Between the Labor Process and the State: The Changing Face of Factory Regimes Under Advanced Capitalism

Abstract

The paper develops the concept of politics of production through a double critique: first, of recent literature on the organization of work for ignoring the political and ideological regimes in production; and second, of recent theories of the state for failing to root its interventions in the requirements of capitalist development. The paper distinguishes three types of production politics: despotic, hegemonic, and hegemonic despotic. The focus is on national variations of hegemonic regimes. The empirical basis of the analysis is a comparison of two workshops, one in Manchester, England, and the other in Chicago, with similar work organizations and situated in similar market contexts. State supportfor those not employed and state regulation of factory regimes explain the distinctive production politics not only in Britain and the United States but also in Japan and Sweden. The different national configurations of state intervention are themselves framed by the combined and uneven development of capitalism on a world scale. Finally, consideration is given to the character of the contemporary period, in which there emerges a new form of production politics-hegemonic despotism-founded on the mobility of capital.