ABSTRACT
An attempt to draw together the separate but thematically linked arguments developed in the previous seven chapters is fraught with difficulty. Movement between different levels of analysis blunts analytical precision and on occasion results in the reader being asked to do something more difficult than the author. Any writer who moves between different subjects and literature sets faces these difficulties. However, this is necessary to draw out and to expose the proximate nature of many declinist arguments that highlight, isolate and separate the industrial relations system from other aspects of the state and capitalist regulation.
