Marx though, the fact that they currently

do exist does not mean that they always

will. We do seem to have experienced over

the last 20 years or so, the extension of

market relationships into areas where they

did not previously exist. It would also seem

that the Marxist would have no problem

with the notion that capitalism will destroy

the very thing that its existence relies upon.

For Hodgson though, the differences will

also exist in whatever comes after

capitalism.

The second way in which this work

differs from Marx is concerned with what

does replace capitalism, as Hodgson does

believe that something else will evolve. In

a section provocatively entitled ‘Where

Marx Got it Wrong’ (p.184), he suggests

that the growing complexity of the socio-

economic system, and the need for

knowledge based skills, will lessen the

power of capital over labour. The more

skill is required, the argument runs, the

more independent the worker becomes.

222 Capital & Class #72

The effect of this will, for Hodgson, lead to

the end of capitalism as it changes the

capital/labour relationship. It is seen as

leading to the end of employer/employee

relationships and their replacement with

the situation where ‘the degree of control of

the work process by the employer becomes

closer to that of a contract for services’

(p.219), which effectively means that the

worker is now self-employed and has

control over their own working lives. This

is a direct denial of the de-skilling

hypothesis of Braverman, for which

Hodgson argues there is no empirical

evidence. Crucially though, we cannot

determine the outcome of this process,

and a number of possible scenarios are

discussed. One of these does correspond

with traditional Marxism, but this is seen as

only one possibility.

There is much to like about this book. It

is well argued, stimulating and thought

provoking, and deserves to be widely read.

The political right will find little to their

liking but there is much here for the left. It

is an optimistic work. Ultimately though,

this may actually be its weakness. It

concludes with the comment, ‘Once we

realise that we are not at the end of history

then we can begin, with eyes open, the task

of making it’ (p.262). That may well be the

case, but will it be of our own choosing?

Book Reviews 223

George McKay (Ed.)

DiY Culture: Party and Protest in Nineties Britain

Verso, London & New York, 1998, pp.310.

ISBN 1-85984-878-8 (hbk) £40.00

ISBN 1-85984-260-7 (pbk) £12.00

Reviewed by Keir Milburn

Editor George McKay deﬁnes ‘DiY culture’

as ‘a youth-centred and directed cluster of

interests and practices around green

radicalism, direct action politics, new

musical sounds and experiences, [which] is

a kind of 1990s counterculture’ (p.2). The

book broadly refers to the movements

which came together around the 1994

campaign against the Criminal Justice Bill.

This campaign led to new alliances and

political practices. In particular it was the

point when anti-roads and related green

activism joined forces with the free-party

dance scene. What emerged was probably

one of the most important and imaginative

movements of post-war Britain, the story of

which is far from played out.

In his previous book, Senseless Acts of

Beauty (Verso, 1996), McKay attempted

to provide a running commentary and

some context to the explosion in popularity

of direct-action politics. The rooting of his

analysis in ‘cultural studies’ led to a certain

amount of distortion and a narrow focus

which led to the book receiving a mixed

reception from the movement. McKay

outlines the purpose of the book DiY

Culture as: ‘…to open up some space for a

number of key ﬁgures and other happeners

in it, to tell their stories, their histories,

their actions and ideas’ (p.2). This approach

allows some of the shakers and movers

involved in ‘alternative’ political culture

over the last decade to speak in their own

voices. There are chapters by and about

the video group ‘Undercurrents’ and the

squatters’ magazine SQUALL. There are

histories of the groups ‘Reclaim the Streets’,

‘Earth First!’ and ‘The Land is Ours’, and of

the ‘Exodus Collective’ and the ‘No M11

Link Road’ campaign. The book ends with

three chapters on aspects of the nineties

dance music scene.

By far the longest chapter is McKay’s

own introduction and it’s here that

problems are most apparent. A particular

problem is his projection of his own politics

on to the movement: ‘I do think that even if

it doesn’t overtly espouse it, DiY culture

practises an intuitive liberal anarchism’

(p.3). Perhaps a case could be made for

this line when the chapter was written—

presumably early 1998—but two years on

there has been a political sea change. The

buzzword in the DiY movement in Britain

now is anti-capitalism. As with any loose

movement, its political development has

been untidy and uneven but there has,

without a doubt, been a change in the

rhetoric and focus of this movement’s

politics. The J18 ‘Carnival against Capital-

ism’ was both the public expression of a

political development that had been under-

way for some years and a catalyst for a new

hegemony in the movement. This quote

from a participant at J18 is not atypical of

current thinking:

I was at Newbury, and we lost. I saw the

land being trashed. A lot of us in the

environmental movement are absolutely

disenchanted with the old approach. You

can only appeal to NIMBYism so often;

there is no point fighting little battles

across the country. We have to be more

ambitious, and attack the system itsel£

That’s why we targeted the City itself.’1

By providing an almost yearly national

focus, the big Reclaim the Streets (RTS)

demonstrations provide a useful barometer

of the movement’s thinking. It is clear that

some of the originators of RTS saw their

form of protest as displaying an implicit

critique of capitalism right from the

beginning. But the overt focus was

originally on ‘car culture’ and the

reclaiming of public space. This focus

expanded when solidarity actions with

striking Tube workers and the more famous

coalition with the Liverpool dockers led to

a 20,000 strong ‘march for social justice’

on the day of the 1997 general election.

RTS’s contribution was a ‘never mind the

ballots’ party in Trafalgar Square, with

heavy fighting to defend the party from

riot police. John Jordan’s chapter leaves

the story of RTS here. He uses a framework

of radical art theory to situate RTS but

makes its anti-capitalist basis clear. The

next big event was a street party against

the meeting of the G8 countries in

Birmingham—with simultaneous street

parties taking place around the world. From

here it is easy to see a progression leading to

the ‘Carnival against Capitalism’ in the City

of London.

A vital part of this political development

is the worldwide circulation of information

about struggles in which the Zapatistas

have played a large role. Their initiation

of the international encuentros

(‘encounters’)— the ﬁrst in the Mexican

jungles, the second in Spain—has

accelerated the linking of anti globalisation

struggles and, in particular, led to the

setting up of Peoples Global Action (PGA).

This organisation links the UK DiY

movement with large inventive movements

from the Southern hemisphere, like

Movemento Sem Terra, the Brazilian

landless peasants’ movement, and KRRS,

the radical Indian farmers’ union. The

Birmingham anti-G8 protest was part of

four days of international protest and a

first outing for PGA coordination. This

‘globalisation of our own’ has made

capitalism’s global system hard to ignore,

224 Capital & Class #72

whereas in 80s and 90s academia this truth

largely moved out of view. With global

institutions such as G8 and the WTO,

capitalism has allowed it’s mask to slip.

Without the mediation of nation states

there has been a lack of legitimacy. These

institutions also present a uniﬁed target in

an immaterial system which has been hard

to pin down. Unfortunately McKay misses

out on these global inﬂuences which have

proved so important.

You could argue that McKay just

backed the wrong horse, but the direction

of the movement was clearly visible to those

studying the form. In their review of the

No M11 Link Road campaign Aufheben

provide the most prescient chapter. They

view the book itself and the term ‘DiY

culture’ in particular as an attempt at

recuperation:2

The term ‘DiY Culture’ serves to restrict

our historical antecedents to post war

Britain, privileging explicitly cultural

phenomena, at the expense of

connections to, say, the Russian, German

and Spanish revolutions, or the history of

the workers’ struggle in the UK (pp. 128-

283, note 26).

