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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 10, 1982

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/llt10rv01

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Publisher(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

ISSN 0700-3862 (print) 1911-4842 (digital)

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Cite this review (1982). Review of [Reviews / Comptes Rendus]. Labour/Le Travailleur, 10, 229–328.

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Robert Brymand R. James Sacouman, eds., Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada by Ian McKay/ 231 Grant Reuber, Canada's Political Economy by Michael Bradfield / 237 Desmond Morton with Terry Copp, Working People. An Illustrated History of Canadian Labour. by Jacques Rouillard / 239 Kenneth W. Osborne, "Hard-working, Temperate and Peaceable" —The Portrayal of Workers in Canadian History Textbooks by Andre E. LeBIanc /240 Desmond Morton, Canada and War, A Military and Political History by Glenn T. Wright / 242 Donald Crcighton, The Passionate Observer: Selected Writings by William Westfall / 243 Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement from Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I; James J. Kenneally, Women and American Trade Unions; Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past; and Lois Scharf, To Work and to Wed. Female Employment, Feminism and the Great Depression by Veronica Strong-Boag / 245 Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525-1700 by Susan D. Amussen / 249 John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England 1700-1870 and Gwyn A. Williams, The Merthyr Rising by Nicholas Rogers / 251 lorwerth Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London: John Gast and His Times by Peter Bailey / 254 Ian Carter, Farm/jfr in Northeastern Scotland, 1840-1914. The Poor Man's Country; andM.L. Parry and T.R. Slater, The Making of the Scottish Countryside by D. H. Akenson /256 Roger El bourne. Music and Tradition in Early Industrial Lancashire 1780-1840 by Mavis Waters/258 Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900-1939 by Angus McLaren / 259 Harold Smith, comp. The British Labour Movement to 1970: A Bibliography by Norman Horrocks / 261 Michael R. Weisser, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe by Louis A. Knafla / 261 Christopher Kent, Brains and Numbers: Elitism, Comtism, and Democracy in Mid-Victorian England; and Robert Mandrou, From Humanism to Science. 1480-1700 by Roger Cooler / 262 Robert Damton, The Business of Enlightenment, A Publishing History of the Encyclopedic 1775- 1800 by Peter Simoni / 267 Michael R. Hanagan, The Logic of Solidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three French Towns. 1871-1914 by M.L. McDougall / 267 Paul-Henry Chombard de Lauwe, La Vie quotidienne des families ouvrieres by Arthur Borghese / 269 Denis Poulot, Le Sublime ou le travailleur comme U est en 1870, et ce qu'il peut etre by Arthur Borghese / 271 Alex Hall, Scandal, Sensation and Social Democracy. The SPD Press and Wilhelmine Germany 1890-1914; Max H. Kele, Nazis and Workers. Nationalist Socialist Appeals to German Labor, 1919-1933; Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War. German and American Propaganda, 1939-1945; and Barrington Moore Jr., Injustice. The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt by Larry Peterson / 274

229 230 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Ian MacDougall, ed., A Catalogue of Some Labour Records in Scotland and Some Scot Records outside of Scotland by F.K. Donnelly / 277 Revolutionary Situations in Europe, 1917-1922: Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Proceedings, 2nd International Colloquium, 25-27 March 1976 by Larry Peterson / 278 Edward Acton, Alexander Her&n and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary by N.G.O. Pereira / 280 Paul W. Drake. Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932-52 and Colin Henfrey & Bernardo Sorj, Chilean Voices: Activists Describe Their Experiences of the Popular Unity Period by Peter Blanchard / 282 Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Peter Blanchard / 284 Martin A. Klein, ed., Peasants in Africa: historical and contemporary perspectives by Ann McDougall / 285 Ellen Mains, ed.. The Politics of Housework by Meg Luxton / 287 John Fox and William Johnston, Understanding Capital: A Guide to Volume I; and Frank Cunning­ ham, Understanding Marxism: A Canadian Introduction by Anthony Thomson / 290 Istavan Meszaros, The Work of Sartre: Volume One: Search for Freedom by J. Alan Lennon / 292 Russell Jacoby. Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism by Paul Piccone / 293 Horace B. Davis, Toward a Marxist Theory of Nationalism by Paul Craven / 295 Gary P. Freeman. Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies and Sasha G. Lewis, Slave Trade Today by Paul Phillips /297 Michael J. Piore, Birds of Passage, Migrant Labour and Industrial Societies by Lars Osberg / 300 Gordon Swanson and Jon Michaelson, eds., Manpower Research and Labour Economics; and Michael J. Piore, ed., Unemployment and Inflation: Institutional and Structuralist Views by Martha MacDonald / 302 Klaus von Beyme, Challenge to Power: Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in Capitalist Countries; Tom R. Bums, Lars Erik Karlsson and Veljko Rus, eds., Work and Power: The Liberation of Work and the Control of Political Power; and J. David Edelstein and Malcolm Warner, Comparative Union Democracy: Organisation and Opposition in British and American Unions by Heather McAllister / 304 Cary L. Cooper and Enid Mumford eds,, The Quality of Working Life in Western and Eastern Europe; and Murray Yanowitch, Soviet Work Attitudes: The Issue of Participation in Manage­ ment by Gerry Hunnius / 307 Pastoral Production and Society! Production Pastorale et Societe by Richard Roberts/313 Charles F. Delzell, ed., The Future of History by Bruce Tucker/ 315 George Konrad and Ivan Szeleyni, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power; A Sociological Study of the Role of the Intelligentsia in Socialism by Reginald Whitaker / 316 David Bradby and John McCormick, People's Theatre by Alan Andrews / 318 Paul J. McNulty, The Origins and Development of Labor Economics by Lars Osberg/ 318 Anne Humpherys. Travels into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew; and Sheila M. Smith, The Other Nation: The Poor in English Novels of the 1840s and 1850s by Patricia E. Malcolmson / 321 Theresa Malkiel. Journal d'une greviste by Lucy Bullick / 324 REVIEWS 231

Robert Brym and R. James Sacouman, four regional studies are followed by three eds., Underdevelopment and Social fairly detailed analyses of Nova Scotia: Movements in Atlantic Canada (Toronto: one by Sacouman on the Antigonish New Hogtown Press 1979). Movement which stresses the structural factors which conditioned its rise; another by L. Gene Barrett on the fishing industry IT IS AN ALMOST shocking reflection on to 1938; and a third by Rick Williams the quality of socialist thought in Canada which carefully examines the struggles for that this is the first book-length study of trade unionism among inshore fishermen, the "Eastern Question" to come out of Then we turn to three studies of New­ the left. What a long silence! But it would foundland. Steven Antler discusses both have been impossible to assemble ten seri­ neo-marginalist and Marxist analyses of ous Marxist scholars a decade ago to pro­ monopoly in his "The Capitalist Under­ duce a book like this one. Given this long development of Nineteenth-Century New­ silence, one might have expected a weak, foundland;" Robert J. Brym and Barbara tentative exploration of the problems of Neis discuss the regional factors which Atlantic Canada. But this collection of contributed to the remarkable success of essays is not weak; in fact, it is not even the Fishermen's Protective Union of New­ "uneven," to use a word much beloved foundland, by far the most successful by reviewers of collected essays. third-party movement in the region; and Although there are differences between James Overton, in "Towards a Critical the authors in tone, method, and subject, Analysis of Neo-Nationalism in New­ each of the essays is carefully constructed foundland," offers a severe critique of and analytically clear. The Marxist dis­ various types of "populist" writing in the covery of Canadian regionalism is now a province. Merely to list the titles is a way fait accompli, and both socialist thought of conveying both the broad sweep and and regional studies should be trans­ ambition of the collection, and its close formed. attention to detail. Historians who have so Four of the essays present a regional often belaboured sociologists for their analysis. Henry Veltmeyer assesses "The neglect of the particular might find this Capitalist Underdevelopment of Atlantic collection puts this criticism to rest, and Canada" by situating regional disparity in fact starts turning the question to the within the categories of Capital. The historians' own abject neglect of explana­ other three regional essays are more con­ tion. cerned with social movements: R. James Sacouman describes the differences At the risk of imposing on Underde­ between the Maritime and Prairie Co­ velopment and Social Movements a unity operative Movements to 1940, and cor­ it does not profess, one can conclude that rects a serious blindspot in the literature the various authors all want to root the of Canadian protest movements; Robert J. study of underdevelopment in conditions Brym discusses "Political Conservatism of production which are considered to be in Atlantic Canada" and concludes that crucial to any understanding of the condi­ such conservatism comes from a deep- tions of exchange. The scholars in this rooted structural weakness within the collection all take their stand with those working class and the primary producers; critics of dependency theory who suggest and David Frank and Nolan Reilly show that Gunder Frank and others played down that workers in the region responded in or even ignored class relations in the fairly large numbers to socialist and radi­ sphere of production. The underlying cal doctrines — a solid (if somewhat theoretical premiss of the volume is implicit) challenge to the identification of derived from Marx's discussion of Canadian socialism with the West. These accumulation in Capital. I think three 232 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

challenges (or problems) have still to be this law is also associated with Marx's confronted, if the analysis is to proceed prediction — which Veltmeyer adapts to a further from the basis outlined in this vol­ regional analysis — of a growing concen­ ume. tration of capital and wealth at one pole, The first and most fundamental chal­ and immiseration and massive pro­ lenge is to sort out what weight to attach letarianization on the other. Instead of this to the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of working across the social formation in Profit to Fall (or TRPF for short). The classes, it is seen to be working within the answer of these authors, particularly regions. The stark landscape of the Com­ Henry Veltmeyer, is to assert that the Law munist Manifesto is back with us. of TRPF is absolutely basic. Essentially A central dilemma of those who seek the development of the capitalist system to use this law is the immense weight (and consequently the regional disparities which must be assigned to the counterten- involved in it) is shaped by the attempts of dencies and counterweights which enable capitalists to counteract the system's capitalism to endure and expand. What inherent tendency toward a declining rate makes this argument exasperating, of of profit. (19) One of the most puzzling course, is that countertendencies and and unsatisfactory aspects of the book, counterweights end up postponing inde­ however, is that it fails to present this law finitely the crucial test of the original in any kind of detailed manner — so that theory — that is, the fall of capitalism. while the law is seen as a basic and deter­ Although the theoretical sections of this mining one, the reader is never shown collection tend to place countertendencies how it works or why it is basic or deter­ in a secondary position, the most recent mining. It seems to operate as a kind of and intelligent defenders of the Law of talisman of orthodoxy, both here and in TRPF argue that the "counteracting influ­ the articles which have set out this theoret­ ences" are not in fact effects or results of ical perspective at greater length. While the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. one might argue that a consistent They are, rather, equally the effect of cap­ approach to underdevelopment is impossi­ ital accumulation with its necessary con­ ble within Marxism without the Law of comitant of a rising technical composition TRPF — the argument Veltmeyer has used (reflected in Marx's analysis by a rising elsewhere — one succumbs to a fairly organic composition but a value composi­ obvious tautology when one uses this sup­ tion which does not necessarily rise).2 posed impossibility as a means of justify­ Consequently to speak of a Law of the ing the law.' As everyone knows, the Law Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall is of TPRF is precisely the section of Capital profoundly misleading; we should speak, which made the greatest appeal to the rather, of a Law of the Tendency of the theorists of the crash in the Second and Rate of Profit to Fall and Its Counteract­ Third Internationals. Essentially the ing Influences. But even this more theory of the crash suggests that the nuanced version of the Law (which would capitalist system is a motor which runs have been adapted to the interesting dis­ into trouble because of the very mecha­ cussion of the benefits derived by nisms which allow it to function; the end capitalism from non-capitalist relations to of this system, its crash, is not centrally production on its periphery) does not get influenced by the class struggle nor by the around the central questions of verifica­ consciousness of anyone. The adoption of tion and coherence which many critics have raised. If we retain Maurice Dobb's interpretation of the law (as tendency and 1 Cf. Henry Veltmeyer, "Dependency and Underdevelopment: Some Questions and Prob­ lems," Canadian Journal of Political and 2 Ben Fine and Laurence Harris, Rereading Social Theory, 2 (1978), 69, n. 12. Capital (New York 1979), 63. REVIEWS 233 countertendency as elements of conflict War I, which came to dominate the indus­ out of which the general movement of the try in the 1930s and 1940s. Thus his system emerges),3 we are obviously left analysis presents a detailed historical without any clear notion of how such ten­ model that recalls Marx's understanding dencies and countertendencies work or of the transition from mercantile to indus­ what predictions, even over a very long trial capitalism. What is suggestive, of term, might be made about the outcome of course, is how late this transition seems to such interaction. It is simply not clear that be occurring: any simplistic notion of the the dogged defence of this "law" serves transition to industrial capitalism that fails any useful purpose, either for historical to account for unevenness is simply materialism or for the study of regional inadequate. underdevelopment. Perhaps this criticism It is on this point of the history of vari­ can be confronted and turned back by the ous modes of production in the region that theorists; but the point remains that these the essays (especially those by Barrett and criticisms are not particularly new, and Williams) make a fine and striking contri­ the sociologists who use the Law of TRPF bution to our knowledge of regional his­ must either show that they have effec­ tory. I still wonder, though, if some excel­ tively combatted them or that they are lent points might not have been made doing something altogether different. To against the neo-marginalist position that write of the laws of capitalist development did not come through very strongly. and not mention the critiques of Sraffa Surely the strongest case Marxists have and others smacks of genuflection, not of against the neo-marginalist insistence on analysis. resource deficiencies as a covering expla­ A second problem this volume nation of underdevelopment, is that suggests is that periodizing regional his­ roughly the same resource base has pro­ tory is an immensely complicated busi­ duced strikingly different economies ness. When did the region become according to the mode of production pre­ capitalist? Why and when did it undergo dominating in the region and in the exter­ "underdevelopment?" Some of the nal authority governing it. One cannot analysts — Veltmeyer especially — pre­ help observe that there seems to be some sent a fairly stark portrait of confrontation difference of opinion among the authors between the local primary producer and on this point. If some passages suggest the external industrial and financial that the region was characterized prima­ capitalist. This approach glides over the rily by non-capitalist relations of produc­ local working class and the local indus­ tion (within the mode of production of trial and commercial bourgeoisie, omis­ mercantile capitalism), until it con­ sions which are not minor. L. Gene Bar­ fronted, at some point, the external con­ rett's analysis of the fishing industry is centration of industrial and financial capi­ subtler. He sees two distinct forms of cap­ tal, there is much evidence cited for the ital appearing in the fishing industry: a view that the precipitous decline of the nine tee nth-century indigenous merchant- region was determined by the advent of trader class (a branch of which was monopoly capitalism, which effectively responsible for the development of large- absorbed indigenous industrial and mer­ scale salt fish companies and the offshore cantile capital. Rather than seeking, as schooner fishery, which dominated the Veltmeyer tends to do, a "turning point" industry until the 1920s), and a large- at Confederation or earlier, the theorists scale class of fresh-fish companies formed should turn more close attention on the in the years immediately preceding World early decades of the twentieth century. The period of 1900-25 — a period of 3 Maurice Dobb, Political Economy and immense regional economic growth as Capitalism (New York 1945). 109-110. 234 LABOUR/LETRAVAILLEUR

well as crisis — must be considered more ventional theory. But however urgent this closely before we assent to any simple task and right the arguments, they will not view of economic history which sees the demolish the opposite view until the ques­ course of events as determined by the real­ tions of the general evolution of capitalist location of economic roles within Confed­ economies (why some regions must eration. What the initial work on mercan­ develop to a lesser extent than others) are tile capital notoriously missed, and what fully integrated with the particular ques­ these essays tend to overlook as well, is tions raised by this case (why the Atlantic the specific stage of Canadian capitalism, region in particular came to be the type of indicated by the tight interlocking of region which developed less than others). banks and industries and the massive con­ Here, again, we want to focus much more solidation of industry, which clearly closely on the period from 1900 to 1925, arrived in the first quarter of the twentieth since it was in this period that the region century. was clearly weakened vis-a-vis central Canada. A third challenge which the volume presents, concerns the overall impact of This outlines some of the challenges the Marxist approach. One good way of which are raised by the essays on the putting this is to ask, as directly as possi­ structure of underdevelopment; but there ble: "Why did Atlantic Canada decline?" are many additional arguments in this col­ Why did the eastern periphery decline as lection about social movements that opposed to the centre? Why did the centre deserve comment as well. The general not become the hinterland of the east, as conclusion of these essays is that the some Nova Scotians thought inevitable in stereotyped image of the Atlantic region the 1860s? The Marxist theorists have as a conservative area is overdrawn, if not made everyone understand that capitalism precisely inaccurate, and that the future of entails the subordination of weaker econ­ the working-class movement holds prom­ omies to stronger ones within the market, ise. What seems to strike us most forcibly but the traits that constitute strength or is the sheer diversity of social move­ weakness tend to be left unexplored. ments. Frank and Reilly, for instance, Everyone attacks and criticizes resource question the adequacy of some all- determinism, and for good reason. It is embracing theory of regional conserva­ obviously misleading (and "ideological" tism and recall the widespread influence — in the Marxist sense) to confer on the not only of the Socialist Party of Canada, workings of Nature the same status that but of a whole range of reforming groups the devout once reserved for the as well. Sacouman sees the rise of the Almighty. Steven Antler's essay on Antigonish Movement co-operatives in nineteenth-century Newfoundland con­ the context of a struggle between tains the best critique of geographical capitalism, co-operation, and trade determinism. As he notes, the resource unionism/socialism — a formulation determinists merely transfer the workings which seems difficult to accept, although of the Unseen Hand from God (or the it again reminds us of a diversity of Market) to nature. In this interpretation, responses and popular struggles. Turn •' Underdevelopment may be an ugly over the pretty picture postcard of the phenomenon, but given the workings of region, with its tranquil peasants whittling the invisible hand, it must be judged to by the sunny sea, and you find an amaz­ represent the best of a wide variety of less ingly complicated nexus of social classes, appealing possibilities." (198) Obviously economic conditions, and political this critique is right. It is clearly a priority ideologies. Some of these ideologies have to dismiss the simplistic equation of geog­ questioned the continuing survival of the raphy and destiny which is made by con­ capitalist system: the pleasant villagers of REVIEWS 235

Peggy's Cove, as J.F.B. Livesay found with the "hospital of the active labour- out, talked about the CCF and socialism army" (to quote Marx), the pauperized when they wearied of being picturesque. lumpenproletariat. But without minimiz­ Of course we want to be careful and not ing the extent or the tragic impact of effectively block off the avenues which unemployment, it can be seen from the the earlier political scientists opened up. labour participation rates and the unem­ There is a problem of mobilizing people; ployment rates that what we are dealing there is widespread cynicism and apathy. with is not a radically different economy Brym is surely right to ask whether this is than (say) Quebec or Northern Ontario, really "conservatism" or merely resigna­ but a basically similar economy in some­ tion to necessity. The best way of under­ what worse condition. The Atlantic region standing it is surely to get a firmer idea of is an area of old industries and depleting its history. When, for example, did the resources but it is not the equivalent of various political Fiefdoms — those seats Latin America. It is simply not clear that which are passed on from father to son, an analysis based largely on analogies presumably as part of the settlement of an drawn from Latin America really brings to estate — take shape? light the central features of regional eco­ At the risk of belabouring the point, I nomic history. More apt parallels might might point out that the analysis of the lie in such places which were, like the social movements tends to raise questions Maritimes at least, heavily into coal, about the inadequacy of the analysis of heavy industry, and primary resources: social structure. If we follow Capital Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Bel­ closely enough, Veltmeyer urges, we gium, Pennsylvania.... And this further should analyze social movements in suggests that it is simply wrong to insist Atlantic Canada in terms of the "indus­ that the most important question concerns trial reserve army," and this as character­ the lumpenproletariat or the primary pro­ ized by three categories: the floating (tem­ ducers . The proper analysis of the porarily out of work with alternate expan­ regional class structure begins with the sion and contraction of production), the working class, which is curiously neg­ latent (workers expelled from capitalist lected in this volume. The proper analysis production who are thrown into self- of regional class structure, unless it is to subsistence or independent commodity be forever branded with the label of Marx­ production), and stagnant (workers in ist hyperbole, should not attempt to marginal and very irregular employment, suggest that the wages of workers in the who are degraded and pauperized, and region have been (or are going to be) consequently unable to sell their labour at dragged down to a bare subsistence level any price). Veltmeyer goes on to suggest by the existence of a swarming mass of the that it is this stagnant form of reserve labour which "creates the economic and absolutely pauperized. social foundation of the class structure, The point is that the working class has formed with varialions in each of the four been a major force in the region since at Atlantic provinces." (31) least 1900 (and in the coalfields since 1880). We cannot jump from the fact that 1 do not agree. Veltmeyer is suggest­ people live off the land, or fish, and ing that the economic and social founda­ assume that they are incapable of acting in tion of the class structure is actually class ways. Williams' study of fishermen, created by the lowest strata of the for example, is especially valuable, surplus-population: by the marginally because it charts the movement from pri­ employed and the lumpenproletariat. The mary production to wage labour in a sensi­ analysis of class structure in the Atlantic tive and understanding way. Rather than region would thus logically commence clucking over the "petit-bourgeois" 236 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR attitudes of fishermen and chortling over Angus L. Macdonald did not merely their imminent proletarianization, Wil­ thrive on passivity: they aroused people, liams sees that the autonomy at work and more especially they aroused classes which fishermen once had may well be a of people. So did the Conservatives, when resource for them in the struggles with the they enjoyed success. Maritime Rights monopoly fishing companies. In other was a fairly explicit attempt to win back words, when we move from the analysis from the socialists and independent labour of structure to the analysis of conscious­ the working-class constituencies. It is ness, we cannot offer any simple reduc­ probably misleading to think of politics in tion from ideology to the economic base; the Atlantic Region as the consequence of people carry ideas with them through passivity or desperation. There was an time, and these may not neatly reflect any active component in the creation of these "underlying" present structural reality. ideologies, for they arose only by appeal­ The point brought up so often in this book ing to masses of people. This may seem — about the heterogeneity of structures like a pessimistic conclusion, at least for and of responses to them — is absolutely those who do not want to see the forces of crucial. The divergent interests and preoc­ reaction dominate the region forever, cupations of primary producers and work­ because it suggests that these forces are ers (think, for example, of the fishery: not merely suffered by working people polarized between inshore/offshore, but were, in part, actively created by unionized/"artisanal," and Newfound­ them. In fact, however, it is a more land/Maritime Provinces bases) makes optimistic conclusion than that drawn by it all the more difficult to general­ the analysis of social structure or of social ize local struggles into an understanding movements in this volume — and one of common goals and purposes. There are might note that at times the social move­ class struggles here, to be sure: each small ments are reduced to their underlying social "island" in this archipelago has its social realities in a rather mechanical working class and capitalists and a whole fashion. For it suggests that the failure of range of others, each of whom struggle the left in the region may be not the conse­ for their interests; but there is perhaps no quence of unavoidable structural realities regional class struggle, no regional work­ but the result of tactical error. One possi­ ing class, capable of imposing order on ble reason why the left has been con­ the many small struggles which take place founded in Atlantic Canada is that it has and making them into something bigger never confronted the very special prob­ and more challenging. lems that the region represents. A central­ ist, bureaucratic, and flaccid ideology is This brings us back to the question of precisely what is doomed to fail in the conservatism. Brym tends to argue that region; but the imaginative, flexible, and the continuing hegemony of the tradi­ grass-roots approach is not so necessarily tional parties comes about because people fore-doomed. One reason why socialists have resigned themselves to necessity. dislike the Antigonish Movement so much Perhaps. But these traditional parties did, is, as Sacouman shows, that it effectively in the past, appeal to the very local but undercut the socialist alternative in Cape quite serious class conflicts within the Breton; but another reason is simple region. The Liberal Party can hardly be jealousy: they performed with the effec­ construed as a radical threat to the estab­ tiveness and cogency that the traditional lished order, but it secured its hold on the left in the region has never approached, populace by offering comprehensive min­ People did not support the Antigonish ing reform, working-class representation Movement (or the Robichaud or Mac­ (of a sort), and eventually the welfare donald Liberals, or the Fishermen's Pro- state. Men such as Louis Robichaud or REVIEWS 237

tective Union) because they were resigned has made up my mind!) to their fates, but because they wanted to The section on Confederation is rela­ change them. This volume of essays is tively mild, arguing that disparate regional remarkably successful in conveying the pressures make for more inefficient gov­ diversity of the region it studies. Could ernment intervention in the economy. He this be at least a beginning to using this cites the dependency of provinces like diversity itself as a resource, rather than Newfoundland on federal transfers but an obstacle, for the left? does so in a way which implies twice the dependency which actually exists. (61,63) Ian McKay His discussion of the "Just Society" Dalhousie University again shows Reuber's ideological bias. He implies that state intervention has pro­ Grant Reuber, Canada's Political Econ­ moted social justice, yet cites evidence that omy (Toronto: McGraw-Hill). there has been no change in the income dis­ tribution. (88) He claims that poverty has THIS IS AN edited collection of 22 articles diminished, but if poverty is defined rela­ and five appendices, mostly written by tive to national income, then the constancy Reuber since 1970. They are mainly over­ of the income distribution implies that the views and not highly technical. In both percentage of poor in the population has content and perspective they are what also remained constant. He ignores the might be expected at a Bay Street Rotary economic basis of poverty, having quoted Club dinner — neither enlightening nor Harry Johnson regarding its "deep social enlightened. roots." (16) The discussion of Government and Economic Policy reflects a general theme, The cop-out on poverty is further jus­ that "big and growing government as often tified by a nice bit of jargon: "The Family as not has been the source of difficulties Benefits line. -. can be considered an rather than the key to their solution." (xi) It approximation of revealed social prefer­ is not the private market economy, but the ence for a minimum necessary income." "avoidable failures of analysis and policy" (80) Interpretation: we do not have to which explain economic performance in worry about the poor because the current Canada. And government's failure has support reflects society's feelings about been too much intervention in the econ­ what is adequate. This is astounding from omy, not a failure to deal with the power of an economist who attacks comfortable the corporations in the economy: "As the middle class conservation values and state has tried to take over the market, so whose economic theory of democracy interest groups have tried to take over the leads him to conclude that government state.... With the market suppressed and intervention reflects vested interests, not the elite overwhelmed, no effective check the public interest. Somehow, when it resists the clambering interest." (17) This comes to the poor, the government is able shows both Reuber's economics and poli­ to reflect the public sentiment. As Osberg tics. The state should stay out of the econ­ points out, the poor lack political clout, so omy and policy should not be determined consistency for Reuber should mean that by other than the elite. He recognizes that transfers to the poor are too low since they reforms, such as proposed by Carter for would reflect the desire of the non-poor to taxation, are fought by the vested interests; avoid taxes.' On the other hand, if one can yet he opposes increased access to decision conclude that government reflects soci­ making, because there is already enough ety's values with respect to the poor, why access and because it would lead to "less does it not also reflect society's values with consensus and more intensive dispute. respect to tariff levels or equalization pay- albeit better informed dispute." (30) 1 Lars Osberg, Economic Inequality in Canada (Don't confuse me with the facts, (he elite (Toronto: Butterworths 1981). 238 LABOUR/LETRAVAILLEUR ments? Let's have consistency in analysis, when the Canadian economy is in reces­ not in bias. sion and we are better able to generate our There are three sections dealing with own capital goods. Reuber implies the international matters. They all reflect the reverse. He claims that "it is widely recog­ underlying assumption that freer interna­ nized that Canada continues to reap sub­ tional trade leads to a more competitive stantial economic benefits from foreign (more efficient) economy. Reuber does not investment," (229) conveniently ignoring 2 ignore the power of the giant corporation to studies such as Powrie to the contrary. He exploit workers, consumers, and govern­ also damns expansionary monetary policy ments, he denies it! (219, 241) He consid­ in the 1970s, ignoring the significant role ers the post-war international arrange­ played by the inflow of foreign funds. ments "largely a success," turning a blind The analysis of the current stagflation eye to their blatant abuse, as in the case of is unsurprising. Changes in the unemploy­ Chile. He is not concerned about Canada's ment insurance regulations make it harder increasing integration with the U.S., even to consider 4 per cent as the upper accept­ though "closer economic integration . ,. able limit of unemployment (despite the particularly with the United States, has evidence that about 0.7 percentage points constrained national policy in many of our unemployment is attributable to areas." (55) Moreover, Canadian eco­ unemployment insurance). Unions are nomic nationalists are sneered at and the cited as a source of stagflation, but corpo­ use of foreign aid in "the interests of the rate power may only "possibly" be a factor West" is discussed. This reflects his "in some cases." (259) assumption that Canada's interests are the The fundamental flaw in Reuber's same as those of the U.S. It might do him a thinking, common to mainstream econom­ great deal of good to decorate his office ics, is the inability to recognize that the with the poster declaring " Being Canadian real world has little to do with the competi­ is Un-American!" tive mode I. Reuber sees the use of power in politics, but not economics. Even in poli­ Reuber's benign attitude towards the tics, he implies that the corporations are multinationals is explained by his claim just one of many vested interests to which that the "giant modern corporation, such the government listens. His brand of elite as General Motors or IBM... provides a politics and pollyanna economics fails to highly effective means for economic pro- deal with the fact that political and eco­ ress...." (207) He obviously believes that nomic power go hand in hand. Nor does he it is economies of scale, not market power, explain why politicians, occasionally which generated GM's past high profits. He accountable to the public, can serve the accepts the output of the firms, including public less well than the economic elite the gas guzzlers requiring massive public which is democratically unaccountable expenditures on roads, as economic prog­ and irresponsible. This is hardly the basis ress. His naivete also shows in the claim upon which to develop a realistic and use­ that the foreign firm buying a Canadian ful analysis of political economy. company will expand its operation rather than maintain it or close it down. He 1 T.L. Powrie, "The Contribution of Foreign ignores the important distinction between Capital to Canadian Economic Growth," financial and real investment. The former Unpublished Paper, Department of Economics. is the inflow of foreign currency, to be con­ University of Alberta, 1977. verted to Canadian to be spent here. The latter is the purchase of foreign capital goods to add to our productive base. We only need the former to finance the latter Michael Bradfield and our need for the latter is diminished Dalhousie University REVIEWS 239

Desmond Morton with Terry Copp, Work­ ce choix a été fait avec intelligence et ing People. An Illustrated History of beaucoup de métier. Si on peut pardonner Canadian Labour. (Ottawa: Deneau & des lacunes au niveau de la connaissance Greenberg 1980). et de l'interprétation, il faut être cepen­ CE N'EST PAS UNE MINCE tâche que dant plus sévère du côté de la connais­ d'écrire une synthèse d'histoire du mouve­ sance de l'historiographie du mouvement ment syndicale dans un pays profondement syndicale. divisé par l'appartenance régionale et L'auteur d'une synthèse doit bien ethnique, et où la législation dans le maîtriser les sources secondaires de docu­ domaine des relations du travail relève de mentation. L'essai bibliographique en fin onze niveaux de gouvernement- Desmond de volume montre que leur connaissance Morton, avec l'aide de Terry Copp, ont de l'historiographie canadienne-anglaise relevé le défi avec succès, à plusiers s'avère irréprochable. Par contre, ils n'ont égards. Leur tâche fut facilitée par l'abon­ manifestement pas lu les ouvrages les plus dance des travaux en histoire des travail­ importants parus sur le syndicalisme leurs depuis quelques années. Cependant, québécois depuis dix ans. Je souligne cet apport ne minimise en rien leurs entre autres, les Mémoires d'Alfred Char­ efforts car le travail qu'ils ont accompli pentier (1971), l'analyse des idéologies est immense. de la CSN et de la FTQ par L.M. Tremblay Malgré ce que laisse sous-entendre le (1972), les Travailleurs contre l'Etat titre du volume, c'est une histoire du syn­ Bourgeois de Ethier, Piotte et Reynolds dicalisme canadien que les deux auteurs (1975) et, ce qui aurait pu leur être très nous offrent. Les quelques paragraphes utile, la bibliographie rétrospective de A. sur la condition ourvrière ou l'action Le Blanc et J. Thwaites sur Le Monde politique servent à illustrer l'action syn­ Ouvrier au Québec (1973). Leur lecture dicale. Leur synthèse renouvelle con­ aurait pu éttoffer les quelques paragraphes sidérablement celles qui commençaient à sur le syndicalisme nationale et catholique vieillir, soit les travaux de H.A. Logan et et éviter des erreurs comme de définer le Charles Lipton. Il y a un effort pour Second Front de la CSN à un front de con­ dépasser l'histoire institutionnelle d'un sommateurs (282) et de prêter des inten­ Logan et pour éviter de sombrer dans tions anarcho-syndicalistes au Front com­ l'histoire à ces deux derniers ouvrages, mun de 1972 (283). Cette lacune me sem­ l'histoire du syndicalisme après la guerre ble d'autant plus décevante que les auteurs reçoit une attention équitable. Il leur a ont fait un réel effort pour tenir compte fallus sur cette période récente tracer des régions dans leur synthèse. Mais, l'historique d'événements sur lesquels après tout, ce n'est quand même pas si personne ne s'était encore penchée et grave; le Québec n'est qu'une province et présenter des interprétations sur des ques­ la Canada en compte dix. tions encore brûlantes. Les cent ciquante A un autre niveau, il est intéressant de dernières pages du volume me semblent la relever la conception que les deux auteurs partie la plus neuve et la plus intéressante possèdent de l'action syndicale et de du volume. situer leur perception de la présence du On peut toujours reprocher à un ouv­ syndicale et de situer leur perception de la rage de synthèse d'avoir ignoré tel présence du syndicalisme international au événement, d'avoir escamoté tel autre ou Canada. L'approche adoptée dépasse de laisser de côté de éléments l'idée que le syndicalisme est un simple d'interprétation. C'est inévitable dans une problème de relations industrielles; ils synthèse qui couvre près de deux cents situent son évolution dans le cadre de ans d'histoire. Les auteurs ont du faire un l'émancipation de la classe ouvrière. Le choix d'événements et insister sur certains syndicalisme et l'action politique ouvrière aspects plutôt que d'autres. A mon sens, leur apparaissent comme les moyens par 240 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

excellente de promotion des travailleurs. l'évolution du syndicalisme dans le con­ Ils ne minimisent pas las luttes ouvrières, texte économique et politique de chacune mais ils évitent de les interpréter dans le des époques. Au niveau de sens d'un conflit irréductible entre classes l'interprétation, ils évitent les racourcis sociales. Leur analyse laisse penser que faciles et cherchent à présenter un point de notre société capitaliste et démocratique vue balancé en serrant les événements du possède la flexibilité nécessaire pour plus près possible. Leur volume assurer l'avancement des travailleurs, représente, à n'en pas douter, la meilleure Il faut noter à ce propos qu'ils atta­ synthèse du syndicalisme canadien. chent une grande importance à l'évolution de CCF-NPD et aux liens qu'il a entre Jacques Rouillard tenue avec le mouvement syndicale. Ils Université de Montréal mettent en relief souvent les bienfaits de cette association pour les travailleurs. Les Kenneth W. Osborne, "Hard-working, gains obtenus dans le domaine de la légis­ Temperate and Peaceable" —• The Por­ lation sociale proviendraient de la crainte trayal of Workers in Canadian History de la montée duCCF-NPD où de la voie Textbooks, Monographs in Education IV tracée par les partis sociaux-démocrates (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, au pouvoir dans les provinces. Les auteurs 1980). laissent l'impression que des législations comme les pensions de vieillesse, le C.P. THIS VOLUME IS NOT the sort of fare that 1003 et l'assurance-maladie seraient one normally finds on the menu of the davantage l'oeuvre du CCF-NPD que du academic historian. It touches upon of all mouvement ouvrier. things how learning and values can be En outre, ils ont tendance à faire du influenced by what the student reads. syndicalisme internationale la norme syn­ Along the way it appears to snipe at Clio's dicale au Canada. Les autres courrants handmaidens. Finally and worse still, it is syndicaux sont présentés comme l'oeuvre the production of an organization that d'irréductibles conservateurs manipulés must inhabit the first circle of Dante's par les gouvernements, ou encore la fait Inferno: a Faculty of Education. For all of d'irréalistes révolutionnaires. Le mili­ these reasons — and then some — it tantisme syndical dans l'Ouest de Canada probably will not be read by those who qui a débouché sur la formation de l'OBU could profit the most, This is unfortunate et la grève de Winnipeg est expliqué par la for if the book is slim in size (80 pages of frustration et l'utopie de chefs syndicaux. clear prose) it is weighty in thought- Les syndicats nationaux qui ont disputé provoking matter. It is also written by a l'adhésion des travailleurs aux "inter­ scholar who has carved out a reputation nationaux" deviennent sous leur plume for himself in the realm of curriculum une "nuisance" et une source de division development and along the way has paid parmi les syndiqués. Le nationalisme his dues as a practicing historian; his R.B. n'aurait guère de prise sur les travailleurs; Russell and the Labour Movement (Agin- il serait davantage la préoccupation des court, 1978) is known to many devotees intellectuels et des politiciens. of this journal. Ces quelques critiques sur lesquelles What K.W. Osborne does is survey nous avons insisté, ne doivent pas faire twenty-nine of the principal textbooks oublier que l'ouvrage constitué un apport used in the public schools of English- précieux à l'histoire des travailleurs. En speaking Canada since the end of the général, il révèle une bonne connaissance nineteenth century. What he comes up de l'historiographie du mouvement ouv­ with is not that earth shattering but it bears rier et ne contient pas d'oublié factuel heralding and repeating: the textbooks majeur. Les auteurs insèrent adroitement "say very little about working Canadians" REVIEWS 241

