Work Authority in Industry: The Happy Demise of the Ideal Type

Abstract

Recent dramatic changes in the social and political organization of Eastern Europe and what was the Soviet Union have led to a widespread reformulation of certain generic terms that have long plagued comparative scholarship. Similarly, with the destruction of the monolithic Berlin Wall has come the imperative to deconstruct monolithic terms, such as communism or traditionalism, which have often obfuscated difference and negated geographical and historical specificity. In this essay, and in the spirit of laying to rest the ghost of the ideal type, I compare the work and authority relations in Chinese and Soviet factories in the 1960s and 1970s. When the differing variables that coalesced to form distinctive patterns of labor relations in these two countries during those years are more clearly understood, it will be possible to discuss the current patterns of change with greater accuracy. In addition, when the essentially structuralist constraints of an overarching communist type are loosened, it is also possible to reintroduce actors into the dialectic and to enrich the comparison with finer social and historical detail.