There are chapters which are overtly re-

cuperative. For example, George Mombiot

in his piece on The Land is Ours campaign

says: ‘Direct action is not the whole answer,

nor is it an end in itself; but it is an unparal-

leled means of drawing attention to issues

which have languished in obscurity to the

cost of us all’ (pp.185-6). Mombiot’s line

reduces direct action to a form of militant

lobbying of power. The early DiY move-

ment sprang up in opposition to exactly

this sort of politics, embodied by organisa-

tions like Greenpeace and Friends of the

Earth.

McKay’s introduction is a useful

example of the limitations of a liberal

anarchism to a movement struggling to

understand what capitalism is and how to

oppose a social relationship. In a section he

calls ‘Lacunae’ he produces a familiar

shopping list of identity politics and berates

DiY culture for failing to measure up to

their demands. The identity politics of the

80s and 90s failed to deal with or con-

ceptualize capitalism, which under the

strategy of ‘neoliberalism’ had been

extending capitalist relations both geo-

graphically and into new areas of life. All the

new social movements have found

themselves floundering on the rocks of

neo-liberalism. These movements have had

to face up to capital’s attempted reduction

of all life to the economic. The result has

either been defeat or incorporation with

the danger of backlash.

The move to anti-capitalism has enabled

the ‘DiY’ movement to at least see the

possibility of moving beyond that impasse.

It has been understood as moving away

from ‘single issues’, and towards a unity-in

diversity that happened first in practice.

As the Zapatistas say ‘One No, Many Yeses’.

Capitalism has enveloped the world and

our lives: a shared opposition to it provides

a point of unity. The yeses are the different

areas of struggle, the different lines of ﬂight

to possible different worlds. This holds out

the prospect of avoiding both the old

monolithic unity of the party and the

rainbow coalition of liberalism.

____________________

Notes

1. ‘How virtual chaos beat city police’, in The

Observer 20/6/99.

2. ‘Recuperation’ is term borrowed from the

Situationist International and defined by

Aufheben as ‘an attempt (not necessarily

deliberate) to appropriate antagonistic

expressions, transforming them into

something harmless and integrating them

ideologically into the aims and purposes of

capitalist relations’ (p.128/283, note 27).

Book Reviews 225

Two competing discourses have recently

emerged within the labour process

literature, each offering different interpret-

ations and languages to explain the

reorganization of work. One argues that

changes in the workplace in the name of

‘flexibility’ benefit capital and further

entrench the fordist organization of work

leading to the intensiﬁcation of work for

the working class. The other accepts the

transcendence of the fordist organization

of work and argues that post-Fordism

means ‘empowering’, and ‘challenging’

workers by re-combining conception and

execution and validating their experiences

and tacit knowledges of the organization

of work. Moreover, a new and harmon-

ious relationship between capital and

labour is evident as each has something to

gain in the new workplace. The post

Fordist workplace is a ‘win-win’ political

climate where cooperation between labour

and capital has replaced confrontation.

Where does Bob Russell locate himself in

this literature? What evidence is there in

the Canadian mining industry to support

his own contribution to this paradigm?

Russell sets out to investigate the

changing labour processes in the mining

industry in Canada since the 1960s. At the

same time, he empirically evaluates the

post-industrial thesis that workplace

change entails the introduction of more

challenging and enskilling work leading to

a workforce capable of diagnostic and

analytical skills in the reorganized

production process. Finally, Russell seeks to

ascertain the extent to which new industrial

relations protocols corresponds to the

reorganization of work in the mining

industry.

The book contains seven chapters.

Chapter one reviews the literature on the

(re)organization of work, provides a

rationale for the study, and describes the

methodological approaches used to

collected data. Russell investigates four

companies at ﬁve different sites with three,

rather solidarity-lacking, unions represent-

ing workers. Site visits, surveys of mining

and mill workers, interviews with union

leaders and managers, and observations of

union meetings discussing change in the

workplace are the methods used. What

surely must be an oversight, he forgets to

inform the reader of the total number of

interviews carried out.

Chapter two describes the market share

of the Canadian Potash and Uranium

industries, and the characteristics of their

workforces. It is largely a (white) male

workforce, with the exception of the crews

at Key Lake in Northern Saskatchewan.

Here, 37% of the workforce (147 of 399

workers) are Aboriginal. Women of

Aboriginal descent are numerous here as

well, and 13% of Russell’s sample at this

mine includes them. Typically, Aboriginals

work in the mining department as heavy

equipment operators (61% of them). In

chapters three and four, Russell identiﬁes

two ‘cultures of employment’. By this he

226 Capital & Class #72

Bob Russell

More with Less: Work Reorganization in the Canadian Mining

Industry

University of Toronto Press, 1999.

ISBN 0-8020-4354-2 (hbk) £40.00

ISBN 0-8020-8178-9 (pbk) £14.00

Reviewed by Luis L.M. Aguiar

means the ‘specific strategies that are

directed to managing workforces and

inﬂuencing the work effort bargain’ (p.28).

Across the companies, two cultures of

employment are identiﬁed—fordism and

post-fordism. Chapter five evaluates the

ﬁndings in chapters three and four with an

eye to the literature. Chapter six examines

the extent to which industrial relations

protocols follow suite with the introduction

of new work reorganization. The study is

brieﬂy concluded in chapter seven.

Russell begins his argument by stating

that capital accumulation is primary and its

achievement can take different forms in

the capitalist organization of production.

Thus, there is nothing inevitable about the

choices management makes in securing

proﬁt, and by extension, it need not take

specific form. More specifically he

concludes that the introduction and

implementation of work reorganization is

not due to arguments put forth by pro-

ponents of post-Fordism, (contradictions

of fordism; concerns over monotony of

work process; etc) but instead by

managerial strategy of reducing workforce

and making the remaining workforce do

‘more with less’. This being so, post

Fordism has little to offer: ‘[a]bout the

empowerment of workers, households and

communities, it is not. About the creation

of more participatory, skilful labour

processes, it is at best, tangential. Rather,

the emerging economy is, first and

foremost, about doing more with less and

for less’ (p.199). His investigation of the

politics of production in a changing

industrial relations climate reveals that

workers have not been ‘empowered’, but

nor is there evidence that post-Fordism is

displacing the union as primary source of

identity and political vehicle for workers.

Instead, post-Fordism ‘has failed to resolve

management’s ‘union problems’ or to ‘put

the union away’ (p.194). And,’ [b]y no

stretch of the imagination have workers

been empowered by the new forms of work

organization, unless by that we mean a

willingness to more readily undertake

dangerous work’ (p. 194).

Sceptics familiar with Canadian political

economy might question the need for yet

another study of the mining industry in

Canada. Several good (and recent) studies

of the industry already exist, and mining,

like forestry for example, has often been

harnessed by writers intent on discourses of

nation-building. Perhaps in anticipation

of this question, Russell suggests three

reasons for his study: the industry remains

crucially important for the Canadian

political economy since Canada is the

world’s largest producer of Potash; it is a

major employer in Saskatchewan’s

economy; and more importantly, his

‘comparative sectorial study’ allows for

comparison of the ways in which doing

work is changing.