and they have to date not been greatly more of the new social history is neces­ influenced by the "approaches and find­ sary and he concludes his study by assert­ ings of the new social history."(73) Sim­ ing: "To date, the Canadian working class ply stated, despite the tremendous has not been able to give much attention to changes that have taken place in our so- its relationship with the schools, but the called "classless society" during the past potential is there. And one place to begin few decades, despite the efflorescence in is with the textbooks."(80) interest showered on Canadian working If Osborne is clear in his own mind on men and women themes, the message is the need, he does not use the forum to not getting back to the textbooks where it provide a prescription. He does, however, can do the most good. offer an insight that merits being expanded upon within the confines of this It would be nice to think that this per­ review. ceptual gap is being covered by classroom Along the way Osborne points to the teachers who are aware of the new social fact that in Canada it is far from the norm history. This is far from the case. For the to see academic historians writing texts most part these individuals are the products for the public schools. Indeed, when one of the late 50's, 60's, and very early 70's glances over the field, with the exception and they were nourished in the univer­ of K. McNaught, Canada and the United sities and teachers colleges by such stand­ States: A Modem Study (Toronto, 1963) ard works as Mclnnis' Canada, Morton's who with an interest in labour history is The Kingdom of Canada, Creighton's doing any textbook writing for the public Dominion of the North, Careless' Can­ schools or, for that matter, the univer­ ada: A Story of Challenge and Lower's sities? Recent articles by G. Kealey and Colony to Nation. Mainline interpreta­ D. Bercuson in Labourite Travailleur tions great for their time but often not (Spring 1981) on the state of labour his­ even suggestive of other avenues of devel­ tory are eloquent on where the priorities opment. For many of these teachers the are to be found and it is not in the class­ bloom of classroom interaction has faded. room. The New and Not-So-New Labour Often hamstrung by provincial syllib1 History with its ideological underpinnings requirements, left to fend for themselve: of activism and social involvement is by the Canadian Historical Association strong on symposia and well-researched and its numerous specialized sub-groups, articles and monographs, but what about and, according to the research, not always the basic tools of the craft so necessary to terribly motivated by the thought of pro­ reach the vast majority of the school age fessional development, the textbook with population that will nevçr do any other a little enrichment is often all that the stu­ history and, for that matter, will never go dent gets. Need more be said! beyond secondary school studies? Not to despair. Osborne at least feels The financial crunch now hitting edu­ that some encouraging signs of change are cation throughout the land means that the appearing. As he points out, "the increas­ basic classroom text will take on more and ing newsworthiness, prominence, and more importance in the public school cur­ activity of organized labour makes labour riculum. This trend is to be decried, but history appear more 'relevant' to textbook the handwriting is on the wall. The chal­ writers."(60) Some recent texts have a lenge facing the social historians in gen­ section here and there on labour and the eral and the labour historians in particu­ ubiquitous Winnipeg General Strike is lar, hence, is to get out of their safe ivory even written about from an 'implicitly tower. Their work is being lost within the pro-strike position."(62) It is obvious restrictive circle of their colleagues and to where Osborne stands with all of this. As the ever-shrinking cohorts of history a curriculum designer he feels that much majors in the universities. Now more than 242 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

ever is the time for them to get into the area of social welfare responsibility. The action by adapting and providing for the war was not a unifying experience either, needs of the public schools. With this argues Professor Monon, but rather it their energy will create not only advance­ accentuated the divisions and tensions ment in knowledge but it will also serve to within Canadian society and politics. For generate change in mentalities, something the inter-war years, the author traces the that Osborne demonstrates as being long usual themes of Canadian isolationism overdue. and defence cutbacks, but he also looks André E. LeBlanc closely at the problem of the veteran and Champlain Regional College the failure of re-establishment as a means of illustrating the unsettling influence of Desmond Morton, Canada and War, A war. All of these concerns were swept Military and Political History, (Toronto: away in September 1939 with the out­ Butterworths, 1981) break of World War 11. The long truce was THIS STUDY OF CANADA and war is the over. first in a series of books that attempts to deal with contemporary political issues in Two chapters are devoted to the their historical perspective. Desmond 1939-1945 conflict, one on the home Morton examines some aspects of the front, where the war experience brought a interaction between politics, society, and "social revolution," and a second on Can­ war in Canada from the mid-nineteenth ada's contribution to the overseas war century to the present day in order to illus­ effort. Throughout this portion of the book, trate the very formative influence that the Professor Morton continues to elaborate war experience has had on Canadian his­ on the theme that the war had a significant tory. impact on Canadian politics, society, and economic development. The effects of the The first two chapters explore some of two wars on Canada are compared and the political and social dimensions of the contrasted in an instructive way, particu­ Canadian militia in the nineteenth century larly on the conscription crises and imme­ and the slow, but gradual, emergence of a diate post-war economic and industrial military tradition after 1885. Canada's readjustment. role in the South African War and The final chapters examine post-war increased defence spending after 1900 Canada, the Cold War, the development helped to create a more confident and pro­ of North American defense systems, and fessional military establishment in Canada a host of other military issues that have that was, in many ways, prepared for the determined Canada's role and position not Great War. In strictly military terms, Can­ only on the international scene but more ada emerged from World War I justifiably importantly, in her relationship with the proud of its contribution to the Allied war United States since 1945. The author con­ effort. The militia may have been pre­ cludes that in the dangerous world of the pared for war, but no one else in Canada 1980s, it is essential that we understand could have predicted in 1914 the broader the war experience in our history because impact of the war experience on politics it has been a significant factor in deter­ and society. mining the political and social complexion Professor Morton's discussion of the of Canada today. Great War and the post-war years is first A few comments on the formal of the rate. While Canada did not experience book are necessary. There are no foot­ "total war" in the European sense, the notes to the text, although the major Great War eventually touched nearly sources for each chapter are described at every facet of life in Canada as demon­ the end of the book with a brief annota­ strated in the expanded role of the state dur­ tion. It is obvious that Professor Morton ing and after the war particularly in the has drawn on his extensive knowledge of REVIEWS 243 primary source material in the preparation failures) that he encountered on his intel­ of this study and it is regrettable that the lectual and cultural quest. If Creighton format did not allow him to discuss some found the spectre of Goldwin Smith lurk­ of the available documentation in more ing behind the writing of Canadian his­ detail. Nevertheless, the recommended tory, it would seem that Smith's shadow readings constitute an excellent introduc­ fell across many other aspects of Canad­ tion to the literature of Canada and war. ian life. Canada and War is a well-balanced The Passionate Observer was pub­ and readable study of a complex subject, a lished after Creighton's death, and draws study that will undoubtedly encourage fur­ together a number of recent essays and ther research into other aspects of Cana­ reviews. The first section contains essays da's military experience and its influence of contemporary issues (Quebec, the on our history. Pickering Airport, the LCBO), the second Glenn T. Wright contains a short collection on the art and Public Archives of Canada practice of reviewing books, and the third a series of character portraits of Donald Creighton, The Passionate some of Creighton's well-known Observer: Selected Writings (Toronto: academic contemporaries. The second McClelland and Stewart 1980). section is the most enjoyable. Creighton has often related the story of the origins of IN AN EARLY ESSAY on the writing of his own literary career, how he began by Canadian history, Donald Creighton drew opening the great parcels of books that an analogy between the career of Goldwin came for his father who was the editor of Smith and the failure of intellectual life in the Christian Guardian. These reviews Canada. Smith, he argued, could have not only show how Creighton mastered been a figure of national stature, he could this art, but also how well this art form have led the young Canada First move­ suited his own dispositions. He longed to ment, but he chose instead to descend to be a part of a grand literary culture, like the level of a partisan propagandist for the late Victorian period, in which intel- continental ism and liberalism. Goldwin legent people could conduct an ongoing Smith styled himself a "bystander" — learned discourse at the highest level. and Creighton certainly accepts the ideal Some of Creighton's own letters to the of the detached intellectual — but the editor might well have been included here ideal was not observed in practice. — I remember one that defended Peter Newman from the Canadian historical "Nobody was ever less a bystander He establishment that was a masterpiece of was an intellectual partisan.... He was a rhetoric and argument. journalist among other journalists.... Smith was a one-man party... to which The other two sections of the book he attached himself with all his petulant present an image of Creighton that is vanity and rancorous vindictiveness." unsettling and even tragic. Something Creighton tried to rescue Canadian intel­ snaps when Creighton writes on contem­ lectual life. Almost all of his work can be porary events, and it is not a question of seen as an attempt to create a national cul­ old age and prejudice. One can see the ture: in this sense Laurentianism provided man searching for the grand historical the content for this culture, while roman­ principles that run beneath the contempo­ tic idealism provided the framework. rary world, the principles that he can use The Passionate Observer does not to organize events and personalities into extend Creighton's vision of Canada, nor an intelligible narrative. But he can not does it provide any new sense of depth to find them. Creighton is a moralist in the the man's extensive scholarly record. It Victorian sense of that word, but the mod­ does, however, show the frustrations (and ern world has no morality; or to put 244 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

the matter another way, Creighton's mor­ had foresaken. It is against this ideal that ality is individualistic: he looks for per­ Creighton implicitly comments upon the sonality rather than the moral dimension of lives of other men. institutions, systems of technology, and The collection republishes Creigh­ class (in the manner of George Grant). ton's essay on Underhill and the Consequently he tends to fall back upon a Ogdensburg Agreement. Not many peo­ host of traditional villains, such as French ple will applaud this choice. The war influence and American domination. He between these two was not stayed even by is more like Jeremiah than Isaiah — a death. But beyond propriety is the ques­ prophet who is certain of the corruption of tion of the type of judgement that the modem world, but not at all secure in Creighton makes. He draws a very fine the knowledge that God will lead history distinction between academic freedom to a richer life. and academic responsibility, so that he at least tacitly agrees with Underbill's His literary style suffers for the same analysis of the continentalist implications reason. He certainly did not lose the abil­ of the Ogdensburg Agreement (and must ity to create the memorable phrase or defend him from Cody and the Board of draw the short, pungent character sketch Governors). Nonetheless Creighton is {J.W. Dafoe was "a big, gross man, with quite willing to attack Underbill's a dogmatic, hectoring 'bow-wow' man­ academic standing because he supported ner, a truculent and abrasive style, an publicly and with enthusiasm the course intense partisan dislike to both Tories and that history had chosen to follow. It is a socialists, and a psychotic hatred of what mark of Underbill's lack of detachment he thought of as 'British imperialism' "). that he went over to the enemy who These literary talents were nurtured on the rewarded him with curatorship at Laurier masters of the late Victorian period, men House. like Galsworthy, Zola, Balzac, and Wag­ ner. Regrettably, the modem world The other three historians (Brebner, marches to a different rhythm. The words Stacey and Forsey) are given high praise might be devastatingly brilliant, but the but Creighton again adjusts the Innisian aesthetic within which they live does not rubrics in a curious way. One might won­ penetrate very deeply into contemporary der what exactly separates the inter­ life. Caricature might make us believe that nationalism of Brebner from the continen- Trudeau (and most Liberals) are morally talism of Underhill, other than the bankrupt; but how much does this conclu­ geometrical difference between a triangle sion tell us about liberalism and modern and a straight line. Is Forsey any more Canada? The style did not fail but the detached from the world of contemporary world it had to explain had changed political affairs? Was there any major his­ almost beyond recognition. torian who had never supped at the table The biographical essays also suggest of the Liberal government? This group of that there was a similar tension in his men are clearly important scholars, and views on the character of scholarship and Creighton is not being hypocritical in his academic life. The God-like figure among judgements.The source of tension is to be Creighton's friends is Harold Innis: a man found in the framework itself. He con­ who was in Creighton's judgement at once tinued to hold on to the Victorian ideal of detached from current affairs and a con­ academic disengagement, he continued to vinced Canadian nationalist, a first-class believe that art and scholarship were scholar who had an outspoken sense of abstract values, and he continued to judge what was moral and correct in human and people and politics in moral terms. The university affairs. In short, the man who consistency of Creighton's position is fulfilled the promise that Goldwin Smith remarkable and praiseworthy. But the REVIEWS 245 romantic framework itself had fallen apart. of The Grimke Sisters from South Universities, governments, and societies Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967), operate according to different interests, has provided a volume rich in intellectual and this is one source of the sense of the and social history, not the least of which is tragic that runs through this volume. the introductory "Autobiographical Notes." This confident assessment of a William Westfall life and a career which began in Austria, York University included a flight before Nazi persecution, marriage, children and an MA and a Philip S. Foner, Women and the Ameri­ Ph.D. in her forties at Columbia Univer­ can Labor Movement from Colonial Times sity, illuminates the process, often slow to the Eve of World War I (New York: and hard by which feminist scholars have Free Press 1979); James J. Kenneally, come into their own. This is no humble, Women and American Trade Unions (St. self-effacing, "lady" academic. Gerda Albans, Vt.: Eden Press 1978); Gerda Lerner is one who knows, after hard test­ Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past (New ing, her own worth. York: Oxford 1979); and Lois Scharf, To Work and to Wed. Female Employment, The 12 essays in this collection Feminism and the Great Depression appeared originally between 1969 and (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood 1980). 1977. There are five essentially historio­ LIKE THE HISTORY of the working class, graphie contributions, including one which the history of women has come a good sets out some of the basic issues raised by long way since the 1960s. Progress has the experience of black American women. been especially dramatic because the These are deservedly well-known among female experience, still more than that of practitioners of women's history. They the working class, had been so badly neg­ raise the essential problems of methodol­ lected. In the United States the richness of ogy, sources, and interpretations for the this new scholarship is reaffirmed every new field. In their discussion of the rela­ two years at the Berkshire Conference of tionship between the "old" and the Women Historians which brings together "new" women's history, they also an impressive number of scholars com­ illuminate the theoretical and practical mitted to the recovery of women's indi­ choices facing feminist scholarship. vidual and collective past. Among the These should be required reading for all foremost in these richly talented who claim to be students of the human assemblies is Gerda Lerner, a figure who past. Lerner's ability to meet the high in many ways may be identified as the standards she sets is successfully put to the test in two provocative articles doyenne of feminist women's history in 1 the United States. Since the mid-1960s illuminating blacks experience as club­ she has set a powerful standard of women and the interaction of black and revisionist excellence. That standard, so white reformers in the nineteenth and well displayed in The Majority Finds Its early twentieth centuries. Equally valu­ Past. Placing Women in History (1979). able are two pieces on Jacksonian and is a good measure by which to judge three abolitionist women which raise important entries in the field: Philip S. Foner, issues of class differences, popular sup­ Women and the American Labor Move­ port, and conventional period ization. Ler­ ment (1979), James J. Kenneally, Women ner's breadth of analysis and research is and American Trade Unions (1978), and confirmed further in three penetrating, Lois Scharf, To Work and to Wed. hard hitting inquiries entitled "The Female Employment, Feminism and the Feminists: A Second Look." "Women's Great Depression (1980). Rights and American Feminism." and "Just a Housewife." The range is impres- Lerner, first well-known as the author 246 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

sive, the treatment non-polemical, and the movement to that date as well as the short­ inspiration ever-present. The critical vari­ age of monographs, especially for the able, sex, is assessed as working with, and years before the break with Great Britain. as often against, class and race to produce Of most practical use here is Chapter a host of results over time and space. As a Six's ten-page sketch of the situation of consequence, women's history demands, black women before the Civil War. Mat­ as Lerner so well argues, "a fundamental ters are suitably summed up for the under­ re-evaluation of the assumption and meth­ graduate but with none of the sophistica­ odology of traditional history and tradi­ tion Lerner evidences when considering tional thought. It challenges the tradi­ the same group. The remainder of the tional assumption that man is the measure book benefits from the extensive studies of all that is significant, and that the now available on the later period as well activities pursued by men are by definition as some new research by the author. As significant, while those pursued by such, chapters on "The Socialist Party women are subordinate in importance." and Socialist Women," "Birth of the (180) This essential re-evaluation is a dif­ National Women's Trade Union League," ficult task. Old training and traditions and "The Lawrence Strike" provide hang on grimly. Witness the majority of handy guides to both primary and second­ undergraduates who still fail to encounter ary literature. serious treatment of women in their classes, history and otherwise. Indeed the bibliographic function con­ As the author of more than 40 books stitutes perhaps the most significant con­ on a wide variety of subjects, the writing tribution of the book. Readers new to the mill which is Philip Foner has turned history of working women are introduced inexorably to a very ambitious study of to a large, if of limited range, array of American working women from colonial materials focusing on women's economic days to the present. In this the first of a struggles in the United States. Of similar projected two volumes the account is value for quick reference are the abundant taken to 1914. Foner acknowledges that sketches of heroic figures such as Mother labour history today is something more Jones, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Rod- than "workers on the job in their collec­ gers, Leonora M. Barry, Rose Pastor tive organizations and actions" but insists Stokes, Addie W. Hunter, and Alice that much remains untold about "working Hamilton. The identification of a host of women and the American labour move­ women's strikes and economic protests of ment." Their "organized resistance" con­ various kinds in which women partici­ tradicts "the tendency to view women's pated serves as a convenient reminder of past as one of undifferentiated subjection female activism on the labour scene. Fon­ and passive victimization, in short, a er's provision of such material is reminis­ chronicle of failure." (x) In over 600 cent of early examples of labour history pages of text and notes which depend which concentrated on unions, strikes, heavily on less senior, if earlier, workers and personalities. In this case the women in the vineyard, Foner superintends the replace the men centre stage. To be fair recovery and commemoration of the self- there is some attempt to supply the social conscious waged heroine. The result is context in which women's lives evolved uneven. The colonial and revolutionary but this generally succumbs to the need to years, for example, are reviewed briefly cover lengthy periods of time and large in 19 pages as a time of relative, if declin­ amounts of material. The result sacrifices ing, equality. The entire period prior to in-depth research and suggestive analysis the Civil War is dismissed in just over 100 to the piling up of yet further proof thai pages, an imbalance reflecting the limited women were not passive victims of cir­ development of the American labour cumstance. It is a step in the right direc- REVIEWS 247

tion but it is an inherently limited account hardly deserves the name. What we have which sidesteps the task which Lemer here is a well-meaning but inherently lim­ would have historians of women under­ ited endeavour to latch on to a supposedly take . Sources, methodology, and "trendy," that is marketable, subject. This approach are traditional, only the faces volume should be scrupulously detoured change. by anyone seeking the new territory rec­ The same limitations and more evident ommended by Lemer. weaknesses are found in James Kenneal- ly's Women and American Trade Unions. All is not lost, however, since exciting This well-intentioned study begins with new work is also appearing. Lois Scharf s the period after the Civil War and moves To Work and to Wed: Female Employ­ quickly and largely superficially through ment, Feminism and the Great Depression to the 1970s. Like Foner's volume, which opens up a rich landscape in which female is almost three times its length, the focus characters assume leading roles. Scharf is organized female protest. There is no charts with great success the often debated significant assessment of women's wider question of what happened to feminism lives either within the workplace or after suffrage. In doing so she treats read­ beyond. In addition, it is marred by petty ers to more than her title promises. The errors such as the reference to American feminism of the 1920s is dissected very "suffragettes," (3) dubious assumptions, neatly to reveal an underappreciated integ­ (see the sentence "Women contributed to rity and intelligence. In contrast to the their own degradation fur despite the intellectual bankrupts portrayed by Wil­ organizing successes of the Knights of liam O'Neill and others, there were Labor most continued to resist union­ feminists who knew very well where at ization," [18]), irrelevant, sometimes least some of the important issues lay. In silly, digressions as the discussion of one the decade after World War I they woman's attempt to persuade Samuel "turned... to proposing change in Gompers "to dress more attractively," women's economic roles. They advocated (21) and contradictions as with the con­ paid employment for married women to fused treatment of Gompers' attitudes to improve the social and economic status working women in Chapter Three. and the psychological self-esteem of According to the preface this book devel­ wives. They believed women had abilities oped out of a series of short biographies. beyond those required by familiar respon­ In some ways these still form the back­ sibilities and domesticity and deserved the bone of the volume, but Foner's efforts in opportunity to utilize them without relin­ this regard are again better. Seemingly quishing the emotional gratifications that without conscious intent, Women and derived from love, marriage and mother­ American Trade Unions often in fact ends hood. Above all, they argued that women up as little more than an extended descrip­ required financial compensation for pro­ tion of the Women's Trade Union League. ductive labor, since economic dependence A third of the chapters as well as material lay at the foundation of freedom and elsewhere concentrates on the largely equality." (42) These champions of work­ familiar activities and personalities of that ing wives were for the most part "native- body. Unfortunately, even that very born, well educated professional interesting feminist experiment has been women." Few of these "new style appraised more successfully by others feminists" (22) had been prominent in including the pioneer study by Gladys social reform or suffrage. Most ignored Boone, The Women's Trade Union the predicament of working-class wives, Leagues in Great Britain and the United for whom personal fulfillment on the job States of America (1942). Finally, schol­ was a marginal consideration, and simi­ arship which avoids necessary footnoting larly failed to come to terms with the dull 248 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

dead-end employments which fell to the Chapter Four describes the desperate lot of the majority of female wage- situation facing female teachers in every earners. They also evidenced extreme state. Although their reception varied ambivalence and finally undue optimism widely across the country, teaching wives regarding the sharing of domestic respon­ upheld by feminist supporters managed to sibilities in families where both husband hold their own. Ironically, young single and wife went out to work. As Chapter women lost ground almost everywhere to Two on the 1920s makes clear the male competitors who once again found feminist "careerists" by no means had all education a profitable field of endeavour. the answers. Nevertheless in focusing on Such losses placed severe limits on women's need for economic indepen­ women's power in one of the few profes­ dence they were raising some of the right sions they could hope to control. questions. The onset of the depression in the Competition between women and 1930s reined in the intellectual debate between women and men for scarce jobs centering on married women and their in other professional, white collar and right to work. Instead feminists found even industrial employments had similarly themselves fighting a bitter rear-guard heavy costs in "economic hardship and action to defend wives whose place in the psychological disillusionment" (H6) for labour force came under massive assault female citizens. Status, wages, and work­ by those who wished to guarantee male ing conditions deteriorated steadily for economic superiority and the patriarchal most librarians, social workers, and family as a "haven in a heartless world." nurses but remained sufficient to attract a The refusal to hire or the discharge of host of new male rivals. Women's predi­ married women had occurred in the cament was still worse in male-dominated 1920s, but a generally buoyant economy professional and managerial positions. had provided important protection. In bad The absence of female role models in law, times working wives found few allies. medicine, dentistry, management, and Chapter Three documents the complicity universities reinforced reduced ambitions of governments in the widespread effort to for female job-seekers. drive out female workers who were con­ Men's replacement of women in the demned as selfish, anti-social, and a better posts increased competition among threat to the family. In face of this attack women for the remaining jobs. The result women's defenders closed ranks in a show could be dramatic downward mobility. of unity unprecedented since the suffrage When college graduates lined up to serve campaign. This was not the only familiar as secretaries and clerks, girls' limited development. Depression feminists like horizons were yet again affirmed. Low their predecessors grew narrow and defen­ status, low wage employments had, how­ sive, straying far from the equal right ever, their own reward. With each step argument to emphasize the altruism and down the occupational ladder discriminat­ self-sacrifice which motivated working ory practices decreased. Few wished to wives. Women were praised as they had remove women, whether married or sin­ been in the days before the vote was won gle, from menial jobs as laundresses, for their self-denial and family orienta­ clerks, or domestics, The real impact of tion. discouragement was not to eliminate mar­ ried women from the work force, indeed Even this pragmatic reduction of their numbers increased, although more expectations, however, did not guarantee slowly during the 1930s. The result was to economic security. In the 1930s the assign married women overwhelmingly to employment of all women, both married white collar job ghettos. Work with few and single, remained at best precarious. rewards became the accepted pattern for REVIEWS 249 the wives who increasingly dominated the tion which is too often missing in the vol­ female labour force. Occupational aspira­ umes by Foner and Kenneally. The result tions were correspondingly undercut for all is a highly readable and provocative chal­ young women. Feminist hopes would take lenge to conventional histories of the a long time to recover. period. This is the type of scholarship we The New Deal did nothing to change need if the majority is indeed to recover its this picture as Chapter Six demonstrates. past. Despite the efforts of sympathizers like Veronica Strong-Boag Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of Labor Simon Fraser University Frances Perkins, recovery programmes pursued the prevailing policy of discrimi­ Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Pov­ nation. As always, black women were the erty and Piety in an English Village: Terl­ most disadvantaged. Even women's ing 1525-1700 (New York: Academic prominence in the strikes of the period did Press 1979). not change this picture. The difficulty was not so much lack of government sympathy SOCIAL HISTORIANS of early modem Eng­ for women as the sheer extent of the land have turned in recent years to the vil­ crisis. When all other values and tradi­ lage study to analyze the lives of "ordinary tions seem threatened, few had the people" in a precise context. Keith stamina or the courage to tamper with Wrightson and David Levine, working male-female roles. The personal and psy­ within this tradition, have chosen the Essex chological costs of the status quo could village of Terling between 1525 and 1700 nevertheless be painful as Chapter Seven as their subject. They have a broad range of indicates. Notions of masculinity and sources because Terling has an excellent feminity, even in near destitute house­ parish register, and the records of most of holds, were often linked closely to waged the local administrative courts, civil and work for husbands and home respon­ ecclesiastical, have survived. The book sibilities for wives. Yet levels of consump­ began with a study of illegitimacy, but the tion depended increasingly on two pay research led the authors to broader ques­ packages. The result of this contradiction tions, as the title of their book indicates. was, as sociologists refused to recognize, Poverty and Piety is chiefly concerned a double burden for married women. It with social structure, social control, and was hardly any wonder then that many religion. This book is important but often wives preferred, if they could, to stay frustrating, and it demonstrates both the home. In her Epilogue Scharf indicates possibilities and limitations of the village that the return to prosperity did not change study as a method. matters much. Married women continued to move into waged work. There, in pink Wrightson and Levine argue that in ghettos, they laboured in increasing num­ Terling, as in most other English villages, bers. Only the rebirth of feminism would the end of the sixteenth century saw a rapid again challenge this subordination. increase in the population caused by higher Scharf's important study closes with an fertility rates which resulted from a lower "Essay on Sources" which is a model of age of marriage than in other periods. This its kind. Here are critical signposts for led to an increase in the proportion of those studying American women in the labourers in the village. They also argue period. that the resultant polarization was not only economic, but also cultural; this is not To conclude. To Work and to Wed unexpected, but it is significant. Cultural enters upon the type of exploration recom­ polarization was affected by the with­ mended by Gerda Lerner. Sources, meth­ drawal of the parish elite from communal odology, periodization, and perspective sociability — most notably in the alehouse all receive the careful, critical examina­ — and by the imposition of "godly" 250 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

behaviour through court prosecutions. reconstitution is the absence of any consid­ This polarization was related to the eration of women's social experience. This Puritanism of the village elite, but the sig­ is a book about men; differences between nificance of agrarian capitalism in the vil­ women and men are noted but not exam­ lage for both these phenomena remains ined. The higher infant mortality of girls is unclear. Wrightson and Levine go no fur­ mentioned only with the comment that it is ther than noting that the village Puritans unexpected. (57) The discussion of were largely drawn from within the mid­ changes in fertility considers only eco­ dling and upper ranks of village society. nomic factors, while cultural norms, This book provides our first glimpse of health, and nutrition are never mentioned. how membership in the local elite affected This myopia is underscored by the proof both an individual's behaviour and his per­ that childbirth was not dangerous for ception of his fellows. mothers and children: "less than one child The impact of Wrightson and Levine's in seven died in its first year of life." (58) examination of economic and cultural According to Wrightson and Levine's fig­ polarization is weakened, however, by ures, this would mean that there was a 50 their evasions about the nature of the social per cent chance that one child born to a system. Social structure is described by woman would die in its first year. dividing the population into Groups I, II, HI, and IV. The groups are based on the Poverty and Piety is a difficult book distribution of wealth in the thorough taxa­ because the chapters are not integrated, tions of 1524 and 1671, and then linked to and they are also uneven. The "National occupational or status designations which Context" is a clear and accessible survey of allow their use at other times. Cottagers, general trends easily used by under­ labourers, and paupers are placed in the graduates. "Demographic Structures" is same group, and any differences which complicated even for someone familiar might exist between them are hidden by the with demography; it also assumes there is a categories. By defining groups on the basis demographic "rationale" which leads peo­ of status and occupational designations, ple to limit fertility when there are fewer the authors have avoided exploring what opportunities for children — an awkward the designations mean. For example, they assumption in a book which stresses the show that most of those holding certain importance of culture in shaping behav­ offices belong to Group II (yeomen), but iour. "A Local Social System" is merely a they never discuss why some members of run through of questions asked about social Group III (husbandmen) also held those systems; after a statistical description of offices. They suggest that the meaning of one subject, the authors move on to the next the offices changes later in the period, but with no further analysis. Yet this is fol­ never explain earlier exceptions. Such a lowed by the most important and sugges­ discussion would illuminate the sources of tive chapters in the book, those on "Con­ power and prestige in early modem com­ flict and Control," and "Education and munities. Early modernists are under­ Religion," where Wrightson and Levine standably chary of the word class, but describe the increase in the regulation of some discussion of how the developments personal behaviour at the same time as the traced in Terling contribute to the central group of local notables becomes emergence of a class society would have Puritan. Only in the final chapter do the been useful, especially if it explored the connections become clear, and then the complex of factors which affected one's authors regret that they have said so little social position. about those on the bottom of the social scale. In their last sentence they admit they A more serious conceptual weakness of have been describing the oppression of the a book that began with an interest in poor — "A shudder of pain vibrates across illegitimacy and which includes a family REVIEWS 251 the centuries" ( 185) — but it is awkward, The second, by Gwyn Williams, concen­ not moving. Wrightson and Levine have trates on a particular moment in Welsh his­ written a straightforward and careful tory, the Merthyr Rising of 1831, which description of Tcrling, where the impact of heralded the emergence of a working class capitalism and Puritanism on relations in industrial South Wales. between the villagers is striking. Only by Gwyn Williams' book is in a real sense looking carefully at one village can the a very personal record since the story of the impact of these forces be so clear. In the Merthyr Rising has resonated in the oral end, however, one longs for more of a con­ tradition of the Welsh working class for text, to know how common Terling's expe­ over a century and he was literally weaned rience was. Poverty and Piety raises on the folk-lore of its martyr, Die Pende- important questions, but it shortchanges ryn. His total immersion in the rising gives itself by not exploring the implications of his reconstruction a passion and immedi­ many of its own findings. Doing so might acy that is quite infectious without doing have brought more substantive criticism, an injustice to the historical record. One but it would have added far more to our has only to compare his account with that understanding ofearly modern village life. of David Jones in Before Rebecca to recog­ nize his deep involvement in the early his­ Susan D. Amussen tory of his native town. It is also, predict­ Brown University ably, informed by a wonderful sense of place. We are not only presented with an John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in authoritative sketch of Merthyr as the mat­ England 1700-1870 (London: Longman rix of the South Wales iron industry, but of 1979) and Gwyn A. Williams, The its settlements, dominated by the Dowlais Merthyr Rising (London: Croom Helm and Cyfarthfa ironworks, its immigrant 1978). population, and the immigrants' religious and political traditon. Merthyr was a ONE OF THE MOST exciting and important booming industrial community in 1831, developments in the rapidly expanding unsanitary, unplanned, prone to epidemic field of social history in the past two dec­ crises of debt and relief determined by the ades has been the rediscovery of popular state of the iron industry, attracting disturbance and the protean forms of social migrants with the prospect of good wages, conflict which characterized the pre- however short-time and seasonal they may industrial era. Ever since George Rudé's have been, and administered by a predomi­ pioneering studies of the crowd and nantly Unitarian shopocracy which period­ Edward Thompson's brilliant study of the ically baulked at the reluctance of the iron­ early English working class, historians masters to contribute their fair share of the have been busily exploring those spheres of poor rates. plebeian militancy hitherto consigned to The influential Unitarian minority the margins of labour history and recon­ played a crucial mediating role in the rising structing both the prehistory of the labour­ of 1831, for it was largely under their aegis ing poor and its relations with authority. that radical ideas took root. This is not to Among the latest batch of books on the deny the extraordinary democratic energy subject are the two under review. The first, of the other dissenting chapels and the by John Stevenson, is an attempt to sum­ unevangelical populism of the pubs and marize the current state of the English liter­ penitlion, but it was largely through the ature on popular protest from the post 1688 Jacobin tradition of the petty-bourgeoisie era to the mid-nineteenth century, charting that working-class activism surfaced. It the long-term patterns in popular discon­ did so against a background of Reform tent which characterized this transitional euphoria and a severe economic depression period in the growth of English capitalism. which forced the ironmasters to cut wages 252 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

and lo to force workers on the parish, fn insurrectionary decades in more detail, for this conjuncture the agitation for reform in what seems a tangled and complex polit­ quickly assumed another dimension, ical aftermath we have to accept some of generating a demand for a moral economy his assertions about the centrality of a of provision and the abolition of the Court working-class presence, periodically frac­ of Requests which culminated in the repos­ tured by a reassertion of the old rivalries session of distrained property and a bloody between Dowlais and Cyfarthfa, upon confrontation with authority. What began trust. One would also like a more systema­ as a reform movement under middle class tic treatment of the mid-century process of leadership, abetted by the enigmatic iron­ liberalization, a subject broached by John master William Crawshay, was trans­ Foster in his study of Oldham, whose formed into an insurrectionary protest influence Williams specifically acknowl­ against the shopocracy and by extension edges. In particular more needs to be said the real powers in Merthyr society. about the role of the intermediate classes who are sometimes handled impression- Williams is particularly good at showing, istically, even described as the "elite" of with deep sympathy, the relative immaturity the town and the "gentry." Yet despite and traditionalism of the workers' initial these lapses and the occasional verbal protest which was directed at those middle­ exaggeration — the insurrection is some­ men and officials most visibly enmeshed in times characterized as revolutionary, the chronic cycle of debt and penury, He "designed to effect Reform and overthrow argues convincingly that the moral a social order" (224) — this is a memora­ hegemony of the ironmasters inhibited a real ble evocation of a decisive turning-point in understanding of the crisis until the local Welsh working-class history, written with contradictions of the situation, sharpened by characteristic exuberance and vivacity. repression, forced the insurgents to see themselves "as a working-class, defined By contrast John Stevenson's book against the rest of society." Once this hap­ seems remarkably stolid and at times pened trade unionism became a real possi­ pedestrian. It is true of course that a survey bility and a distinctive working-class pre­ of popular disturbances over a century and sence was forged, to inform both the town's a half does not exactly lend itself lo the electoral politics and its Chartism. Not until drama of a particular rising. But the prob­ the mid-century did working-class lem lies less in the subject itself than in the radicalism fuse with non-conformity to turn approach. Rather than highlight the new proletarian activism into the marching wing methodological departures in the field and of Liberalism. their possibilities for a new exploration of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century In reconstructing this crucial episode in English society, Stevenson has gone in for Merthyr's history Gwyn Williams had mass empirical coverage within a basically adopted an almost Thompsonian conventional narrative mode. In his intro­ paradigm, reasserting the primacy of ductory chapter, admittedly, he did outline agency and consciousness in the formation the various approaches to the history of the of a working-class identity. It has been crowd and popular disturbance. But his modified, certainly, as Thompson's more treatment of their theoretical implications recent work has been, by the Gramscian is summary indeed, and nowhere does he notion of hegemony; and indeed his define the problematic within which they account of the mediated but determinant are situated. The result is that the student power of the ironmasters, whose influence has little sense of the current trends in over their workers was at times almost tri­ crowd historiography or of their wider bal, is one of the more impressive features ramifications over and above certain tech­ of the book. But it is a pity he does not nical problems of evidence. What he/she follow his story through the post- receives instead is a vade me cum of riot, a REVIEWS 253 loosely constructed, derivative and essen­ intervention of the state in the eighteenth tially episodic history of disturbance from century and the imperatives of a war econ­ the Augustan to the Victorian era. omy, dimensions that are never mentioned. This might have been an acceptable Above all, what is needed is some regional procedure in the days when crowd history breakdown so that the conflicts between was in the chrysalis stage, but it is scarcely town and country, province and capital, appropriate today. Historians, save for the agrarian and proto-industrial economies can unrepentant quantifiers, have become be satisfactorily explored and their patterns increasingly aware that riots must be of allegiance adequately defined. In the sec­ placed within very specific contexts, in tion on bread riots, in particular, one is sur­ time and place; and that more often than prised to discover no maps outlining the not they formed one phase of a complex areas of disturbance during the principal series of negotiations whose history must crisis years and no analysis of their geog­ be unravelled before their true meaning is raphy over time. Nor is there any discussion disclosed. Consequently historians have of the way in which the authorities handled examined riots to explore the relations riots in the absence of troops and the degree between the labouring poor and authority, to which political divisions within the landed to challenge received truths about the paternalistic timbre of pre-industrial soci­ class may have influenced their conduct. ety, for example, or equality before the law. Alternatively they have analyzed the Much of the book is taken up with polit­ various modes of disturbance, their rituals ical disturbances and here Dr. Stevenson and ceremonies, to reveal aspects of popu­ fares better in his own period of special­ lar mentalités that would have otherwise ization, the early nineteenth century, than remained inaccessible. In both France and in the earlier decades. He makes the impor­ England, for instance, there has been a tant point that many of the Regency disor­ flurry of inquiry into the cultural origins of ders can be attributed to food shortages and riot, how forms of direct action grew out of war-time dislocations rather than to radical older patterns of festive life, and what this grievances and questions the extent to may tell us about plebeian expectations and which Jacobinism took root among the critical shifts in popular political con­ common people. There is also an interest­ sciousness. ing portrayal of Burdettism and the Queen As his references reveal. Dr. Stevenson Caroline affair and of the problems con­ is obviously aware of this literature but fronting the popular radical movement of rarely does it inform his analysis. His dis­ the 1830s, which eschewed violence but cussion of folk ritual and popular festival, was forced to adopt "the language of for example, is slotted into a miscellaneous menace" to overawe an unsympathetic Par­ chapter entitled "Manifold Disorders" liament. Theearlierchapters, however, are when it might have been appropriately less impressive. Too great an emphasis is associated with politicization of the public placed on London, which while crucially calendar during the Stuart era and the riot­ important in mobilizing opinion "without ous royal anniversaries of the post- doors," was not the only city with a reputa­ Revolution decades. Had this been done, it tion for political turbulence. And his treat­ might have been possible to analyse the ment of popular Jacobinism, which can changing idiom of political protest and only be viewed within a regional context what this meant in terms of popular politi­ and in terms of the language of ridicule and cal aspirations, prevailing ideologies, and satire, is remarkably thin. There are also plebeian self-assertion. Sections on some factual errors. Bristol was not the recruiting riots, press gang affrays, only town to experience serious disorders smugglers, and anti-tax disturbances on coronation day 1714; the newspapers might have been linked to the increasing reported riots in some 30 centres. The 254 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

