Capitalist Collective Action: Competition, Cooperation and Conflict in the Coal Industry (Studies in Marxism and Social Theory)
Cambridge University Press, 11/1/1989
EAN 9780521362658, ISBN10: 0521362652
Hardcover, 272 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
This 1989 volume presents a theory of capitalist collective action and a case study of the pre-World War II American coal industry to which the theory is applied. The author examines the irony of capitalist firms that do not want to compete with each other, but often cannot avoid doing so. He then explains under what conditions businesses would be able to organize their competition and identifies the economic and political factors that facilitate or inhibit this organization. The case study not only illustrates the theory, but demonstrates how the competitive relations of capitalist firms are critically important determinants of their political behavior. The author argues that the traditional Marxist concern with conflict between workers and capitalists should be supplemented with a concern for the competitive conflicts among capitalists.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part 1
1. Economic competition and market organization
the logic of capitalist collective action
2. Forms of capitalist collective action
Part II
3. Price and wage games in the bituminous coal industry
4. Workers organize capitalists
collective bargaining and market organization, 1880–1914
5. The coal industry on the defensive, 1916–22
6. Labor-capital conflict and the disorganization of the coal market, 1921–8
7. From free competition to state intervention
Part III
8. Capitalists, workers, and the state
Bibliography
Indexes.