Firms and Workers

Abstract

The five preceding chapters have demonstrated the importance of systematic differences among firms according to the degree of monopoly power they enjoy, and among workers according to the strength of their resistance and the pressure exerted on them by the reserve army. Marx recognised such differences, but he treated firms and workers as homogeneous categories for analytical purposes. The primary difference between Marx’s analysis and the amended framework to be used here lies not in the recognition of these differences but in the analytic role played by the relation between firms of unequal monopoly power and between groups of workers of unequal strength and insulation from the reserve army. These differences allow top managers considerable flexibility for maintaining authority over all workers. Thus they represent an important means whereby the capitalist mode of production itself is maintained.