This is an impressive study for several

reasons. First, Russell demonstrates deft

skill in research design, analysis, and

description of the formal structures of

workplace organization. The detail of his

describing of the labour processes and the

accessible style in which it is presented, is

outstanding. Second, so is his ability to

bring together several data into clear and

coherent arguments linked to an immense

(and growing) body of literature. But there

are some weaknesses in the study. One,

for a study of workers’ experiences of a

changing workplace, little is actually

presented from the point of view of

workers themselves. With the very rare

exception of the inclusion of a passage

from an union leader in the book, there

are no workers’ ‘voices’ in this study. What

there is are summaries of workers

responses to survey questions. In this case,

the reach of survey methodology comes

at the cost of workers’ voices and rich data.

Two, he misses an opportunity to discuss at

length ‘race’ and the labour process. One

Book Reviews 227

would have expected Russell to develop

further analysis of the position and

experiences of Aboriginal workers in the

study. The following questions seem

particularly important to me: why and how

were Aboriginal workers placed largely in

one occupation only? By what basis was

this discrimination made? What were their

speciﬁc experiences of the changes in the

labour process? Did they not have a

different opinion from ‘white’ workers?

Were any Aboriginals part of the union

leadership? Russell also identified the

Aboriginal female composition of the

workforce but once again fails to explore

their speciﬁc experiences of what is taking

place in their workplace. This is too bad

since the impact of the post-Fordist labour

processes on women, and their reactions to

it, are sorely lacking in Canadian research

and elsewhere. In my view, a synopsis of

Aboriginals occupational and educational

background is insufficient to understand

their workplace experiences. Three, this is

a conventional study of the organization of

work. It ignores the more recent literature

on ‘discourse’ and the labour process. It

would have been useful for Russell to

discuss, for example, the meaning of work

and masculinity for a (primarily male)

workforce experiencing tremendous

change to their work and their identities as

workers. Is it possible that the ‘more with

less’ thesis is more than an economic

discourse? To what extent is this idea tied

to managerial assumptions about the

working class body and masculinity, and

the latter’s ability to endure shifts in

managerial programmes? The literature

today argues that not only is work

organization changing and the politics of

production, but also workers’ identities.

Pity this focus was not defined in an

otherwise very good study.

228 Capital & Class #72

Jeffrey Broadbent

Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 1998, pp.xviiii + 418.

ISBN 0-521-56424-7 (hbk) £59.95

Reviewed by Paul Burkett

According to the New York Times, (January

13, 2000), since the September 1999 nuclear

accident in Tokaimura, 70 miles north of

Tokyo, Japan has experienced a ‘sharp

movement of public opinion against

nuclear power …a genuine groundswell

[of] small civic groups that have started

petition drives against the industry’s

expansion.’ Grassroots environmental

protests ‘have been springing up and

asserting themselves more boldly,’ after

‘having mostly died out since Japan

attained the level of affluence of many

Western countries, starting in the 1960s.’

Those interested in learning from and

supporting this new upsurge of environ-

mental activism will find essential

background in Jeffrey Broadbent’s book,

which provides detailed information on

the real reasons behind the rise and fall of

Japan’s localised environmental move

ments in the 1960s and 1970s. Broadbent’s

analysis shows that the ebbing of this earlier

round of protests was hardly due simply to

Book Reviews 229

rising consumer affluence as mainstream

views would have it; rather, it had

everything to do with the ability of Japan’s

unique capitalist power structure and its

‘ruling triad’ (big business, government

bureaucracy, and the Liberal Democratic

Party) to muffle, co-opt, out flank, and

repress popular concerns and aspirations.

At the same time, Broadbent uses the

Japanese experience of environ mental

protest to test the relevance of alternative

approaches to capitalism’s ‘growth/

environment (GE) dilemma,’ and to argue

for the importance of a ‘network’ analysis

of environmental conﬂicts.

The main site for the book’s analysis

is Oita Prefecture (on the island of Kyushu,

in southwestern Japan), where Broadbent

lived and worked during the 1978-81

period. This area experienced, in a kind

of microcosm, the whole gamut of

phenomena comprising Japan’s postwar

GE dilemma: rapid industrialization,

growing pollution problems, rising

environmental protests, and the ‘solving’ of

these problems and quieting of these

protests by the combined efforts of the

ruling triad. With a narrative built out of

rigorously tabulated field interviews and his

personal involvement in environmental

actions, Broadbent recounts the rise and

fall of Oita’s environmental protest

movements over the 1960s and 1970s at

the neighbourhood, hamlet, city, township,

and prefectural levels. While the narrative

is itself mainly inductive, the analysis

(especially in the extended chapter

conclusions) is also presented as an

interplay between the empirical raw

materials and extant theoretical models.

The story begins with the national-level

debate over the ‘New Industrial Cities’—

industrial decentralization—law passed in

1962, followed by the prefectural squabble

over the type of industry to be attracted to

Oita (early 1960s and subsequent). The

narrative then turns to the national-level

conﬂict over growing pollution problems,

culminating in the 1970 ‘Pollution Diet’

with its new environmental regulations.

Broadbent uses this national debate to

help explain the development of environ-

mental protests in Oita, leading to the

prefectural governor’s promise to fulfil

three conditions (‘consensus, harmony,

and assessment’) prior to any further

expansion of Oita’s shoreline industrial

development. Finally, the struggle over the

deﬁnition of each of these conditions (i.e.,

the interpretation of their fulﬁlment or lack

thereof) provides the thematic for the

peaking and ebbing of grassroots protest

under the incessant pressures exerted by

the ruling triad.

In using the Oita/Japan experience as a

case study, Broadbent divides extant

analyses of the GE dilemma into three

broad categories: political-economic,

institutional, and cultural. He also

considers alternative models of state power

including ‘the pluralist, elite, class,

corporatist, state-autonomy and party

centric (principal-agent) models developed

in studies of the United States and

European societies, as well as distinctive

models of the East Asian state—the

“network state” and the “bureaucratic

paternalist” state’ (p. 338). Broadbent’s

methodological preference is clearly for

an extension of the network state approach

to the general process of industrialization,

pollution, and attendant conflicts.

Networks occupy the ‘plastic zone’ between

structure and individual agency, where

interpersonal relations and collective

actions are germinated and reproduced.

They are thus variously characterized as

‘networks within social institutions,’

‘normative, informal networks,’ ‘informally

institutionalized social networks,’ ‘informal

hierarchical institutions,’ ‘embedded social

networks,’ and ‘social structures infused

with ideological cultural structures’ (pp.

24, 26, 28, 30, 65, 92, 178, 186). As such,

they operate across all ‘three forms of

interaction: political economic, social

institutional and cultural dimensions’

(p.30).

There is a healthy concern behind

Broadbent’s embrace of network theory.

The motivations of individuals and their

bonding together in class and other

movements should never be reduced to

either personal preferences or structural

imperatives; an irreducible intersubjective

element always remains (even though this

element is itself both material and social).

