Reconceptualizing Worker Power in Strategic Industries through the Lens of Marxist State Theory

• In Event: 50858 - Contributions to Marxist Sociology

Abstract

This paper explores the dominant contemporary theories of worker power, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, and arguing that an approach incorporating Marxist state theory provides both greater coherence and analytical leverage to our understanding of worker power in strategic industries. Economistic Marxism provides crucial insights into the ways in which the structures of capitalism – at the level of the workplace and the economy as a whole – shape worker power differentially. Workers occupying strategic positions within the workplace – or workers occupying strategic positions within the broader economy – have greater power than other workers because their strategic positions provide them with greater disruptive power when they withhold their labor, sending ripples beyond their immediate work area or even industry. Yet, economistic Marxism does not tell the full story because it is unable to account for cases in which workers have a high degree of structural power and yet fail to achieve their goals. Drawing on concepts from Gramsci and Poulantzas, I propose a framework for understanding worker power in strategic sectors that centers the role of the capitalist state and the twin imperatives to avoid crises of profitability and crises of legitimacy. I argue that as a result of these twin imperatives, the state is drawn into disputes in these sectors again and again. For this reason, workers in economically strategic sectors’ success depends paradoxically on drawing on non-economic forms of power to build alliances with other actors in civil society as a buffer against the recurrent tendency towards state intervention on behalf of capital. I conclude by considering the implications for worker movements more broadly.

Author

• Caitlin R. Fox-Hodess, University of Sheffield