Summary
Lev Grinberg’s model (Grinberg 1991a) of capitalist domination in Israel, combining neo-corporatism and dual labor markets as complementary rather than contradictory: centralized, party-controlled labor organizations imposed from above coexist with a labor market divided by ethnic and national identity and citizenship, so that strong workers’ resistance can unintentionally maintain the structure that divides and rules the workers (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.25-26).
Details
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Inverting Goldthorpe (1984), who treated neo-corporatism (when workers are more powerful) and dual labor markets (when employers are more powerful and divide the workers) as two contradictory tendencies in late capitalism, Grinberg argues these were two potentially complementary models, whose combination provides the most sophisticated model of capitalist domination, with Israel a prime example (PDF p.26).
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The Histadrut was established in 1920 as a quasi-state institution, providing welfare services to its members and ruled by political parties, serving the political objective of creating a separate Jewish State; it was not representative of the workers, imposed party-controlled trade unions on Jewish workers, and relied on the workers’ weakness and dependency (Shapiro 1976; Medding 1972; Shalev 1992; Grinberg 1991) (PDF p.25).
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In 1980 the 13 worker committees that organized to confront the government were not the weak workers the Histadrut restrained, but powerful workers who benefitted from their position in the primary sector of the labor market, whose wages were not restrained, and who were interested in helping the Histadrut maintain the political structure that facilitated their privileged position; the image of a revolt against the Histadrut was misleading, as there was deep hidden cooperation between the worker committees and the umbrella organization (PDF p.25-26).
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Workers were divided according to their ethnic and national identity, as well as citizenship (Semyonov and Levin-Epstein 1987), and had very different opportunities to organize at labor market level (PDF p.26).
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The same research added a concept of state autonomy: to Skocpol’s (1985) three conditions — crisis, professional bureaucracy and independent financial resources — Grinberg added a crucial fourth element, political facilitation by the party system and ruling coalition (Grinberg 1991); the research revealed the differential capacities of competing political parties to mediate between state, capital, and labor, and state autonomy depends on the institutional differentiation between state apparatuses, civil society organizations, and political parties, and the ruling parties’ ability to facilitate autonomous state decisions — in the Israeli case, the deep economic crisis of 1984-1985 facilitated collaboration by the two dominant parties, both of which had failed to slow down inflation in the past (PDF p.27).
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Chapter 6 restates the model in action: the Histadrut, both workers’ representative and big capital owner with quasi-state loan-allocation powers, had a vested interest in inflation through the WS Financial Plan’s non-indexed loans, buttressed its representative position only among the less powerful workers, and in 1980 secretly cooperated with the Forum/13 committees that appeared to revolt against it — resolving its contradiction without transforming its non-representative, partisan structure (PDF p.193-194, 199).
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Treasury Minister Yigal Horowitz’s October 1980 revocation of the Financial Plan — the material basis of that interest — was a profound structural transformation of state-Histadrut relations and a key factor in the later financial collapse of most Histadrut firms and bodies dependent on it (PDF p.200-201).
Related pages
Lev Grinberg, Histadrut, Vicious Institutional Triangle, Movements of Resistance, Moments of Resistance