political calendar cited on page 18 was cer­ pioned in a variety of causes, as a neces­ tainly more complex than Stevenson imag­ sarily select interest or order in society ines and more importantly changed over whose rights and status were perilously time. By 1790 radicals were even com­ embattled in the post-war years. In this memorating the birth of George Washing­ most valuable study, Prothero argues for ton! Alderman Sawbridge wab not a mem­ the primacy of the skilled trades in the ber of the Protestant Association (88) and making of a militant political conscious­ in the aftermath of the Gordon riots was ness in early industrial society, empha­ even taken to task for his toleration of sizing the interrelationship rather than the Catholics. Military law was not declared compartmentalization of trade and politi­ during these riots either; what the Privy cal movements. Plainly this lies in direct Council did was to issue a proclamation line of historiographical descent from allowing the Commander-in-chief of the E.P. Thompson, but it is a mature and forces to act without civil direction. self-sufficient piece of substantive schol­ Errors of this kind are perhaps inevita­ arship that breaks new ground and attends ble in a survey covering over a century of more than previous studies to the recovery disturbance. But that is not the central crit­ of workshop practice as a key to worker icism I wish to make of this book. It is that culture and politics. As in Thompson, Dr. Stevenson has not addressed the prob­ there is an emphasis upon continuities of lems which are currently engaging the his­ ideology and action, though Prothero's torians of protest and popular disturbance, or the new methodological departures, focus on London provides a more closely both of which bear crucially on how we textured account which brings out the view power relations in this age of transi­ diversities in the artisan experience and tion. This book merely embellishes the shifting locus of political initiative George Rudé's early survey of the English within the stratum. Here was a definable crowd, taking the story to the liberal con­ social group, at once homologous yet sensus of the Victorian period. It does not divergent. What seems contradictory and add much that is new and disconcertingly fragmentary, argues Prothero, is to be hedges on many of the major questions. understood as complementary, if we prop­ erly comprehend the range and flux of art­ Nicholas Rogers isan thought in what Thompson claimed York University was "perhaps the most distinguished popular culture England has known." The political career of the artisanat is thus set within the context of the economy and culture of the trades in a city whose lorwerth Prothero, Artisans and Politics multiplicity of crafts and workshops made in Early Nineteenth-Century London: it "the Athens of the artisan." Artisan John Gast and His Times (Baton Rouge: values have been examined in a variety of Louisiana State Press 1979). settings and eras and there is much that is familiar here — the regard for skill as a "THE INDUSTRIOUS CLASSES are the form of property, the concern for personal wealth and strength of the nations, and independence and "respectability" within nothing but their own conduct makes them a collectively regulated commonweal of poor and impotent." Thus did John Gast, small producers, the celebratory integra­ shipwright and radical, exhort his fellows tion of work, leisure, and social obliga­ during the depression of 1826. This was tion — but the virtue of this account is its not, however, a universal rallying cry, for meticulous analysis of a culture under pres­ he spoke not to the working class at large sure. Though spared the travails of exten­ but to the artisanat, whom he long cham­ sive modem industrialization, the London REVIEWS 255

trades were threatened by a growing that characterized the working-class labour surplus and foreign and provincial radicalism of the period. He talked of competition in an economy subject to resort to violence in contrast to Place's abrupt cyclical depressions. Traditional moderation. But Gast (though himself controls on recruitment, hours, and earn­ briefly a publican) was at one with the ings came under attack from the state, the diminutive sage of Charing Cross in his developing capitalism of the bigger mas­ abhorrence of working-class addiction to ters, and the price-cutting of unemployed "pot and pipe" as conduct which jeopar­ journeymen forced into dishonourable dized political mobilization and the practice. Artisans suffered too from over­ respectability of the craft interest. The taxation and underrepresentation in a other self-inflicted impediment he closed and corrupt political system that bemoaned was the particularism of the fought political and economic combina­ trades — what he sharply labelled their tion by proscription, harassment, and "presumptive self-consequence." Gast infiltration- If Prothero's account is over­ was foremost in the campaign for general all a record of progressive gains in worker union and there were attempts to enlist consciousness and organization, it is not a workers outside the crafts, but the prob­ conventional linear treatment, but a lems of consolidation were exemplified in reconstruction of the immediate and often his own trade which reverted to a tradi­ obdurate historical present within which tional sectionalism in the last years of his artisans struggled to comprehend and life. respond to crisis. This they did through Artisans and Politics is clearly indis­ strikes and unionization, lobbying and pensable to the study of pre-Chartist popu­ demonstration, co-operative and educa­ lar radicalism and beyond. Looking tional organizations, and an independent ahead, Prothero sees a continuity between press. A great deal of new evidence is the radicalism of Gast's world and that of brought to light here, particularly for the mid-Victorian artisan liberalism which 1820s, a decade badly neglected by histor­ still preserved an irreducible core of inde­ ians. The autonomy and resourcefulness pendence among its apparent contradic­ of artisan culture revealed here was for­ tions. The emphasis throughout is upon midable and dramatic. the complexity as well as the integrity of John Gast was prominently involved artisan values. There are no simple for­ in the main worker movements of the mulae here. At times this makes for diffi­ period, and though the materials for a full cult reading, yet the extensive detail pro­ blown biography are frustratingly incom­ vides many an incidental bonus. We plete, Prothero makes good his claim that learn, for example, that the LWMA limited the conventional labelling of pre-Chartist members to one contribution per debate, London as the London of Francis Place obliging them to remain seated while ought more accurately to read the London speaking, thus discouraging declamation of John Gast. Unlike Place, Gast — a telling illustration of the urgent but remained a working craftsman all his life principled world of English artisan poli­ and placed his faith in artisan action inde­ tics. pendent of middle class support. Unlike Place he spoke for the majority of his fel­ lows in contesting the claims of Malthus Peter Bailey and political economy, and though a University of Manitoba rationalist his career involved him among other things in millenarianism and fortune telling — not as eccentricities but as part of the restless quest and experimentation 256 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Ian Carter, Farmlife in Northeastern Scot­ sphere of Aberdeen. land, 1840-1914. The Poor Man's Country Being based on a real (and fundamen­ (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., tally non-academic) curiosity about his 1979, distributed in Canada by P.D. friends and neighbours, Carter's book has Meany Publishers, Port Credit) and ML. great virtues. Not least, it is genial and Parry and T.R. Slater, The Making of the humane in presentation. Carter writes very Scottish Countryside (Montreal: McGill- well indeed: he must be the only English- Queen's University Press 1980) trained sociologist in existence who is able to use the word "I" in a monograph with­ THESE TWO VOLUMES are as different in out sounding embarrassed. And. moreover, method and philosophical underpinnings his theoretical arguments are sharp-edged as two books can be. Yet, they share two and clearly presented. Because he is points of commonality, in addition to their interested in understanding the social and obvious similar focus on Scottish rural his­ economic life of real people, his methodol­ tory: each is a volume of history produced ogy and his theoretical framework are crisp outside the confines of traditional and efficient. His viewpoint is clearly and academic departments of history, and, unambiguously Marxist, but. unlike so each is an excellent specimen of its own many similar exercises, he does not waste genre. his time in theoretical vapouring — theoretical concepts are cither used for Readers of Ian Carter's fascinating direct explication of data, or he ignores study of farm life in five northeastern Scot­ them, presumably leaving them to be tish counties are apt to split radically and argued about forever by the theoreticians see it either as a brilliant achievement or a of class and production. Quixotic failure. 1 think that he succeeds splendidly, but as 1 will indicate in a Within British historiography, the moment others who may disagree are not agricultural revolution in Scotland largely without grounds for their misgivings. In has been written from the imperial view­ either case, the book demands reading by point of Edinburgh. In particular, the Lo­ social historians and certainly it should be thian pattern has been projected upon the purchased by every serious Canadian entire lowlands. This pattern implied a library. swift and revolutionary polarization of agrarian life into capitalist farmers and Carter embarked upon his study forthe landless farm workers and this revolution best possible reason: he wanted to under­ was complete by the mid-nineteenth cen­ stand the society in which he lives. As an tury. Carter's book, amongst its other Englishman, trained in sociology, he achievements, rescues the lowlands from found himself teaching at Aberdeen Uni­ the hegemony of the Lothians. He shows versity. In that city, he found the people that in the Aberdeen region the revolution Iriendly and, at a superficial level, the cul­ took longer and was much more complex ture of the hinterland accessible. Yet, in than previously was believed. He suggests many ways the culture was both impenetra­ that an alternative title for his book might ble to an outsider and, seemingly, con­ be "The Breaking of a Scottish Peasantry." tradictory. In particular, the northeast of That would be accurate, but only if one Scotland evinces a mixture of strong added the subtitle: "and why it took so parochialism and socio-political long." radicalism. To come to terms with the present-day culture of the region. Carter Carter's answer to the question of why turned to local agrarian-social history. it took so long to proletarianizc the north­ This he contends, explains not only the eastern peasantry is theoretically sophis­ configurations ol the rural culture of north­ ticated. but here one can only note its two east Scotland, but also that of the urban signal characteristics. First, instead of the REVIEWS 257 usual capitalist farmer-peasant dichotomy, have tested his theoretical argument by an he analyses the empirical data to show a in-depth study of a single parish, farm by three-class structure in the beginning of his farm, labourer by labourer. I do not find period: pre-capitalist peasant, medium this failing crippling, but others may. sized fanners who were market oriented, On a conceptual level other readers and the "muckle farmers," that is, the may feel that his discussion of culture of large and growing capitalist agricul­ the peasantry, middle farmers, and large turalist. It is in the triadic interrelationship capitalist farmers is weak. Each of these of these three groups that the explanation groups had a cosmology that requires for the regional social structure is found. delineation in terms not derived from Second, Carter argues convincingly, that social classification. There is a good book over quite a long period of time, it was not in the making here, and one hopes that Dr. in the interest of the large capitalist to Carter having done the ground work, now destroy the intermediate and lower social will go on to the much more arduous — but fractions. In fact in the local context, social infinitely more rewarding — task of defin­ accommodation, rather than social fric­ ing and analyzing the popular culture of the tion, was the most efficient way of organiz­ rural Scottish northeast. ing production from the viewpoint of The contrast between Carter's book "metropolitan capitalism." and the Parry and Slater volume is sharp. To a considerable degree, Carter's Fundamentally, it is the contrast between book is compelling because he does not try the humanist and the scientist. Whereas to force his data into his framework. He Carter is interested in geological and pays admirable attention to the topographical matters as they impinge idiosyncrasies of his region, both to the upon the condition of the rural people in geology and climatic characteristics of the northeast Scotland, the contributors to region, and to the peculiar nature of the Parry and Slater's book are interested in local market: Aberdeen cattle being a human beings only to the extent that they highly specialized and very successful prod­ affected the physical landscape. This is not uct which were marketed at a premium to say that they slight such human social throughout the British Isles. And, further, configurations as field systems and when he turns to cultural matters, he is agricultural settlements — far from it — highly insightful. In particular, he pro­ but always the human factors are treated as vides a convincing explanation of famous variables that produce the final effect: a and often misinterpreted "bothy ballads." specific rural landscape at a specific period in time. To many humanists and social sci­ I find Carter's argument convincing. entists this approach may seem repugnant, However, other readers may have misgiv­ but, in my view, it is no more objectionable ings and these probably will centre on two than the traditional fields of topography points, the one evidentiary, the other con­ and descriptive geology which certainly ceptual. Although Carter has assiduously have their value. corralled a wide and large I y-fugitive litera­ ture on his subject, as well as printed Although there is no explicit theory of census data, it is true that he has not done rural social structure in the Parry and Slater nearly the amount of primary research that volume, most of the writers seem to take as a professional historian approaching the given thai, from earliest recorded times, same topic would have done. In particular, large landowners predominated through­ there is scanty use of estate papers and no out most of Scotland. Thus, implicitly they use of manuscript census material. Perhaps accept the formulation of Loretta Timber- the manuscript census sheets for the area ley: "if the basic continuity and slowness did not survive, If they did, however, it of change in the pattern of landholding is would have been very useful for him to considered, along with the growing impor- 258 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

tance of non-economic motives for the pos­ the essence of folklore creation lies in session and acquisition of land, one is what he calls "a social misalignment that almost justified in regarding this pattern of must be confronted and rectified.... landholding as a social system within Folklore items are useful to performers which economic change operated." (151) who want to bring a subject to the atten­ Nothing could be further removed from tion of the group." Industrialization crea­ Carter's view, that economic change was ted such misalignment on a gigantic scale determinative of social change. One would and it is Roger Elboume's contention that love to witness a direct debate between the it gave rise to industrial folk songs which proponents of the highly scientific history can legitimately be so called, although of the Scottish agrarian scene and their they differ significantly from the songs of opposite number, the less objective, more the rural culture to which they refer back humane Marxist. in style and tune. Should Canadian historians pay any Beginning with a careful, though attention to these two books'.' They should lightly-sketched, portrait of preindustrial read the Parry and Slater volume if they Lancashire in the eighteenth century, wish to become familiar with a rapidly- Elbourne shows us an area where cotton developing school of agrarian history. As cloth was produced on the putting-out sys­ for Carter's book. Canadian historians tem by weaving villages, communities should read it only if they wish to under­ where the population was still part- stand the behaviour in Canada of the Scot­ agricultural, though already dominated by tish immigrants and their descendants. a centralized commercial capitalism. Already they were an important active D.H. Akenson ingredient in the nation's economy, as Queen's University their population and occupation- concentration thickened with the boom in Roger Elbourne. Music and Tradition in handloom weaving between 1780 and Early Industrial Lancashire 1780-1840 1826. He shows us a musical tradition very much alive in these villages, in the (London: Brewer/Rowman & Littlefield form of dialect songs and stories present­ 1980). ing local incident in traditional forms, in the fiddle-playing, clog and country THIS IS A NEW ANGLE upon the mills and dances of the public house, and through factory towns of eighteenth and participation in the harvest-homes and nineteenth-century England. As usual we haymakings of the countryside. Along are asked to concern ourselves with the with these he reveals the existence of a pace and process of change in the course devoted interest in the performance and of the original industrial revolution, but in propagation of classical music on the part this case it is not change in technology or of groups of weaver-musicians who economic standard of living which is copied the works of Handel and Haydn. argued, but that of change in the self- walked miles to music festivals, created expression of the people through their church orchestras and choirs, fashioned folk-songs, their use and appreciation of and cherished their own string instru­ music, and their communal participation ments. Methodism had a part in this in its enjoyment. enjoyment of music (for the weaving, like Although the author is good enough to the mining, villages took rapidly to that tell us that we, as historians, may ignore faith) but the weaver's trade enabled him his learned chapter on the definition and to pursue it. for he could control his own nature of folk song in the abstract, it does hours, working long stints to save leisure in fact contain a concept central to the time for music (or the public-house). subject matter he explores: namely, that REVIEWS 259

Weaving families sang at their work to Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: ease the monotony and keep themselves Child and Maternai Welfare in England, awake. "We chorussed 'Christians 1900-1939 (London: Croom-Helm 1980). awake' when we ourselves were almost gone in sleep" says one autobiographical FOR SOME REASON Jane Lewis' pub­ account. When steam-power drove a lishers decided that the public should not reluctant population into the towns this be informed that her book first saw the musical tradition went with them. light of day as a 1979 University of West­ ern Ontario Ph.D. dissertation. Such an There it was transformed again; driven omission is a pity because Lewis' work is from the workplace by supervision and a fine example of the important contribu­ strict rules it survived in the public-house, tion North American scholars are making where the semiurban culture saw the be­ to English social history. The chief ginnings of the music-hall, and also in the interest of the study, however, lies in the Mechanics Institutes and churches where fact that it touches on so many questions serious music became an ingredient of in the history of social policy that are temperance and respectability. Mean­ being broached by researchers on both while the industrial ballad took literary sides of the Atlantic. form through the medium of the broadside Lewis focused on the provision of sheet and the ballad-pedlar. The broadside child and maternal welfare, which as a sheet was an old urban form, but as the result of the investigations precipitated by wages of the weavers sank and life the Boer War, became the subject of furi­ became more grim it could be used to con­ ous debate in the first decade of the twen­ front the issues through the dialect song. tieth century. Governments were spurred Thus, the author argues, emerged a hybrid on to take some action as it was pointed musical form, created in many cases by out that sickly children provided the pool singers of the people, but diffused by from which ultimately the defenders of commercial means and for commercial the Empire would be drawn. Infant and profit. He gives us a number of examples maternal mortality figures were readily of this form in an enjoyable appendix. adopted by experts as the criterion of the nation's health, but what no government In general the culture of the people did could accept was responsibility for the not suffer so rough a transformation as poverty which produced such figures. their working-conditions and as long as Though school meals and medical inspec­ the towns remained of a manageable size tions were in force before World War I, the inhabitants could renew their contacts old-fashioned liberals worried about the with the traditional culture through family dangers of intervening in the family while visits and attendance at country fairs. new-fangled eugenists often adopted the Closely related to ongoing work by "better dead" view that even the infant scholars like Vicinus and Stedman-Jones had to be subjected to the struggle for sur­ on the creation and survival of working- vival. Lewis follows through the 1920s class culture, this vignette adds a dimen­ and 1930s these representatives of the sion by its perception of an evolution of derrière-garde and the three groups most musical tradition in one particular seg­ concerned by social intervention — the ment of thai class and links it to the nature social and medical science "experts," the of their work and the special manner of various women's organizations, and the their experience of industrialization. actual women who were the subjects of the new policies.

Mavis Waters The experts' role can only be fully York University understood, Lewis argues, by analyzing 260 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

their underlying assumptions concerning Hospitalization with the ever-increasing sex and class. These Medical Officers of number of inductions and episiotomies Health, economists, doctors, and so on eventually won out. The importance of chose to pursue some policies while they the struggle lies in the fact that what set­ ignored others. And whatever the conclu­ tled the issue were the relative strengths sions of the administrators and the of the rival professional groups, not the expressed desires of the clients there was expressed desire of the clients. the inescapable fact that government would never admit that simple poverty Protests agianst this state of affairs was the root cause of most infant and mat­ were voiced by a second group that ernal distress. Accordingly the experts Lewis examines, a variety of women's had to fall back on supporting temporary or organizations that presented a broader indirect policies that were aimed at interpretation of the social and economic "encouraging" individuals to be self- needs of women and children. The supporting, at parents to be more respon­ Women's Co-operative League, the sible. Thus infant mortality was attributed Women's Labour League, the National primarily to the "ignorance and feckless- Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship ness of mothers" who, it was asserted, amongst others declared that what ordi­ killed off their babies by poor feeding, nary mothers really wanted was economic filthy care, and overlaying. Efficient aid, family allowances, and birth control. mothercraft was to be obtained not by the Such groups occasionally set up their own provision of economic aid, but by educa­ clinics and educational outlets. Though tion via domestic science classes, infant Lewis presents their activities in a sym­ welfare centres, and a welter of pamphlets pathetic light, their practical impact is dif­ which contained such gems of informa­ ficult to determine and at times they tion as "Remember that a baby that has appeared to act as patronizingly as the had a dummy is like a tiger that has tasted official experts they themselves cas­ blood." tigated. It is when one turns to the question of Even in the more significant responses the response of the clients to social to illness and poverty it was always appar­ policies and the criticisms made of them ent that the concerns of policy makers and by the women's groups that one feels the clients necessarily differed. The Medical most need for great clarification. In the Insurance Act of 1911, for example, had introduction Lewis states that she will from the Treasury point of view the pur­ deal with the demands and reactions of pose not of securing health but of guaran­ clients but in the main, given the paucity teeing economy by keeping the sick out of of information, she falls back on arguing the workhouse. Similarly Beveridge's from inference concerning attitudes to family allowances were conceded, not as experts, hospitalization, etc. Her argu­ a recognition of the role of the mother, but ments are usually sound. For example, as as a way to stifle social unrest without regards hospitalization she acknowledges conceding a general advance in wages. that medical professionals by discourag­ The experts, of course, often quarreled ing old neighbourhood networks — in amongst themselves, a point Lewis illus­ which the new mother relied on midwives trates by an analysis of the medicalization and older women — in effect created a of childbirth. The medical profession's "need" for medical intervention which response to high maternal mortality rates doctors then filled. But at the same time, was to call for more medical intervention, Lewis also argues that working-class but the question was whether or not it women in their pursuit of the best health would be administered by hospital consul­ care went willingly to hospitals and that it tants or general practitioners or midwives. would be foolish to suggest that such REVIEWS 261 institutions offered no real benefits. It In addition there is a detailed index lead­ would help if such insights were fleshed ing back to the numbered item. After an out. In both Lewis' preface and in an introductory bibliography of bibliog­ appendix references are made to 83 raphies, Smith includes 3838 individual women who spoke to the author about items. Labour historians will owe a great their memories of maternity between the debt to the compiler for his efforts in pro­ wars but in the body of the book there is ducing this bibliography and so also will scarcely a mention of such information. all interested in British political history. The fact that The Politics of Mother­ hood is primarily a study of the debate Norman Horrocks over policy rather than an analysis of the Dalhousie University child-bearing experiences of ordinary women will disappoint some; most read­ Michael R. Weisser, Crime and Punish­ ers will be more than happy to find in this ment in Early Modern Europe (Hassocks: slim volume a clear, concise account of Harvester Press 1979). the relations between health and family economy, the control of health care, and THE PURPOSE OF THIS study is to the control nf reproduction. Lewis' study "analyze some aspects of the transforma­ of the social and economic context in tion of early modern European society which social policy originated will be through the perspective of criminality," necessary reading for all who interest and "the incidence of crime and the themselves in both its history and its behaviour of criminals as a measure of reform. how early modern society was being transformed." In an attempt to fulfill Angus McLaren these objectives the author makes some University of Victoria interesting observations. These include viewing crime as an index of social devel­ opment as well as social distress; that crime "is the quintessential activity that Harold Smith, comp. The British Labour draws people together." Weisser argues Movement to 1970: A Bibliography (Lon­ that this activity involves intra-class rela­ don: Mansell 1981). tions in rural settlements and inter-class disputes in urban areas. Assessing the impact of industrialization on crime, he concludes that what the upper class saw as THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY COVERS books, disorder the lower class saw as fun, and pamphlets, and periodical articles in Eng­ that the criminal process was for the upper lish dealing with the history of the British class the maintenance of law and order, Labour Movement published in and for the lower class simply misery. 1945-1970. It is planned to produce Pleading for historians to compile a geo­ decennial supplements with that for graphical catalogue of crime, he acknowl­ 1979-1980 scheduled for publication in edges that criminal records may not be an 1982. Harold Smith is a noted Labour His­ adequate source to examine its structure tory bibliographer and he has drawn on or extent. his years of experience as a collector and librarian to comb bookstores, major This work, however, cannot be clas­ libraries, and smaller specialist collec­ sified as a sustained account of the sub­ tions in search of material which is truly ject. The organization into sections on the ephemeral in nature. The arrangement is social environment, legal environment, by broad subject headings, for example, change, new crime, modem crime, police. Early Radicalism. Trade Unionism, etc. and punishment becomes superficial. 262 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Countries appear and disappear at ran­ dom, as do centuries, and the great catalogue of relevant scholarly literature is scarcely touched, let alone digested. Despite the great strides made in the Christopher Kent, Brains and Numbers: methodology of the history of crime in the Elitism, Comtism, and Democracy- in 1970s, and the creation of various models Mid-Victorian England (Toronto: Univer­ — especially the labelling and conflict sity of Toronto Press 1978), and Robert theory models, there is no attempt to pre­ Mandrou, From Humanism to Science, sent any kind of model for the concep­ 1480-1700 (Sussex: Harvester Press tualization of the material let alone its dis­ 1979). cussion. In the end one has approximately 120 regular book pages covering Europe from 1350-1850 with no ideological per­ THESE TWO books make strange bedfel­ spective, methodological approach, or lows; one being a detailed monograph on understanding of the evidence. One does the origins, career, and significance of the have, however, a large amount of con­ ideas and attitudes of an influential group tradiction and much repetition both within of mid-Victorian thinkers; the other (the chapters and throughout the text. third volume in the Pelican History of The work begins with the claim that it European Thought) being a broad and is the first attempt to regard crime and eloquent overview and synthesis of the punishment as a whole, and that there "ceaselessly refreshed" intellectual life have been no histories of crime to date, and tensions from the Renaissance to the Weisser praises ' 'wholly-researched eighteenth century. What unites both work" such as Radinowicz, assumes that books for consideration here is their com­ most of the specialized studies published mon concern with that aspect of history so far are adequate, and declares that he which, if absent, ultimately makes all will provide the synthesis. However, other aspects not only unintelligible but since he excludes political and religious vacuous: namely, the concern with ideas crimes, riots and rebellions, female (and those who spread them) in relation to offences, and other areas, he can conclude material, social, political, and cultural life that most crime was professional, writing and change. Students of labour history the history of deviance out of the literature least of all can afford to ignore this, for to on the subject. Thus he concludes that do so is to fall (from the opposite side) crime has a simple, logical development into the same naïve internalism that once of its own, and can be found and made led historians of ideas completely to known without recourse to the original divorce matters of the head from the real records. world of the hand. That said, however, neither of these books goes far toward Any attempt to summarize research on advancing a constitutive understanding of the history of crime and punishment, to mental and manual labour. provide a useful methodological approach, and to suggest challenging Of the two works Mandrou's is by far hypotheses would be welcome. But this the more readable, much of this readabil­ book is a failure. One hopes that individu­ ity being attributable to the excellence of als in related fields will not be seduced the translation by Brian Pearce. But it is into accepting the study as a genuine rep­ more than prose style that recommends resentation of the historian's craft. Mandrou's book: he has an authoritative command over a wide range of diverse Louis A. Knafla primary and secondary sources and has a University of Calgary majestic scope that is truly European. To REVIEWS 263 those nursed on standard European his­ these would be minor carpings and largely tories of this period Mandrou's forays into misdirected at a book aiming to integrate Poland, Hungary, Spain, Sweden, and the more salient and accepted features of elsewhere will be welcomed. modern research as they apply to the his­ Mandrou's approach is also satisfying tory of thought over this crucial 220-year to the extent that a correction of emphasis period in which the modern capitalist and can be satisfying. Butting primarily scientistic mindscape of the west can be against Paul Hazard's influential The said to have been incubated. Yet for this European Mind, Mandrou cautions very reason of integrating historical against drawing sharp contrasts between advances, it is legitimate to criticise Man­ "old" and "new" intellectuals in any drou's book as seriously flawed by its period, and against imposing arbitrary total neglect of economic realities. It is labels upon periods and so construing all not only that Mandrou, with such a mag­ nificent epochal panorama before him, the thought within them in terms of dis­ has neglected to consider in any way the continuities with the past. He perceives, notion expressed (rhetorically) by Marx rather, that ideas and the dynamic cultural and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: and social hegemonies they serve or "What else does the history of ideas undermine must be treated with an prove, than that intellectual production extended contextual finesse: not in terms of period pieces or simple linear progres­ changes its character in proportion as sions, but in terms of the endless move­ material production is changed?;" it is ment of contextual totalities. Innovating also the case that by eschewing consider­ ation of economic changes between 1480 ideas are to be seen as the products of and 1700 he has failed to fulfil even the specific (though deeply-rooted) social and modest promise of his introduction, "to institutional contexts which, over time, analyse and reconstruct the complex rela­ nudge or jar those contexts and, as they do tions which linked intellectuals with dif­ so, are in turn themselves transformed, ferent social milieux." (13) Aware that thus allowing for still more innovations, the diffusion of ideas is not to be under­ adjustments, reactions, absorptions, and stood without reference to social rela­ so on. It is an approach that makes for a tions, Mandrou seems to think it possible fairly messy history, yet Mandrou carries to understand social relations and the it off without needless simplicity or con­ ideas connected with them without ever fusion and without always trying to dis­ heeding economic structures and changes cover and convince us of a single ideolog­ in modes of production. Like so many lib­ ical or political "line" in the thought of eral historians, Mandrou, "the contex- this or that intellectual or intellectual tualist," rests satisfied with a mere part­ group. Mandrou is fully aware of the man­ ing of company from the old internalist ifest and latent contradictions and tradition in the history of ideas wherein ambiguities in every social and intellec­ ideas were treated autonomously, as if tual environment. they had descended from heaven. It is of course almost inevitable that in a book as geographically and chronologi­ cally expansive as this that the ire of spe­ The neglect of economic realities is cialists in the history of science, religion, contingent with Mandrou's failure fully to politics, witchcraft, literature, and art will conceive of ideas as social products. For be raised over detailed points of fact and all his concern with the social, political, interpretation; that the author will, on the religious, and cultural contexts in which one hand, be damned for what he has done ideas were developed and deployed, he and, on the other, for what he has not. But still thinks of ideas as things functioning 264 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

in an essentially mechanical interactions! nature of intellectual life, but he travels way. rather than as mutually constitutive no distance at all towards providing any with material reality, that is he does not understanding of how and why and from perceive the ideational and the material as what the "impetus" arose or what deeper interpenetrated by the dialectics of change social significance it had. It is also from and growth. Mandrou lacks any concep­ passages like this that one sees clearly the tion of "'mediation" or of the subtle and weakness of the continuity-tending inter­ complex ways in which ideas — in being pretation of intellectual history: it too generated by real people under real socio­ readily allows the historian to avoid economic conditions — reproduce the altogether any careful explanation for ideological and social interests of that real change; Mandrou too often surfs over the world in alternative (often highly abstract) historically relevant problem of change in intellectual forms. Forsaking, or perhaps a smooth wave of mere narration. being ignorant of, the now considerable body of literature that reveals scientific The least that can be said of From knowledge (including mathematics) as Humanism to Science is that its title is socially constituted, Mandrou cannot wholly belied by its vigilantly anti-Whig hope to relate material and intellectual approach. The title of Christopher Kent's realms without ending up in the mire of book, however, simply belies. Brains and economic determinism. Wisely choosing Numbers has nothing at all to say about to avoid that fate, he avoids economics the masses, while even the theoretical and altogether and thus ventures not the actual alliance between brains and num­ slightest speculation on the relation bers takes up less than 50 pages. Kent's between changes in thought in this period main interests are with describing the and changes in socioeconomic structures intellectual milieux out of which emerged and relations. the disciples of Auguste Comte's Système de politique positive (1851-54), and with examining both the elitist nature of their This is a shame not only because Man­ radicalism and its practical social and drou obviously has the fine ability to han­ political manifestations and ambiguities. dle complex matters sensitively, but also because the price paid is an overwhelming Kent's book is divided into three sec­ shallowness. A thousand times one cries tions. The first relates how the Cole- "why?" to observations like: Mersenne ridgean "ideal of clerisy" (the notion of and his friends in early seventeenth- an intellectual élite serving as a cultural century France granted primacy to mathe­ priesthood for an organic society of class matics and mathematicized all natural consensus) strongly appealed to certain phenomena (208); or one feels cheated by members of the generation at Oxford in remarks seemingly pregnant with contex­ the 1840s and 1850s who, in that placid tual significance but left untouched, such "end of ideology" atmosphere, were con­ as: the printing establishments set up in scious of their social and political irrele­ the fifteenth century "were like a produc­ vance. Kent then goes on to discuss the tion line, in the modern sense of the Comtist Movement in England during the expression . . . employling] detail workers 1850s and 1860s as a systematic and at each stage of the manufacturing pro­ explicit attempt to organize and extend the cess" (29); or one tosses up the book in authority of the university élite. Within disgust after an unelaborated observation that context he endeavours to dispell the such as: "Scholarship was given a fresh various myths about the appeal of Com- impetus in the early seventeenth century tism in mid-Victorian England. Comtism through the coming of new participants" was, he indicates in a prefactory passage (183). By the latter, Mandrou makes his that adequately sums up his concerns and point about the "ceaselessly refreshed" his findings: REVIEWS 265

not the exotic aberration of a coterie of chapter in his Before the Socialists eccentrics but rather a comprehensive ideology (1965). At much greater length, Kent has remarkably harmonious with certain estab­ spoken on less, and it may even be that in lished English currents of thought and remark­ concentrating so heavily on Frederic Har­ ably well suited to the needs of a middle-class rison, Kent has slightly distorted histori­ intellectual élite. It not only legitimized their cal understanding, for Harrison was, of all pretensions to intellectual authority but also the English Positivists, the most self­ provided a powerful ideological solvent for consciously elitist. It's also slightly disap­ social irritants to those who were ready to entertain fairly radical notions of social change pointing that in warming over the rela­ for essentially conservative ends — a sort of tively familiar, Kent stylistically reveals a prospective conservatism rather than the more firm attachment to the drab historical common retrospective variety. Comtism met orthodoxy that the ultimate reality to the anxieties of classically-educated, amateur- which the historian can aspire is party oriented intellectuals by providing a scien­ politics. But what is more worrying is the tifically sanctioned blueprint of the future insubstantiality of Kent's contribution to which assured their continued relevance serious historical concern over the nature despite the increasing industrialization, spe­ of the transmission of ideas from intellec­ cialization, and democratization of society. tuals to masses and vice versa, and over (xiii) the role of intellectuals in relation to the political necessities of production at any The third part of Kent's study is given historical moment. The mid- directed to the relation between intellectu­ Victorian Oxford intellectuals would als and politics, a relation that became seem to offer a convenient point of entry problematic to Comtisis after the defeat of to both these concerns. Yet Kent never the intellectuals at the polls in 1868. Here takes them up — never refers to such Kent pays particular attention to John important writings on the function of Morley and Frederic Harrison and treats intellectuals as Gramsci's (as does Man- us to an extended exegesis of their most drou), nor does he ever seek to bring into considered wrestlings on the problem in, his discussion any other relevant critical respectively, On Compromise and Order sociological writing. Indeed, it almost and Progress, Through this Kent illus­ seems that in writing on a group of intel­ trates two varieties of engagement with lectuals who were preoccupied with the and responses to the Comtean elitist sub­ problem of the intellectual's place and stitute for democracy. role in society, Kent is afraid to lift his sights from his file cards lest it lead to any self-questioning of his own role as an The book lacks imagination and origi­ academic. Nose to the exegetical nality. Virtually everything Kent says on grindstone. Dr. Kent never breaks histori­ the English Positivists has been said cal rank, not even for so much as a wisp of before, including the cheap, if relevant, an allusion to, say, presentday Oxford- comparisons with Marxists (and Posi­ connected radicals also seeking relevance tivism with Marxism), the secular reli- and comprehensive understanding giousity of these intellectuals, ihe ambiva­ through the structures of Parisian intellec- lent middle ground they occupied between tualisms. Utilitarianism and Fabianism, their spe­ cial, if not always certain, regard for trade unionists, their sense of guilt at being bourgeois, their prolific output relative to Brains and Numbers, then, should be their small numbers, and so on. Royden especially recommended to devotees of Harrison, besides treating the Positivists' history for history's sake or to anyone else involvement with British labour, dis­ seeking to make a match between mind cussed all of these matters succinctly in a and atrophied facial muscles. By contrast, 266 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

it is easier to recommend From representative version. Thanks to letters Humanism to Science. and papers of the STN, one of the most important eighteenth-century printers in Roger Cooter Europe and an associate in the quarto ven­ Dalhousie University ture, Darnton is able to follow in almost intimate detail the history of this edition, Robert Damton, The Business of from the creation in 1776 of the first asso­ Enlightenment, A Publishing History of ciation between the powerful Parisian the Encyclopédie 1775-1800 (Cambridge: publisher, Panckoucke, detainer of the Harvard University Press 1979). works "privilege," and the STN, to the final acrimonious settlement of accounts EMMANUEL LEROY LADURIE at one in 1780 involving the two original associ­ point suggested that advances in the his­ ates and a third partner, Duplain, a Lyon­ torical sciences were obtained either by naise '"pirate" publisher. The unfolding the discovery of new sources or by the of events, involving intrigue and duplic­ innovative use of standard archival mate­ ity, makes for fascinating reading. rial. In this, justifiably, much acclaimed work Robert Darnton has demonstrated If this diplomatic history of entrepre- that these are not mutually exclusive neurship forms the thread of Darnton's approaches. Basing his study upon the study, analysis of the technical aspects unique and formerly unused records of the and of the intellectual and political signif­ Société typographique de Neuchâtel while icance of the publication of the Ency­ attempting, in his own words, to mix clopédie constitutes its substance. Ledg­ "'British empiricism with the French con­ ers and correspondence of the STN to cern for broad-gauged social history," paper manufacturers, foundry makers, Damton succeeds in creating an ""original and ink suppliers enable Damton to blend of the history of books." (3) And as elucidate the relative costs of materials "'arcane" ( 1 ) as it may appear, this is a and to examine the inflationary pressures history that will appeal not only to bib­ arising from the publication of a work that liophiles, Indeed, Darn ton's claim that it for over two years tied up roughly 200 constitutes a contribution to the history of presses from Lyons to Neuchâtel. ideas, of business, of labour, and to the These pressures also affected labour historiography of the French Revolution costs. Confronted with the Encyclopédie is, with some qualifications, borne out. boom, labour and capital adopted differ­ ent strategies, the one to take advantage of The scope of the study is a reflection the situation, the other to limit its conse­ of the subject matter itself and of the rich­ quences. Neither was passive, and if ness of the source material. The commer­ eventually employers gained the upper cial success of Diderot's first folio edition hand by coming to an understanding of the Encyclopédie had established this among themselves over wage scales, the work as the "affaire du siècle11 and printers did maintain their mobility, leav­ incited publishers to conceive plans for ing shops for better conditions if not better reprints and new revised editions. Pub­ wages and continued to exert some con­ lished at over 8000 copies between 1777 trol over their working environment, and 1780, the "Geneva-Neuchâtel" determining work rhythm and developing quarto edition is the most successful techniques for easing the work load at the example of this effort to capitalize upon expense of quality. One might argue that ihe popularity of the Encyclopédie, and much, especially the cabal of employers, since it also constitutes both the largest was already known to Adam Smith. But single run and approximately 60 per cent the STN archives, with their memoranda, of all of Diderot's Encyclopédie sold in description of workers, and pay slips con- France, it may also be considered its most REVIEWS 267 fer to these moments in labour history an which present American practice con­ immediacy rarely found elsewhere. stitutes the norm for modernity. Thus Panckoucke's proposal for reorganizing Finally, the records of the STN pro­ the trade along corporate welfare lines is vide insight into the geographic and social rejected as an example of archaic think­ diffusion of the Encyclopédie and thus of ing. One may regret that not only the the Enlightenment. Far from being the Swiss but also the Japanese remain una­ ideological expression of the bourgeoisie, ware that they are following backward the Encyclopédie reached a mixed elite practices. Similarly Damton's concept of drawn from the three orders of the Ancien modern business seems to remain on the Régime. Damton's findings would thus one hand, too courteous and civil and, on seem to substantiate the claims of Cobban the other, too impersonal. To believe, as concerning the conservative nature of the the author suggests, that socializing and social configuration of the Revolutionary the dining that characterized business in class. the Ancien Regime (84), and the necessity However, it remains to establish the of patronage from highly placed state offi­ link between the Encyclopédie and the cials were things of the past is to show a Revolution. Panckoucke's Encyclopédie surprising ignorance of both modern busi­ méthodique 1780-1834, conceived as a ness practices and current business his­ perfected remake of Diderot's work pro­ tory. To take but two examples. Dieter vides means of tackling the problem. Buse has discussed the importance of After a review of the conduct of the Ency­ salons as a place for social and business clopedia's contributors during the Revolu­ contacts over dinner between stale and tion, Darnton concludes that there is no business administrators in Weimar Ger­ necessary link between the two. In short, many, while Don Davis has been working he has undermined the significance of his on the role of sponsorship in the rise of earlier findings, especially since he makes individuals to the elite. Finally, to believe no apparent effort to tie them together. that the cupidity characteristic of a Dup- The study of the Encyclopédie is a contri­ lain no longer motivates modem business bution to the fields that it concerns but men is simply naive. because these are so dispersed the conclu­ sions end up being rather weak, Professor Darnton promises us further studies based upon the records of the STN. This raises another problem with The shortcomings pointed out above are Darnton's study: it is too wide ranging. In minor in comparison to the contributions particular, the reader may question the that he has made in this book, and thus, advisability of pursuing the study past the one can look forward to these subsequent dissolution of the quarto association studies with pleasure. If Harvard con­ through to the publication of the Ency­ tinues to publish them, it is to be hoped clopédie whose connection to Diderot's that they will be more conscientious in work remains problematic. the proof reading of the French quota­ Nonetheless, this procedure does tions. enable the author to consider the transfor­ mation and "modernization" of the print­ Peter Simoni ing trade brought about by the Revolu­ Laurentian University tion. But this brings us to the major diffi­ culty with Darnton's study, which centres Michael P. Hanagan, The Logic of Sol­ on the question of changes in business idarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in practice and Darnton's use of terms such Three French Towns, 187/-1914 (Urbana: as archaic and modern. Put simply, University of Illinois Press 1980). Darnton subscribes to a technological interpretation of historical change, one in TO LEARN MORE about the reasons for 268 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