This is, after all, the stuff of which Gramsci’s

rich analyses of power and hegemony (not

to mention Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire)

are largely made. Indeed, Broadbent’s

narrative is at its insightful, intuitive best

when unveiling and sorting through the

complex web of informal and semi-formal

relations through which environmental

protests developed, and by which the ruling

triad’s power was exerted. One gets a real

feel for what was happening in these

movements and conflicts—the exhilara-

tion of networks being transformed from

instruments of class rule into instruments of

protest and partial liberation, and the

resignation attendant to the reversal of this

dynamic by elite power and by the failure of

movements to forge an alternative vision of

more environmentally friendly production.

Nonetheless, Broadbent’s somewhat

wooden treatment of alternative theories

—especially Marxism—does lead him to

overstate the independent advantages of

the network approach. In fact, the

substance of Broadbent’s very intuitive

narrative strongly supports a Marxist

approach emphasizing the relevance of

class power (in all its forms) as a

determinant of environmental outcomes in

the Japanese case. As Broadbent himself

puts it, ‘networks softened the borders of

structural contradictions generated by

different immediate interests … enabl[ing]

compromise solutions sufficient to

preserve the collective interests of the ruling

triad’ (p.92). His narrative also clearly

shows that Oita’s environmental protest

movements were basically working-class

formations, not middle-class interest

groups as is commonly presumed in

mainstream circles.

Perhaps it is Broadbent’s rigid, fractured

conception of alternative theories that

prevents him from recognizing the obvious

implications of his own narrative. Instead,

his main conclusions are that Japan’s

relatively intense environmental conﬂicts

were due to the high social intensity of its

pollution (the number of people affected),

and that class had very little to do with

Japan’s speciﬁc GE dilemma. In the end,

institutional and cultural factors, and

networks themselves, are treated as mere

propagation mechanisms for a

predetermined GE dilemma which is

basically the same for all ‘advanced capitalist

industrialized democratic societies’ (p.10).

Without a uniﬁed, holistic and dialectical

methodology to inform the network

approach, it remains incapable of

organically linking the respective networks

of power and of protest as two sides of one

class relation involving the dual exploitation

of social labor and nature. Hence the realm

of industrial production and pollution

problems is basically taken as a technical

‘given’ (one exhibiting a generic conflict

between society and nature), not as a

historically transient form of human

production to be overcome through the

struggle for non-exploitative production

relations. This may help explain the

alternately optimistic and fatalistic tone of

Broadbent’s analysis—depending on his

stance toward the ruling triad’s techno-

cratic ‘solutions’ of the GE dilemma (which

included such methods as taller

smokestacks, bogus impact assessments,

and the relocation of Japan’s most overtly

dirty industries to the poorer countries of

East Asia and Latin America).

230 Capital & Class #72

Fortunately, these methodological

rigidities and biases do not negate the

usefulness of Broadbent’s main narrative

embodying his extraordinarily detailed ﬁeld

work and his intuitive grasp of the Japanese

power structure. This book is an important

and timely contribution to our knowledge

of Japan’s environmental struggles.

Book Reviews 231

Akhtar A. Badshah

Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability

Zed Books, London. 1996.

ISBN 1-85649-405-5 (hbk) £39.95

ISBN 1-85649-406-3 (pbk) £14.95

Reviewed by Luis L.M. Aguiar

This book focuses on the housing crisis in

the ‘Third World’ and describes the ways in

which some communities are organizing to

meet this crisis. The author proposes an

‘appreciative inquiry’ approach focusing

on ‘building capacity, valuing the strongest

features of the community under

consideration, envisioning what “might

be”, discussing what “should be” and

achieving innovative solutions’ to delineate

ways of resolving the crisis (p.ix). He claims

this will develop ‘a vision that sees develop-

ment nurtured by empowering the people

so that they can create their own identities

and their own institutions’ (p.ix). This is

preferred to an analysis centred on

‘problem-solving’ since it deﬁnes the issues

narrowly and often is implemented on a

time-delay basis long after more pressing

issues have arisen to grip the community.

This ‘appreciative inquiry’ method,

however, is largely based on secondary

sources with little contribution from

community members themselves.

The book is divided into three parts.

In the first, chapters 1 and 2, the author

contextualizes the issue of housing and

the severity of the housing shortage in

the ‘Third World.’ The severity of the

housing challenge is alarming especially

since urbanization continues at an

accelerated rate. The discussion here is

poignant and represents some of the best

sections in the book. Part two (chs.3-6)

describes in detail five cases studies

where housing shortages are being

addressed by communities. There are

two examples from Pakistan, and one

each from Egypt, Indonesia and India. It

is not entirely clear why these specifics

communities were chosen as examples

of housing initiatives. Nonetheless, the

level of detail in the description of the

assembly of tools and materials for the

construction of housing projects is

impressive. The last part of the book

(chs.7-8) summarizes the findings and

discusses the implications of the evidence

for the transplantation of the approach

beyond the cases discussed in the text.

The author concludes that urban

development services programmes have

a better chance of success in

sustainability and equity ‘if they are

developed through the following:

consensus rather than confrontation;

encouraging and promoting private

sector involvement under conditions that

are clearly understood and instituted,

and when NGOs and other intermediary

organizations play a vital role in

community empowerment and manage-

ment’ (x-xi). This conclusion stems from

Badshah’s own political beliefs that the

political right rejects state intervention

in favour of market force to resolve the

housing crisis. And, the left is suspicious

of the private sector and the latter’s focus

on exploitation for profit gain. Badshah

opts for a ‘middle ground’ between these

two polarities arguing that research and

solutions will only come about through

cooperation between the private sector,

government and communities. The latter,

in particular, must show ‘self-help’

initiative to attract the other two partners.

The book has a lot to offer, especially its

description of each case study and the

coordination of unpaid labour power and

effort in erecting housing structures. But it

is the ‘self help’ advocacy that most

concerns me. Few would question the

severity of the housing crisis in the ‘Third

World,’ and increasingly in the ‘First’.

There is little doubt that community

defined priorities and initiatives are

necessary elements in any serious attempt

to deal with the housing situation. This

should not, however, be pursued at the

cost of side-stepping structural inequalities

and systemic barriers reproduced by local

and international capital, as well as supra-

national organizations such as the World

Bank and the International Monetary

Fund. While one might acknowledge that

communities must indeed get on with

sheltering themselves, this should not

preclude a serious critique of international

political economy. It is disappointing that

this book contains little about foreign

investment, ‘Third World’ debt, ‘bloody

Fordism’, etc. What there is is a discussion

of housing issues and development

separate from an increasingly impinging

political economy.

The view of ‘self-help’ is worrisome for

a second reason. Undeniably, communities

have always identified their issues and

developed ideas on how to resolve them.

To suggest otherwise, as the author seems to

(see the quote in the opening paragraph of

this review), is false. Badshah’s implicit view

that ‘self-help’ is the initiative and motivator

that is going to attract ‘partners’ from

government and the private sector alike,

and thus likely to bring results, is also

problematic since it skirts the state and the

role it has played in civil society. One of the

discourses of neo-liberalism is precisely the

view that the state can no longer be relied

upon for intervention, support, or providing

alternatives in improving people’s living

conditions and standards. Instead, it is the

individual citizen/ community that is held

responsible for improving her own life

situation. This is best displayed in arguments

about ‘self sufficient’ and the ‘self

enterprising’ citizen/community that the

new right makes repeatedly. Such a view

cannot go unchallenged.

