ABSTRACT
Marxists and industrial relations pluralists distrust cooperative work-place relationships, seeking ways to explain them away as illusory or the result of strictly temporary configurations of economic forces. Industrial relations is potentially much more significant a discipline than its rather marginal academic status might suggest. Across the developed world, social market politics is under attack from economic nationalists who argue that global capitalism has nothing to offer ordinary people. The theory of industrial relations proposed is aligned with the larger project of critical theory which, in J. Bohman’s words, aims to “transform contemporary capitalism into a consensual form of social life”. Rather more importantly, putting authority relations at the centre of Industrial relations has very significant consequences for theory development. Industrial relations theory should help us to understand how to organise production so that work and the normative framework within which it takes place are freely chosen by all involved.