French workers' protest in the late 1898 to 1919 and deputy from the Loire nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from 1898 to 1906. On the other hand, he Michael P. Hanagan studied three towns provides no breakdowns of local or with different economic bases in the departmental voting patterns. Historians strike-prone arrondissement of Saint- hoping to leam more about the character of Etienne. By contrasting the factors local radical/socialist politics will have to facilitating militance in the predominantly await Joan Scott's book on these subjects. artisanal town of Le Chambon-Feugerolles Similarly. Hanagan rightly stresses the and the mixed artisanal-industrial town of limited impact of revolutionary syn­ Rivc-de-Gier, to the factors inhibiting dicalism but only suggests that workers activism among the industrial workers of may have ignored socialist ideologies Saint-Chamond, Hanagan makes a com­ because the ideologies ignored local pelling case for the role of late, slow indus­ issues. When he does discuss national trialization. and the co-operation of art­ policies like protective labour legislation. isans and industrial workers, in promoting he is brief and, about laws restricting strike actions. More specifically, his selec­ women's work, misleading. Historians of tion and comparison of towns enhances our the national labour movement, particularly understanding of how artisanal workers its political manifestations, may wish to remained in the factories, indeed retained confine their reading to the first three chap­ control over apprenticeship programmes ters of The Logic of Solidaritx, where the and job hierarchies; how new technologies analytical framework appears. Historians and increased employer, engineer, and interested in international comparisons of foreman supervision gradually eroded labour movements should also consult the workers' autonomy and hence their ability important section on "Union Organiza­ to influence peacefully the work environ­ tion" buried in the chapter on Le ment, and how artisanal workers reacted Chambon-Feugerolles. Here Hanagan defensively by unionizing, demanding art­ contrasts the French industrial unions to isanal wage rates for machine work, and English craft unions and accounts for winning the support of industrial workers French artisans' acceptance of industrial on the wage issue. unions by late industrialization where there was no heritage of craft factionalism In the first three chapters of The Logic or competing hierarchies of conservative, of Solidarity, where Hanagan outlines his paid union officials. Here too he tenta­ explanations of mass mobilization for tively challenges the accepted argument strikes, he highlights socio-economic that French unions were poorer than their changes but also indicates that the political Fnglish counterparts. His idea that local liberalization of the Third Republic French unions had more money to devote encouraged artisans to rally industrial to strikes (as opposed to benefits) ought to workers in order to dominate local elec­ be explored further in other contexts. tions. The next three chapters, which treat the three towns successively, give specific, The three town studies systematically often quantitative information about the examine work and wage structures, resi­ socio-economic transformations, but dential patterns, and leisure activities to rather imprecise, qualitative information see how these variables influenced mili­ about local, departmental, and national tance. In the process, the reader gets a policies. On the one hand, Hanagan offers vivid picture of glassmaking. filemaking, interesting vignettes of the personal and metalworking. and braidweaving, of the often paternalistic nature of local and physical layout of the shops, of the interac­ regional politics, as. for instance, in his tions between workmates on and off the description of Georges Claudcnon, an job. as well as the neighbourhoods and important, benevolent employer who was cafes where artisans socialized and mayor of Le Chambon-Feugerolles from "politicked." Hanagan shows that the co- REVIEWS 269 operative work teams and high family out an area needing research — local wages, plus the residential clustering and labour history — and provides a compara­ cafés, of the (artisanal) glass workers of tive model for others to follow, Rive-de-Gier and the (artisanal) filemakers of Le Chambon-Feugerolles explain their M,L. McDougall cohesion and activism. Although these Simon Fraser University ideas are not new — in fact, the author Paul-Henry Chombard de Lauwe, La Vie might have referred to studies of earlier, quotidienne des familles ouvrières (Paris: militant artisanal groups — they have Editions du Centre National de la rarely been so thoroughly elaborated or Recherche Scientifique, 3e edition 1977). integrated into a multifaceted theory. More significantly, Hanagan includes coun­ THE DAILY LIFE of the working-class family ter examples in the form of the industrial has been a subject of interest among metalworkers and the town of Saint sociologists for some time. In France, Chamand. There the female braidmakers Chombard de Lauwe's La Vie quotidienne remained quiescent because they were iso­ des familles ouvrières was first published lated on and off the job owing to being scat­ in 1956. Since then, the book has reap- tered throughout the factories and living all eared in 1959 and 1977 with little atten- over town or in heavily supervised dor­ ..on from labour historians. Yet this study mitories, because they had low wages, lit­ of Parisian worker families during the tle commitment to their work, which they quiet years of 1950-52, deserves reconsid­ perceived as a short phase of their lives, eration for its sophisticated analysis and and few opportunities to organize, thanks unconventional insights. to familial responsibilities at home and the "unrespectable" character of the cafés/ Chombard de Lauwe asserts that the union meeting places. social life of worker families revolves about two major spheres of activities: place Hanagan's hypothesis about why art­ of employment and place of residence. At isans united with industrial workers are not work, men labour long hours at tiring tasks as consistent or compelling. In both of the for mediocre pay. Constant insecurity, towns where artisans supported industrial coupled with an exhaustive routine of com­ workers' strikes, the artisans were muting to the jobsite, induce occupational motivated by alarm at the industrial dissatisfaction and deprive workers of employers* anti-unionism. In Rive- valuable time about the hearth. At home, de-Gier, the glassmakers also approved of women are burdened with daily chores that the metalworkers' demand for shop floor never end, preventing more efficient plan­ representation and saw the metalworkers ning of the workday and curtailing projects as a crucial constituency in their struggle of recreation. Each partner follows a time­ with anti-union local officials. But in Le table that prohibits activities in common. Chambon-Feugerolles, the filemakers And the housing shortage forces the family were activated by threatening technologi­ to live in cramped quarters to the detriment cal change and familial ties to the striking of the children's education and sanity. boltmakers. More case studies of this type What differentiates the situation of the pro­ may clarify whether combatting ami- letariat from that of the bourgeoisie is not unionism was the key reason for artisanal simply that work and home experiences unions' solidarity with striking industrial differ, but that the labouring population workers. lacks leisure — what the author calls an If Hanagan has not proved all of his intermediate milieu between the poles of hypotheses, he has introduced an impor­ workplace and abode. Consequently, the tant thesis: craft interests were not neces­ worker family's social life is predomi­ sarily different from class interests. Fur­ nantly centred on the neighbourhood dis­ thermore, The Logic of Solidarity points trict. This is the global portrait that Chom- 270 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR bard de Lauwe presents as a prelude to his guests, that differs sharply from the cold analysis of the consumption patterns of formality of bourgeois family dinners. Parisian households. And in the workers' desire to eat meat He observes initially that household more often. he sees the proletariat trying to expenditures vary according to the seasons defend its social position so as to maintain and the overall state of the economy. Then family group-cohesion. In short, the shift he remarks that those living at a subsis­ from préoccupation to intérêt-libre is evi­ tence level are caught in a vicious circle: dently the crucial indicator of working- having suffered deprivation during the class aspirations and the avenue of popular workweek, they tend to splurge when pay­ cultural development. Chombard de day arrives, as a form of compensation, Lauwe does not deny that such aspirations which throws them back into dire straits involve desires for prestige and social rec­ again. Unsure of being able to repay his ognition, but he points out that material­ debts, the worker instinctively fears bor­ istic individualism is restricted to the upper rowing on credit. The rhythm of household stratum of the wage-earning population, expenditures is further elucidated by a per­ notably state and commercial employees. ceptive account of the spatial dimension of Workers generally, he asserts, reject indi­ market engagements: the immediate area vidual upward mobility in favour of a col­ of the neighbourhood is the site of daily lective social rise {montée). Hence, the shopping (for example, bread); the periph­ dual motivational schema is a ideological ery of the district attracts some weekly class interpretation of consumption behav­ buying (hardware items); and at greater iour that interprets workers' latent resist­ distance still, special purchasing forays ance to bourgeois domination as a badge of take place intermittently (furniture). The group defiance written large on the most mode of expenditures and distribution of ordinary household concerns. "economic space" structure workers' per­ While Chombard de Lauwe's work ceptions of themselves as a class vis-à-vis constitutes an impressive theoretical state­ other socio-profess ion a I groups such as the ment on the daily life of worker families, it petty bourgeois, who serve as commercial has a number of shortcomings. Form inter­ intermediaries in the marketplace. feres with matler as a maze of footnotes The author offers a typology of con­ takes the reader on a meandering journey. sumption behaviour as well. He notes that From chapters 1 to IX, the author refers us préoccupation about the necessities of life lo various parts of the book ai least 45 (food, shelter, and clothing) dominates times. In the text, a key factor like culture daily concerns. The emphasis he places on is introduced in diverse senses but it is this type of comportment makes the picture neither defined comprehensively nor of the worker family gloomy indeed; how­ treated directly; rather, discussion of this ever, he does point out that misery does not determinant of consumption behaviour is breed quiescent pessimism. The household continuously postponed until it simply remains remarkably generous, comradely, falls out of view by the end, where defini­ and resiliently combattive in a latent fash­ tions of structure, objective, and subjective ion. Thus workers have certain interests social space, take precedence. More sig­ that transcend material concerns; and such nificantly, the author takes for granted consumptive behaviour, he names intérêt- what deserves to be disproven at the outset. libre. This is a broad schema of dual- He assumes that place of employment is a motivations formulated to elucidate work­ less decisive influence on the attitudes and ers' "needs," ultimately in order to explain behaviour of worker families, than place of lower class aspirations and attitudes. In the residence. Consideration of the workplace case of family meals, for example, the is condensed into two chapters and the author ebserves an open festive reciprocity brief treatment is inconsistent in certain between husband and wife, host and places. The male worker, for example, is REVIEWS 271

portrayed as subject to a high degree of author discusses "auto-affiliations et occupational dissatisfaction and insecur­ stratifications sociales," his core sample ity, but the point is forgotten when the of families was questioned in terms of author later prescribes equal liberty for social layer (couche sociale), while larger women in choosing a profession. (49) national surveys had respondents answer After all, the author stresses in an accom­ in terms of "bourgeois" and "proletarian" panying article entitled, "Le Prolétariat a- categories. (132) Stratification and class t-il disparu?" that the state of dependence viewpoints of society intermingle in is the essence of being proletarian. While Chombard de Lauwe's analysis, and the workplace receives summary attention, frame work of his core sample and. national habits of food consumption attract inten­ surveys does not always coincide with the sive analysis, giving the focus of the study thrust of his arguments. Despite his asser­ a lack of symmetry. tion that research led him to Marx, (14) the result is structuralist, undialectical, and The orientation of Chombard de static. Besides citing Pavlov (183) to intro­ Lauwe's study is doubtless set by practical duce the importance of food for worker considerations. In the introduction to the families would make many Marx­ first edition, he acknowledges that his core ists salivate in anger. data derive from a survey carried out by Section Nutrition of the Institut National Although the book has certain limita­ d'Hygiène. Given the small size of the tions, it represents a valuable contribution sample of families, he duly warns against to labour history by theorizing about comparing his work with other studies neighbourhood life and market behaviour (mainly American) based on samples 10 to — a field that is all too often overlooked 20 times larger. (225, n. 2) Although ad­ because of ideological preference or just mitting the limits of his sample, he never plain fear of the complexity of life outside specifies the exact degree to which statisti­ the place of employment. In a sense, cally significant differences within the Chombard de Lauwe manifests what variables isolated are indicative of socially American sociology could have been at its significant characteristics other than to best: when in the 1950s, it had become the present the whole as tentative. Moreover, vogue of students of industrial relations on other source material is used without suffi­ our continent to proclaim that the working cient control of the data's composition and class was institutionalized into quiescence the conceptual framework in which the if not extinction, this French sociologist documentation was gathered. For exam­ employed the same techniques to observe ple, the author refers to a variety of that hope still transcends misery and that national surveys which, in effect, lump the fight for social justice continues in the together residents of Paris with those of the daily life of worker families. provinces, such as the Nord and the Loire, including diverse urban centres like St. Arthur Borghese Etienne, Lyon, and Marseille. Yet condi­ University of Lethbridge tions at work and at home in these distant locations can differ greatly from the Pari­ Denis Poulol, Le Sublime ou le travail­ sian environment. Shift work, for leur comme il est en 1870, et ce qu' il peut instance, is a notable predicament of min­ être. Introduction d'Alain Cottereau ing and metallurgical workers; and the (Paris: François Maspero 1980). spread of commercial concentration of transactions involving goods and services WHEN THE SOCIAL PROBLEM — that is bound to be spatially distributed within burning issue of the nineteenth century — neighbourhoods in a fashion distinct from attracts the attention of a manufacturer of that of the capital. Moreover, when the nuts, bolts, and threading machines, the result is as provocative as it is intriguing. 272 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Denis Poulot's brochure Le Sublime the graduates from these schools would appeared prophetically in 1870, on the facilitate mechanization, rendering eve of the Paris Commune; it is now obsolete those pockets of production that republished in the useful collection of perpetuate artisanal control over profes­ Actes et Mémoires du Peuple. The sional expertise and circumscribe patronat brochure is preceded by a lengthy intro­ authority. Moreover, this select contin­ duction by Alain Cottereau, who skillfully gent would inherit an esprit de corps sus­ deciphers Poulot's diatribe against labour tained by associational ties enabling them in order to reveal workers' collective prac­ to assume leadership of existing working tices of resistance to class domination. class organizations, coupling the move­ Both Le Sublime and the introduction ment in the process. offer the social historian valuable insights into matters of radicalism, "artisanal" In the context of technocratic infiltra­ deskilling, popular protest, civil tion, Poulot addresses the questions of hegemony, and the working-class move­ strikes and workers' aspirations. The ment in general. response is a curious combination of indi­ vidualism and collectivism. Strikes occur Poulot adopts an enigmatic title on because employees (pressed by rising purpose. He coins the term sublimixme to costs of living) demand the highest wages designate the "dissolute" ways and possible, while industrialists (undercut by insubordination of the labour force during competition from outmoded enterprises) and after working hours. Writing from the aim to reduce payrolls inversely. He rec­ point of view of an experienced worker in ommends thai both parties form their the metallurgical trade, he perceives sub- respective unions and negotiate differ­ limisme as a unique and contagious dis­ ences. To overcome impasses, he pro­ ease, the principal obstacle to resolving poses a system of binding arbitration car­ the social problem. His objectives are to ried out by a supreme tribunal composed diagnose the "morbid sickness" and to of workers' and bosses' delegates elected prescribe the required treatment. Initially, from Conseils des Prud'hommes —origi­ he draws up a "pathological" typology of nally introduced by Napoleon I in the workers, based on some common criteria 1800s. What of foreign competition nul­ of the period: absenteeism, indebtedness. lifying the national tribunal's decisions? lack of familial affection, drunkenness, Poulot counters that wages could be set and political extremism. In addition, he across frontiers by a universal syndicat; depicts the demoralizing influence of the and he intimates that the model exists workshop environment, in which the con­ already in the International Work- ventional mode of apprenticeship allows ingmen's Association. Although such ref­ skilled recalcitrant journeymen to stifle erences may seem strange today, Ihey emulation among trainees and to convert aptly illustrate the author's desire to find newcomers to cynical anti-authori­ practical remedies within the institutional tarianism toward bosses. Poulot is anti- framework of the Second Empire. For Caesaristic and anti-clerical, accus­ Poulot, the ultimate satisfaction of work­ ing State and Church of exacerbating the ers' aspirations resides in generalizing social problem; yet his own moralistic and property ownership, and to this end he elitist values shine through in the solu­ advocates the extension of producer tions he presents. To eradicate the nega­ organizations which distribute profits on tive effects of workshop apprenticeship, an individual basis in proportion to the he advocates compulsory education at the labour contribution of each person. He primary level, to be followed by training encourages ''democratic" participation in special trade schools. Entering the so as to foster group pressure against the industrial sector in ever growing numbers, sublimes, whose survival is to become REVIEWS 273 impossible through excessive dues and dependencies that have transformed the obligatory membership in mutual aid soci­ Parisian artisanat into an adjunct of the eties and social insurance schemes, osten­ monopolistic national market; at the same sibly established to ensure everyone time, it constitutes a handbook of upper minimum material security. Poulot's vis­ class strategy bent on shattering the very ion is one of harmony between labour and continuity it exposes as a prelude to thor­ capital summed up in the phrase: "sol­ ough domination of the working popula­ idarity obligatoire en présence de la tion. nécessité." Cottereau's introduction is coherent Why read this anti-labour pamphlet? and convincing, but for reasons of econ­ Cottereau notes that it is of direct interest omy it does not completely develop cer­ to the social historian, for in its minute tain threads of the argument. While the portrayal of popular derision and contra­ commentator elaborates upon some vention of patronal power, it gives insight institutions like producer co-operatives, into workers' collective practices of he omits reference to others like Conseils resistance, seldom accessible in private or des Prud'hommes to which Poulot assigns public inquiries of the time. He shows that a crucial role. Cottereau's sensitivity to Poulot's combination of criteria for distin­ the complex situation of artisans is posi­ guishing "good" from "bad" tradesmen tively enlightening, as when he traces cer­ is unorthodox: sublimes may indulge in tain links between resistance in the work­ the usual vices, but they are also highly shop and familial life styles (which Poulot skilled personnel, capable of self- assails with "bourgeois" bias); however, restraint, leadership, intellectual dis­ his Marxist labour-primacy approach course, and concerted action. Cottereau inherently flows in a bi-polar direction. A presents biographical information that complementary Weberian focus on "mar­ elucidates the manufacturer's predilection ket situations" as conducive to manifold for technical training and mechanization class antagonisms might have specified as "moralizing forces." He offers admon­ the mediating position of the lower middle itions for the reader too, remarking that class more clearly. In fact, Poulot men­ historians unwittingly accept simplistic tions numerous relationships between stereotypes concerning industrialization "good" and "bad" workers on the one as something confined exclusively to fac­ hand and wine merchants and small pro­ tory production while supposing Paris is prietors on the other — raising the ques­ inhabited mainly by independent artisans tion: what is the net effect of these rela­ looking "backward" to a corporate ideal tionships on the changing orientation of suited to the Middle Ages. He asserts that workers' techniques of resistance and the invisible web of capitalism embraced their language of protest? Similarly, the the capital and countryside alike, making ambiguous — indeed, contradictory — the situation of nineteenth-century art­ political position that Poulot adopts, war­ isans extremely complex and hetero­ rants clarification in terms of upper class geneous. Cottereau also warns against hegemonic ideology — a Gramscian sub­ artificially isolating "vie populaire" from ject. Just how dominant was the dominant everyday resistance to the dominant social social order in the final years of the Sec­ order; he dissuades the researcher from ond Empire? Despite Poulot's managerial using schematic categories like spon­ elitism and boundless faith in technologi­ taneity or structuredness; and he main­ cal innovation, in political affairs he falls tains that there is a fundamental continuity captive to the so-called rez-de-chaussée between social and political comport­ (petty bourgeois of the traditional and ment. Thus Le Sublime is a detailed reve­ modem type, occupying ground-floor lation of the pervasive set of capitalist apartments): "C'est lui qui assure l'avenir 274 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

de la République et la tranquillité. Il n'y a non-historian who relies upon secondary rien de possible sans lui. . , . Donnez literature and who has himself done no satisfaction au rez-de-chaussée, c'est primary research. Despite the increasing montrer que l'on sait gouverner." (112) interest in social history, these works are Ironically, this is the class that embodies not atypical of the way the history of the anti-monopolistic prejudices essentially German working class is still being writ­ inimical to Poulotian capitalist technoc­ ten — in particular by overemphasizing racy. Finally, what about the countryside? ideology rather than social practice and by It was in Lyon of the 1830s that silk-weav­ separating theoretical hypothesis from pri­ ing artisans first raised the batttecry, mary research. "Vivre en travaillant ou mourrir en com­ Alex Hall has exploited the rich battant! ", and it was in Mulhouse, resources of an extensive national and Alsace, in 1870 that textile and metal regional social-democratic press to inves­ workers engaged in the most massive tigate the interrelationship of political agi­ strike of the century. Cottereau concen­ tation, legal repression, and the uses of trates on Paris and thus avoids this terrain. propaganda in the party press of the SPD Nevertheless, his introduction and in Wilhelmine Germany. Hall analyzes Poulot's Le Sublime offer the social histo­ rian fresh avenues for research and synth­ the treatment of political scandals in the esis. SPD press in three contexts: judicial harassment of the SPD and legal restric­ Arthur Borghese tions on freedom of speech and of the press; University of Lethbridge opposition to constituted authority (the Alex Hall, Scandal, Sensation and Social police, municipal authorities, and the Democracy. The SPD Press and Wilhel­ German military); and political and social mine Germany 1890-1914 (New York; scandals affecting the capitalist system Cambridge University Press 1977); Max and monarchical regime. The major weak­ H. Kele, Nazis and Workers. National ness of Hall's study is that it lacks an over­ Socialist Appeals to German Labor, all focus. There is no real connection 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill: University of between the three main chapters of his North Carolina Press 1972); Leila J. study except that they all deal with Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War. (widely differing) scandals reported over a German and American Propaganda, 25-year period in the party's press. Hall 1939-1945 (Princeton: Princeton Univer­ has posed no central problem: his work is sity Press 1978); and Barrington Moore, neither a study of the party press, nor a Jr., Injustice. The Social Bases of Obedi­ systematic analysis of the measures adop­ ence and Revolt (White Plains, N.Y.: ted by the Wilhelmine state to restrict or M.E, Sharpe Inc. 1978). repress the SPD, nor an attempt to investi­ gate the role of agitprop in the party's THE HISTORIOGRAPHY of the German overall political work. To be sure. Hall workers* movement is in an uncertain, touches on all these problems, but in the transitional state, and the four works end he remains in the nebulous, undefined under review reflect the problems facing area between them. By concentrating his German labour historians. Three of these attention narrowly on the party's official, works fall within a traditional type of printed propaganda, he fails to come to labour historiography that deals with terms with the political practice of the SPD ideology and propaganda. Barrington or with the social assumptions behind its Moore's contribution, which is one of the agitprop line. Nevertheless, Hall's work is few recent attempts to base a theoretical useful in that it is the only major English- analysis of lower-class unrest on the language study to deal specifically with social history of workers, is written by a the legal position of the SPD from 1890 to REVIEWS 275

1915 and with the kinds of harassment and describing the NSBO, the Nazi attempt to limitations on freedom of speech and the build a factory-based organization of press under which the party operated. workers during the Depression, Kele asks Max Kele, on the other hand, has cho­ none of the relevant questions — and sen what should have been a well-defined, therefore has done none of the primary major historical problem — the relation­ archival research — that might have ship of German Nazism to workers during illuminated this side of Nazi history. Who the Weimar Republic — but he does not belonged to the NSBO? Where did they know what to do with his subject. Kele work? In what trades, industries, fac­ unnecessarily restricts his analysis almost tories, offices, geographic regions? To exclusively to the written propaganda and what extent did the NSBO draw its support ideology of the NSDAP, thereby ignoring from older yellow (company) unions? One all the major questions of politics and could start by gathering statistics on NSBO social history which a subject of this kind participation in works councils' elections ought to raise. Even on the level of to determine '.-iiere and among whom the propaganda, Kele fails to put the Nazi Nazis won support. This is a rich, approaches to workers in the overall con­ unexploited source of information of text of the party's agitation and prop­ which Kele seems to be unaware. As a aganda: it is simply impossible, on the strictly empirical, chronological summary basis of Kele's study, to measure or judge the extent of importance of Nazi agitation of Nazi propaganda and ideology about toward workers in relationship to the total­ workers, Kele's study is not without use­ ity of the Nazi movement. Kele's work fulness, but in relation to the larger histor­ lacks a necessary comparative element. ical questions of Nazism and the German The problematic nature of this study, how­ workers' movement it is a very disappoint­ ever, runs deeper, for nowhere does Kele ing and inadequate work. define what in fact he means by Leila Rupp's study of the propagandis­ "worker." Instead of critically analyzing te mobilization of women for work in the the Nazis' ideological, propagandiste U.S.A. and Germany during World War II definition of "worker" — a definition is the most successful and satisfying treat­ used to obscure class divisions by inflat­ ment of the uses of propaganda. She ing the working class to include virtually defines her problem clearly as the attempt everyone, even employers, who contrib­ by the state to change the public image of uted to production through mental or man­ women in the short run to encourage them ual labour — Kele implicitly adopts it as to enter the work-force in the place of men his own. As a result, he confuses both the drafted into the military. She begins with flexible nature of Nazi propaganda and the a summary of the public image of women specific social groups toward which it was in the U.S.A. and Germany in the decades directed. Finally, where Kele could (and prior to World War II in order to put her should) have added a social historical analysis of wartime propaganda into a dimension to his study, he shows no longer historical perspective. This in itself knowledge of social historical methodol­ broadens the scope of her study, which ogy. For example, in analyzing election Rupp reinforces by choosing to make an statistics, Kele is unfamiliar with the prin­ international comparison between the two ciples of electoral analysis and electoral major protagonists of World War II. The geography, and he does not even ade­ quately summarize the conclusions of conclusions she is able to draw from such reliable secondary works by historians a comparison constitute an important con­ who have analyzed the social distribution tribution to the historiography of the of Nazi voting strength. Likewise, in women's and workers' movements. In particular, she underscores both the flexi­ bility of Nazi propaganda and the inflexi- 276 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

btlity of Nazi political practice; that is, from the point of view of the state and although Nazi propaganda left open the workers* organizations, Moore considers possibility of mobilizing women in sup­ it from below, from individual workers. port of the régime, when it came to actu­ Unchanged is the primary emphasis on ally doing so after 1939 the Nazis would ideology. The most problematic aspect of not mobilize women extensively for fear Moore's approach is nevertheless his per­ of reproducing the social antagonisms that vasive moralism. His main concern is to had undermined the state during the World show how "moral outrage" out of a sense War I. More generally, Rupp demon­ of injustice can lead to revolt. As one pre­ strates both the similarities of U.S. and Nazi condition of working-class discontent, propaganda toward women and their dif­ this hypothesis is not without merit, but ferential success in mobilizing women for Moore makes it a general explanation of war. She thereby raises the historical revolt. Moreover, he bases his analysis on a series of unfounded assumptions about question of the greater ability of a democ­ human nature and society, indeed, he racy to wage total war, despite sexual and admits at the beginning that his assump­ class divisions, even though Nazi tions cannot be scientifically proven. He totalitarianism possessed on paper much posits a priori biological and psychologi­ greater organizational and coercive poten­ cal determinants of human behaviour, tial for mobilization. The major limitation although they only manifest themselves of Rupp's study is that it deals only with socially and cannot be investigated by the public image of women in relation to themselves. He also treats society as a col­ work; it lacks the social-historical dimen­ lection of discrete individuals (a return to sion of the actual practice of women. Robinson Crusoe and eighteenth-century Rupp has covered her subject very well. individualism) and assumes the existence and it should now be the task of historians of a social contract (another return to the to extend their studies to this latter theme. eighteenth-century ideology of early Barrington Moore looks at the labour capitalism). As a social theorist, Moore movement from the workers' side in order makes too many such unverifiable to determine why workers at times pas­ assumptions, and his concentration on sively accept their subordination while at "moral outrage" as the explanatory factor other times revolt to change it. Moore's is much too diffuse and unspecific to bear main concerns are theoretical, and he con­ the history of the German workers' move­ sequently organizes his book into three ment. sections: a general theoretical introduc­ tion, a lengthy consideration of the histor­ Moore's treatment of German workers ical example of the German workers' is also open to a number of specific objec­ movement 1848-1920, and an extended tions. He overemphasizes workers' biog­ theoretical discussion of the implications raphies as a source in a country where, of the first two parts. Looked at more more than anywhere else, working-class closely, however, Moore's work is not consciousness developed through the that much different from the other works organized workers' movement. He adopts under review, for his approach is not an arbitrary and unsatisfactory definition really social or sociological at all but of the "proletariat," limiting it in effect rather moral and his main sources of only to workers in the largest and most information on German workers consist of technologically advanced factories, and workers' biographies and statements by he manipulates German statistics to argue workers about their attitudes and aspira­ that it was small in size. Finally, he tions. Moore has merely reversed the tradi­ selects only a small segment of the Ger­ tional emphasis on ideology: where other man working class to discuss at length historians treat the workers' ideology (miners and steelworkers in the Ruhr); he REVIEWS 277 ignores equally important sections which Ian MacDougall, ed. A Catalogue of might have changed his conclusions; and Some Labour Records in Scotland and even in Rhineland-Westphalia he makes Some Scots Records outside of Scotland elementary errors about the geographic, (Edinburgh: Scottish Labour History socio-economic, and organizational struc­ Society 1978). ture of the working class and the workers' movement. (Moore includes all of THIS CATALOGUE ARISES out of many Rhineland-Westphalia in his discussion of years of compilation by Ian MacDougall the Ruhr, though in fact the Ruhr is not and is based partly on an earlier interim only a small part of Rhineland-Westphalia bibliography published by the Scottish as a whole but also constitutes only half of Labour History Society in 1965. The pres­ the very diverse Rhenish-Westphalian ent greatly expanded catalogue is notable industrial region narrowly defined.) for two reasons. First, there is the sheer Moore tends to preselect his evidence to size of the book. It contains over 500 fit his argument and discards the targe pages of tightly packed references to both bodies of information and the alternative primary and secondary sources on Scot­ historical approaches which contradict it. tish Labour History. Second, it is impor­ On the other hand, Moore's work has tant to realize that the expression "labour great interest when read as speculative records" is interpreted widely. social philosophy. He exhibits a healthy skepticism in refusing to accept any rigid Some idea of the scope of the book historical determinism, and he repeatedly can be gathered from the following break­ makes stimulating critical remarks on spe­ down. As might be expected the largest cific aspects of German labour history in section (200 pages) is concerned with the course of his commentary. These trade union records of the nineteenth and remarks should encourage historians to twentieth centuries which have been rethink conventional, often partisan inter­ organized by industry. In a very few cases pretations of German history (for exam­ the records on deposit of this type relate to ple, what possibilities were open in the the late eighteenth century. 1918-19 revolution). Theoretically, this There are also 42 pages devoted to work is unconvincing and overstated; its Friendly Societies and 35 to the Co­ real value lies in the many critical com­ operative movement — all arranged by ments and analyses Moore makes along geographical location. Over 100 pages of the way. the catalogue deal with political move­ ments and this essentially refers to In conclusion, these four works illus­ archival materials on deposit in Scotland trate two serious failings of German which are concerned with the Labour labour historiography. They continue to party, Communists, Anarchists, and other emphasize traditional historiographical left-wing groups of the mid-nineteenth problems and methods and show a reluc­ century onwards. In an effort to give a tance to broaden the subject matter to deeper chronological dimension to the include social historical questions. And catalogue some material relating to Char­ they maintain a rather studied divorce tists and other early nineteenth-century between social theory and primary radicals has been included. This has been research, instead of guiding the latter by largely accomplished by an index of series social theory or revising theories through 102 of the Home Office papers, for the carefully defined empirical research, years 1792-1835 as they relate to Scot­ land. While this is not a comprehensive listing, it is an invaluable aid to research in this area. To all this has been added a Larry Peterson 120 page index of biographical materials New York 278 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

on prominent members of the Scottish tions of 1917-22 (outside the Russian) labour movement. Finally the whole have not been studied to the same extent catalogue has been meticulously indexed as other revolutionary periods, and little for easy reference. of the existing literature is cross-national Perhaps the best recommendation for in scope. Thus, these papers constitute an this book is a personal one. If I had Ian important contribution to the comparative MacDougall's catalogue available to me and interdisciplinary historiography of the when I plunged into reasearch on early revolutionary period 1917-22 and serve as nineteenth-century Scottish radicalism, I a useful summary of the current state of would have been able to proceed much scholarship. more efficiently. This is a specialist's After an opening session, during work which anyone researching modern which Pierre Broué analyzed the bol­ Scotland will best appreciate. The shevik evaluation of conditions in Central catalogue should also be acquired by Europe and Francis Carsten discussed the institutions with research programs in general problem of revolutionary situa­ British and/or general labour history. tions in these countries, the colloquium proceeded in two parts. The first set of F.K. Donnelly papers dealt with each country — Ger­ University of New Brunswick many, Italy, and Austria-Hungary — sep­ Revolutionary Situations in Europe, arately. The approach was national in ori­ 1917-1922: Germany, Italy, Austria- entation and limited to the short-term Hungary, Proceedings, 2nd International crisis in each country. The second set of Colloquium. 25-27 March 1976 (Mont­ papers, on the other hand, were topical, real: Interuniversity Centre for European cross-national, and concerned with long- Studies 1977). term trends. Sessions were devoted to agricultural, political, and ideological problems, as well as to the role of indus­ THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL Col­ try. Oddly, no separate session was set loquium of the Interuniversity Centre for aside to discuss long-term problems of European Studies brought together 21 development in the socialist workers' leading scholars from six countries to dis­ movement or the evolution of social and cuss the problem of revolution in Central economic conditions among industrial Europe during the turbulent and decisive workers. Such problems were touched on years 1917-22. The speakers represented only to a limited extent in Gerald a variety of disciplines and discussed the Feldman's analysis of changes in industry historical, political, social, and economic during the war and in Miklos Molnar's dimensions of the upheavals in Germany, discussion of ideological approaches to Italy, and Austria-Hungary after World revolution in the international socialist War I. The central theme of the col­ movement. In light of the socialist and loquium was the problem of revolutionary proletarian nature of the attempted revolu­ situations — whether revolutionary situa­ tions, a separate session on this problem tions existed in the countries of Central would have been useful. André Donneur Europe after World War I, the extent to concluded the second set of papers with a which they were expressions of the theoretical analysis of what constitutes a socialist and workers' movements, and the revolutionary situation and whether the role of other social classes and groups. concrete situations in Central Europe after The papers given at the colloquium and 1917 were in fact revolutionary. Finally, the general discussions which followed Amo Mayer closed the colloquium with a them have been collected in this volune. discussion of the role of internal crisis and Despite a growing literature, the revolu­ war in European politics from 1870 to the REVIEWS 279