The book also suffers from a serious

omission—the views of the people in the

communities involved in the housing

projects. To my count, Badshah conducted

just six interviews; none with the actual

community leaders and activists engaged in

finding new ways of erecting shelter for

their community. This is a shocking

omission which raises serious doubts about

the author’s ability to evaluate the ‘success’

of the various projects described. Is it

possible to clearly and accurately formulate

an assessment of a project without

discussing it with the people it most

effects—the community members

themselves? I’m afraid that without

commentary from the communities

affected, little is understood about the

mobilization of housing initiatives in the

‘Third World.’

232 Capital & Class #72

In the past decade one of the budding social

movements in the United States has been

the environmental justice movement

(EJM). It seeks to reduce incidences of

environmental hazards being placed in

communities dominated by African

Americans, American Indians, Asian

Americans, Latinos, and those with low

income. The EJM has emerged through the

intersection of race, gender, and class

groupings. This has resulted in multi-racial

coalitions that are thought to perceive the

nexus between racial and gender inequality,

lack of healthcare and social services,

housing, poverty, and economic barriers

that in the past have been the focus of the

civil rights and social justice movements.

Editor David Camacho has assembled a

group of academics to explore the EJM and

bring attention to political and social

aspects of environmental problems

previously dominated by ‘scientific’

thinking. The contributors of the eleven

essays (divided into four sections) are

predominantly political scientists from the

southwestern United States with a sprinkl-

ing of authors from the northeast and

northwest. Camacho begins by asking what

is politics and answers using the theoretical

framework of the ‘political process model’

that rests on the assumption that wealth

and power are concentrated in the hands of

a few groups that deprive most people from

inﬂuence over decisions affecting their lives.

From this promising beginning the

introductory section, (A Framework for

Analysis), often lapses into an impenetrable

and vacuous academic perspective that

serves only to obfuscate rather than clarify

issues through abstract models that do not

address the existing political economy.

Fortunately the case studies of com-

munity environmental organizations, (in

the sections covering Environmental

Injustices, and Confronting Environmental

Injustices), are illuminating and well

researched, providing an understanding of

how these issues are comprehended in

contemporary American society. Speciﬁc

chapters dealing with Hispanic and

aboriginal communities in urban and rural

settings in the southwest are grounded in

empirical situations and demonstrate how

the respective communities have organized

around environmental justice issues to

ensure access to a cleaner environment.

The last two essays in the concluding

section of the book (on Environmental

Justice) are less than satisfactory. Robyn

and Camacho’s ‘Bishegendan Aku: Respect

the Earth’ has underlying elements of

essentialism in employing Native American

environmental values as a prospective

model for broader society. In the last essay,

‘Environmental Ethics as a Political Choice’,

Camacho repeatedly asks ‘What is to be

done?’ to solve environmental problems

through effective social, political, and

environmental organizing.

However, the question is never asked

or answered in the spirit of Lenin. Instead

the reader is subjected to a schizophrenic

Book Reviews 233

David E. Camacho (Ed.)

Environmental Injustices,Political Struggles,Race,Class,and the

Environment

Duke University Press, Durham & London. 1998.

ISBN 0-8223-2225-0 (hbk)

ISBN 0-8223-2242-0 (pbk)

Reviewed by Ian MacMillan

(dare one say dialectical) debate between

‘the individual as rational actor’ and the

need for ‘collective forms of resistance.’ In

the absence of the latter Camacho concludes

that ‘In the final analysis, changing

individual behavior is the only way of

responding to environmental problems.’

Class (and working class issues) are the

singular universal factor in communities

subjected to environmental injustices. Yet

class appears not to be a fundamental

organizing principle of the EJM, or at least

of Camacho’s book. Marxism, socialism,

or any variation thereof are not to be found.

The sole mention of a Marxist economist

has the unwitting appearance of a caricature

since the example deals indirectly with

Cuba, leaving the impression that the only

people that could or would utilize a Marxist

analytical perspective are found in the last

western redoubt of Marxism.

Despite tracing the roots of the EJM back

to community organizing skills and tactics

learned during the civil rights movement

the various authors do not account for

setbacks in civil rights initiatives and the

former role of the state in building the ‘Great

Society.’ Would an EJM not also be

concerned with (the lack of) universal

medical care, social welfare, and housing?

Even though the numerous EJM groups

possess common organizing attributes,

(class, gender, and race/ethnicity), they

remain localized and disparate entities which

have not challenged the political hegemony

of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Yet in the age of ‘new labour’, any smugness

concerning the continuation of American

exceptionalism, (the absence of working

class or socialist political parties), would be

misplaced since social democratic, socialist,

and Marxist political parties in the west have

faired little better.

Historically, in relation to the United

States, we must ask whether the EJM is in

fact ‘new.’ Contemporary and foregone

organizations such as the United Farm

Workers and the Southern Tenant Farmers’

Union could also be considered as examples

of an ‘EJM’ since they often combined

issues of property relations, modes of

production, class, race, and environmental

issues. Furthermore earlier generations of

English and American authors ranging

from Engels and the Webbs, to Jacob Riis,

(How The Other Half Lives), and Hutchins

Hapgood (Spirit of the Ghetto) documented

and sought to alleviate social and

environmental conditions of the underclass.

Given the limitations of Environmental

Injustices, Political Struggles, Race, Class,

and the Environment, I can’t help

recommending Robert Gottlieb’s Forcing

The Spring: The Transformation of the

American Environmental Movement, an

excellent overview of the historical evolution

of the American environmental movement.

For a Red/Green perspective on American

environmental issues the journal Capitalism

Nature Socialism is also useful while a recent

edition of the Environmental History journal

suggests that environmental justice issues in

urban America long predate the EJM. David

Harvey’s, Justice, Nature and the Geography

of Difference is instructive in advancing a

critique of the limitations and possibilities of

the EJM as it is presently formulated.

In addressing equity issues in society

there is deﬁnitely a Green stripe within the

EJM. Sadly, at present, there is no Red

stripe. However, as with the EJM, socialist

and other new social movements have

generally been struggling to form a coherent

social vision. After the WTO’s ‘Battle of

Seattle’ tepid optimism was expressed in

some quarters based on the experimental

labour and environmental coalition known

as the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the

Environment. Though it is far from a

Red/Green alliance, the incongruous sight

of the usually productionist steelworkers

and neo-Malthusian Earth First!ers leading

demonstrations may carry promise for the

future.

234 Capital & Class #72

This is an interesting collection of articles

which, although published in 1996, has

lost none of its topicality. The theme

common to the diverse contributions in

this volume is, as the title indicates, the

future of the natural, in its

conceptualizations, its material realities

and the interactions and elisions between

them. Although not stated, the overall

purpose of the collection could be

described as inviting the reader to (begin

to) take the measure of a crisis, of how

nature—whether human, non human or

‘post-human’—is, depending on one’s

point of view, threatened, exploited,

distorted, challenged, enriched but in any

case changing. The crisis exploration takes

the form of a cultural inquiry. The

introduction sets out the problematic: ‘the

current crisis is not only out there in the

environment; it is also a crisis of culture.’

