Rediscovery of Labour and the Disappearance of Collectivism

IN THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION we argue that the mannerin which some social scientists seek to ‘return to theemployee ’ exacerbates rather than resolves the problem of ‘absent labour’. We suggest that this shortcoming, though intelligible in its own terms, is best understood against a wider failure in the treatment of labour in the sociology of work, including Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management which in the main have worked on problematical notions of the relationship between individualism and collectivism. By contrast, we argue that the latter relationship is better understood by rooting it within the problem of what Marx termed the collective worker—the necessarily co-operative character of the capitalist labour process in which valorization depends upon collective functions of individuals where ‘it is sufficient for [a worker] to be an organ of the collective labourer, and to perform any one of its subordinate functions ’ (Marx, cited in Carter, 1985: 61). This structural feature of the capitalist labour process always confronts management and is addressed today through a range of strategic alternatives exemplified by the individualizing practices of, inter alia, HRM. Recent commentators on the Labour Process Debate have addressed the relationship between individualism, collectivism and broader changes in management strategies through a focus upon the absence of labour and the demise of collectivism. In this critical response the authors argue that almost invariably, while labour in some guise is rediscovered, this occurs at the expense of collectivism