early 1920s, in which he shifted emphasis actual revolutions. Donneur's paper, from the threat of socialist or proletarian which is essential reading for any histor­ revolution to the aggressive attempts of ian trying to grapple with this problem, conservative elites throughout Europe to would have been better presented at the consolidate their political power and eco­ opening session, for it gives the kind of nomic privileges even as socio-economic central focus the colloquium lacked. On changes undermined their traditional the other hand, the opening papers by power base. Broué and Carsten failed to set out the The format adopted at the colloquium terms of the discussion — Broué's allowed for an in-depth look at the revolu­ because he concentrated on the interesting tions in Central Europe from a variety of but secondary question of bolshevik perspectives. The colloquium balanced assessments of concrete possibilities in monographic national historiography with Central Europe, and Carsten's because he an equal number of presentations by gave no more than a narration of events social and economic historians, political and did not attempt to analyze the histori­ scientists, and historians of ideas. And, cal problem of revolution. Thus, the col­ although the upheavals in Central Europe loquium by and large failed to address the were limited to the years between 1917 problem it was convened to discuss. It and 1924, they need to be seen in terms of missed the opportunity to define what long-range developments. The col­ constitutes a revolutionary situation in the loquium gave ample room for the investi­ twentieth century and how this concept gation of such trends. Nevertheless, relates to the concrete revolutions and rev­ despite this format, the colloquium only olutionary movements in Europe at the partially achieved its goal of furthering end of the World War I. the comparative and interdisciplinary The second limitation of the col­ study of the revolutionary situations in loquium — methodological — arose from Central Europe. The content of the indi­ the division of the sessions into national vidual papers is too diverse to review in histories and analyses of long-range detail. But, in two key respects — theore­ trends. The first group was dominated by tical and methodological — the speakers political historians who approached the failed in large part to grasp the problem period as a chronological narrative of that faced the conference. events, and their presentations under­ Although the colloquium was devoted scored the inability of narrative political to the problem of revolutionary situations, history to focus on the analysis of prob­ only two speakers — Charles Maier and lems rather than the explication of events. André Donneur — attempted to define For example, they used social and eco­ theoretically what they meant by this nomic history only as an explanatory fac­ term. The other speakers ignored or tor brought in on an ad hoc basis, and not hedged the problem. Yet it is impossible systematically to analyze political pro­ to discuss the nature of the upheavals in cesses. And they were weak in defining Central Europe without a general theoreti­ the subject for historical investigation cal definition of a revolutionary situation. beyond the course of political decisions, Maier defined a revolutionary situation as with a strong bias toward the actions of the conjunction of a long-term crisis of political leaders "above" rather than the representation, arising from socio­ socio-economic trends, conditions, and economic and political changes, with a movements which sharply curtailed the short-term crisis of legitimacy, while significance of individual decisions and Donneur discussed at length the kinds of actions. objective and subjective preconditions that The papers presented in the second give rise to revolutionary situations and part of the colloquium were both more 280 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

original and more solid contributions to sive discussion of the interpretive, the history of this period. Nevertheless, theoretical, and methodological problems the division of the colloquium into two in understanding the nature of revolution sections precluded the linking of national in modern Europe. events in the short run to long-range trends. How did the long-range trends Larry Peterson cause, condition or counteract the New York City emergence of short-term revolutionary situations in Central Europe after 1917? Edward Acton, Alexander Herzen and the No speakers directly addressed this cen­ Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary tral question because none broke out of the {Cambridge: Cambridge University Press disciplinary and methodological divisions 1979). of institutional scholarship. The col­ loquium offered no resolution of its jux­ MR. ACTON writes old-fashioned history. taposition of national political and cross- It deals with ideas, has a biographical national interdisciplinary, topical focus, and is restricted to published mate­ approaches. Charles Maier and Gerald rials. Consequently, the most that can be Feldman offered some useful points of expected from his efforts is a new synthe­ departure for such a combined approach. sis, or re interprétât ion of materials which but André Donneur was the only speaker have been quite thoroughly covered to focus his paper rigorously on the rela­ before. Such reconsideration is common tion between the general and the concrete. in intellectual history, especially when — In conclusion, the papers collected in as with Herzen — there is unanimity this volume leave unresolved the question about his importance yet controversy of whether revolutionary situations in fact about his ideology. For Alexander Herzen existed in Germany, Italy, and Austria- (1812-70) was Russia's first and greatest Hungary after 1917, and, if so, what this pre-Marxist social democrat; his theoreti­ meant in the long-range development of cal contribution (especially through his modern Europe. As Charles Bertrand own London press) to western understand­ remarks in his introduction, the speakers ing of Russia was seminal; and his per­ tended to split over their evaluation on the sonal odyssey set the standard for all sub­ nature and existence of revolutionary sequent Russian emigrations. situations according to the overall political The present work is written in the and ideological perspective from which shadow of Martin Malia's Alexander they approached their subject matter. Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism Those, mostly liberal, scholars, who and, to a lesser extent. E.H. Carr's The place this period in the long-range "mod­ Romantic Exiles. Acton's effort can best ernization" of Central Europe, tended to be understood as an attempt to extend and discount the revolutionary potential of the revise these two heuristic monographs. upheavals after World War 1. seeing them Thus, in terms of the time frame, Acton more as the result of partial and disjointed picks up more or less where Malia leaves industrialization rather than a socialist or off, the years between 1847 and 1863. proletarian challenge to bourgeois society, Acton's methodology is also quite whereas those scholars who draw on orthodox; it stresses the impact of "public theoretical Marxism saw far greater events and private tragedy upon socialist revolutionary content in the [Herzen's] political thought and activity." popular movements and political crises of The operative premise is that the key to this period. Whichever side one takes, the Herzen's politics may be found in his papers collected in this volume will pro­ personal life. Specifically, Acton argues voke further and, one hopes, more inten­ that Herzen's optimism about human REVIEWS 281

nature and his enthusiasm for the struggle the double tragedies of 1848-52, accounts to build socialism (in Russia as well as in for Herzen's growing frustration and res­ the west) suffered a combination of deci­ ignation. But he tried to fight it with all sive public and private blows during the the intellectual tools at his command. Ini­ period leading up to the serf emancipation tially that meant ignoring the political of 1861. The two major instances cited by issue in the name of social and economic Acton in this regard are the defeat of the progress under the aegis of the benevolent 1848 revolution and the nearly simulta­ autocrat Alexander II. When it finally neous affair between Herzen's wife and became clear (at the very end of the his best friend, the German poet Her- 1850s) that peasant emancipation and wegh. Allegedly this tragic coincidence related reforms were not being carried was at the roots of Herzen's growing res­ through in good faith, Herzen became ervations about social engineering in gen­ much more radical. eral and socialism in Russia in particular. What emerged from this process of Underlying these reservations, no doubt, radicalization was a dialectical analysis of was the dilemma of making peasant revo­ the advantages of Russia's backwardness. lution in a "backward" society. That is, Herzen argued that precisely There is an excessively polemical because of her apparent backwardness, quality, especially in the first half of the Russia would be able to make the transi­ book. Too much is made of minor differ­ tion to socialism easier and sooner than ences with Malia of detail and emphasis. the institutionally encumbered capitalist For instance, Acton's attempts to revise west. This formula, with its roots in left- the latter's picture of Herzen's attitude Hegelian thought, appealed to both towards the Russian peasant commune national pride and revolutionary imagina­ (19) and Russian nationalistic messianism tion, and became the chief article of faith (27-29), as well as his wife Natalie's of narodnichestvo — Russian populism or death (84) are either not entirely convinc­ peasant socialism. It was based upon an ing or they do not significantly alter our understanding of the role of the peasant understanding of Herzen's motivations commune in making Russian historical anyway. On the positive side, Acton development unique. Thanks to the com­ makes excellent use of the extensive sec­ munal nature of land ownership among ondary scholarship available in Russian the Russian people, capitalism could be and the major western languages. This is bypassed on the road to socialism, and the no small accomplishment, given the com­ last would get there first. plexity of the issues raised by Soviet Whatever his earlier differences with scholars alone. Contrary to conventional Chernyshevsky and the "revolutionary western stereotypes, differences between democrats," or his reservations about the the interpretations of the Ginzburgs, political maturity of the Russian Koz'min and Smirnova, on the one hand, peasantry, after 1861 (and especially the and those of the Nechkina school, on the suppression of the Polish rebellion of other, are quite basic. 1863) Herzen openly espoused the over­ In addition, Acton has a fine sense for throw of the imperial régime and full the libertarian side of Herzen's nature, social democracy. In the process, he had and its significance in defining his rather come to respect the intelligence and con­ unique ideological position between Rus­ sciousness of the people. "Manna does sian liberalism and the new radicalism of not fall from heaven," Herzen commen­ the 1860s. Almost alone, Herzen saw the ted; "it grows from the soil." And the wis­ terrible antinomy between the individual dom of German Idealism was historically and the state in Russia, and he despaired less important than the crude materialism of it. It may be that this, even more than of the Russian peasant. But Acton is 282 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

wrong to conclude from all this that Her- Drake links these problems to the zen's '"role had been written out of the early development of the Socialist Party revolutionary drama." In fact, Russian when it resembled a populist party rather Marxists and non-Marxists alike have than a party with a firm, class-based seen in his thought the bases of their own ideology. Both socialism and populism positions. Surely Herzen is not to blame emerged in Chile in the early twentieth that his views could in time lead to con­ century in response to the economic mod­ tradictions. Had he not himself warned of ernization and social mobilization which the fundamental tension between the were undermining the domination of the egalitarian and libertarian principles, as traditional élites. Workers were being well as the potentially tragic conse­ radicalized by agitation and unionization quences of either prevailing? and they began turning to Marxism at the end of World War 1 in response to the N.G.O. Percira Russian Revolution and local economic problems. In the 1920 presidential elec­ Dalhousie University tion, however, most workers were won over by a populist figure, Arturo Ales- Paul W. Drake, Socialism and Populism sandri, who promised them much but in Chile, 1932-52 (Urbana: University of delivered little. Nevertheless, his victory Illinois Press 1978) and Colin Henfrey & was important in establishing links Bernardo Sorj, Chilean Voices: Activists between middle class leaders and the Describe Their Experiences of the Popu­ workers, and the relatively open political lar Unity Period (Hassocks, Sussex; The milieu of his presidency allowed the for­ Harvester Press 1977) mation of a Communist Party (PC) in 1922 whose strongly ideological line attracted IN RECENT Latin American history the organized labour. event that probably had the widest popular impact was the election of the Marxist The emergence of the socialists was president, Salvador Allende Gossens, in associated with a general alienation Chile in 1970 and his violent overthrow sparked by the Depression. It transformed three years later. This period has spawned large sections of the population into a wealth of literature, much of which "socialists," including army officers who should never have been published. How­ in June 1932 took over the government ever, this is not true of the two books and declared a "socialist republic." In under review for, despite being written fact, these officers owed more to from totally different perspectives and populism than socialism for their move­ about completely different aspects of the ment was directed from above and called period, both add to our understanding of for evolutionary rather than revolutionary the events. The book by Drake, in fact, change. It enjoyed little support and fell deals specifically with the Allende period within two weeks. However, it set the pat­ only in a concluding "Epilogue" which tern for subsequent developments and led covers the years from 1952 to 1973 and to the formal foundation of the Socialist which has been written, as he admits, Party (PS) in 1933. Like the socialist with "no pretense of complete coverage republic the party was dominated by the or in-depth analysis." Nevertheless, his middle class who stressed reform rather examination of the earlier period intro­ than revolution and believed that success duces some of the major problems of the could be achieved via the electoral sys­ Allende presidency, including the reform­ tem. The workers had little influence on ist nature of the Socialist Party and its the new party since unions were weak at commitment to democratic ideals, and the this time and few workers were lack of unity of the Chilean Left. politicized. The PS made little effort to REVIEWS 283 correct this, focussing their appeals for as their presidential candidate in 1952. support on those who had already been Despite this radical ization Drake feels politicized. It produced a multi-class that the early development of the PS con­ party with a weak base led by a charisma­ tinued to affect it and consequently also tic middle class leader who could attract affected the Popular Unity government of adherents. Allende. Between 1970 and 1973 the The reformist nature of the socialists party still adhered to constitutionality and was reinforced by their political success in democratic forms, now with the support 1938. At this time the PC, although still of the PC. But there was a significant dif­ dominated by class elements, was also ference from their earlier alliance under prepared to accept a multi-class approach the Popular Front. The workers were now in order to draw the middle class away allowed unprecedented participation in from the right. Thus, the two Marxist par­ the system. It was a development which ties united with the middle class Radical neither the right nor the military was pre­ Party and other minor parties behind the pared to countenance and it helped lead to Radicals' rather conservative leader in the the tragic coup. Drake concludes that • 'Popular Front' ' and won the presidential Allende and the Marxists ultimately failed election in 1938. According to Drake, this because they never resolved the "con­ success had a profound impact on the tradiction of using evolutionary institu­ Marxist parties. Since they now shared tions of formal democracy in a highly political power their commitment to dependent capitalist system to pursue a democracy increased and their calls for theoretically revolutionary ideology change were blunted. They did not take aimed at the ultimate replacement of that advantage of their power to organize the system." (337) harshly exploited rural workers, and The author presents substantial evi­ newly-formed urban unions were domi­ dence to support his thesis. His one con­ nated by middle class leaders. Appar­ stant source is electoral records which he ently, the left did not want to cause the analyzes thoroughly. However, accus­ government problems with the right tomed to the contradictory voting habits which might provoke military interven­ of Canadians I was not convinced that tion. electoral results can be used to prove ideological shifts — although Chileans The Socialist Party's reformism even­ may be more committed voters than Cana­ tually caused its disintegration and reor­ dians. My only other reservations about ganization. In 1941 it left the Front Drake's book are its rather ponderous because of the continued inclusion of the writing style and its lack of some human PC which the PS accused of being anti- elements which might have counterba­ national and authoritarian. Already radi­ lanced the pages of dry statistics and polit­ cal members had begun splitting away and ical analysis. now others followed. The fortunes of the party reached their nadir in 1946 and then The weakness of Drake's book is the recovered behind new leaders who were very essence of the work by Henfrey and determined to transform the party into a Sorj. They have transcribed the recollec­ Marxist vanguard party and less of a tions of individuals who participated in populist mass movement. Moreover, from the developments between 1970 and 1948 the PS was the only legal party on 1973. Those interviewed do not represent the left following the Cold War influenced all Chileans for, as the title indicates, they suppression of the PC. The radicalization were activists operating in the industrial of the PS was followed by a restoration of sector, the countryside, shanty towns, and relations with the Communists and universities, and they were members of together they nominated Salvador Allende the parties that comprised the Popular 284 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Unity. In trying to explain what went avoid the devil's malevolence by perform­ wrong they agree in general with Drake's ing elaborate rituals to him. Elsewhere conclusions but also feel that Allende did workers have entered into contracts with nol go far enough, that he did not give the the devil in order to obtain more money, workers "a real role in the process of but traditional customs have limited the use building socialism." (48) The govern­ of that money by transforming it into a pro­ ment was more interested in production duct of barrenness and death, thereby pre­ than mobilizing the workers so that the venting complete absorption into the factory and rural workers had to mobilize capitalist economy. on their own. But this was an incomplete process and thus there was no adequate In the case of the Cauca Valley, Taussig is counterweight to the united strength of the dealing with the descendants of black slaves right and the military. When the coup who were imported to work on plantations came the workers were either unable or and in the mines. The workers were influ­ unwilling to resist and the Marxist experi­ enced by their African heritage and ment came to a violent and bloody end. their resistance to the slavery system. Fol­ lowing abolition in the 1850s there was con­ tinuing conflict in the area as hucendados Peter Blanchard confronted both marginal smallholders and University of Toronto their own labour force of cash and service Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Com­ tenants. The latter part of the nineteenth- modity Fetishism in South America century was marked by constant political (Chapel Hill: The University of North unrest as well, much of it with a religious Carolina Press 1980) flavour as liberals challenged conservatives for power, and this provided the various A PRINCIPAL FOCUS of much of the present groups with the opportunity to press their research on rural labour systems in Latin claims, frequently resorting to violence. The America is the impact of modernization or peasantry was finally dislodged in the pres­ expanding capitalist relations on the ent century following improvements in "neophyte proletarians and theirsurround- communications, expansion of the popula­ ing peasant kinsmen," as Professor Taus­ tion with a simultaneous increase in the sig describes them. This book describes demand for food, and rising land values. the plantation workers in the Cauca Valley Commercial agriculture expanded and of Colombia and the mine workers of "rural proletarianization began in earnest." Bolivia, with frequent references to vari­ Once more the peasants reacted violently ous groups of Indian workers throughout but the gradual shrinking of their land- much of highland Latin America. Profes­ holdings forced them to turn to the cultiva­ sor Taussig argues that since the time of the tion of cash crops and employment on the Spanish Conquest the concept of evil, as estates as casual labour in order to survive. portrayed by the existence of the devil, has been firmly adopted by the Latin American It was in response to this absorption masses in response to the deterioration of into the capitalist economy that male plan­ their traditional style of life at the hands of tation workers began making secret con­ ihe Spanish overlords. Over the last 100 tracts with the devil to increase productiv­ years with the increasing proletarianiza­ ity and hence their wages. But traditional tion of the peasantry the awareness of the values continued to predominate for this devil has intensified and he has come to capital was viewed not as a route to long- symbolize the disruptions that have taken term improvement, but rather as a means place in their daily lives as they have been for immediate gratification. Any attempt at drawn into a market economy. Taussig has using the money lor investment purposes found that in some areas the peasants try to would fail and the person who tried this REVIEWS 285 would die an early and painful death. jargon and greater objectivity. Taussig's There was only one way which capital hostility to capitalism leads him along could earn a return safely and it, too, some strange paths, like his contention that occurred within a religious framework. the idea of a pervasive spirit of evil was an The money had to be baptised along with a import of imperialism. His own research child, but in such a case the soul of the indicates that in fact it was an import of child was lost. The risks were obviously Christianity, a more reasonable view, great and Taussig states that instances of although some historians and archeologists this, like the devil contract, were rare and who have studied indigenous American may in fact only exist in rumour. religions might disagree. In the case of the Bolivian tin miners, In sum, the book is an interesting and Taussig points out that the presence of the thought-provoking examination of the devil is more apparent. A small figure related impact of religion and moderniza­ sculpted of clay, pieces of metal, and glass tion on the Latin American peasantry. It with a gaping mouth awaiting offerings of points to one of the glaring weaknesses in cocoa and cigarettes and hands ready for Latin American historiography, the lack of liquor is found in the mine shafts. Rites to information on the motivations and chang­ it are essential to prevent accidents or some ing relationships of the workers over time, other catastrophe. Taussig again ties the and while providing one explanation of a devil's presence to modernization: "pro­ particular aspect. Professor Taussig leaves letarianization of peasants into miners and an enormous vacuum that begs to be filled. the modernization of Indians have led not to a disenchantment of the world but to a Peter Blanchard growing sense of destructiveness and evil University or Toronto as figured in the devil." The arguments presented in the book Martin A. Klein, ed. Peasants in Africa: are not entirely convincing. One obvious historical and contemporary perspectives problem is the material used for the two (Beverley Hills: Sage 1980)'. areas. While the section on the Cauca Val­ ley is based largely on primary research PEASANTS IN AFRICA is a collection of and personal interviews, the section on studies solicited especially for this vol­ Bolivia relies entirely on printed material. ume, and includes several by French schol­ Taussig brings together a variety of infor­ ars whose work often is not easily available mation to support his hypotheses, but the in English. Klein's apologies for the vol­ reader learns nothing new about the Boli­ ume being "top-heavy on West Africa" (7) vian miners. On the other hand, the mate­ notwithstanding, it is perhaps more impor­ rial on the Cauca Valley workers is new tant (with respect to its aims to present and consequently a valuable addition to "historical and contemporary perspec­ existing works on the impact of moderniza­ tives") that it cover a representative range tion on rural workers. of socio-economic formations during dif­ In the section on Bolivia there is also a ferent epochs of the penetration of limited sense of change over time. Taussig's capitalism into Africa. In this, the selec­ picture is of present conditions — although tion of contributions succeeds admirably. he uses some sources that were written 30 Following an introduction by Klein are or more years ago — and, while anyone chapters on: "Peasants in the Colonial who has been to La Paz and seen the market Congo" (Bogumil Jewsiewicki), "The stalls lies very heavily on the Bolivian Evolution of Peasantries, Senegal" (Jean Indians, there must be some transition of Copans), "Social Differentiation among the type which makes his Colombian chap­ the Mawri, Niger" (Elaine De Latour ters so valuable. Dejean), "A Historical Perspective on the Baule Region, Ivory Coast" (Jean-Pierre The book might also benefit from less 286 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Chauveau), "Landholding in Nigeria" reproduce themselves, and. in turn, how (Julian Clarke), "The Bakosi of Came­ their success or failure affected the repro­ roun" (Michael D. Levin), "Differ­ duction of the specific social formation of entiation in Broken Hill, Northern which they were a part. With reference to Rhodesia" (Maud Shimwaayi Muntemba), Marx, Klein argues that whereas in the and "Rural Resistance in the Transkei" "centre" the original process of capital (William Beinart and Collin Bundy). accumulation tended to destroy earlier In the introduction, Klein answers the modes of production, in "peripheral question "what is a peasant" with the capitalism" (in this case, as it has devel­ broad definition of a producer who pro­ oped in Africa), the process is in fact vides his own subsistence, though dependent upon the survival of these "ear­ involved in the market, and is subject to the lier modes" to absorb the costs of repro­ exploitation of other social classes. The duction. "Essentially then. ... the process difficulty lies in differentiating a "peas­ involved ... the articulation of capitalist ant" from a "cultivator," who may also and non-capitalist modes in a way that produce for the market and be subject to made possible a continued transfer of some degree of exploitation, or from a value." (17) The relations of production "capitalist small commodity producer," which characterize specific articulations whose real difference from a peasant may aim to maximize this transferable surplus be measurable only in the amount of pro­ within the confines of the means of produc­ duce he sells on the market. "The line tion available. [between them] is often a fuzzy one." (13) In the chapters which follow, the If this is the case, one is tempted to ques­ authors try to explore these theoretical tion the usefulness of choosing "the issues further, while addressing them­ peasantry" as a framework of analysis. selves to the historical problems Klein Although Klein does not raise this specific identifies as being "crucial," namely, how issue, he goes on to develop a convincing do cultivators become peasants and why do argument for the aims of his approach. they remain so. These questions are not Essentially, he is examining a particular easily answered nor is the historical per­ form of labour which seems to be differ­ spective required to do so easily achieved entiated from other forms of labour accord­ within such a limited space. While the ing to three criteria: the amount of surplus results vary, on the whole the analyses appropriated by an exploiting class, the seem to cope better with the first question means by which this is accomplished, and than with the second. In fact what emerges the proportion of surplus which is intended most clearly is the degree to which the for market exchange. peasantry underwent processes of eco­ nomic differentiation which frequently If the first two factors were frequently reduced those near the "bottom" of the more significant in the emergence of a scale to subsistence cultivation or wage peasantry in pre-colonial societies, the labour, and created of the "upper eche­ second and third tend to dominate discus­ lons" a class of petty commodity pro­ sions of the peasantry under the colonial ducers. This process was especially strik­ system, that is within the development of ing in the accounts of De Latour Dejean "peripheral capitalism." (17) This is true and Muntemba, and in the latter case. with reference to debates about the origins socio-economic inequalities were accen­ and future of the peasantry in general, and tuated by the growth of marked regional is clearly reflected in the seven studies pre­ disparities. Perhaps we need to emphasize sented here. The analyses tend to centre more strongly that while the peasantry around the issue of "reproduction," both in appears to have outlived its life-expectancy the sense of how the needs of the colonial as predicted by Marx, in any given histori­ economy affected the ability of peasants to cal period its composition was likely to REVIEWS 287 have been an extremely fluid one. chose a basically descriptive approach Some of the authors identify the exis­ emphasizing the significance of low tech­ tence of a pre-colonial peasantry, (Copans, nology and "the inability to increase pro­ De Latour Dejean, and Muntemba, for ductivity due to the lack of more efficient example), but none really devotes analysis factors of production," (263) thereby sac­ to the nature of its emergence. Rather, rificing analysis of the relations, in favour attention is generally focused on the colo­ of the means, of production. nial period and the ways in which the colo­ With respect to the individual contribu­ nial economy subjected peasants to its own tions to this volume (several of which have dynamics. Jewsiewicki and De Latour not been discussed because of limited Dejean attempt to explain the changing space), one further word should be added nature of rural life in terms of the differing about the decision to include Beinart and needs of merchant and industrial capital. Bundy's piece on peasant resistance. At Under the first, there was no fundamental first glance, the focus of this chapter seems necessity lo alter the structure of produc­ to lie beyond the specific questions Klein tion, colonial intervention affected only poses; but, to the contrary, it proves to be the sphere of circulation. Industrial capi­ one of the most interesting and valuable tal, on the other hand, required that the contributions to the book. Beinart and rural sector absorb the costs of reproduc­ Bundy's analysis of resistance highlights, tion, as well as providing food and labour; from a unique perspective, the nature and in other words, it necessitated a restructur­ degree of social differentiation among the ing of agricultural production and the crea­ peasantry, the relation between socio­ tion of a peasantry. economic position, the ways in which In terms of marrying a sophisticated political interests are perceived and theoretical approach to a well-developed defined, the conditions under which "class historical investigation, these two studies consciousness" emerges, and the reper­ are perhaps the most successful. Copans cussions of these conditions for the devel­ raises important questions about our abil­ opment of oven political action. Further­ ity to write the history of peasants as more, their study illustrates vividly the opposed to constructing an anthropologi­ instrumental role played by women both in cal view, and introduces the stimulating defining the issues to be contested and in concept of "multi-ethnic space." — "the directing the actual resistance movements. natural environment of African social for­ Clearly, more attention is going to have to mations. .. . Social formations, modes of be given to the changing nature of the production, and class ... operate within a female, asdinstinct from the male. African social dimension, But African is t s do not peasantry if our understanding of its past agree on the level of social reality that (let alone its future), is to be furthered. should be studied first." (81) I am not cer­ Klein's book should go a considerable way tain his chapter takes us that much closer to in stimulating exactly this sort of attention. resolving this problem: it would have been useful for our understanding of his concep­ Ann McDougall tual framework to have been presented Duke University with a more exhaustive analysis of histori­ cal data. On the other hand, Muntemba's fascinating material on the changing com­ position of the Zambian peasantry, particu­ Ellen Malos, éd.. The Politics of House' larly the tantalizing bits about the roles work (London: Allison and Busby 1980). played by women, provided an excellent case study with which to further attempts at ONE OF THE central issues of the last fifteen constructing a viable theoretical years for the women's liberation move­ framework. How disappointing that she ment has been women's work in the home. 288 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

One of our biggest victories has been that tion of as much domestic labour as possi­ we have defeated the notion that the sexual ble; 3. adequate social services and bene­ and family roles of women are rooted in an fits foreveryone; 4. fight against sexism in immutable biology of timeless "women's all its forms, especially violence against nature." Instead, the women's liberation women. (36-41) movement has insisted, what women do in The first article (Catherine Hall, "'The the home is historically determined work. History of the Housewife") sketches a In The Politics of Housework, Malos rough outline of the main changes that have has assembled eighteen articles which rep­ occurred in the occupation of housewife resent some of the key feminist formula­ since the fourteenth century. Hall stresses tions that have emerged as part of the strug­ the origins of some of the main features gle to define the sexual division of labour (such as the ideology of domesticity) of and the character of domestic labour. As a the modern housewife job. Her central collection, the book's strength is that it argument is that the occupation of house­ draws together various analyses so that the wife is crucial for understanding the posi­ working out of the ideas becomes visible. tion of women and that '"the history of As one moves through the collection, the women in the home — of the changing reader becomes aware of the growth of a nature of marriage, childcare, and domestic debate. The articles move from a critical labour, for example — is an area which description of the situation of women in the badly needs exploration." (44) The next home to a strategic debate about how to three articles, (Charlotte Perkins Oilman, transform that work and end the oppression "The Home: Its Work and Influence." of the women doing it. 1903; Margaret Bondfield, "Women as Malos sets off the whole book with a Domestic Workers," 1919; and Marjorie good introductory essay which sum­ Spring Rice, "Working Class Wives," marizes the main points in these debates 1939) are particularly interesting because and shows the impact of these arguments they are now historic pieces. Written in the on the English women's liberation move­ first few decades of the twentieth century, ment. I was particularly impressed by the they are all striking for ihe depth of under­ way she untangled the wages for house­ standing they demonstrate about women's work debates, showing some of the domestic situation. Compared with con­ intricacies of the development of those temporary writings, they show that while ideas, especially the way the original for­ the situation in the home has changed mulation of a guaranteed income for all dramatically throughout the twentieth cen­ was reduced to wages for housework. This tury, the structure of domestic labour has focus on the wages for housework debate remained the same. What 1 found particu­ and on the impact of their demands on the larly disturbing about these three articles women's liberation movement was the one was the fact that, although these issues aspect of the book that struck me as odd. were part of an ongoing public discussion Their representation in this book seems out prior to World War II. the disintegration of of proportion to their impact. In her essay, the women's movement and the reaction of Malos herself summarizes many of the the Cold War years meant that these ideas alternative arguments put forward by other were lost. When the second wave of the strategists. I would have preferred to see women's movement re-emerged in the late more of these writers represented in the 1960s and began to examine the character collection. In summing up her introduc­ of women's oppression in the family, we tion. Malos draws on the lessons of all the had to start from scratch. These articles articles in the book to put forward a reaffirm the importance of knowing and number of fundamental demands: I. an retaining our history — a task this book end to the sexual division of labour both fulfills very nicely. inside and ouiside the home; 2. socializa­ The remainder of the book consists of REVIEWS 289

14 articles published between 1970 and represents the various positions put for­ 1975 in Canada, England, Italy, and the ward on the domestic labour debate and on United States. They illustrate first of all the issues surrounding the strategic and tacti­ international character of the women's lib­ cal questions of wages for housework. eration movement for they draw on each Missing from the collection is a discus­ other and elaborate each other's arguments sion of two important issues in the politics in an integrated and exciting way. They of housework. None of the articles deals clearly demonstrate the relationship with the political activities of women who between personal experience, anger at our are housewives, nor do they consider the oppression, analyses, and strategies for tension between housewives (many of change. The very moving piece by Suzanne whom are not feminists) and the women's Gail, "The Housewife," in which she movement. However, the important point describes the process by which a vibrant, this book does illustrate is that women's intelligent women "dwindles into a wife," work is the home is work. Like any occu­ aptly expresses the bewildered pain so pation it has a history, its workers are many women have experienced. The next engaged in a changing labour process step toward feminist consciousness is rep­ which affects their relations with other resented by Pat Mainardi's famous "The people and their political activities. In Politics of Housework" where, with biting addition, unlike other occupations, humour, she documents the struggle women's work in the home is concerned between women and men to challenge the with the reproduction of labour power and traditional sexual divisions of labour in the hence is a factor in all paid occupations. home. From this pain and anger emerged Therefore, when researchers conduct the impetus to understand women's work studies of other labour situations, they in the home both theoretically and strate­ must begin to relate to their study the ques­ gically. tion of domestic labour, the role of women, and the sexual division of labour. Other articles demonstrate the evolu­ tion of our understanding and the develop­ These articles are some of the best ment of different positions within the expressions of the feminist recognition that women's liberation movement. They par­ an analysis of class relations is inadequate ticularly reflect some of the complexity of by itself, that what is essential is an the debate which has been generated in the analysis of the interaction of sex and class last decade between feminism and marx­ relations. Unfortunately, as some of the ism. For example, Margaret Benston's debates at the 1981 COSS and CSAA meet­ article "The Political Economy of ings pointed out, the importance of this les­ Women's Liberation" made the first big son has not yet penetrated very far into the breakthrough by recognizing that women's realms of malestream political economy or 1 oppression in the family was not just based labour studies. For those interested in on psychological and ideological factors becoming familiar with these issues, this but is also firmly based on economic rela­ book will be an excellent place to start. tions. Peggy Morton in "Women's Work is Never Done" extended this idea by show­ Meg Luxton ing how women's work is "the main­ McMaster University tenance of and reproduction of labour power, i.e. that the structure of the family is 1 The Committee of Socialist Scholars (COSS) determined by the needs of the economic and the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology system, at any given time, for a certain Association (CSAA) both met in Halifax in May kind of labour power." (138) The rest of 1981. A number of the papers presented at these the articles reflect the development and meetings addressed this question and one result of elaboration of these ideas. Malos has the discussion is thai a main theme of the 1982 COSS meetings will be the relationship between selected a good range of material which sex and class. 290 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

John Fox and William Johnston, Under­ collective study. The issues raised in Capi­ standing Capital: A Guide to Volume I tal are controversial and an understanding (Toronto: Progress Books 1978) and Frank of the capitalist mode of production must Cunningham, Understanding Marxism: A go beyond an uncritical reading of this sin­ Canadian Introduction (Toronto: Progress gle text. The explicit purpose of Under­ Books 1978). standing Capital is neither to defend the original text nor to discuss these issues of IT IS A CENTRAL paradox of our times that, debate. However, it would have been use­ during a period of its greatest apparent suc­ ful if the contours of these current con­ cess, Marxism is in its deepest crisis. troversies had been sketched and refer­ While about one-third of the world's popu­ ences to other texts cited. lation live in states which proclaim Marx­ In contrast to this. Understanding ism as official ideology, the versions Marxism docs attempt to situate its exposi­ adopted are not only different but often tion in the context of present-day debate. antagonistic. What appears as success, Marxism consists of numerous texts and, then, actually masks a crisis in theory and simplistically. it may be assumed that an practice. At the same time, the spread of introduction to the general principles Marxism in western academic circles may would be largely a question of selection or be little more than institutionalized critic­ emphasis. However, comprehending what ism, divorced from working-class move­ is said in a text is a vastly different under­ ments. If there is a potential strength, how­ taking from understanding a social sci­ ever, it is in a diversity of views which ence. Obviously there is not only one trans­ attempt to confront the failures of lation or interpretation of a single text and twentieth-century socialism within a subtle variations in emphasis, even distor­ Marxist perspective. tion, are likely depending on the version of Marxism to which the commentator is pre­ The two books under review, which disposed. No complete distinction can be come out of the Toronto Marxist Institute, drawn between one text and many texts. are important because they attempt to Nevertheless a discourse about "marxism" bridge the gap that exists between the as a single theoretical outlook is much theory of Marxism and its real constitu­ more problematic. ents. Although they share a single origin and a common enterprise, these two works While any explanatory concept is have to be evaluated quite differently. "theory-impregnated," there is an impor­ Marx's Capital is a crucial starting tant difference between theoretical prin­ point for a study of the capitalist mode of ciples and social reality. For Marxist production, and Understanding Capital theory, in which an evaluation of practical aims to provide the reader with some intel­ activity within society is crucial for devel­ lectual raw materials for this purpose. It oping approximate knowledge, the link deals with a single work. Volume I of Cap­ between general principles and less ital, "a difficult, century-old text," (ix) abstract political lines cannot be drawn with the object of making what is written absolutely. But there is still an important more comprehensible. The book provides analytical distinction to be made. Under­ short chapter by chapter summaries of the standing Marxism conflates these two main arguments, divided into eleven sec- aspects and thereby implies that the politi­ lions of roughly equal length, correspond­ cal lines offered (what is to be done) are ing to a "course" division of the material. equivalent to the "objective laws of devel­ A series of questions is presented for opment" presented in the text, rather than clarification ordiscussion. Understanding both these propositions and "laws" being Capital is most useful for assisting a first controversial positions in contemporary reading of the text, especially as part of debates within Marxism. In this fashion, REVIEWS 291