(p.1). The inquiries in response to this

problematic negotiate in diverse ways

tensions between ‘essentialist’ or ‘naturalist’

and ‘constructionist’ ways of understand-

ing the natural. ‘We are living in an age

when

“

nature” seems on the brink of

extinction yet, at the same time, “nature” is

becoming increasingly ubiquitous and

unstable as a category for representation

and debate.’ (editors’ blurb).

Bringing together theorists of and

commentators on culture and science,

FutureNatural consists of a series of

cultural inquiries into science and

technology but not in the sense of either

interrogating the cultural consequences of

technology or highlighting the cultural

embeddedness of science (as Kuhn may

be said to have done). Rather, and rather

more interestingly, science and technology

are treated as culture: ‘Contributors discuss

… how scientiﬁc theories and models have

been taken up as cultural metaphors that

have material effects in transforming “ways

of seeing” and “structures of feeling”’.

(editors’ blurb) They do this through a

considerable range of topics, academic

disciplines, and styles of presentation.

Topics include the relation between

ecology and postmodern cultural theory

(Kate Soper), the fetishization (Neil Smith)

or commoditization (Les Levidow) of

nature, the history of biological research up

to transgenic organisms (E. Fox Keller),

the construction of woman as Other in

medical practice (Nelly Oudshoorn),

Artiﬁcial Life (N. Katharine Hayles) and

Virtual Reality (Mark Poster). Between

them, the contributors have academic

backgrounds in English, Media Studies,

Science and Technology, Psychoanalysis,

Geography, and Philosophy. Styles of

presentation range from the dense

psychoanalytic reconstructions in Karl

Figlio’s ‘Knowing, loving and hating

nature’ over Kate Soper’s sober, carefully

considered exposition in ‘Nature/“nature”’

to Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ‘musical swoon’

(her expression) in ‘“Nature’s” r’ to the

Book Reviews 235

George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis and Tim

Putnam (eds.)

FutureNatural. nature/science/culture

Routledge, London & New York. 1996, pp.310.

ISBN 0-415-07013-9 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-07914-7 (pbk)

Reviewed by Bettina Lange

journalistic (post) human interest story in

Tom Wilkie’s ‘Genes

“

R” Us’.

Space and time do not permit an essay

by-essay account of the contents of this

collection, so I conﬁne myself to examples

of the most and the least convincing

aspects. Four criteria have inﬂuenced my

judgement: 1. Is useful information

provided, and in an accessible form? 2.

Are the terms of the debate genuinely

advanced? 3. Is the reader’s imagination

invited to qualitatively new spaces? 4. Are

political implications and opportunities

adequately addressed?

Andrew Ross provides (disturbing)

insights into how environmental risk

assessment and preventative and reparative

action carried out by the Pentagon ‘may

result not in the greening of the military but

in the militarization of greening’ (p.15).

Les Levidow’s closely argued account

details how the commoditization

characteristic of recent developments in

biotechnology relies on two related ﬁctions:

biological properties as things (or

products) rather than aspects of (relations

between) living beings; and technological

omnipotence vis-à-vis ‘unruly’ nature

(p.62). These two are perhaps the most

explicitly politically aware and econom-

ically rigorous pieces, although the force of

Ross’s contribution is in my view

somewhat weakened by his polemic style

(e.g. ‘an IT quack like Hernstein and a

welfare-basher like Murray’, p.19) . Other

contributions are less explicitly political—

not necessarily a disadvantage as the reader

is sometimes provided with enough

informative, thought-provoking material to

draw her/his own conclusions. This is true

of Fox Keller’s and N. Katharine Hayles’

contributions. It is not true of Karl Figlio’s

or Mark Poster’s articles, although for

different reasons. Figlio (in so far as I

understand his aim) treats our longing for,

and guilty feelings towards ‘mother nature’

as science’s (irrational) unconscious. This

potentially very illuminating psycho-

analytic approach is considerably

weakened by the traditional way in which

Figlio casts the psychological strategies

involved as ‘inherent in all social

formations’, leaving little room for social or

political action. Poster claims to be able

to show that, and presumably how, new

electronic media ‘cultivate new

configurations of individuality’ (p. 184)

but the evidence he uses to substantiate

this claim is virtually limited to VR role

play— something which, it seems to this

reader’s admittedly not very computer-

literate mind, a child’s imagination exceeds.

It is also disappointing that Poster only

states that the political questions raised by

new media are ‘at the moment extremely

difficult’ (p.191) rather than sketching what

these questions might be.

Kate Soper, by contrast, does just that

and in a way which moves beyond received

opinion. For instance, while she cautions

against the way in which underlying

exploitative social relations are often

effaced from veneration of ‘natural’

landscapes in preservationist campaigning

groups, she also emphasizes that we should

not treat the ‘preservationist impulse’

purely as ‘the vehicle of a patrician and

conservative sentiment’ (p.24).

In conclusion, this is a collection well

worth reading for its diversity and insights.

Those looking primarily for political

economy accounts of the crisis of nature

will be disappointed, however.

236 Capital & Class #72

Ben Watson’s critical evaluation of the work

of the late Frank Zappa is both a fascinating

and important read. Zappa of course, is

notoriously difficult to pigeon hole. As a

musician he was comfortable in both the

idiom of rock and modernist atonality.

Similarly as a Iyricist and polemicist he was

both a consistent critic of corporate

capitalism (in particular ‘the culture industry’

and organised religion) and a very spikey

lampooner of new social movements.

Radical or reactionary? This has been the

question that has troubled many a cultural

critic for the past thirty years. Watson’s

solution to this conundrum is an effective

one. Using marxist class analysis he identiﬁes

Zappa essentially as a petite bourgeois artist

who stood betwixt the contesting class

agenda’s of advanced capitalist America.

Now as an SWP member there is little

surprise in this aspect of Watson’s analysis,

however what is interesting is the critical

theory spin he introduces. Thus where

orthodox marxists might dismiss Zappa as a

defender of the status quo masquerading as

a radical critic (and here one can sight the

pro-family, pro-cottage industry, anti-trade

union and seemingly misogynistic content to

his Iyrics). Watson in the tradition of

Theodor Adorno in particular, seeks not

only to identify the confusion and

contradictions in Zappa’s politics, but also

his great worth as a commentator, who by

virtue of his autonomy from the constraints

of class loyalties, was able to make some

telling observations on the nature of

existence within the vortex of hyper-

capitalism. For example, his derision of

hippydom (‘plastic people’) is portrayed by

Watson as a much needed antidote to the

highly commodiﬁed pseudo-escapism of

Californian ‘new ageism’.

On the vexed issue of Zappa’s attitude

towards women, Watson makes a fairly

strong case for viewing Zappa as less

concerned with the gender or sexual orient-

ation of those he chooses to focus upon,

but rather the socially (re)constructed and

exploitable forms that they take (in the case

of women, the groupy, WASP womenhood,

S&M lesbians). In addition, Zappa’s targets

are many and varied and not exclusively

women (evangelists, music tycoons,

parents, rock bands, the audience),

although it must he said that women do

ﬁgure prominently and when coupled with

his stage antics (the infamous ‘panti-quilt’),

one is left feeling that Watson’s defence of

Zappa here, rather minimises the

problematic nature of his Iyrics.

