Chapter 9: Marx, Marketization and Transforming Work – on Ian Greer and Charles Umney’s Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Disciplines Workers and Subverts Democracy

Neo-Marxist analysis is undergoing something of a mini revival in the sociology of work and work organizations of late as researchers reach out to theoretical traditions which had previously seemed moribund and incapable of intellectually coping with the pace and complexity of change in early 21st century capitalism. Greer and Umney’s book, Marketization, is one example of this mini revival. It needs to be evaluated in this wider contemporary context of capitalist transformation and work reorganization which has more than a hint of ‘back to the future’ about it in the recrudescence of structural changes usually associated with the early decades of the 19th century. Also, it raises fundamental questions about the role of the state in reshaping work organization as political and economic elites attempt to ‘ride the tiger’ of transformational change.