Marxism is presented as a holistic, unitary nominally socialist states, an issue which theory situated in the context of bourgeois is never raised. Much more needs to be criticism. said about racism and sexism if it is true Without doubt, Marxist thought is so that the transition to socialism does not situated. The most useful aspects of this automatically end these practices. (56) book are the responses made to the various Theories which suggest that the economic critiques of socialism originating from out­ conditions of a socialist state provide fer­ side Marxism, which continually recur and tile ground for the political consolidation will not disappear on their own. The text of a new exploitative class are simply grew out of practical efforts to explain and labelled "anti-Marxist." (92-94) defend Marxism in the face of prejudice and misinformation. Given these facts, These issues, as well as others, are as and its commendable style which makes it pertinent to an understanding of Marxism in the contemporary world as the bourgeois accessible to most interested readers, the critiques so appropriately debunked. The book would have much to recommend it. fact that there is no consensus about these But inevitably a review of this text cannot issues may be a more profound statement be separated from an evaluation of the about the scientific status of Marxism than political positions taken. From its incep­ an outline of its laws of development. tion Marxism has not developed in a linear direction. Understanding Marxism Consistent with its title, Understand­ ignores most of the pressing theoretical ing Marxism is a "Canadian Introduction" issues which have been raised since the because it uses some Canadian examples to 1950s within Marxism itself. It accepts the illustrate its general laws and types of appearance of political success in the bourgeois ideologies. But Marxism in world without probing its substance. Canada must be more than the fitting of Marxism is presented as a body of proposi­ Canadian institutions into "universal" tions and laws to be explained and under­ moulds. Consistent with its scientific stood rather than as a scientific approach nature, the furtherdevelopment of Marxist with alternative conceptions and lines theory will dovetail with its concrete appli­ which need to be debated in class terms. cation in Canada and elsewhere. We need a This is not only a problem of mission Canadian Marxism but it must begin by because it affects the interpretations pre­ recognizing the centrality and diversity of sented. A few examples: while generally debate, with the emergence of general arguing a positivist version of Marxism as principles from the clash of political lines consisting of objective laws of historical and practices. This would be a difficult and development, leading the reader to look lengthy undertaking, evaluating the expe­ first for structural causes, the central prob­ rience of the early socialists, the influence lem is defined ideologically, as a matter of of the Third International, the new left, as radical education to overcome the con­ well as contemporary social democracy scious media distortions of Marxism. The and ultra-leftism. Within such a schema, Understanding Marxism describes one theory of crisis presented in the text is an political perspective among many. inadequate underconsumption/break­ down model. (24) Workers in Italy and A great many changes have occurred in France are seen as possibly "on the eve of the world since World War II, not least in transforming those countries to socialism" the socialist world. Marxist theory has yet (29), but the nature of Eurocommunism is to account satisfactorily for most of them. not discussed. Under socialism, we are From this perspective. Understanding told, there are not the same feelings of na­ Marxism could have been written two dec­ tional antagonism (58), a position which ades ago. At the risk of a stereotype, this hardly begins to explain wars between may be the most ironic basis for the claim 292 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

that the book is a "Canadian" introduc­ orizations of contingent situations intelli­ tion. gible to other humans. For Mészaros, Sartre, from the very beginning of this Anthony Thomson quest, is trapped within "hopeless King's College, Cambridge dichotomies" because he has always wanted to assert both unrestricted human Istvàn Mészaros, The Work of Sartre: freedom and the full weight of facticity Volume One : Search for Freedom (Atlan­ (determinism). This antinomy is at the tic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press heart of all Sartre's work, according to 1979). Mészaros, and is the key to understand­ ing and evaluating it. THE CENTRAL TASK of Sartre studies In his preliminary discussion of Sartre today is to explain the apparent dichotomy and the methodological questions implicit in Sartre's work between the early existen­ in his project of understanding Sartre, tialism and the later Marxism. The inter­ Mészaros does little to further our under­ preter of Sartre must make the radical standing of the extremely elusive, yet fun­ twists and turns as well as the self- damentally important, problem of Sartre's criticisms which punctuate Sartre's career relation to this historical situation. comprehensible within a general under­ Throughout the book, Sartre is treated as a standing of Sartre's work. Istvân timeless and socially unconditioned Mészaros established what he takes to be thinker who is trying to develop a theory the basis for a general understanding of of social conditioning and human free­ Sartre's work, the continued existence of dom. Mészaros' failure to link Sartre and an antinomy in the Sartrean problematic. his work to the social and intellectual In the latter part, he analyzes the early climate from which he and his work existentialism of Sartre concentrating, not originated leaves us with an abstract view surprisingly, on Being and Nothingness. of the Sartrean project and the unity In the forthcoming second volume, he underlying its development. Because of promises an analysis of the post-war this abstractness, Mészaros, in order to Sartre and his increasing involvement show the overall unity of Sartre's work, with history and Marxism. While one can­ must read the earlier work in terms of the not at this time evaluate the success of problematic of the later work. The result Mészaros' overall project, one can see in of this failure (which Mészaros shares the first volume the structure of his under­ with most writers on Sartre) is that this standing of Sartre and comment on his study provides us with little in the way of ability to illuminate the movement of illuminating insights into Sartre and his Sartre's career. project as situated in and responding to The central unity of Sartre's work lies twentieth-century Europe. in his fundamental project, the attempt to understand the individual through the spe­ A more fruitful approach, one fol­ cificity of the individual's praxis. Sartre's lowed by Aronson and Poster for exam­ explorations of "the roads to freedom" of ple, is to investigate the dialectical rela­ the individual, beginning with the self- tionship between his situation and the oriented subjectivity of the early existen­ theoretical limitations of the various posi­ tialism and moving to the problematic tions he has held. By beginning always subjectivity of the serialized and extero- with consciousness because it is perceived conditioned individual of the Critique and first (a fact Sartre himself explores in his the universal singular explored in the final autobiographical work, Words), Sartre is works, were always directed to the devel­ inevitably trapped within an ontological opment of a general theory or method individualism which is continually which would make the specific interi- haunted by the absence of the layers of REVIEWS 293

sociality and collectivity. The changes in freedom-facticity dualism which is Sartre's position are the result of his con­ ultimately at the heart of his Critique. tinuing attempts to overcome the particu­ What Mészaros has done is to impose the lar manifestations of abstractness brought framework of his own second volume on to his attention primarily through his inte- Sartre's early work rather than allow the riorization of his situation. The develop­ dialectical development of Sartre's work ment within Sartre's thought is intelligible to create that framework for him. only through this dialectical interplay of For the historian, the overall work of the Sartrean categorical structure and the Sartre has enormous methodological Sartrean understanding of his experience. implications although these become clear Mészaros' discussion in the second only in the later works. In opposition to half of this book is a valuable contribution the positivist human sciences, Sartre to the analysis of the early work of Sartre champions the freedom of the individual even though it also focusses on the central and hence places, at the heart of explana­ antinomy he finds in Sartre's work tion, the subjective experience of the indi­ between freedom and determinism. vidual. While in the early work the ques­ Around that central theme, Mészaros pro­ tion of history has no place within his vides us with a great deal of insight into view of radical freedom, later, the attempt the conceptual network Sartre has devel­ to situate historical forces within his oped in Being and Nothingness and ontology of freedom leads him to pose the illuminates the unfounded nature of questions of the Critique: how, using sub­ Sartre's self-criticisms of his early work. jective experience as a basis, can history The central argument, however, claims be intelligible? How can there be only one that the Sartrean use of metaphors, for history given the myriad of individual which Being and Nothingness is so praxes? famous, is the result of the necessity of holding together the dualism in which Mészaros' first volume, even with its Sartre is enmeshed. insights into the early work, seem prima­ rily aimed at setting up the issues and the framework of the second volume. One The difficulty with this view of the hopes that the second volume, which is early Sartre is that it is again the product concerned with the period of Sartre's life of a reading of [he early Sartre from the during which he openly confronts the perspective of his later work and not a issue with which Mészaros is primarily reading which emerges from a systematic concerned, will clarify not only Sartre's study of the texts themselves. For the thinking but also the entire problem of early Sartre, the irreducible freedom of understanding the situatedness of the indi­ the individual creates not only its own vidual within history. If it fulfills its projects but also, through such projects, promise, Mészaros will have contributed the nature and contours of its situation. significantly not only to Sartre's studies. The tension Meszaros finds is only appar­ but to the philosophy of the human scien­ ent — the real problem of Being and ces as well. Nothingness is the unmediated collapse of the world into the individual's freedom. It J. Alan Lennon is in trying to deal with this problem, State University of New York at Buffalo revealed to him through his attempt to think the experience of the war and the immediate post-war period using the cate­ Russell Jacoby, Dialectic of Defeat : Con­ gories of Being and Nothingness, that tours of Western Marxism (New York: Sartre creates for himself the tension Cambridge University Press 1981). Mészaros places at the heart of all his work and, in particular, creates the WHILE NOT QUITE YET a dime a dozen, histories of Marxism are not hard to come 294 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

by. From Vranicki to Zanardo or from its borders are criminal and the only Perry Anderson to Kolakowski, however, emancipatory thing about them has to do they tend to grind well-worn axes through with their elimination or transformation. relatively orthodox theoretical mills. Matching — if not surpassing — the Dubious constructions of ideal Marxisms Nazis in the extent of their crimes, these are usually dragged through a 100 or so regimes are shown to be propped up by a years of political tribulations either to a scientistic Marxism whose absurdity and concocted happy ending of a fundamen­ pretense cannot tolerate competitors. tally sound Marxist theory precipitating Hence, Western Marxism and its expo­ — or promising to precipitate — a pro­ nents have been its first victims. letarian revolution through the good offi­ Given this scenario, it is not surprising ces of some mythological Leninist party that the leading chapter on "Conformist (Anderson), or to the unavoidable suc­ Marxism" opens with a devastating cumbing to insurmountable internal diffi­ critique of Althusserianism — a modern culties resulting in precisely the opposite version of Stalinist apology whose inter­ of what was initially promised nal incoherence betrays its ulterior (Kolakowski). What is missed by grand motives. In a peculiar sense, however, reconstructions of this type, which tend to this attack has more political relevance in overemphasize winners or otherwise "suc­ England and some parts of Canada than in cessful" exponents, is the very historical the United States, precisely because of the fabric whereby theory is translated into a theoretical preventive spade-work that people such as Jacoby have been success­ new social reality through the sufferings fully engaged in for the past 10 to 15 and failures of tragic agents whose bitter years. As a result, with the possible fate consigns them to obscurity. The exception of some marginal literary cir­ result is ideology. A fraudulent theory or cles notorious for their intellectual loose­ a trajectory fabricated after the facts nor­ ness, Althusser and scientistic Marxism mally occlude a much richer historical ter­ have never significantly penetrated rain. Jacoby's new book is an attempt to American radical circles. The only sur­ remedy this state of affairs. As such, it prises generated by For Marx and Read­ performs a useful task. In focusing on ing Capital was the rapidity with which "the defeated," it not only provides a they were remaindered, while lesser dull much fuller than usual picture of what epigones such as Poulantzas and the New went on, but also explains why things here Left Review Trotskyists have remained turned out the way they have. primarily continental and British oddities. Dialectic of Defeat does not mince This explains why Althusser is ridiculed words: the defeat of the dialectic is due and summarily dismissed in less than a first and foremost to precisely that dozen pages here. His inclusion is as the orthodox Marxism whose success is most outstanding example of that Con­ drenched in the blood of countless victims formist Marxism which, blinded by its and the subversion of every ideal or eman­ success, recreates all the worst features of cipatory hope the theory originally held. the capitalism it pretends to challenge. Unlike most standard reconstructions of The most important task, however, is the Marxism which either thrive on an explanation of the derivation of this scien­ ambiguous attitude towards presently tistic Marxism and its complicity in defective — but presumably redeemable destroying — often physically — its — "really existing socialist regimes," or Western counterpart. end up outrightly apologizing for them pending the cleansing of few remaining In so doing, Jacoby traces the theoreti­ internal imperfections, Jacoby is fright- cal red-thread of both Western and Soviet eningly honest on the subject. The regime Marxism back to the subterranean Hege­ in the USSR and its sad caricatures around lian heritage, and their relation to Engels. REVIEWS 295

The split between Right and Left Hege­ of the dialectic is an irreversible fact. lians that ensued after Hegel s ' death is While careful scrutiny of particular seen by Jacoby as recreated within diver­ accounts by specialists may turn up over­ gent Marxist traditions as, respectively, a sights — as in the reconstruction of scientific and an historical Hegelian tradi­ Antonio Labriola's contribution to Marx­ tion resulting, eventually, in Western and ism (42-9) where Jacoby misses the main Soviet Marxism. In reconstructing the thrust of the debate with Croce concerning contours of their peculiar history, he pro­ the Marxist philosophy of history — the vides a wealth of information about for­ analyses are first-rate. They put an end, gotten and/or repressed Marxist debates once and for all, to much claptrap about which makes the book a necessary refer­ histories of Marxism seeking to buttress ence source for anyone dealing with the crypto-Stalinist attempts to present an periods in question. The main point, how­ uninterrupted continuity and a unified ever, is fairly simple. The outcome of theoretical framework. these debates was decided by the authority derived from the political success of the Paul Piccone Bolsheviks rather than the respective Memorial University of Newfoundland merits of the various positions. The dialectic of defeat requires that the spell Horace B. Davis, Toward a Marxist of success outranks any other consider­ Theory of Nationalism (New York: ation. Western Marxism in the 1920s was Monthly Review Press 1978). then forced out of center stage by a double-barrelled shotgun loaded with HORACE DAVIS'S new book, a sequel to his Nazi and Stalinist bullets. earlier Nationalism and Socialism: Marx­ ist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to Unlike Gouldner's parallel analysis in 1917, takes issue with the proposition that The Two Marxisms where "critical" and has dominated the mainstream of Marxist "scientific" Marxism are presented as thought for a century, that nationalism is Siamese twins — the critical side often the by-path of folly, leading the forces of being the conscience of its scientific coun­ proletarian internationalism away from terpart — only to end up as ideologies of their historic mission of class conflict and the "new class," in the final chapter socialist revolution. To Davis it is a self- appropriately entitled "Nightmare Marx­ evident truth of contemporary history that ism," Jacoby closes with the question of there exists no such thing as an interna­ "Class Unconsciousness." More con­ tional working class, while monopoly cerned with the emancipatory potential of capitalism is subject to the deepest threats Marxism than with Gouldner's emphasis not from the highly developed and on the social role of theory, Jacoby closes organized working classes of the imperial with a call to reconstitute radical theory centres, but by socialist-oriented move­ qualitatively in order to salvage its eman­ ments of national liberation in peripheral cipatory spirit. The vindication of West­ countries that frequently do not even pos­ ern Marxism thus leads to the ironic con­ sess a proletariat. clusion that its theoretical carcass be given a decent burial. The exposé of its suppres­ A recurrent theme in Davis's analysis sion through well-known administrative flows from Sun Yat-sen's dictum thai there measures does not result in the resuscita­ exist three great movements in modern his­ tion of a viable theory pointing the way tory: socialism, democracy, and nation­ towards emancipation, but of an outlook which, independently of its bitter fate, alism. While Davis does not explore the was terminally ill nonetheless. The point question of a necessary link between the of the Dialectic of Defeat is that the defeat first two of these, he is emphatic that there exists no necessary link between, or chasm 296 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

separating, nationalism and either state of Israel than before. The second socialism or democracy. Nationalist characteristic, a minimum size, does not movements have sometimes contributed to appear to mean very much in the absence of the development of socialism, but so have criteria for deciding what that size might socialist movements sometimes led to the be: as it stands, it could presumably be development of nationalism. Nationalism used to deny the national claims of certain has sometimes furnished the indispensable minority peoples who fit the other criteria. driving force for socialism; sometimes, (Davis elsewhere distinguishes between nationalism has lain at the basis of nations and tribes by arguing that the socialism's defeat. Equally, while former are based on territory, the latter on kinship.) The third criterion seems some­ socialism may hold the ultimate hope for what questionable in the circumstances of true national liberation, socialist countries colonialism: what if the centralization and have upon occasion frustrated and defeated interdependence are imposed from out­ the drive of nationalities for independence side, particularly in a way that destroys and self-realization. indigenous social organization? Finally, There are good nationalisms and bad the emphasis on consciousness is clearly ones. Good nationalisms are movements necessary to a definition of nationalist directed against the exploitation of whole movements, but if nationalist movements peoples; bad ones are inherently exploit­ can spur the development of nationalist ative of others. While the future of human­ consciousness, as Davis seems to argue, ity does not stand or fall with the fortunes what is the nature of the social group of any particular nation, and while the sole before it attains thai self-consciousness? basis for moral law must rest not in the nation but in humanity as a whole, Marxist A substantial chapter reviews the theory must view the nation as an authentic Marxist theory of nationalism as devel­ social category analogous to the concept of oped by Lenin, Luxemburg. Stalin, and class. Davis cites as a valuable contribu­ Trotsky, emphasizing the first three: tion to theory the notion developed by the Trotsky, Davis argues against recent adhe­ Yugoslav communists that national rents of the Fourth International, was no oppression is a Marxist category related to champion of nationalism. Classical Marx­ class oppression but not identical with or ist theory is shown to have been seriously subordinate to it. wanting in its analysis of nationalism, and Davis' definition of the nation, as in a deeply interesting chapter on the perhaps all definitions of the term are in a national question in the Soviet Union socio-historical vacuum, is somewhat Davis provides grounds for his view that problematic. Nations, he says, share four ami-Russian nationalism is on the determining characteristics: all nations upswing, that the Soviet communist party have a specified territory, a certain has not responded as thoroughly as it must minimum size, some integration (centrali­ to the claims of the nationalities, and that zation, interdependence), and national "a collision course is indicated." This is self-consciousness. The first of these begs followed by a fairly detailed case-study of the question of a national diaspora, the best the Yugoslav situation, stressing the eco­ example, although by no means the only nomic frictions that may translate into one. being that of the Jews. Davis some­ nationalist agitation in a largely bi-national times seems'to indicate that local Jewish federation. Much of what Davis has to say communities, for example in Poland, have here sounds terribly familiar to anyone been "national,"' while elsewhere world who has followed federal-provincial rela­ Jewry is portrayed as being at least some­ tions in Canada, notwithstanding that thing very like a nation: more so. Davis much of what is said seems to parallel more suggests, following the creation of the closely Alberta-Ottawa relations than REVIEWS 297

those of Quebec and the central govern­ capable as well of exploitations and ment. oppressions on its own account. And the Next comes an exceedingly cursory book is all but silent on a number of matters review of the place of nationalism in the one would particularly like to see Chinese revolution, adding little to previ­ addressed: there is no discussion of the ous discussion of this topic. The chapter on bearing of nationalism in the developed Latin America is fuller. Davis argues that capitalist countries beyond the equation of the Brazilian left's strategy of support fora nationalism at the centre with imperialism, national bourgeoisie was doomed to failure but this is hardly helpful when one consid­ in the absence of a national bourgeoisie; ers the Basques, the Northern Irish both that nationalism provided the pivotal protestant and catholic, the Québécois and motive force for the Cuban revolution; and even (dare it be said?) the English- that the explanation for the failure of speaking Canadians. For all that it clarifies Guevara's Bolivian campaign lies not in some questions, (he book obscures others: the hostility of Bolivian nationalists to for all that it attempts, '"in the spirit of Cuban leadership but in the presence of the Lenin," to do, there remains much to be CIA. Davis concludes his discussion of the done. bearing of the Latin American experience on the theory of nationalism by arguing Paul Craven that the progressive equation of nation­ York University alism with anti-imperialism there casts doubts on the validity of Lenin's notions Gary P. Freeman, Immigrant Labor and about the class basis of nationalism. Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies Nationalism may sometimes be a bour­ (Princeton: Princeton University Press geois movement, but it may equally some­ 1979), and Sasha G. Lewis, Slave Trade times be a movement of other classes Today (Boston: Beacon Press 1979). against a bourgeoisie, and even a broad social movement that cuts across class RACISM HAS NEVER been very far below the lines. surface in the white societies of Western The penultimate chapter views class Europe and North America. Nevertheless, and national formation in Africa through the recent resurgence of open racism — the the prism of Fanon and Cabrai. Davis spread of the Ku KIux Klan to Ontario, the points to the apparent paradox of revolu­ official Republican candidacy of a former tionary socialism and nationalism appear­ Nazi Party and Klan member on a white ing where there is neither a revolutionary supremacy platform in the 1980 Congres­ proletariat nor a progressive bourgeoisie. sional elections, the introduction of a new, The African experience is also used to racist citizenship and immigration bill by demonstrate again the non-existence of the Conservative Thatcher government in international labour solidarity. Britain — is sobering evidence that the There is much in this book that is infor­ social liberalism of the civil rights era is mative and engaging. One reads it, how­ giving way to a nativist conservatism in ever, with the feeling that on balance, which racism has once again become Davis is engaged in the rather unrewarding respectable. The reason is not hard to find. task of trying to convert the vulgar Marx­ The current economic crisis in the western ists of the sectarian left to a position the world with its attendant unemployment rest of us have long made our own: that and downward pressure on the real wages nationalism is an independent force to be of workers has led to the search for reckoned with in the modern world, capa­ scapegoats. How easy it is to find one in ble of harnessing populations to seek free­ the darker skins of immigrants, legal and dom from exploitation and oppression, and illegal — so visible, so obviously alien. 298 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Yet there is a curious contradiction shortage after World War II and therefore between this common reaction of so many entered into controlled arrangements with workers and the needs of modern less developed countries to import labour. capitalism, needs which if not satisfied Because immigration was part of the will undermine the very basis on which the country's technical planning mechanism relatively comfortable status of the major­ (and one might note, as a result of specific ity of white workers rests — economic provisions to house and service immi­ imperialism of the underdeveloped world grants who were not accorded citizen and its peoples. rights), the public was not drawn into pol­ These are the central issues taken up, in icy discussion and the government was very different ways, in these two recent able to buy time "during which it extracted books. Freeman's work, a rather dry, enormous profit from immigrants." (317) academic treatment as perhaps befits a Preference throughout the period was published thesis, is a comparative analysis for "white" immigrants from southern of French and British immigration policy Europe who could be culturally in the post-war period. Lewis, on the other assimilated, but, as the common market hand, is a journalist writing with consider­ expanded and prospered, increasing able passion of the degradation of the trade reliance had to be placed on African in illegal immigrants, primarily Hispanic sources. As economic problems began to and Mexican, into the United States. Yet arise in the late 1960s and the visibility of" from both viewpoints and approaches, a unassimilated non-European immigrants similar theme emerges: low wage immi­ rose, racial tensions also increased, grants are a necessary ingredient in ultimately leading to the suspension of capitalist prosperity, but the social strains most new immigration in 1974 and a sub­ created by large scale "coloured" immi­ gration threaten the very fabric of capitalist stantial tax on employers who imported society. Employers use race to "divide and semi-skilled labour. At the same time conquer" the working class but the racism programs were introduced to ameliorate engendered threatens the supply of immi­ social tensions. grant labour. In contrast, the British considered their country overpopulated and, as a legacy of Freeman establishes this theme in his their colonial policy, saw no way to control introduction and suggests that the inherent "commonwealth" (a euphemism for col­ contradiction in immigration "which oured) immigration, particularly since makes it both a cause of and an answer to they had no manpower policy or economic the crises of advanced societies makes a planning mechanism. Rather, the role of simple, straightforward analysis of policy the state was to mediate conflict which impossible and explains, perhaps, the arose because immigrants were not fumbling manner in which it has been separate, or of inferior status, and because handled by British and French officials." of the racism inherent in the British belief, (10) The bulk of his study, however, is a also a colonial legacy, in the "greatness of narrative account of the evolution of Brit­ British national character." Also, unlike ish and French policy which, although in France, Britain lacked a Marxist party that many ways similar in that both were con­ would interpret the problems with immi­ strained by economic goals, nevertheless gration within a class context. Afraid of the differed, because of different perceptions of economic goals, because of different violence of American race relations, the racist attitudes, and because of different British resorted increasingly to attempts to legislate harmony and to restrict "com­ political institutions. monwealth" immigration, culminating in The French, he argues, considered the 1971 Immigration Act that placed France underpopulated and facing a labour "commonwealth" immigrants in the same REVIEWS 299

category as aliens, allowed to work only on immigrants are net contributors to the pub­ temporary work permits. lic sector in the United States, contributing Lewis, unlike Freeman, is not particu­ more in taxes than they receive back in larly concerned with the historical evolu­ benefits. For the American (white) tion of American immigration policy worker, he is ensured at least first chance at toward Hispanic America. Rather, she the better paying, more desirable jobs puts a human face on the immigrant experi­ while relieved of filling the survival "jobs ence, but it is a human face disfigured by that require no skills but obedience; jobs pain, deception, exploitation, and death, that develop no skills." (161) Freeman exposing and documenting the inhuman makes the same observation, in a more reality of the trade in illegal immigrant general context, for Britain and France. labour and the extent to which all the par­ Who then are the losers? The would-be ticipants, including the American Immi­ immigrants who die under the relentless gration and Naturalization Service, law desert sun or of suffocation in the trunk of a enforcement agencies, employers, and car as they try to cross the border; the ones those involved in the trade, have been who are apprehended after paying their life degraded by the pursuit of profit. It is a savings to a trafficker but who never make story that does not compare particularly it; the ones who make it but who are turned favourably even to the original African over to the immigration service by their slave trade. upright employer, the day before payday. While most of the book concentrates on Lewis points out how small a proportion of the realities of the trade perhaps the most the illegal immigrants actually make sig­ interesting part of the study for the student nificant gains trom their perilous journey. of labour is her analysis of the economics Yet it is one ray of hope against the of the contemporary "slave trade." Who hopelessness of their poverty at home. gains and who loses? The obvious gainers, The other major losers in the United other than the traffickers themselves, are States are the lower strata of the legal the employers who can pay very low labour force, particularly blacks and his- wages, even below legal minimums, or panics, who are displaced from those who can avoid paying payroll taxes or 'dead-end, mini mum-wage jobs that other legislative benefits. After all, being Americans take when they can get them illegal, the immigrants can hardly com­ and hold onto only until they think they can plain to authorities or form a union (as Lewis find something better," ( 161) but who are puts it, they take no civil rights with them displaced nevertheless. The result is inter­ to the job). Less obvious gainers, she racial tension and violence among the argues, are the governments of Mexico and non-white community. the other emigrant countries for whom the Lewis only begins to take the analysis immigration is a safety valve against one step further, to the role of American rebellion or revolution. But perhaps the capitalist imperialism in perpetuating the biggest winner is the American consumer. poverty in the underdeveloped countries Lewis quotes an investigatory committee that provides the push of illegal immigra­ appointed by President Ford: "The prices tion and in perpetuating the secondary American consumers pay for labour- labour market in the United States that pro­ intensive products are kept down by the vides the pull. Both are manifestations of presence of exploited, unskilled illegal the exploitation of unequal exchange. workers {and the more of them the lower Under the reign of the multinational corpo­ the prices.)" (154) Canadians, being net ration, jobs that can be designed to use importers of this type of agricultural pro­ low-skilled workers and that can be duce also gain from this exploitation. exported to "safe" low wage countries — Lewis also argues that the illegal Hong Kong, Taiwan, Brazil. Chile, Singa- 300 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

pore, the Philippines — are exported. For Michael J. Piore. Birds of Passage, those jobs that can not — restaurant help. Migrant Labour and Industrial Societies fruit and vegetable pickers, hotel maids — (N.Y.: Cambridge University Press 1979). low wage workers must be imported because American (and West European) BOOKS BY ACADEMIC economists are usu­ workers refuse to work at onerous jobs for ally narrowly focussed, crammed with bare survival wages. There are few barriers mathematical formulae, replete with statis­ to the export of multinational capital to the tical tables, and written in a style of Eng­ poor countries, but there are barriers to the lish which might be called, gently, •'mod­ free import of labour, particularly "col­ em scholastic." Michael J. Piore's most oured" labour. These are immigration recent book is none of these things. Rather laws, a response to the racial and social it is a wide-ranging and well-written narra­ problems engendered by immigration and tive with only a dozen tables and not a sin­ the resulting legitimate opposition from gle mathematical formula. Hopefully these labour which sees immigration as feeding a defects will not prevent its attracting a permanent reserve army of unemployed. wide readership, as it is the sort of book undermining and undercutting wage rates. which many economists ought to read. The problem, as with the drug traffic, is Piore presents a suggestive analysis of a when the exporting countries, the custom­ ers in the importing countries, and the traf­ pressing social problem and his policy pro­ fickers, all "benefit," policing becomes posals are novel and far reaching in their not only extremely difficult, but avoidance implications. It is therefore to be hoped also very profitable, to the degradation of that those who cannot write or speculate the trade. will now address themselves to gathering the data which will prove whether or not he What is the answer? Freeman suggests is right. that the European countries will resort to Piore starts from the viewpoint that the the German "guest worker" system which labour market of advanced capitalist allows systematic and explicit exploitation nations can be divided into a segment of foreign workers whenever required by which contains jobs with good pay, pleas­ the state of the domestic economy. But as ant working conditions, prospects for he notes, even this system is not without Us advancement, fringe benefits, and for­ problems. He hints that only a socialist malized authority relationships, and a sec­ transformation can provide any long term tor (the dual labour market) which offers solution. Lewis is caught in a dilemma. the reverse —- insecure, low-paying jobs She shows that the only hope to end the with little prospect of advancement, poor push of immigrants is social revolution at working conditions, and informal, per- home. She also knows that the United sonalistic work relationships. The 10 per Slates would never permit such revolu­ cent of the western European labour force tions. citing the case of Chile. (184) She which is composed of legal migrant work­ also recognizes that the pull will remain so ers and the unknown percentage of the long as it is profitable for employers to exploit low wage workers, which means as U.S. labour force which is composed of long as capitalism remains dominant. As a illegal aliens are destined for the dual result, her only answer is a plea to labour market. Piore argues that since humanize the treatment of immigrants. spontaneous migration flows are relatively Given the present employment crisis and weak, the active agent generating migra­ rising racism, it is a plea that is likely to fall tion flows is the evolution of developed on deaf ears. countries. Individual employers and gov­ ernment recruiting agencies have a vir­ Paul Phillips tually inexhaustible supply of labour to tap University of Manitoba from third world countries, labour which REVIEWS 301 can fill very specific needs in advanced cal distance from the work which they do economies. Piore sees the roots of the in the developed nations and to ride out dualism in the job structure of advanced temporary downturns in labour demand. industrial nations as the "flux and uncer­ The contradiction in this process is the tainty that inheres in all economic activ­ growth of community among migrant ity." Only part of the aggregate demand of workers in the advanced nations. The advanced economies is stable and predict­ growth of social ties, assimilation, and able and can generate stable, long term long term residency create, over time, per­ employment. In capitalist economies, manent inhabitants rather than temporary cyclical fluctuations, changes in fashions sojourners. Their descendants then aspire to upward social mobility within the and technology, seasonal variability, and a advanced nations and become unwilling to host of other influences generate an unav­ accept the menial jobs of their parents. oidable instability in production and, therefore, in demand for labour. In a Migrant workers are, however, not "pure" capitalistic system, all labour is "at alone in their instrumental, short run risk" in this process, but Piore argues that attachment to the labour force. Peasant advanced industrial nations are only workers who work to supplement an "quasi-capitalist" in that native labour agricultural income, housewives whose has, by and large, managed to insulate self-definition is in terms of traditional itself from this insecurity (through its familial roles, and students, who are only struggles for the seniority system in the in it for the summer, can maintain a similar United States and redundancy pay and psychological distance from dead-end jobs employment guarantees in Europe). Pools and tolerate (indeed desire) their instabil­ ity. Migrant workers, however, present of malleable migrant labour therefore significant advantages to employers. They allow the system to cope with its inevitable are adaptable, much more mobile geo­ instability and to fill its menial jobs while graphically, and much more susceptible to offering stable employment and relatively manipulation and control. Piore argues good jobs to most of its native sons. "the economics of wages for migrant Why do migrants accept their place in workers is by and large the economics of such a scheme of things? Piore argues con­ the minimum wage." (93) Piore argues that vincingly that there is normally much more migrants are "target earners," meaning to work than money. Work roles define that they work only long enough to acquire social roles and status rankings. They a specific nestegg, and then intend to situate their occupants in society and they return home. The consequence of paying tie us to particular social groups. Piore migrants more, therefore, is that they argues that it is precisely because most would work less, since they would need migrants initially view their move as tem­ less lime to attain their targets. This is one porary that they can function as pure eco­ of the few points in this otherwise convinc­ nomic men and view work as a purely ing narrative at which I, personally, pause instrumental means to gain income. in disbelief — Piore seems to have taken at Income is desired so that wealth can be face value the analyses of the employers of accumulated which migrants can take back migrant labour and offers no other support­ to their home community in order to ing evidence. enhance their roles within that social struc­ ture. Migrants are therefore willing to do What is the impact of these migration work that they would find demeaning, and flows on the home regions? Piore argues to live under conditions that they would that migrants do not return with heightened find intolerable, if they had to do so in their skills and improved work habits — rather home communities. Frequent visits home the opposite. Typically, their social dis­ enable them both to maintain a psychologi­ tance from skilled native workers and the 302 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

sort of jobs which they fill prevent the extent that migrant populations develop acquisition of sophisticated work skills. permanent settlements, Piore therefore Moreover they do not want to do the same argues that one should "encourage the sec­ sort of jobs at home that they were willing ond generation to acquire whatever traits to endure abroad. Piore speaks of the (training, education, credentials, and the strong "resistance to dependent status" tike) are requisite for upward mobility" among returning migrants. Because of this (172) resistance to a wage-labour status they typ­ In summary, Piore has written a ically aspire to purchase land or to become stimulating and suggestive book. His dis­ small businessmen, usually in the service cussion is wide-ranging and provocative. or commercial sector. In the former case, On the class composition of migration returning migrants may simply bid up the streams, on the relationship of the de facto price of agricultural land. In the latter, they U.S. immigration scheme to de jure mech­ may establish the sort of small enterprise anisms, on the internal migration flows of about whose importance in the develop­ the U.S. and on much else he tells a very ment process far too little is known. Con­ believable story. Hopefully, duller, more ceivably, the capital they bring to these academic books will examine these issues businesses from the advanced nations and in greater depth. the management techniques which they have assimilated may hasten the develop­ Lars Osberg ment process. Whether this acceleration of Dalhousie University development can outpace the heightened aspirations they also bring with them on Gordon Swanson and Jon Michaelson, their return is a moot question. eds.. Manpower Research and Labour Piore is also ambiguous in his evalua­ Economics (Beverly Hills: Sage Publica­ tion of the impact of migrant labour on tions 1979); and Michael J. Piore, ed,, advanced nations. When migrant workers Unemployment and Inflation : Institutional are restricted to unstable dead-end jobs and Structuralist Views (New York: M.E. Sharpe 1979). they are complementary, rather than com­ petitive, to most adult male native labour. Temporary migrants pay taxes, unemploy­ THE VOLUMES UNDER review both lack two ment insurance premiums, and social secu­ elements of relevance and interest to stu­ rity contributions but make relatively few dents of Canadian labour history. They are demands on social security systems — neither Canadian, nor are they concerned especially if they are "illegal." Their pres­ primarily with history. They are, however, ence therefore confers significant benefits concerned with labour. They are edited on both employers and many adult male books on labour economics, and are native workers. There is thus little opposi­ American in authorship and subject mat­ tion to temporary sojourners, but much ter. Each was written to address certain more opposition when their children begin theoretical, methodological, and policy to aspire to upward mobility. Piore seems issues within current labour economics lit­ to feel that a dual labour market is inevita­ erature, and as such may not be of great ble. Hence he argues that the aim of public interest to labour historians. However, policy should be to "maximize the tempo­ there is value in interdisciplinary cross- rary character of the migrants' stay in the fertilization and literacy, and from this urban industrial countries and capitalize point of view both books are useful upon the natural propensity of such popula­ resources. They are written in non­ tions to return home." (171) As a liberal, technical language, easily understandable he is uneasy with a policy which finds its to a non-economist. fullest expression in South Africa. To the The Piore book addresses general REVIEWS 303 issues of aggregate unemployment and research funded, and much of the emerg­ inflation using a theory of the labour mar­ ing labour market segmentation theory, ket which differs radically from the main­ including Marxist analysis, was developed stream economics theory underlying cur­ under OMRD funding. Piore suggests that rent national policy in both Canada and the the balance of academic, political, and United States. The S wanson/ Michael son program experience forces operating on book is a series of articles evaluating the OMRD enabled greater academic free­ labour economics research funded by the dom to the researchers than the discipline Office of Manpower Research and Devel­ itself was affording. Furthermore, the opment (OMRD) of the U.S. Labour Depart­ research was unfettered by the ideological ment and is concerned primarily with the thrust of the manpower programs them­ labour market problems of various groups, selves. The assessors seem to agree that the and with the relationship of research to program has been useful to the progress of manpower policy. Between the two books academic labour economics, though not the lay reader is provided with a fair sum­ directly useful to the sponsoring agency or mary of the orthodox, the Institutional, and to the formulation of government policies. the dual labour market theories within The discussion touches on most aspects of labour economics. Recent Marxist work in employment and wage theory, with spe­ labour economics is not discussed, although it may be more familiar to labour cific emphasis on problems of poverty, dis­ historians than is the work represented in crimination and unemployment. The qual­ these volumes. ity of the articles is uneven, and most read like hastily written, balanced overviews The articles in the S wanson/ aiming to more or less please the agency Michaelson book are by prominent labour funding the evaluation. economists commissioned to "consider the Unemployment and Inflation is a more state of knowledge in the field and its rela­ focused, coherent set of articles written tionship to policy and to inquiry," (7) as within one labour economics framework. background papers for a review of the This framework is the Institutional school, effort of the Office of Manpower Research of which dual labour market theory is the and Development since 1962. Each of the modern outgrowth. The Institutional work seven articles tries to provide a framework of 1950s and 1960s rejected the rarefied for assessing the research and in doing so neo-classical theory of wages and unem­ gives a summary and viewpoint on theoret­ ployment, known as marginal productivity ical debates and policy issues within labour theory. Their work emphasized non- economics. The authors range from the market forces and institutions, and they current U.S. Secretary of Labour, Ray focused on wage differentials, wage Marshall, to Michael Piore, editor of the rigidities, nagging unemployment, and second review book, and a maverick in other issues which were antithetical to the laboureconomics. Thus, the full spectrum neo-classical framework. Readers of of non-Marxist views is presented. The Labour who are familiar with current work articles do not evaluate individual research on segmented labour markets will know products, but they do provide a sort of that the theory has a Marxist variant, repre­ annotated bibliography of the work spon­ sented by the work of David Gordon, sored by OMRD. Richard Edwards, and Andrew Friedman. and an institutional variant, represented by The OMRD has been a major source of Piore and Peter Doeringer, among others. academic funding, with more than $350 Piore, in the introduction, is careful to dis­ million invested in research over the 15 tinguish his book from both orthodox and year period. As Piore points out in his arti­ Marxist theories, although he claims closer cle, there has been a remarkable balance, affinity to the Marxist camp. As with other politically as well as topically, in the 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