One final point concerns Watson’s

theoretical sources. Zappa’s frequent use

of popular musical jingles as an affirmative

shell in which to make powerful criticism is

probably better understood not by using

Adorno, who we know retreated into high

art as the last bastion of authenticity, but

rather those critical theorists who were

genuinely appreciative of such dialectical

techniques. Walter Benjamin and Herbert

Marcuse spring to mind here.

In spite of these reservations however,

Watson has succeeded in putting together

a formidable study of an important late

20th Century cultural ﬁgure who is likely to

become the stuff of numerous under

graduate dissertations in the years to come.

Sociologists you have been warned!

Book Reviews 237

Ben Watson

Frank Zappa: the negative dialectics of poodle play

Quartet Books. 1995, pp.597.

ISBN 0-7043-0242-X (pbk)

Reviewed by Karl Haselden

In Spaces of Hope, David Harvey attempts

to piece together a ‘Dialectical Utopianism’

based around the continuing relevance of

Marxism. This, he says, is what haunts him

in his sleep, the idea that the realm of

possibility remains open, the implicit

closures, which we impose upon the world,

are only transitive, historical and cultural

constructs in relation to the world itself.

Hauntology, it seems, is at work once again.

This is a wide ranging book drawing

upon a vast number of sources and yet

the point of inspiration never dims. The

shear scope of Harvey’s work makes doing

justice to it all the more difficult in a short

review. The first part of the book is taken

up with the contemporaneity of the

Communist Manifesto in relation to

Globalization. In the second section

Harvey comes over all Foucauldian in

relation to concerns about materiality and

the body. The third and fourth parts are

the beginnings of how to think through a

way out of the perceived impasse of

contemporary capitalism. It is the latter

half of the book, however, which is

interesting for the hopes and fears of a

Marxist.

Harvey, one of the most astute

commentators when it comes to the thorny

issue of the postmodern, raises the

important question why bother with

Marxism today? This question is both

meant for the reader and for himself in his

continuous teaching of Capital, when most

seem only too keen to write Marx off as

‘the weaver of an impossibly huge master-

narrative of history and an advocate of

some totally impossible historical

transformation that has in any case been

proven by events to be just a fallacious

politically and practically as it always was

theoretically’. This question is on the

horizon of anyone working in the ﬁeld of

Marxism, under the conditions of

contemporary capitalism (and perhaps it

always was).

Yet Harvey’s developing oeuvre over

the last twenty years seems to offer more

than a hint of optimism for himself and

perhaps also for his current and former

students. There is much in this book that

recommends itself to the reader, but the

three main strands one can draw from is

that Capital is still important if not

necessary today; this seems fuelled by the

anniversary of the Communist Manifesto

and the variety of optimistic writings

stemming from the occasion (see chapters

two and three); and also as an antidote to

the TINA (there is no alternative) school of

thought that profelgates the Market as the

only possible way to organise ourselves —

all we can do is smooth off some of the

rougher edges. For Harvey, what is new

about Capitalism today is not the spirall

ing inequality, which is the inevitable result

of Capitalist exploitation, but rather the

will to do anything about it. This is what

Harvey, and ‘Radical Geography’ more

generally are responding to. Building on

the notion of Dialectics set down in his

previous book Harvey shows that, not only

is Marxism of relevance today, but it has

become more pertinent than ever because

the inequalities it produces are so striking.

238 Capital & Class #72

David Harvie

Spaces of Hope

Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. 2000, pp.293.

ISBN 0-74861-268-8 (pbk) £14.95

Reviewed by Neil Curry

He endeavours to follow up his

theoretical endeavours in a concrete study

of the city of Baltimore. Yet, here again,

Harvey says what fuels his indignation is

not the ‘mess’ (perhaps this has never

changed), but the lack of belief that

anything can be done about it. This lack of

vision, the ability to begin to think that

things can be different, is what seems to

push Harvey in the direction of a Utopia

against the Market Utopia, one in which

‘dialectical utopianism’ comes to the fore.

Harvey derives inspiration from a whole

array of thinkers from within and without

the Marxist tradition, and yet operates

firmly within the reasonable limits of the

tradition. This book is a collection of

essays written over the last few years and

its chief concern seems to be the holding of

one’s nerve when everything points to

abandonment. Yet Harvey manages to

guide the reader through a diverse and

often difficult terrain, whilst mapping a

sort of personal balance sheet on a whole

variety of issues. A sort of dialectical

playing out of presence and absence seen

through the eyes of a renowned Marxist

Geographer. The book is eminently

readable and highly recommended

because the figure that strings together its

complex array of concerns and asserts a

presence at every possible moment is none

other than Marx. What many Marxists

may find rather disconcerting is his

approach to ‘the Post-Modern’. Harvey

suggests somewhat uncritically, that

postmodernism, severed the connections

between the universal and the particular,

fragmenting the social structures, which

reproduce the inequalities he vehemently

deplores. But he seems at times to suggest

that this may not have been such a bad

thing after all, and that having been

through this process, it is now time to

reconnect the particular with the universal.

Spaces of Hope is primarily about the

attempt to think the unthinkable, or at

least offers the possibility of doing so.

Book Reviews 239

Joe R. Feagin

The New Urban Paradigm: Critical Perspectives on the City

Rowman & Littleﬁeld, Lanham, Maryland, USA & Oxford, England, 1998, pp.357.

ISBN 0-8476-8498-9 (hbk) £ 46.00

ISBN 0-8476-8499-7 (pbk) £ 18.95

Reviewed by Derek Kerr

Over the years, Joe Feagin has made an

important contribution towards developing

what has been referred to as ‘the new urban

paradigm’. This book seeks to elucidate

that new paradigm by bringing together a

number of Feagin’s works that have been

published elsewhere. As its subtitle suggests

the new paradigm seeks to break free from

the mainstream. Urban research projects

guided by the latter are atheoretical or are

linked to dated or unimaginative ecological,

demographic, or urban problem perspect-

ives. They therefore fail to grasp the ways in

which various urban realities are inter-

connected and mediated by relations of

domination and exploitation. In its place is

an approach to the study of cities that

focuses more heavily ‘on their political

economic histories and the rise and fall of

their social institutions; on the character

and impact of their underlying systems of

capitalism, racism, and patriarchy; and on

how all of this plays out in the everyday

lives of contemporary urbanites’ (p.x). The

nature and power of this new approach to

the city comes out clearly though the form

and content of this book by Feagin. Its

fifteen chapters are divided into five

sections: cities in global perspective;

powerful economic actors in city develop-

ment; the political dimension of city

development; race, racism and city

development; and review and reprise.

