ABSTRACT
Class struggle, in as much as it is formally organized into interest-mediating associations in the industrial sphere, occurs between trade unions and employers’ groups. In the final chapter we will analyse the processes of this struggle. We may define these processes in terms of actions which result in more or less transformation or reproduction of a given relationship between capital and labour. For each class, the success of class struggle will be determined by the extent to which either class gains greater control over the capitalist system as a whole (in the long term, the stakes are somewhat higher of course). We will consider this struggle subsequently in terms of changing patterns of reinvestment of surplus for accumulation and its effects on changing patterns of class shares of total income, in the variable framework of stages of economic development. In this chapter we investigate the relationship between the state, civil society and the organization of the two contending parties to this struggle. Through this investigation we establish that ‘capital’ and ‘labour’ cannot be adequately conceptualized as plural, countervailing powers. On the contrary, we argue – against much popular wisdom – that trade unions are not ‘too strong’ or ‘capable of holding the country to ransom’, but tend to be routinely more disorganized than the capital they confront, because of the characteristic structures of civil society and the state and the respective salience of these for the opposing powers. Class organization is never likely to be an unambiguous matter.