careful liberal work, there are insights and state of the art in non-Marxist labour eco­ evidence of great interest to the left where a nomics. They also inadvertently reveal the Marxist interpretation can be readily limitations of this field in terms of the placed on the findings. The villain in the questions asked and the illuminations pro­ piece is mainstream economics, and the vided. For overviews of the omitted radical contribution of the book is to derive impli­ labour economics, the reader is referred to cations for the macro-economic issues of works by Gordon, Edwards, Reich and inflation and unemployment from the dual Friedman.1 From an economist's point of labour market theory of labour market view it would be useful to have labour his* structure. It follows from this theory that torians contribute their evidence to the unemployment and inflation are two unre­ radical/institutional/neo-classical debates lated processes. Therefore, if labour mar­ in labour economics on the nature of the kets are indeed segmented. then not only is labour process overtime. Literacy in each neo-classical labour economics wrong, but other's fields might enable such an the mainstream analysis of the macro- alliance. economy is also wrong. To a non- economist this may sound trivial, but Martha MacDonald mainstream economics has succeeded in Dalhousie University keeping each attack isolated to one small corner of the edifice, refusing to accept the Klaus von Beyme, Challenge to Power: broader implications. Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in In developing the argument, the book Capitalist Countries (Beverly Hills: Sage presents a valuable collection of Institu­ Publications 1980); Tom R. Burns, Lars tional readings from the 1940s and 1950s. Erik Karlsson and Vcljko Rus. eds.. Work These are classic articles, yet many of the and Power: The Liberation of Work and the insights have been lost or buried and labour Control of Political Power (Beverly H:,,s: economists today are busy rediscovering Sage Publications 1979); and J. Di. the same truths. Further readings are by Hdelsteinand Malcolm Warner. Comptti modern dual labour markei authors, live Union Democracy: Organisation and including Piore. Ben Harrison, Charles Opposition in British and American Sabel. and Paul Osterman. Pi ore" s five Unions (New Brunswick. N.J.: Transac­ essays range over the whole topic, weav­ tion Books 1979). ing the other articles together, dropping insights, and flaunting neo-classical stand­ TRADE UNIONS TODAY apparently bear lit­ ards of scientific proof. The latter is left to tle outward resemblance to the first combi­ his more pedestrian colleagues. To a Marx­ nations of workingmen formed to defend ist he is a frustration, for he just misses a and promote the interests of workers in the historical, class analysis. For example, his labour-capital relationship. Changes in the theory derives from the central role uncer­ composition and condition of the workers tainty and instability play in the economy, they represent, their own gtowth into but the contradictions are never integrated in an explicit model of capital accumula­ 1 tion. In terms of particular topics, this vol­ Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and David Gordon, eds.. Labor Market Segmentation ume contains useful articles on immigrant (Lexington: DC. Heath 1975); Richard workers, the youth labour market, the role Ldwards. Contested Terrain (New York: Basic of minimum-wage, bargaining patterns, Books 1979); David M Gordon. Theories oj and the origins of the present inflationary Poverty and Underemployment (Lexington: spiral. DC. Heath 1972); and Andrew Friedman. Industry and Labour: Class Struggle ai Work lu conclusion, the two hooks provide and Monopoly Capitalism (London: Macmillan useful summaries and samplings of the 1977). REVIEWS 305

organizations of sometimes considerable make contributions to our understanding of size and complexity, and the formalization trade unions in contemporary conditions. of the relationship between trade unions, The problem of the conditions under employers, political parties, and govern­ which union leadership will be represent­ ments, all suggest a significant transforma­ ative of and accountable to the rank and file tion in their character. Unions, however, is of increasing importance as unions remain the indigenous organizations of the become involved in the diverse forms of working class and fundamental questions industrial democracy and national eco­ concerning their role and nature remain nomic planning. For Edelstein and Warner unresolved. this becomes the question of the extent to The books under review here have the which a trade union constitutes a democra­ implicit or acknowledged orientations tic system which they define as "a which place them within the realm of decision-making system in which the Marxist debates concerning trade unions. membership actively participates, directly Three main foci of these debates are: the and indirectly through its representatives, extent to which trade unions compromise in the making and implementation of pol­ or promote the interests of the working icy and in the selection of officials, for all class under capitalism; their potential as levels, on the basis of political equality and vehicles for the transition to socialism; and majority rule. Furthermore, the system the role of unions in a socialist society. The operates on the basis of accountability of ancillary questions to these debates are vir­ officials, the legitimation of opposition, tually endless in number. Nevertheless it is and a due process for the protection of the useful to note a few of them here: What rights of individuals and minorities." (30) factors determine the character of trade They choose as their indicator of union unions? Under what conditions does indus­ democracy the existence of successfully trial militancy develop? What part does contested or close leadership elections trade union activity play in the develop­ which they suggest signifies the lack of ment of class consciousness amongst oligarchic power and leadership and ipso workers? How are unions used as organs of regulation of the working class and to what facto the existence of the other elements of extent does this generate conflict itself.' democracy. What demands by unions can be consid­ Comparative Union Democracy is ered a challenge to, rather than accommo­ essentially a study of what constitutes a dation with, the capitalist order? democratic electoral process and the organizational factors which facilitate this It must be noted that changing condi­ in unions. The authors present a model for tions and events add new dimensions to effective electoral opposition in unions as these debates. In some countries the pri­ consisting of close competition among full macy of direct union-employer bargaining time officers of relatively equal rank. over the price of labour-power appears to based on organizational subdivisions of be eclipsed at least partially by the increas­ relatively equal numbers, resolved through ing importance of forms of worker partici­ a voting system which does not favour the pation in management, share ownership, administration, and with the power of the and profit sharing at the enterprise and administration checked by autonomous industry level, and of union consultation power centres and a judicial process out­ and decision-sharing at the political level. side the administration's control. Their Notwithstanding these developments. empirical analysis of the relationship industrial militancy over wage demands between structural and procedural organi­ remains the enfant terrible of advanced zational variables in 5 1 American and 31 capitalism. While none of the three books British national trade unions is comple­ address this most perplexing issue, they do mented by in-depth case studies of unions 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR with effective oppositional internal poli­ cal Power held in Dubrovnick. Yugo­ tics from both countries. slavia. Included in the papers are assess­ As far as their study of union elections ments of existing schemes of industrial is concerned, Edelstein and Warner have democracy in Sweden, Denmark, Yugo­ been thorough in their identification of the slavia. and selected western European formal organizational characteristics countries, and comments on the limitations which increase the likelihood of a contest on industrial and economic democracy in for top office. One must ask, however, capitalist and socialist societies. As with whether this in itself is sufficient to ensure most collections, the uneven quality of the that the leadership is responsive to and rep­ papers is frustrating. That problem aside, resentative of the interests of the rank and the papers do raise a wide range of issues file. One critic of their approach has and present a variety of viewpoints. charged that this is "too narrow because The paper by Baumgarter, Bums, and politics is about power, not simply elec­ Seville ("Work, Politics and Social Struc­ tions: the preoccupation with elections turing Under Capitalism") both asks and rather than interests which was generally attempts to answer many of the most perti­ characteristic of American political sociol­ nent questions surrounding the concept of ogy in the 1960s diverted attention from industrial democracy. They are systematic the fundamental issue of the bases of com­ in their approach; first situating industrial pliance. Evaluation of the distribution of power within unions, and the effects of democracy reforms in the context of the recent changes upon that distribution, thus' failure of other attempts to regulate labour involves examining the interests of differ­ problems in advanced capitalism, then ent groups within the union, and the out­ identifying the types of reforms which this come of varied attempts to secure com­ has included and the interests which have pliance despite resistance, not simply the promoted and benefited from them. Their tabulation of election results."1 Granted, critical assessment of these reforms points Comparative Union Democracy is more to their dual or contradictory consequences than the tabulation of election results, but and their limitations as the means to a the distribution of power in their organiza­ gradual transition to socialism. Compared tional structure which is pertinent to the to this paper, the others tend to be narrower electoral process cannot be seen as the only in focus. important aspect of power within unions. On the problems encountered with the This is especially so, when one has, as system of self-management in Yugoslavia, Edelstein and Warner claim, a larger Rus ("'Limited Effects of Workers' Partici­ interest in the role which democratic pation and Political Counter-Power") unions might play "in the establishment of found that an informal status hierarchy democratic socialism, through the struggle within the enterprise gave greater power to for industrial democracy." (viii) management over the staff and workers' councils and created stratification between This is precisely the question examined the skilled and unskilled workers. Baum­ in Work and Power, a collection of 12 garter, Burns, and Sekulic ("Self- papers from the 1977 International Confer­ Management, Market, and Political ence on the Liberation of Work and Politi- Institutions in Conflict") identified the technical division of labour in the 1 Roderick Martin, "The Effects of Recent enterprise and market allocation rules of Changes in Industrial Conflict on the Iniemal Politics of Trade Unions: Britain and Ger­ the economy as constraints on the system many," in Colin Crouch and Alessandro Piz- of self-management. ^orno. eds., The Resurgence of Class Conflict Concerning industrial democracy in Western Europe Since 1968 (London 1978), reforms in capitalist societies. Batstone II, 103-104. ("Systems of Domination, Accommoda- REVIEWS 307

tion and Industrial Democracy") argues it draws together relationships between that organizational behaviour, both formal aspects of the various levels of analysis: and informal, constrains the options for from the micro-level of the union organiza­ reform. Abell ("Hierarchy and Democra­ tion to the system of industrial relations, to tic Authority") presents a model for an the economic, political, and ideological "ideal type" of a rational democratic work macro-systems within which they operate. organization where democratic principles, Beyme identifies as his major thesis rather than Weberian rational-legal ones, "that the current interpretation of the govern decision-making. Gerry Hunnius behavior of unions through organizational of York University ("On the Nature of details... is as inadequate as is the con­ Capitalist-Initiated Innovations In the frontation of unions with their programmes Workplace") argues that innovations in and ideology to deduce either that they are industrial democracy, such as job enrich­ making exaggerated power claims ment schemes, have not altered the system [conservative criticism] or 'betraying the of class power and then poses the question workers' [neo-Marxist criticism]. Union of whether such innovations raise the behavior is only explicable in the context potential that workers will demand more of labour relations as a whole and the polit- ical system." (6) His conceptualization of autonomy, control, and power; in short, the system of labour or industrial relations will they raise workers* consciousness? goes beyond a legalistic focus on the rules Horvat ("Paths of Transition to Workers' governing collective bargaining. He Self-Management in the Developed includes both the rules and the ideologies Capitalist Countries") proposes a scenario which constitute the system, but unlike the for the transition to socialism through the consensus theorists does not assume a bal­ gradual expropriation of capitalism ance of power between capital and labour through collective profit sharing and the or the lack of challenge to the rules and participation by workers in a system of co- ideologies by organized labour. Because determination. Through these and the the industrial relations systems function in remaining papers in the collection, the social, economic, and political contexts, reader is presented with ideas which are at they, like the unions, are seen in dynamic least provocative, even if they leave one rather than static terms. Hence, for Beyme with more questions than conclusions. the differences and similarities in the pat­ To anyone dismayed by the facile gen­ terns of industrial conflict between eralizations concerning the functioning countries are explicable only through the and role of trade unions in capitalist soci­ consideration of many factors. eties which plague much of the literature. Beyme's work will be a welcome respite. Beyme recognizes the limitation of his Challenge to Power is impressive in both approach: "A complex study like this, its scope and depth. With an eye for glean­ which aims to represent all the essential ing what is both common and unique to aspects of labour relations and identify the unions in major western capitalist causal relations between individual factors countries, Beyme identifies the "essential in the macro-system instead of concentrat­ aspects" of their organizational character­ ing on one problem in detail. cannot offer a istics, conflict behaviour, and partici­ general theory of labour relations." (5) But pation in integrative schemes. In this he is this does not hinder him from arriving at thorough in both addressing the main some general conclusions. On the one established theories explaining these fea­ hand we have the necessity of appreciating tures of unions and in providing many the specificity of the way in which unions empirical examples which either support in each country have developed, but on the or challenge the same. The richness of other hand we have the existence of gen­ Beyme's analysis lies in the way in which eral trends in this development. As 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Beyme's study progresses from an analysis this may undermine the autonomy of of the internal structure of unions to their unions and in fact sees it as a move towards external relations, so does his identifica­ "Socialist co-responsibility." He main­ tion of these trends: tains thai as long as the unions remain 1. the tendency for unions to unify essentially democratic and do not give up ideologically and to integrate workers their rights to negotiate collective agree­ previously outside the traditional labour ments and strike (in other words maintain force; their essential functions), there will be no 2. the establishment of the precedence of incompatibility of roles. He states that "no industrial unionism and the centraliza­ union can now embark on a cooperative tion into larger units of organization; course unless it maintains its militancy at 3. a rivalry between unions and works the same time. This duality of role, when councils and between union represent­ the unions are at once a regulative factor atives and those from the rank and file and a counter power, is a condition for the where forms of industrial economic par­ maintenance and achievements of social ticipation have been established; liberties." (339) 4. a loosening of ties between unions and To be fair, Beyme does not suggest that labour parties with the concomitant this increase in union power will be decline in focus on direct parliamentary unilinear and without setbacks. His projec­ representation and the new focus on tion for the future, however, highlights the institutiona'lized forms of extra- essential weakness of his study: the parliamentary functional representa­ absence of the notion of class interests and tion; class conflict. The unions and employers 5. an increase in the public functions of the are presented as interest groups in conflict unions and divisions between unions over the distribution of the fruits of produc­ and labour parties; tion, but the class relations which assure 6. a trend towards neo-corporatism, espe­ the accumulation and reproduction of capi­ cially in northern Europe. tal are missing. Beyme is correct in iden­ This takes us back to the underlying tifying the increasing need for union coop­ theme of Beyme's work: that in the power eration to keep capitalist economies func­ struggle of industrial relations organized tioning profitably; he is unconvincing, labour is gaining strength. He explains however, in his argument that this implies that: a decrease in the employers' power rather The extension of state intervention is altering than a new mode of accommodation in the balance of power between the organized capitalist class relationships. Indeed, one groups as the state takes over an increasing could just as well argue that the increasing number of functions. As it wishes to regulate role of self-regulation by the unions only these but cannot administer them alone it gives strengthens the economic and political some competencies and participation rights bases of capitalism. Besides his optimism back to these associations. The mass organiza­ regarding the democratic potential of tions which can mobilize the greatest mass loy­ alty, like the unions, are bound to register a unions, Beyme provides us with little in his growth in political power over the longer term, analysis to support the claim that unions whether there is a Labour government or not. can remain an effective counter power The employers' associations are furthering this while engaged in this cooperative course. development by demanding a state guarantee for While he recognizes that the state is the prices and profits developments and by attempt­ important third partner in labour-employer ing to control wage developments as well, relations, he has surprisingly little to say which can only be done with the help of the state about the nature of this three party relation­ through the unions. (330) ship. Despite these problems, Beyme's Beyme is relatively unconcerned that study remains useful for pointing out the REVIEWS 309

constellation of factors which are impor­ vations and the belief that workers are not tant influences on the behaviour of unions. producing enough. QWL, incentive pro­ The unifying theme of these three grammes, and similar innovations are seen books lies in their focus on trade unions as one alternative to correct this problem and power: power within unions, the — the other approach considered involves power which unions exercise at the work­ a new "war on labour." ' place, and the power of unions at the politi­ The composition of the Cooper/ cal level. It is with the different concep­ Mumford reader with one contribution tualizations of power that one finds most to from each of nine European countries disagree with. If the authors fail to resolve (Section II & HI) presents another prob­ the many questions concerning trade lem. Many of these contributions deal unions today, they do evoke a lively with specific case studies or phases in the response. And with that we can say the development of work humanization and debates continue. participative innovations. The chapters on Norway and Sweden are particularly suc­ cessful examples. The problem in this Heather McAllister approach is that an overall evaluation of University of Toronto such changes cannot be undertaken suc­ cessfully by viewing these experiments in Cary L. Cooper and Enid Mumford, eds. isolation from general economic and polit­ The Quality of Working Life in Western ical conditions. In Sweden and Norway, and Eastern Europe (Westport, Ct.: for example, QWL innovations and Greenwood Press 1979) and Murray labour-management relations in general Yanowitch, Soviet Work Attitudes: The have historically been closely dependent Issue of Participation in Management not only on general economic conditions (White Plains, N.Y.; M.E. Sharpe 1979). zut also on the balance of power between labour and capital. The slow-down in THE FIRST THING to strike the reader of such innovations in Sweden during the these two volumes is the overriding pri­ past few years is an illustration of this macy of economic factors in the introduc­ reality. In this connection, I would tion of work humanization, quality of suggest that it is an oversimplification to working life (QWL), and related innova­ suggest, as the editors do, that unions and tions. With the possible exception of management share a "common set of Yugoslavia, productivity considerations values on the kind of society that Scan­ have been the primary reason for the dinavian countries should be trying to increasing popularity of such innovations, achieve." both in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in Canada and the United States. Since the Cooper/Mumford volume The introductory comments by Cooper contains frequent references to the United and Mumford, implying a greater concern States and Britain it is important to under­ with productivity issues in Eastern line the different socio-economic Europe, while Western Europe "appears framework of the United States, the to view participation and work design as United Kingdom, and Canada on the one contributing to an improved social situa­ hand, and many of the West European tion," are misleading. A recent analysis of countries covered in the volume on the other, One way to illustrate this difference contemporary trade journals in the United 1 States for instance illustrates a growing Paul Goldman and Donald R. Van Houlen, concern with declining productivity "Uncertainty, Conflict, and Labor Relations in among employers. Two general explana­ the Modem Firm: Productivity and tions are offered: the inability of business Capitalism's 'Human Face' " (Part I & II), Eco­ to invest in profitable technological inno­ nomic and Industrial Democracy, I, ! & 2 (1980). 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

is by using the concept of liberal corpora­ employers in QWL and related innovations tism as a definitional category, particu­ in a liberal corporatist context must there­ larly for the Scandinavian countries and fore be seen as being qualitatively differ­ the Federal Republic of Germany. The ent from cooperation in countries struggle between labour and capital in like Canada and the United States where Sweden, for example, can be usefully the working-class movement is relatively analyzed in the context of a liberal corpo- weak in relation to capital. Partial support ratist model. The increased militancy of for this view, in the case of the United the labour movement in terms of new Kingdom, can be found in the contribu­ labour legislation, tougher bargaining tion by Lupton, Tanner, and Schnelle positions on wages and work environment (Chapter 4). reforms, coupled with the fact that much Two of the contributions from West- of the new legislation has met with strong em Europe are written by trade unionists. employer resistance and has yet to be The radical historical analysis by Matteo operationahzed in the private sector, Rollier sees union strategy in Italy not would seem to indicate a stage in the simply in the narrow terms of QWL, "but development of relations between labour rather as an issue concerned with the over­ and capital which can best be described as all use to which labour is put inside the "liberal corporatist." factory." The organization of work is seen A recent application of the corporatist in the context of an overall union strategy model to West Germany fits the Swedish of changing the entire system of capitalist and Norwegian models very well. The economic development. author argues that while the integration Jack Peel makes the important but fre­ and institutionalization of unions has quently overlooked point that unions have served the interest of capital, this has been been struggling for better working condi­ feasible only because it has simulta­ tions long before employers or govern­ neously appeared, from the perspective of ments showed any interest in these issues. the labour movement, as a successful It is all the more surprising to see another strategy representing particular interests 2 author in the same volume (Geert of the unions and their membership. Hofstede) state that workers have rarely Liberal corporatism reflects the exist­ demanded humanization of their jobs. ing balance of power between labour and Peel continues by outlining point by point capital in a particular phase of capitalist why many unions today seem to be less development. As Panitch has pointed out, than enthusiastic in co-operating in QWL liberal corporatism cannot be reduced to innovations. class collaboration, while at the same The chapter by A.T.M. Wilson, while time, it cannot come about without class lacking the historical approach taken by collaboration. Geert Hofstede (Chapter 2 Rollier, is nevertheless a useful introduc­ in the Cooper/Mumford volume) tion to the subject. The author recognizes describes some of the same manifestations the economic imperatives surrounding using the "power distance and uncertainty QWL innovations. He points out that while avoidance" model without, however, most government support for such pro­ dealing with the changing function of the Mate in this phase of capitalist develop­ grammes in Western Europe was initiated ment. during the economic boom of the early 1970s, in no case does it appear to have Union cooperation/collaboration with been cut back in later, more difficult " Wolfgang Strecck. Gewerkschaftliche years. This is an important point since ear­ Organisutionsprobteme in der Sozialstaat- lier "waves" of work humanization and lithen Demakratie, Dissertation, Frankfurt am participative management in Europe as Main, 1980. well as in Canada and the United States, REVIEWS 311

have often been terminated by employers need to gain the support of unions and once the initial economic or political rea­ workers if the revolution is to be more sons for these initiatives no longer than a "palace revolution." Without prej­ existed.3 udice to the final outcome of work One partial explanation of this devel­ humanization and related innovations, the opment might be that the reasons which above scenario suffers badly from a lack initially compelled governments and of historical perspective and even more so employers to initiate or support such inno­ from a lack of awareness of the role of the vations have not disappeared. Traditional state in contemporary capitalist society. repressive measures are believed to be In the American and Canadian context the counterproductive in most West European notion of a "Work Humanization Revolu­ nations as we move into the 1980s. A more tion" along the lines described by complete answer must be sought in the Hofstede seems ludicrous. Whatever context of the changing balance of power shifts of power between labour and capital between labour and capital in many West have occurred in western Europe or in the European countries. The emerging liberal United States and Canada, have been the corporatist framework in many of these result of successful working-class strug­ countries has given the working-class gles and there is little evidence to suggest movement the power to resist attempts to any change in this pattern. terminate programmes perceived to be Two of the chapters deal with the still advantageous to organized labour. inadequate tools and results of evaluating Geert Hofstede is the only contributor work reorganization programmes. who has no hesitation in describing the Anthony Hopwood is concerned with the Work Humanization movement in terms of inadequate assessment of economic costs the "Third Industrial Revolution." He and benefits of work reorganization pro­ sees the Human Relations ideology, a grammes and proposes a breakdown into forerunner of the present "Work Humani­ three categories for the purpose of evalua­ zation Revolution," as having only tink­ tion: the operational (enterprise level); the ered with the symptoms of worker alien- systemic (the impact of work organization nation and argues that an actual shift in on the long term capacity of the enterprise power is more evident in the "Humaniza­ to adapt to its internal and external envi­ tion of Work Revolution." The evidence ronment); and the societal (covering those for this bold statement is, however, slim. costs and benefits which are borne or His scenario for the "Humanization of received by society as a whole). Work Revolution" rests on four parties: James Taylor offers a useful critique the ruling élite (employers, top manage­ of the present-day state of QWL evalua­ ment and sometimes union leaders); the tions. If evaluations imply measurement revolutionary élite of the "humanizers" of the degree to which a given innovation (academics, management consultants, results in the hoped for solutions, then, as some politicians, professionals, junior Taylor points out, we are faced with the managers, and some union leaders); the problem that in many instances the oppressed workers; and others (workers in intended results have either not been pub­ non-alienating jobs). Hofstede argues that lished or not even been stated explicitly. the "humanizers," who are rarely aware In the American and Canadian context that they are a "revolutionary élite," will researchers may well face another politi­ cal problem. Given the adversary relation­ 3 For a good account relating to the United Kingdom see Harvje Ramsay. "Cycles of Con­ ship between union and employers and the trol: Worker Participation in Sociological and suspicion with which many unions view Historical Perspective." in Sociology, 11 QWL innovations, stated intentions of (1977). such innovations may prove to be mean- 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

ingless as a yardstick for accurate meas­ management operates, and defines the urement. terms used to describe the Yugoslav sys­ Section II of the Cooper/M uni ford tem. This, is however, not sufficient for volume offers examples of QWL related an understanding of how the system oper­ innovations in six west European ates in practice. We are left with too many countries. We have already mentioned the questions as to the actual decision-making contribution on Italy. What is of particular process, the distribution of power interest in other chapters are the reported between the various organs of self- case studies. In the case of Norway, Max management as well as the role of man­ Elden uses a case study of two banks to agement, experts, and the League of Com­ illustrate one phase of the Industrial munists. Democracy Programme in Norway. This The contribution from Czechoslovakia is a very satisfying phase in a national pro­ tells us little about worker participation in gramme.* Similarly, the contribution of that country except to outline models and Sweden based on material compiled by phases with little content. The impression the Swedish Central Organization of one is left with, particularly in respect to a Salaried Employees (TCO) should be of case study of an engineering enterprise, is particular interest to trade unions since it involves five case studies which were car­ that the approach is essentially top-down, ried out using local resources and without that it was successful in increasing pro­ expert participation. duction, and that it involved a limited dose of job enlargement and job enrich­ The case studies as well as the intro­ ment. but the essential details are missing. ductory comments in the Dutch and The contribution on Hungary by Danish contributions illustrate manage­ Csaba Mako and L. Héthy is very reveal­ ment-initiated change efforts; in the case ing. The two authors differentiate of the Dutch case study the innovations between two principal philosophies of met with initial resistance from middle worker participation: job-oriented partici­ and lower management as well as staff pation and the so-called power-oriented specialists who feared that their tasks participation model. The former model were at stake. The contribution from focusses mainly on improvement of work France is largely based on a survey con­ efficiency and is thus of particular interest ducted by the author in 1975/76. Initia­ to management. The latter, while never tives in job redesign come exclusively from clearly spelled out, implies a redistribu­ top management and are largely oriented tion of power within the enterprise as well to economic goals. Union opposition, par­ as fundamental changes in the role of the ticularly at the national level, is almost unions. The authors are fully aware that automatic. the conditions for successful participation The contribution from eastern Europe are dependent not only on the power rela­ (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugo­ tions within an enterprise but also on slavia) are, with the exception of the chap­ those pertaining in the wider society. ter on Hungary, disappointing. Bogdan They give a critical account of the func­ Kavcic gives an accurate and useful intro­ tions of trade unions in Hungary and the duction to the legal and institutional critical reactions of workers to manage­ framework within which worker self- ment initiatives and union policies and actions. A case study of a management- * The Industrial Democracy Programme should initiated change effort in a large factory be seen in the cuntext of more recent changes in work environment reform. For an up-to-date producing engines and rear axles for cars account se Bjom Gustavsen and Gerry Hun- and railway coaches gives empirical evi­ nius. New Patterns of Work Reform: The Case dence for some of the general observa­ of Noway (Oslo: Oslo University Press 1981). tions made by the authors. REVIEWS 313

In the second book under review here such as production conferences, trade Murray Yanowitch has collected a fas­ unions, and the enterprise's party organi­ cinating series of essays about the emerg­ zation. For a brief critique of the Hun­ ing discussion on worker participation in garian equivalent of these "organs of par­ management in the USSR. No actual ticipation" the reader should consult the innovations are analyzed in this volume.5 Cooper/Mumford volume. What is under The discussion emerged during the eco­ discussion here is foremost the idea (hat nomic reform of 1965 and ended in the managers should be elected and be early 1970s only to re-emerge in 1977. accountable to those who elected them. The very fact that such a discussion took Ideological support for such a radical place is of considerable interest. We can departure from contemporary Soviet prac­ only speculate about the reasons for its tice is given by Kapeliush in a quotation re-emergence in 1977, but the recurring from Lenin who stated that "Democracy, problems with excessive labour turnover implemented to the fullest and most con­ and disappointing productivity perform­ sistent degree conceivable, transforms ance are likely to be among the main rea­ bourgeois democracy into proletarian sons. Job satisfaction studies in the Soviet democracy." Union differ to some extent from many American and Canadian studies by the The political difficulties in implement­ inclusion of non-work related factors. A ing elections of managers become evident study of 10.720 Leningrad workers who when we look at the reported results of had quit their jobs (reported by ladov) various opinion surveys reported by revealed that 35.6 per cent gave dissatis­ Kapeliush. Support for the election of faction with working conditions as their managers decreases sharply as we move reason, 27.5 per cent listed housing and from rank and file workers (89 per cent in related issues, and 21.4 per cent men­ favour) to higher level managers (47.3 per tioned wages, while 15.5 per cent gave cent in favour). The large percentage in other reasons. While ladov takes the social favour of elections may come as a surprise division of labour and narrow profes- to many readers. While several instances sionalization as given, Aitov tackles the of such elections are mentioned by the design of technology when he argues that authors in this volume, it is not clear how the design of new technology (in machine extensive this practice has become, nor is building in this instance) must take into the actual process of these reported elec­ account the socio-psychological needs of tions described in any detail. workers if a deterioration of attitudes It is customary to conclude a review towards work is to be avoided. with some general positive or negative comments. This is difficult in respect to The issue of workers' participation in readers. The Yanowitch volume is a must management is discussed in the contribu­ for anyone interested in labour- tions by Kapeliush, Alekseev, and management related issues in the USSR. Tikhonov. It should be noted here that this The Cooper/Mumford volume contains discussion essentially ignores the ""offi­ valuable contributions, particularly the cial" channels of worker participation case studies from western Europe and 5 Hungary. Its shortcomings should be clear For a description of one reported, but short­ to readers of this review. lived innovation in the democratization of man­ agement in a state farm, see Murray Gerry Hunnius Yanowitch, "'Pressures for More 'Partici­ York University patory' Forms of Economic Organization in the Soviet Union," Paper prepared for the First Pastoral Production and Society/ International Conference on the Economics of Production Pastorale et Société (London Workers' Management, Dubrovnik, October and Paris: Cambridge University Press 1978, published in Economic Analysis and and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de Workers' Management, XII (1978). l'Homme 1979). 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Pastoral nomadism is a form of social groups of nomads. Further contributions adaptation to a peculiar environment more by Hamès on the Maures and a general or less concentrated along a world-wide study by Burnham refine the processes of frontier between the steppe and farmland. political centralization in terms of external Pastoral nomadism is based on the and internal factors. exploitation of this environment through The second major thrust of this collec­ the "intermediary of gregarious migratory tion is a critique of ecological reduc- herbivorous flocks or herds under the tionism as an explanatory tool. By con­ management of a human group;" it differs centrating on the economic and social from ranching because it is a precapitalist constraints of access to resources, contrib­ economic activity. utors such as Lefébure on the Ayt Atla of The recent devastating drought in Morocco argue that variables other than Sahelian Africa has stimulated increased the natural and demographic must be used interest in pastoral nomadic societies. to account for the social differentiation found among social groups. This perspec­ This interest has taken two general though tive of differential access to resources and not mutually exclusive forms: 1) studies the development of inequalities runs paral­ directly or indirectly sponsored by inter­ lel to the critique of segmentary lineages. national development agencies and con* cerned with ameliorating pastoral condi­ Nomadic pastoralism was never a tions and underwriting commercial self-contained economic activity. Herders exchanges; and 2) studies concerned with need to supplement their diets of milk, understanding the form and structure of blood, and occasionally meat, with grain nomadic groups. and vegetable products. This gave rise to Pastoral Production and Society fits the development of trade and the articula­ neatly into the second category. It is the tion of social relationships with sedentary farmers, which in turn had two implica­ collection of papers presented at an inter­ tions. First, it established an exchange national colloquium held in Paris in 1976 value on products of pastoral production under the direction of the Equipe écologie and therefore the foundation for social et anthropologie des sociétés pastorales. inequality based on control over the prod­ The conference was organized with an ucts of trade. Second, the biological explicit call for a discussion of theoreti­ necessity of securing agricultural products cal, conceptual, and methodological created a dialectic which occasionally led issues, and a desire to avoid empirical to efforts by nomads to create political detail. If there is coherence to the papers, hegemony. The alternating claims to that unity lies in a critical perspective on power (and therefore control over the two dominant themes in anthropologi­ resources and surplus) by nomads and cal studies of nomadic pastoralists. farmers has been a historical theme all The contributors, although not uni­ along the desert fringe. formly and not always consciously, take issue with Evans-Pritchard's concept of For those not directly interested in segmentary lineage as the basis of pastoral nomadism, this collection pro­ nomadic political and social organization. vides insights into the current debate rag­ According to Evans-Pritchard, nomadic ing within French marxist anthropology. groups were composed of lineages with Adherents of Maurice Godelier's concept relatively equal control over resources and of kinship acting as relations of produc­ manpower, which effectively limited cen­ tion are pitted against adherents of Claude tralization of power. Studies by Bonté and Meillassoux's argument that the articula­ Gast on the Tuareg and by Digard and tion of kinship structure reflects the form Legrand on the nomads of Asia of the economy. Tala! Asad offers a short demonstrate the historical dynamics of paper arguing that there arc only two political centralization among different modes of production, a precapitalist one REVIEWS 315 and a capitalist one, and Lawrence and closes with a call for innovation, Krader, compiler of Marx's Ethnographic accuracy, and a warning to avoid jargon. Notebooks, has a piece on nomads and the Richard Leopold invokes the standards of state. Despite the unevenness of the contri­ early giants in the history of American butions, Pastoral Production and Society foreign policy and then predicts that the reaffirms the value of historical material­ field will soon witness a "renewed dedica­ ism. tion to basic research." (243) Some of the essays in non-American Richard Roberts topics are more promising. After a wide Stanford University ranging review of developments in mod­ Charles F. Delzell, éd., The Future of ern Japanese historiography, John Whit­ History (Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt ney Hall asks western historians to aban­ University Press 1977). don their almost exclusive use of Europe as a model for comparative purposes and THIS COLLECTION of essays grew out of to consider Japan's social and economic a symposium held at Vanderbilt Univer­ history as an alternative. Lewis Spitz chal­ sity in 1975. Several established scholars lenges the traditional division of European were invited to offer evaluations of their history into ancient, medieval, and mod­ particular fields and to assess new meth­ ern periods. His attempt to relocate the odologies and interpretations. Although Reformation in the broad sweep of Euro­ the topic of the book is timely, its tone is pean history is instructive to anyone who generally cautious and at times, down­ is tempted to relegate a particular epoch to right superficial. Editor Charles F. "a time of transition." Gordon Wright Delzell begins by suggesting that the ably defends the writing of contemporary essays are united by the caveat that "the history from critics who argue that stu­ historian should keep his mind open to dents of post-World War I Europe seem to new methodologies and revisionisms but focus only on critical episodes at the at the same time preserve a healthy skepti­ expense of underlying structures of social cism of pseudosciences, new dogmatisms change. His essay raises the question of and the merely faddish." (x) Several of the the failure of the Annales school to deal authors perform admirably to the stand­ effectively with the modem period. ards of this inauspicious and bland begin­ Two of the essays should be singled ning. out for special mention. Lawrence Stone Practitioners of the history of ideas outlines the changing relationship will benefit little from Paul Conkin's defi­ between history and the social sciences nition of an intellectual historian as "one since 1870. Between 1870 and 1930, who concentrates, if not exclusively, then Stone argues, historians and social scien­ predominantly upon past concepts and tists conducted very little dialogue. With beliefs." (113) Nor will their current crisis the development of the Annales school, of identity be eased by his elaboration of the methods of social scientists were intellectual history as the chronicle of increasingly appropriated by historians. great moments in western thought. On the This happy integration forced historians to topic of the history of the American south, make explicit their hidden assumptions, to C. Vann Woodward opens with a celebra­ define their terms more precisely, to tion of the proliferation of studies over the refine research strategies, and to support past 30 years and then abruptly launches impressionistic judgments with quantita­ into a witty but unnecessary attack on tive evidence. Warning historians to be Fogel and Engerman's Time on the Cross. wary of injudicious quantification, Stephan Themstrom ranges over the psycho-history, and mechanistic deter­ development of urban history as a field minism, Stone suggests methodological 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

diversity and ideological pluralism as cor­ tion, not from the West but from the East. rectives. Although readers may wish for a George Konrâd is a novelist, Ivan more adventurous solution, they will Szeléyni a sociologist. They are both of appreciate his sensitivity to the theoretical the generation which came of age at the issues involved. Likewise Bernard time of the Hungarian Revolt of 1956. Cohen's long essay on the evolution of the Since that time they have observed the history of science as a sub-discipline evolution of Hungary into the most "lib­ deserves careful scrutiny. Rich footnotes eral" of Soviet bloc nations. In 1974 they and an engaging style help to make this committed their thoughts to paper in a enigmatic field easily accessible to the manuscript which they felt constrained to non-specialist. bury each night. The police seized a copy Generally, however, the authors in this and condemned it as a manuscript "which volume recommend a cautious and non- could serve as the programme of a coun­ activist approach to the writing of history. terrevolution" (high critical praise!). The Hall, for example distinguishes between authors were given the option of emigra­ ideological history (that is, Marxist) and tion. Konrâd stayed, Szeléyni ended up in methodological history, clearly expressing Australia where he obtained the one copy his preference for the latter. The organiz­ of the manuscript which the police had ers of the symposium, moreover, chose missed, and which was finally published, not to include papers on working-class in English, in 1979. history, women's history, or immigration As it turns out the East European and ethnic history. If the future of history police are good critics, with a nose for bears any resemblance to this unexciting subversive writing. Konrâd and Szeléyni forecast, at least we will be able to say are indeed subversive. The Intellectuals that they warned us in advance. on the Road to Class Power is a very Bruce Tucker important book, along with Rudolf Dalhousie University Bahro's The Alternative in Eastern Europe perhaps the most important to George Konrâd and Ivan Szeléyni, The reach the West from the régimes of "actu­ Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power: ally existing socialism" in the 1970s. A Sociological Study of the Role of the They have written, however, a very differ­ Intelligentsia in Socialism, translated by ent book than Bahro's ideological Marx­ Andrew Arato and Richard E. Allen (New ist vision: more empirical, more sociolog­ York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1979). ical, perhaps more cynical or more realis­ tic, depending upon one's point of view. THERE HAS BEEN a great deal of specula­ tion in the West in recent years about the They adopt a Marxist mode of class appearance of a "new class" of techno­ analysis, which to their surprise, after crats and intellectuals. One right-wing years of avoiding official orthodoxy, they ideologue appearing in the Financial Post suddenly discovered to be the most power­ has even spoken of a "ruling class of ful at hand. But it is, in a sense, a Webe- bureaucrats and publicists" — proving, if rian analysis as well and to the extent that it nothing else, that when reactionaries is Marxist, it undermines some fundamen­ adopt Marxist terminology they are apt to tal Marxist assumptions by turning them sound even more idiotic than usual. upon themselves. The core of their insight Unfortunately, much of the "new class" is that while class conflict is indeed the discussion has been not much more motor power of change in modern social enlightening than this, from whatever formations, there is no reason to see the ideological vantage point it has issued. working class as a universal class which Now comes a brilliant and exacting study will end class oppression by overthrowing of the "new class" in process of forma­ capital. The socialist societies of Eastern REVIEWS 317