The three chapters in the ﬁrst section

consider the way in which the development

of large cities is linked to the world

capitalist economy. This includes a case

study of Houston, ‘oil capital of the world’,

and a comparative analysis of Houston

with Europe’s reputed ‘oil capital’,

Aberdeen. Taken together these chapters

show that corporate expansion in the world

capitalist system has a major impact on

urban regions around the globe. That is,

corporate investment and disinvestment

are linked constantly to state action and

have major economic, social and political

effects on urban households and

communities. The second section (three

chapters) focuses on the role of major

economic actors and their political allies in

the structuring, growth and decline of

cities. Here the focus is on the production

of urban space in terms of the important

role of real estate speculators and the ways

in which capital flows from one sector,

such as manufacturing or office towers, to

another, such as land and real estate. The

latter draws upon what Henri Lefebvre,

David Harvey and others call the secondary

circuit of capital. A case study of Houston

points to the irrationality of real estate

investment in terms of the boom-bust cycle

which not only affects capitalists but also

impacts on the ordinary residents of cities.

The third section (three chapters) turns

to the political dimension of city

development. It points to the way in which

specific government programmes and

actions, such as land-use zoning and urban

renewal programmes, have been shaped

and used by business coalitions to displace

residents of colour and to bring white-run

businesses and white residents back into

central cities. In America, racial and ethnic

separation and exclusion have been at the

heart of urban land-use regulation since

the 1880s. Indeed, the ﬁrst zoning actions

were taken in San Francisco in the 1880s in

order to stop the spread of Chinese

laundries. The data in this section provides,

‘a corrective to the notion that state

intervention and the “free market” are in

opposition. Indeed, most of the zoning and

planning regulations—including exclusion-

ary racial zoning—were initially proposed

or substantially created by those represent-

ing dominant real estate interests in the

cities…’ (p.168). This section also returns

to the comparative study of Houston and

Aberdeen, this time with a close look at the

impact of oil-related economic and real

estate development in the two regions. It

illustrates the range and severity of the

many social costs that have stemmed from

over-investment and the associated boom-

town growth in the two metropolitan areas.

Houston, the much larger city, has had the

more severe social costs. One reason for

this, according to Feagin, has been the lack

of any zoning laws and the much weaker

urban planning system in the Houston area,

compared to the more extensive planning

system in Aberdeen.

The last four chapters covering Feagin’s

work, section four, turns to racism as a

fundamental relation shaping the processes

of urbanisation and city-living. This marks

an important concern of the new urban

paradigm. As Feagin demonstrates, the

system of informal segregation central to

urban racism in America today was set in

place in northern cities in the form of Jim

Crow laws in such areas as public

accommodations and housing and in

informal practices not set out in laws. These

240 Capital & Class #72

practices developed in northern cities well

before the end of slavery in the South. The

current situation still reveals a ‘slavery

unwilling to die’ (p.246). Two chapters in

this section provide fascinating detailed

accounts of everyday experiences of African

Americans with whites in urban areas and

institutions. While the 1960s civil rights

acts theoretically abolished most

discrimination, they have been very weakly

enforced. In spite of denials by white

commentators of the persistence of racism,

antiblack discrimination remains common

in public accommodations, business,

education, housing, and jobs.

The ﬁnal section is given over to two

authors who each evaluate Feagin’s

contribution. Interestingly, these two

chapters refer to Feagin as developing a

new urban sociology. As one of these

authors (John Gilderbloom) puts it: ‘Feagin

never gets trapped by pessimism that is too

often a trademark of traditional Marxist

analysis. He shows how capitalism can be

redirected to create a more sustainable

economy that will beneﬁt everyone’ (p.345).

This perhaps sums up the present limits of

the ‘new urban paradigm’: its critical

perspective is not critical enough. Despite

this limit, Feagin has done much to shake-

up the mainstream and establishment and

this collection of his work provides many

interesting insights and deserves to be

widely read.

Book Reviews 241

Rethinking Labour Markets: Challenging the Orthodoxy

Chapter

Mar 2019

Joseph Choonara

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a theoretical basis upon which the counter-intuitive results in preceding chapters, showing the relative stability of employment in the UK, can be explained. This draws on a range of sources within critical and heterodox political economy: Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi, as well as contemporary theorists such as Kevin Doogan, Ben Fine and Lise Vogel. It presents a concept of a mutual interdependence of employers and employees, showing how this leads to contradictory pressures on employers, one impelling them towards greater flexibility the other to greater efforts to retain employees. In addition, long-term reproductive imperatives shape how labour markets work under capitalism. These processes are affected by gender divisions, the role of the legislation and the state more generally. Finally, it is argued that distinct labour markets are structured in distinctive ways, necessitating concrete examination of specific forms of employment rather than extrapolation from particular instances of precarity. The chapter suggests that approaches to the analysis of labour markets drawing on critical and heterodox political economy, particularly those rooted in a Marxist approach, offer substantial advantages over conventional views in coming to terms with the relative stability of employment in the UK.

The Political Economy of South Africa: From Minerals--Energy Complex to Industrialisation

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2000
Foreign Pol

Political Economy: A Synthesis of Kaleckian and Post Keynesian Economics

Article

Jan 1989

Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class

Article

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The Coal Question: Political Economy and Industrial Change from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day, Ben Fine Routledge, London (1990), xiv, + 226. £35·00

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Apr 1991

David Sadler

The Peculiarities of the British Economy

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Post-Keynesianism: A New Approach to Economics

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Feb 1990
Rev Soc Econ

Philip Arestis

This study attempts to put together the constituent elements of the post-Keynesian economics school of thought. This is pursued from the point of view of its methodology, its theoretical constructs, and its policy implications. The major policy implications of post-Keynesian thinking turn out to be some form of socialization of investment accompanied by explicit and permanent planning of incomes under the umbrella of a social construct among trade unions, industry, and state. Appropriate industrial policies to promote participation of the workforce in decision-making is a further important policy implication. Potential constraints to these types of policies are identified and discussed. Copyright 1990 by Taylor and Francis Group

A Short History of Meat

Feb 1996

Alexander Cockburn

Cockburn, Alexander (1996) 'A Short History of Meat', in New Left Review 215, January- February.

Economic Theory and Ideology __________ (1982) Theories of the Capitalist Economy The Value Dimension: Marx versus Ricardo and Sraffa Marx's CapitalOn the Composition of Capital: A Comment on Groll and Orzech

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149-55

Ben Fine

Fine, Ben (1980) Economic Theory and Ideology. Edward Arnold, London. __________ (1982) Theories of the Capitalist Economy. Edward Arnold, London. __________ (ed.) (1986) The Value Dimension: Marx versus Ricardo and Sraffa. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. __________ (1989) Marx's Capital, 3rd ed. Macmillan, Basingstoke. __________ (1990a) 'On the Composition of Capital: A Comment on Groll and Orzech', in History of Political Economy, 22 (1): 149-55.

On the Falling Rate of Profit Marx and Modern Economic Analysis Women's Employment and the Capitalist FamilyThe New Revolution in Economics

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__________(1992a) 'On the Falling Rate of Profit', in G.A. Caravale (ed.) Marx and Modern Economic Analysis. Edward Elgar, Aldershot. __________ (1992b) Women's Employment and the Capitalist Family. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. __________ (1997) 'The New Revolution in Economics', in Capital&Class 61, Spring: 143-8.

The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar United States Economy. St. Martin's PressThe Rate of Profit and the Future of Capitalism

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23-41

Fred Moseley

Moseley, Fred (1992) The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar United States Economy. St. Martin's Press, New York. __________ (1997) 'The Rate of Profit and the Future of Capitalism', in Review of Radical Political Economics, vol 29/4: 23-41.

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