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Book Review: Luc Boltanski and Eva Chiapello The New Spirit of Capitalism, Verso: London, 2005; 601 pp.: 9781844671656 £24.99 (pbk)

Although the Comintern advocated the formation of factory committees, ‘there was no detailed exposition or consideration of how this could be done, let alone any serious integration of the experience of the syndicalist-influenced British shop stewards’ movement’ (p. 231). For its part, the Leninist leadership chafed at the ‘exclusive orientation on the industrial struggle and denial of “politics”’ seen as characteristic of syndicalists (p. 234). For conscious revolutionaries, ‘although syndicalism clearly represented a significant step forward from parliamentary reformism ... the exclusive emphasis on the industrial struggle meant that in practice it represented the mirror image of reformism, with its separation of economics and politics’ (p. 245). Most of all, this ‘separation’ was revealed in the syndicalist failure to fully recognise the issue of state power, as indicated in the widespread syndicalist strategies of ‘workers’ control of industry’ and the ‘revolutionary general strike’. As J. T. Murphy pointed out long afterwards, ‘“workers’ control of industry” without “workers’ ownership of industry” is utterly impossible’, and Darlington adds, ‘Only if the general strike progressed to the level of an insurrection to seize state power could it prevent an inevitable counter-attack’ (p. 250). And yet, and yet ... The organisational form that could and should have overcome these contradictions was, once again, the soviet. The Comintern itself ‘argued that it was these democratic workers’ organisations, rather than the trade unions, that needed to take power from the capitalist class’ (p. 254, emphasis added). That this did not transpire, in Britain or elsewhere, marks the tragedy of the post-war failure of revolutionary promise. In many ways, Darlington’s study of syndicalism is an extended analysis of the vexed question of party and class. ‘Class’ influenced ‘party’ in that ‘the revolutionary Marxist tradition was itself refined as a result of the influence of syndicalism, notably with the placing of trade union struggle at the very core of the communist project’, while ‘party’ criticised ‘class’ in ‘pointing to a number of crucial limitations within the syndicalist tradition, including ... the insufficiency of unions compared to soviets as the chief agency of revolution’ (p. 279, emphasis added). Yet both, it emerges in Darlington’s powerful and comprehensive account, faltered over the simple yet decisive question of how to understand that central class organisation: the trade union.