Europe instead exemplify, in a more (usually Marxist) and empirical developed manner than the market soci­ revisionists whose social science forces eties of the West, a continuing dialectic of them to re-examine the official doctrines. class conflict, this time around the Both categories are examined with unspar­ emergence of the intellectuals as a new ing candour, without a hint of romanti­ class force. Moreover, the very emergence cism: as marginal Eastern European intel­ and triumph of socialism can best be lectuals, the authors are extraordinarily understood as the work of intellectuals self-critical, maintaining the courage of striving for class consciousness and class their methodological convictions. They power in the process of remaking the realistically discuss the tortuous dialecti­ world. The working class is still left at the cal process by which, they argue force­ post and, one would assume from the fully, the intelligentsia under socialism authors' argument, are rather likely to will ultimately form a class, a class which always remain there. will be the real beneficiary of socialist It is the authors' thesis that intellectu­ revolutions. als are in the process of forming a class, in The argument is dense, rich, and contemporary Eastern European regimes, suggestive. Given the circumstances of its although nowhere else in the world. This composition it lacks the armoury of foot­ development has roots in the specific his­ notes and references behind which social torical evolution of the intelligentsia in scientists normally hide, but as an essay in Eastern Europe, which they argue was social and political criticism it stands on already distinct from the Western experi­ its own, unadorned and provocative. Kon- ence before the advent of socialist regimes rad and Szeléyni have the uncanny knack (Perry Anderson argues this in a some­ of disarming critical reactions in the what different manner in Lineages of the reader by pre-empting possible cavils in Absolutist Slate), but which derives its advance. It is above all a book which real impetus from the nature of states should be read very carefully by Western based on the legitimating principle of Marxists. The authors' vision of the "rational redistribution" as opposed to socialist future is unsentimental. Paradox­ market allocation. In this teleotogical ically, they undermine the Marxist telos context of societal choice the stage is set by the critical application of Marxist for the rise of the intellectuals who deal method. This should generate a serious above all in values. They analyze the dialectical tension betwen the transcen­ debate, which cannot be engaged here dence of values and the historically deter­ within the confines of a short review. mined class interests of intellectuals I completed my reading of this book at imminent in their social position. In the the moment of the dénouement of the latter case they investigate in detail the Gdansk shipyard strike in August 1980. contradictory location of intellectuals The apparent victory of the workers sig­ between the ruling party élite and the nalled in the granting of free trade unions working class. It is here that the fertile and the right to strike is a remarkable dynamic of transition from post-Stalinism symbol of the vitality of working-class to a third phase of socialism can be dis­ struggle against a régime which claims to cerned. be a workers' state. Konrad and Szelényi in their realistic manner were not unaware of The intelligentsia itself can be divided such possibilities when writing this book, into a "technocracy" utilized by the state nor were they unaware of the potential and the marginal intellectuals who rest in alliance between militant workers and the uneasy relationship with the ruling élite marginal, dissident intelligentsia which and its repressive apparatus. The margi­ seems to have taken shape in Poland. nals in tum divide into ideological critics Indeed, they predict it. But they ground 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR their analysis on the hard base of imma­ Dublin, and they are particularly good in nent class interests, not on romantic no­ their discussion of the ideas and practices tions of revolutionary transcendence. And of the French theatre since Romain Roll- in this harsh light, it is the intelligentsia, and's passionate espousal of Le Théâtre not the working class which will inherit du Peuple in 1903. Rolland's pamphlet is the leading role in the next phase of fairly well known, but much less so, at socialism. This phase, the authors suggest least to English-speaking readers, are the with mordant irony at the end of their work of Maurice Pottecher at Bussang in book, will have arrived "when some Eas­ the Vosges, the syndicalist Theatre tern European publisher accepts this essay Confédéral de la Grange-Aux-Belles, and for publication." Léon Moussinac's Théâtre d'Action Inter­ national. On more familiar subjects, like Reginald Whitaker Firmin Gémier and Jean Vilar, their dis­ Carleton University cussions are equally worthy of attention. In other parts of the territory, post- revolutionary Russia, Weimar Germany, David Bradby and John McCormick, and the Anglo-American world, their People's Theatre (London: Rowman and commentary is less original, to be sure, Littlefield 1978). but it is useful to be asked to consider simultaneous responses to the ideas asso­ PEOPLE'S THEATRE turns out to be a dif­ ciated with people's theatre across a com­ ficult concept, at least for Messrs. Bradby plex set of historical circumstances. and McCormick. Is it, for instance, the Doing so implies another book than the theatre of a nation as a whole, rich and one we have here, a more profound study poor alike? Or, of the underprivileged and in comparative theatre. But Bradby and oppressed members of society? If the lat­ McCormick point the interested enquirer ter, is its purpose to enhance their politi­ in the right general direction. cal awareness? Or, to extend to them the cultural privileges hitherto the preserve of the wealthy and educated? Again, is Alan Andrews theatre exclusively an instrument of edu­ Dalhousie University cation and propaganda? Or, a stimulus to community debate about social aims, Paul J. McNulty, The Origins and Deve I~ achievements and failures? optnent of Labor Economics Subscribers to each of these different aims are part of the panorama surveyed by MUCH OF CURRENT labour economics our authors. Thus, they concede at the can be aptly characterized as embodying a outset that only a negative definition is lot of brains but very little memory and possible: "all have been united in their even less common sense. It is therefore impatience with existing theatrical forms, highly refreshing to read a book such as audiences, buildings, techniques." How­ this — a book which brings both brains ever, since not everyone infected by this and common sense to the task of restoring same impatience is included here, this a memory to present day labour econom­ definition is scarcely more helpful than a ics. positive one would be. McNulty's point is that the current Nevertheless, the book certainly has state of mainstream labour economics in its uses and not least because it sheds light North America is rather atypical. Cur­ on unfamiliar areas in the history of the rently, it is seen basically as a branch of modern theatre. The authors are both lec­ applied microtheory and/or applied econ­ turers in French, Bradby at the University ometrics. Primary attention is devoted to of Kent, McCormick at Trinity College, models of individual maximizing behav- REVIEWS 319 iour, the efficiency properties of equilib­ wealth and the determinant of value, in his rium market relationships, and the techni­ view that the skill and dexterity of the cal characteristics of statistical estimating population were the ultimate source of techniques. Labour economics is thus national economic strength, in his critique now very close to mainstream neoclassical of wage regulation by the employing economics, but McNulty points out that it classes, and in his advocacy of a high is not so very long ago that it maintained wage, high productivity policy, Smith was an interdisciplinary perspective which was writing more as a social critic than as an in general very critical of laissez-faire eco­ apologist for existing wages doctrines. nomic theory. Indeed, he points out that McNulty points out that Smith attacked over time the very conception of labour in both slavery and the combinations of mas­ the productive process has evolved in ters and employers to restrain wages. parallel with the actual social evolution of Smith saw both the alienation of labour work relationships. In his book he pre­ under conditions of extensive division of sents the evolution of the study of labour labour and the inequality of bargaining from the writings of early economists to power between employers and employees the emergence of labour economics as a in labour markets — as McNulty points distinct field of study. out, his successors were far narrower in In feudal societies, where impersonal their analyses. markets for wage labour did not yet exist, It is in McNulty's discussion of classi­ "justice" was seen as the principle on cal economists that today's economists which wage administration should be will begin to feel a sense of déjà vu. founded. When wages were predomi­ Although Ricardo saw distribution as "the nantly set by princely fiat or guild regula­ principal problem of political economy" tion, there was no need for a theory of and offered a theory of value wherein how wages were set, rather labour eco­ labour played a crucial (but not exclusive) nomics was seen as that branch of ethics role, still it is the methodology of his which defined "what wages should be in analysis which had the more lasting order to ensure justice in social dealings." impact. In constructing highly abstract (19) Neither in feudal nor mercantilist models without institutional content, in times, however, did notions of "justice" emphasizing the behaviour of competitive imply any tendency to advocate high markets, and in concentrating on equilib­ wages. McNulty notes the "paradox" rium properities in the long run, Ricardo that, although the labour of artisans was led several generations of English econ­ seen as the ultimate source of national omists away from the study of concrete wealth, "considerable agreement existed social reality. Classical economists on the social utility of low wages." (31) tended to be anti-union (because unions Strangely, he argues: "Although many of impeded market forces), to eschew social the economic commentators during the responsibility for the poor (since they had age of mercantilism were themselves brought it on themselves), and to argue tradesmen, pleading their own causes, it that the level of real wages was set by a would be cynical and shortsighted to dis­ "wages fund" whose size was beyond any miss the general approval of the idea of individual's control. But as McNulty puts wage regulation as merely a self-serving it, "the greatest failure of the classical effort to advance the interests of the trad­ economists' study of labor may well lie in ing and employing class." (25) their inability to explain the existence of widespread poverty and unemployment on By contrast to previous writers, Adam grounds other than those having to do with Smith appeared in 1776 as a positive behaviour that was less than fully rational friend of labour. In his emphasis on on the part of workers or other owners of labour as the ultimate source of economic 320 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

factors of production." (90) To which one the relations between the State and the can only add plus ça change.... citizens" (a declaration softened only to In his discussion of Marxism, McNul- "we regard the state as an agency whose ty's book is perhaps weakest. Not only is positive assistance is one of the indispen­ there a relatively cursory treatment of sable conditions of human progress" in the Marx, there is no attention, whatsoever. adopted statement of principles). How to writers in Marx's tradition, who came many would recognize American labour after him. There is, for example, no men­ economics as characterized by "the histor­ tion made of such modern Marxist writers ical and comparative approach to the study as Morishima who have largely resurrec­ of labor institutions and organizations, an ted Marx' s labour theory of value. inductive study of labor's actual economic McNulty quotes Samuelson on Marx as a position and the effects of labor's "minor post Ricardian" and Schumpeter policies, an espousal of the ideal of an on Marxism as a religion as well as a sys­ interventionist state in labor matters, and tem of economics. Clearly McNulty is not an emphasis on the actions of groups a Marxist, as one might guess from the rather than of individuals." (139) very organization of the book. In empha­ McNulty notes the origin of these tenden­ sizing the internal logic of the evolution of cies in the German heritage of many of the labour economics, McNulty de- prominent early writers in labour econom­ emphasized its role as an ideology. ics, but emphasizes that the institutional Although he quotes authors such as school was a uniquely American approach Walker who asserted that belief in the to the study of labour issues. In empha­ antagonism between labour and capital sizing the roles played by Ely, Commons, would "blaspheme against the harmonies Perlman, Adams, Sumner, and many of Providence" and although he notes the others in the late 1800s and early 1900s. urge for social reform present in the early McNulty is reminding us of an interdiscip­ institutional treatment of labour econom­ linary tradition which is now largely for­ ics, still McNulty never attempts to draw gotten. Such failure of memory means these observations into a historical con­ that institutional and radical writers such text. It is a strange omission, since many as Doeringer and Piore and Bowles and of the writers on labour economics have Gintis in the 1970s must rediscover the been explicit about their consciousness of work of Kerr, Reynolds, and Dunlop in the social role played by theories of the the late 1940s/early 1950s, who were in labour market. J.B. Clark, for example, in their own turn lineal descendents of the his original presentation of his "natural institutional approach of the 1920s and law" that wages are determined by 1930s. labour's marginal productivity wrote that "the right of society to exist in its present Since the 1970s, of course, main­ form, and the probability that it will con­ stream labour economics in North tinue so to exist, are at stake" in the argu­ America has become increasingly anti- ment. institutional and ahistorical. The victory of the human capital/neoclassical research Nevertheless in his discussion of the tradition within labour economics has origins of labour economics as an applied pushed interdisciplinary approaches into field in North America McNulty is at his the twilight world of industrial relations best. Who today would recognize the and has concentrated economists' atten­ American Economics Association as an tion, once again, on individualistic, organization whose draft prospectus held purely economic, non-institutional, expla­ that "the doctrine of laissez-faire is unsafe nations of labour market phenomena. The in politics and unsound in morals and that strengths of this approach include a much it suggests an inadequate explanation of more rigorous attitude to explicit theoriz- REVIEWS 321

ing and a much greater attention to statis­ ease with which disease could spread tical verification of hypotheses. McNulty from mean streets to modish ones, turned also emphasizes, however, the weak­ their attention to the physical and — in nesses involved in a rather extreme form characteristic Victorian fashion — moral of tunnel vision in much of current labour circumstances of the most profoundly economics combined with excessive tech­ uncomfortable of their fellow citizens. nical obscurantism. He concludes his Part of this concern was evidenced by the book with the hope that the pendulum will reports of sanitary conditions by Edwin swing back to a more balanced approach Chadwich {An Inquiry into the Sanitary to the study of labour — to which senti­ Condition of the Labouring Population of ment one can only say "amen." Great Britain, 1842) and Dr. Kay Shuttleworth (The Moral and Physical Lars Osberg Condition of the Working Classes Dalhousie University Employed in the Cotton Manufacture of Manchester, 1832), as well as by the Anne Humpherys, Travels into the Poor famous revelations about the living and Man's Country: The Work of Henry working conditions of the labouring peo­ Mayhew (Firle, Sussex: Caliban Books ple embodied in the spate of parliamen­ 1977); and Sheila M. Smith, The Other tary investigations into the circumstances Nation: The Poor in English Novels of the of workers, particularly children and 1840s and 1850s (Oxford: Clarendon women, in factories, mines, potteries, and Press iy80). agriculture. These studies are familiar fare for the modern social and economic historian, but for most Victorian readers In [the dilchl float large masses of green rotting the main source of information about the weed, and against the posts of the bridge are poor, Disraeli's "other nation," came swollen carcasses of dead animals, almost bursting with the gases of putrefaction.... The from literary and journalistic renderings striking peculiarity of Jacob's Island consists in of this data. The description of Jacob's the wooden galleries and sleeping rooms of the Island quoted above would have been houses which overhang the dark flood.... well-known; Dickens had made the area Across some parts of the stream whole rooms infamous in Oliver Twist, probably the have been built, so that house adjoins house; best part of Charles Kingsley's 1850 and here with the very stench of death rising novel Alton Locke centred on the sweat­ through the boards, human beings sleep night shops and hovels of this rookery, and after night, until the last sleep of all comes Rev. Thomas Beames quoted Mayhew's upon them years before their time. Scarce a article extensively in his widely read house but yellow linen is hanging to dry over Rookeries of London (1850). This slum the balustrade of staves, or else ran out on a attracted attention because both deadly long oar where the sulphur-coloured clothes disease and capitalist exploitation were hang over the waters, and you are almost won- derstruck to see their form and colour unre- here writ large. Here the first cholera flected in the putrid ditch beneath. (Henry deaths in the outbreaks of 1832 and 1840 Mayhew, "A Visit to the Cholera Districts of occurred, here metropolitan slum clear­ Bermondsey," Morning Chronicle, 24 Sep­ ances dramatically increased over­ tember 1849). crowding, here landlords charged exorbit­ ant rents for derelict accommodation, and IN THE MIDDLE DECADES of the here the evils of sweated labour were nineteenth century, comfortable Victo­ much in evidence. Reinforcing the sense rians, their attention caught by "the of Jacob's Island as the archetypal symbol attraction of repulsion," and, in a period of the horror, as the menace and the punctuated by devastating cholera tragedy of the "other nation," both epidemics, by a growing awareness of the 322 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Kingsley and Dickens in their novels Humpherys argues, what makes made this the scene of death — the acci­ Mayhew's work "a very important corol­ dental death of the sweated and starving lary to all the best social observations of Jemmy Downes and the violent death of the period" is his craftsmanship in pre­ the dastardly Bill S ikes. Jacob's Island senting what he uncovered. Descriptive was but one of many symbols used by scenes are carefully constructed to com­ authors concerned with the problems of bine a sense of scientific neutrality with poverty: palimpsests upon which the ecol­ strong emotional impact. The author ogy of the English poor was described. backs up her interpretation by setting Mayhew amongst his literary contempo­ The authors of the books under review raries (particularly Kingsley and Dic­ are concerned to situate the writers they kens). Where other accounts of a trade or examine within the framework of the era's a locale are festooned with moralizing, social concerns and attitudes and lo exam­ irony or fulsome rhetoric, she shows ine their differing uses of the same mate­ Mayhew's version to have greater verac­ rial. The two works are fruitfully consid­ ity — both as social science and as art. ered together because of the manner in which their most telling interpretations In The Other Nation, Smith examines mesh. Humphery's lucid examination of the re-creation of the lives and environ­ Henry Mayhew, the pioneering social ment of the poor in a number of English investigator, elucidates Mayhew's objec­ novels (in particular Elizabeth Gaskell's tive of producing a scientific study of Mary Barton, Kingsley's Alton Locke labour and the poor based on a collection and Yeast, Dickens' Hard Times, and of facts, with, in his words, "a view of Disraeli's Sybil). She shows that, like arriving ultimately at the laws and circum­ Mayhew's writings, these authors* work stances affecting and controlling the oper­ mirrored a broader concern with poverty ations and rewards of the labourer." and were extensively based on fact: on (Interestingly, Humpherys attributes parliamentary Blue Books, on investiga­ much of his scientific bent to his early tive reportage, and personal knowledge. It interest in chemistry.) It was his aim, not is instructive to note how closely even to write an exposé, but a work of political such a wooden novel as Sybil often economy. As his work advanced, this aim adheres to the evidence of the Blue receded ever further into the distance. Books. Disraeli, unlike Mayhew or even Where he was strikingly successful was in the parliamentary commissioners, does giving a face and voice to London's not let the poor speak for themselves; their labouring people. His success was born of real experiences are generalized so as to a passionate interest in the details of ordi­ make them seem improbable, and words nary lives, which precluded the fixing of and sentiments of another class are made information into preconceived to issue from their lips. Despite their authors' frequent protestations of a docu­ pigeonholes, and a nonjudgemental mentary approach, these novels are, empathy — or, in E.P. Thompson's despite occasional glimpses which ring words, a freedom from "'middle-class true, essentially reflections of middle moral halitosis." His ability to get people class fears and opinions rather than faith­ to talk at length about themselves yields ful recreations of working-class reality. significant insights into working-class The need to spin an exciting and saleable life; through the famous material on yarn meant that any attempt at faithful street-sellers we learn about working- rendering (to which Mrs. Gaskell comes class amusements, domestic decorations, 'closest) was distorted by constant crisis: and favourite foods, as well as something extreme poverty, social unrest, violence, of working people's interests, sym­ untimely death or moral dilemmas. pathies, and concerns. But beyond this, REVIEWS 323

Smith's analysis plainly shows that for shared some of the same concerns and most authors the poor were problems perspectives as her subjects, the reproduc­ rather than people, and as "problems" tion of some 47 plates and discussion of working people were not seen by these them in the text adds little to her argu­ writers as capable of internally generating ment. Surely this is not the place for solutions to their own difficulties. Indeed, inclusion of works by Courbet and Van many authors seem to have had the dual Gogh, nor of photographs and prints — purpose of urging their readers to acts of including some yawningly familiar ones Christian charity — such as shipping large by Doré — two or three decades later than chunks of the "problem" off to the col­ the period with which the book is con­ onies — and of denouncing trade union­ cerned. Fairly successful in her use of his­ ism, showing through their plots that torical material elsewhere, Smith under­ unions inevitably resulted in violence and mines confidence in the initial chapter by threatened the peace of the bourgeois excessive reliance on the view of a single world. The novelists, in Smith's view, historian (whose name is mentioned four despite the flaws in their works, were times on one page) and by her unfortunate responding creatively to the "other citing of that author's most bizarre asser­ nation;" they sought to go beyond frivo­ tion — that ' 'the working class... [came] lous entertainment to expose, to inform, into existence with the Parliamentary and to teach. They counselled the middle Reform movement from 1816 to 1819." class to social responsibility against the hands-off policy of laissez-faire econom­ ics, and to compassion against Utilitarian Both authors make solid use of recent rigidities. research on the writers who are their sub­ jects. Humpherys* survey of work on Smith's laudable intention to relate Mayhew is particularly perspicuous. her analysis of the novels to both a wider Seeking to interpret the man as well as the artistic and literary context and a concrete work, Humpherys begins with a biog­ historical setting has led to a book which raphy which helps to elucidate Mayhew's is sometimes disjointed and often bloated. social perspective, formed in part in reac­ In one 90 page chapter designed to show tion against a tyrannical father who was how the novelists depicted the environ­ steeped in bourgeois respectability, and ment of the poor, the argument is diffused nurtured in London's bohemian journalis­ by frequent detailed analyses of descrip­ tic circles. Her account balances the tive passages, tedious for a reader who well-known social investigations with knows the novels and probably confusing Mayhew's little known and more conven­ for one who does not, and further weak­ tionally preachy writings, and gives a fas­ ened by many extraneous or marginally cinating account of the development of relevant asides. Some of the additional the surveys and the evolution of the inter­ information might have been relegated to viewing techniques. Mayhew himself discursive footnotes, but here all the notes indicated that he deleted expletives, but are incorporated in the body of the text, an what else was omitted or altered? To what irritating practice which further impedes extent did he make use of shorthand repor­ the literary flow. As though prescient that ters or research assistants to record evi­ only those assigned the task of reviewing dence, organize material, and work up the book will read all of the lengthy quota­ statistics? There is also no consideration tions (one from Ruskin takes up nearly a of the way in which these massive investi­ page), the author often repeats the salient gations were financed. While some ques­ points of the quoted material in her fol­ tions remain unanswered, this book con­ lowing remarks. Pertinent though it is to siderably advances our understanding of a indicate that painters and photographers writer whose work foreshadowed the later 324 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

social investigations of Booth and corsage auxquelles F. Basch tend à resti­ Rowntree. tuer le titre de grévistes à part entière. Both Humpherys and Smith conclude Car, ce que l'auteur met en cause, c'est le that for most writers, however sincere "spontanéisme" ou ['"amateurisme" dont their intentions, the working class on a trop souvent qualifié cette grève de remained the other nation: foreign, mys­ femmes. La publication du Journal pré­ terious, and vaguely threatening. Only sente donc un double intérêt car il pose Mayhew saw them as individuals, found simultanément le problème de la lutte des them interesting when not in crisis, and classes et de la lutte des femmes, ainsi que recognized with them a common human­ celui des liens entre l'une et l'autre. ity. Mayhew alone of the literary figures Première grève massive de femmes, examined could have written: "Might not étape importante dans la maturation du 'the finest gentleman in Europe' have mouvement ouvrier juif en Amérique, la been the greatest blackguard in Bill­ date du 22 novembre 1909 marque un ingsgate, had he been born to carry a tournant dans l'histoire syndicale améri­ fish-basket on his head instead of a caine. Le mouvement mobilise entre crown?" (Mayhew, London Labour and 20,000 et 30,000 travailleurs de l'indus­ the London Poor, I, 230) trie du vêtement, dont 80% de femmes, immigrantes juives âgées de 16 à 25 ans. Patricia E. Malcolmson La féminisation des métiers de l'aiguille Queen's University (en 1913, 70% des travailleuses de la cou­ ture sont des femmes), s'accompagne d'une deuxième caractéristique: la majo­ Theresa Malkiel, Journal d'une gréviste, rité de ces femmes sont des immigrantes, traduit de l'américain par Marianne Sir- 57% de Juives Russes et 35% d'Italiennes. gent et présenté par Françoise Base h 7% seulement sont Américanies.' (Paris: Payot 1980). Quelles étaient les conditions de vie et de travail de ces ouvrières? Une militante MALGRÉ SON TITRE, cet ouvrage offre de la première heure, Pauiline Newman, plus que le simple récit fictif d'une apporte le témoignage suivant: "Je travail­ ouvrière en lutte contre l'exploitation d'un lais au neuvième étage avec d'autres capitalisme naissant. En première partie, enfants comme moi. Notre tâche n'était la longue introduction au Journal de T. pas difficile: une fois terminées les coutu­ Malkiel par Françoise Basch, "Histoire res à la machine, c'était à nous les jeunes d'une grève de femmes à New York en de couper les fils qui restaient avec de 1909," mérite à elle seule tout notre inté­ petits ciseaux. Et quand arrivaient les ins­ rêt. Le travail de F. Basch vise dans un pecteurs, savez-vous ce qui se passait? premier temps à resituer cet épisode dans Les contremaîtres faisaient grimper tous son contexte historique et sociologique: les enfants dans des caisses ... les recou­ main d'oeuvre immigrée, à peine qualifiée, vraient avec les corsages terminés. .. car discriminée en tant que femmes à la fois nous étions trop jeunes pour travailler par les ouvriers syndiqués et par les légalement à l'usine." patrons. L'objectif de cette historienne féministe: donner une voix à des êtres humains qui cumulent plusieurs formes Une organisation du travail relative­ d'oppression se renforçant mutuellement: ment anarchique règne dans les ateliers, prolétaire, immigrante, femme. encourageant une surexploitation des tra­ vailleuses. Bien souvent, les membres Quant au Journal publié une première d'une même famille ou les amies, jusqu'à et dernière fois en 1910, il soulève un six ou sept dans certains cas, forment un intérêt certain comme témoignage de "l'insurrection des 20,000" ouvrières du 1 Interview de P. Newman, id. p.23. REVIEWS 325 groupe d'apprenties; toutefois, un seul d'action collective, porteuse d'un heritage nom apparaît dans les livres car elles se familial et culturel entravant parfois partagent le même salaire. Les semaines l'effort d'adaptation à une organisation de travail sont de 56 heures, parfois de 70 plus combative); d'autre part, la com­ en haute saison, les heures supplémentai­ plexité des rapports avec le mouvement res étant rémunérées au tarif normal. ouvrier américain dont l'idéologie corpo­ Pour prévenir tout éveil de solidarité, ratiste et un certain chauvinisme s'oppo­ on place par exemple une ouvrière juive à sent à la philosophie plus totalisante et côté d'une Italienne: immigrantes récen­ d'inspiration messianique du mouvement tes, parlant peu ou pas l'anglais, elles ne ouvrier juif. peuvent communiquer. L'exploitation atteint son comble quand... "On leur Quelle est la situation des femmes à comptait l'électricité 20% plus cher que le l'intérieur du mouvement? En 1910, elles tarif, ainsi que chaque aiguille cassée, représentent environ 20% de la main chaque aiguille usée à 25% plus chère que d'oeuvre, mais 3.3% seulement des tra­ son prix. On leur faisait payer la vailleuses de la confection, des textiles et chaise... la patère pour le chapeau. On de la blanchisserie sont syndiquées.4 leur infligeait une amende pour un retard Certaines causes expliquent le faible taux de cinq minutes le matin "' de syndicalisation chez les femmes: leur Enfin, après plus d'une demi-journée jeunesse (plusieurs en sont encore à "l'âge passée dans des ateliers malsains, les nou­ du jeu"); l'extrême mobilité de veaux arrivants ne peuvent que retrouver cette catégorie de travailleuses (le lieu de des conditions de vie et de logement tout travail n'est pour elles qu'un lieu de pas­ aussi sordides: ils s'entassent dans les sage avant le mariage). Cette insertion "bidonvilles du Nouveau Monde," échap­ provisoire dans le monde du travail les pant à toute norme de sécurité et écarte d'emblée du mouvement syndical d'hygiène. "On sortait de l'atelier, som­ américain préoccupé des seuls ouvriers bre et froid l'hiver, brûlant l'été, sale, ni spécialisés. balayé ni aéré, et on rentrait chez soi: De plus, les réflexes sexistes ne font mais quel chez soi?... je vivais dans deux pas défaut. Ainsi, lors de la première pièces avec ma mère et mes deux soeurs; grève qui suit la mise en place, en 1904, la chambre à coucher n'avait pas de fenê­ d'un syndicat dans une entreprise de cha­ tre, les toilettes étaient dans la cour; mais peaux, seuls les hommes mariés reçoivent c'était pareil à l'usine. L'été, les trottoirs, une allocation de subsistance. Dans le échelles d'incendie, toits se transfor­ grand syndicat des métiers du vêtement, maient en chambres à coucher pour pou­ l'ILGWW fondé en 1900 et qui compte voir respirer un peu. On portait des vête­ deux tiers de membres féminins, aucun ments pas chers, on se logeait pas cher, on nom de femme n'est inscrit dans les comp­ mangeait pas cher et on n'avait rien à tes rendus de congrès avant 1909 et 3 espérer du lendemain." aucune femme n'apparaît sur les photos officielles du bureau national. En 1917, à Les difficultés d'implantation d'une Philadelphie, le même syndicat décide de organisation syndicale chez les ouvriers n'accorder aux femmes que la moitié des juifs, arrivés de fraîche date en Amérique, prestations auxquelles les hommes ont relèvent de deux causes: d'une part, le droit. type même d'immigration (main d'oeuvre non spécialisée, ne possédant pas la lan­ Les problèmes spécifiquement fémi­ gue du pays d'accueil, sans tradition nins ne sont pas abordés lors des réunions syndicales; les besoins propres des * Souvenir History of the Shirtwaistmaker femmes ne sont pas reconnus. Il est vrai Strike, id. p. 26. * R. Miller J., "The British and American 3 Interview de P. Newman, id. p. 17-18. Trade Union Leagues." Ibid. p.33. 326 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

que le militantisme féminin reste faible, lutte de classes et lutte de sexes se mani­ surtout chez les immigrantes italiennes, feste particulièrement à l'occasion des davantage opprimées par la famille de campagnes pour le vote des femmes, l'Église; enfermées à la maison, peu ins­ selon que la priorité va à l'une ou à l'autre truites, ces femmes sont des victimes tendance. rêvées. Toutefois, ce sont les travailleuses A l'occasion de la grève des ouvrières américaines de la confection qui manifes­ du corsage de 1909, quelques mouve­ tent le plus de réticence à s'organiser. ments suffragistes dont les effectifs se Elles seront souvent recrutées par les composent principalement de femmes à patrons comme "briseuses de grève." l'aise apportent leur soutien, surtout maté­ Conscientes des privilèges que leur con­ riel, aux grévistes. Quelles est la signifi­ fère la nationalité et la connaissance de la cation politique de ce que certaines ont langue mais inconscientes de leur propre appelé la "brigade aux visons?" C'est la exploitation, au mieux se montreront-elles solidarité entre femmes qui les concerne sympathiques au mouvement des immi­ avant tout; laissant dans l'ombre les autres grantes mais ne seront pas vraiment soli­ objectifs politiques, elles se désolidarisent daires de leurs objectifs. Ce sont donc la progressivement du mouvement ouvrier et diversité et l'hétérogénéité ethnique, cul­ finissent par adopter des positions nette­ turelle et linguistique qui vont constituer ment anti-socialistes. À la faveur d'un l'obstacle majeur à tout effort d'organisa­ mouvement massif des ouvrières, les suf­ tion syndicale. fragistes ont donc tout simplement tenté À un autre niveau, toutefois, l'appui de capitaliser sur sa dynamique pour ren­ du pays d'adoption doit être souligné. forcer leurs objectifs propres, sans aller S'inscrivant dans le courant philantropi- toutefois jusqu'à mettre en cause l'ordre que et réformiste protestant d'une partie établi. Le suffrage des femmes n'a donc de la bourgeoisie américaine, le soutien, pu constituer à lui seul une base commune d'abord limité aux "bonnes oeuvres" en de lutte. milieu défavorisé, se transforme rapide­ ment vue l'ampleur des problèmes, en une Par contre, l'appui des militantes du organisation élargie et plus politique: la Socialist Party of America se situe à un National Women's Trade Union League. tout autre niveau et s'oriente vers une per­ Ses objectifs: L" Aider les femmes dans le spective analytique également différente. monde ouvrier à améliorer leur condition Les premières fondaient leur action sur et ce, en les soutenant dans leur effort l'oppression des femmes de toutes les d'organisation." (42) classes; les secondes mettent en relief l'exploitation de la classe ouvrière et pri­ Dans un premier temps, la Ligue se vilégient la solidarité de classe. Il semble consacre à une tâche d'information sur les ainsi que l'oppression spécifique des conditions de travail des ouvrières et femmes à l'intérieur d'une classe oppri­ d'éducation auprès de ces dernières. Les mée ne soit pas encore à l'ordre du jour. militantes de la Ligue proclament une Que ce soit dans le cadre de la Ligue où double appartenance idéologique: à la fois leurs besoins particuliers en tant que alliées des travailleurs et solidaires du femmes sont reconnus, mais où l'apparte­ mouvement des femmes. Cette double nance à une autre classe n'est pas acceptée allégeance ne sera pas sans susciter des sans restriction; que ce soit à l'intérieur du conflits, douloureusement ressentis par syndicat où leur condition de prolétaires certaines. Car, même si "l'oppression est mise en valeur mais où celle de pesait sur les femmes d'un bout à l'autre femmes est niée, les militantes ouvrières de l'échelle sociale,... 'alliées* et tra­ et socialistes des années 1900 ne trouvent vailleuses vécurent une collaboration pas à satisfaire les multiples facettes de tourmentée." (47) Le tiraillement entre leur identité. Finalement, seule la Ligue reconnaîtra le triple niveau d'oppression sant aux ouvrières, elle dénonce la double des travailleuses: prolétaires, immigrantes journée de travail, au foyer et à l'usine. T. et femmes. Malkiel constate également que les Qui est Theresa Malkiel, quelles sont femmes doivent compter sur leurs propres ses préoccupations et pourquoi avoir forces: "... les femmes ne peuvent se adopté le journal comme forme d'expres­ tourner vers les hommes pour leur libéra­ sion littéraire et politique? L'auteur est tion ... ceux-ci n'étant pas, eux-mêmes juive, originaire d'Europe de l'Est; elle libérés. La véritable libération des arrive à New York en 1891 et travaille femmes ne se réalisera que par elles- dans un atelier de couture dès l'âge de mêmes. ..." (86) Par contre, elle ne favo­ dix-sept ans. Très tôt militante, favorable rise pas vraiment l'éclatement de l'organi­ à une division des tâches entre parti et sation traditionnelle patriarcale et recon­ syndicat, elle se joint à d'autres socialis­ naît même la prééminence morale de tes pour fonder, en 1901, le Socialist l'homme: "... les femmes continuent à Party of America. considérer l'homme comme le guide de leur vie; c'est donc à lui qu'il incombe de Electoraliste et réformiste, le SPA guider ses pas...." (88) n'endosse pas la conception d'une société de classes. T. Malkiel adhère à la même Le Journal d'une gréviste reflète indé­ option idéologique; toutefois, sur la ques­ niablement ces contradictions. Comme le tion des femmes, elle adopte des opinions souligne F. Basch, la tonalité affective du plus tranchées. Elle participe activement à récit évoque l'intensité de l'expérience certains groups autonomes de femmes vécue par l'auteur ainsi que la persistance ainsi qu'à la section femme du SPA et ce, de son attachement au milieu ouvrier malgré les positions orthodoxes du parti qu'elle a quitté après son mariage avec concernant la famille e! le rôle de la l'avocat Léon Malkiel et qui l'a fait passer femme. D'ailleurs, elle ne sera pas de dans "l'establishment socialiste." Le celles qui vont quitter le parti en 1912 à la Journal est donc le récit Fictif de cette suite de divergences sur cette question. grève des ouvrières du corsage. Il met en Ses objectifs: briser le silence qui scène une jeune Américaine, Mary, dont entoure l'exploitation dont sont victimes le père et le fiancé ne reconnaissent pas à les immigrantes, surtout les Juives, peu ou une femme le droit de se mettre en grève. pas représentées dans les cadres du SPA; Le vécu de l'héroïne sert les fins didacti­ travailler à l'obtention du vote des que de l'auteur en mettant en relief une femmes, voie d'accès à un changement de double dimension: d'un côté, la vie pri­ société par lequel passe inévitablement la vée; de l'autre, une vie de labeur et de liberation féminine. Cet engagement lutte, toutes*deux s'interpénétrant dans un l'amène spontanément à s'impliquer dans réseau de contradictions complexe mais la "grève des 20,000." Et c'est avant tout dynamique. La première ouvre la porte au comme écrivain et journaliste qu'elle y combat d'une femme opprimée en tant participe. que femme; la second, au témoignage de la militante politique. Le Journal d'une gréviste ainsi que plusieurs brochures ou articles publiés par Le texte de T. Malkiel va à peine au- T. Malkiel reflètent toutefois une vision delà du féminisme modéré et ambigu qui plutôt floue et peu réaliste du changement l'a toujours caractérisée. Mais, contraire­ social: celui-ci constitue une condition ment aux critiques intransigeantes de F. nécessaire et suffisante à l'égalité des Basch, cette ambiguité et ce va-et-vient de sexes. F. Basch fait état du divorce entre l'héroïne au beau milieu de ses contradic­ les positions officielles de l'auteur favora­ tions internes nous paraît révéler davan­ bles au parti malgré son anti-féminisme et tage la femme réelle, à l'écoute de ses certains moments de lucidité où, s'adres- besoins, mais également aux prises avec 328 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

sa volonté d'autonomie et les réticences qui laisse la travailleur à la merci du de son entourage. L'auteur a échappé au patron, tous ces échecs vont accroître le piège de la femme mythique, débarassée mécontentement et semer les premiers des contraintes intériorisées. germes d'agitation qui déboucheront sur Bien sûr. le récit par trop lyrique et la grève générale de 191 I dans l'industrie pourtant réaliste quant à la simplicité du manteau. d'expression, nous ennuie très vite; il a Symbole le plus dramatique de ce malgré tout valeur de témoignage. Témoi­ demi-échec, l'incendie de l'usine "Trian­ gnage de cette grève qui fut longue et dure gle" en mars 1911 où meurent calcinées (treize semaines et plus d'un million de 146 ouvrières, travaillant dans des condi­ dollars d'amendes); témoignage qui fait tions inacceptables au strict plan de la état d'une répression brutale et de mau­ sécurité matérielle. Ces faits et bien vais traitements (plus de sept cents arres­ d'autres, F. Basch nous les livre en vrac. tations) et dont le bilan est "relativement" Il convient encore une fois de souligner la positif: les effectifs syndicaux augmentent valeur du travail de l'historienne qui considérablement; l'ouvrière n'a plus à éclaire et restitue toute sa dimension au payer ni fourniture ni amende; elle tra­ texte de l'écrivain et de la militante. vaille 52 heurs et non plus 60; enfin, son salaire est plus élevé de 20%. (68-9) Mais la non-reconnaissance syndicale, l'obliga­ Lucie Bullick tion de négocier individuellement avec Institut d'Études du Développement chaque entreprise, l'absence de garantie Économique et Social (Paris)

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