ABSTRACT
Josef Esser’s stimulating chapter on capitalism and corporatism concentrates not on a critique of Goldthorpe’s work, but on developing an alternative analysis which, he suggests, constitutes a necessary corrective to Goldthorpe’s studies of corporatism and dualism. Indeed, he states that he agrees with the substance of much of Goldthorpe’s work on corporatism and dualism. But something crucial is missing in this work: ‘a conceptual framework, grounded in social theory, which could explain why in liberal-capitalist societies one or other tendency [viz. corporatism and dualism]… predominates and which particular set of political and economic conditions generates which particular outcomes’. Goldthorpe criticizes those Marxist theorists who would see corporatism as ‘the latest or highest form of the social control of labour under capitalism’. Esser, though writing within a Marxist tradition himself, agrees with the substance of this criticism; yet in his view not all Marxist analysis can be so easily dealt with. The main part of his contribution is devoted to setting out an alternative framework which, he argues, can provide a fuller theoretical account of the phenomena analyzed by Goldthorpe.
