Trading Work and Pay

Abstract

Gary Cross's article is a valuable and welcome attempt to extend the scope of labor history. to give attention to issues of popular culture and consumption that have been brought to current prominence especially by work in the field of cultural studies. Clearly this move reflects wider changes in society, in which the hegemony of commodity production appears to be exercised as much through the attractions of advertising and the shopping mall as through the disciplines of the factory and office. But as Cross is able to show, these are not new issues. Working-class movements have long sought to resist the power of capitalism and class domination through the social linkages of alternative class cultures as well as through bargaining and political strategies, though in the consumerist age these forms of cultural resistance are easily forgotten. Cross is right to suggest that these issues and struggles - whatever their outcomes have been – are important to labor history. His central idea of exploring the antinomies of money (conferring power within a market system) and time (allowing partial withdrawal from it) as alternative kinds of class demands, is an interesting and potentially fruitful one.