Beyond Individualism: How Social Demands of the New Identity Groups Challenge American Political and Economic Life.

• Author: Moss, Laurence S.

In 1984 Michael J. Piore and coauthor Charles A. Sabel put forward a strikingly original thesis (The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, Basic Books, 1984). The United States mass production economy, which had sustained nearly 100 years of unparalleled material progress, was coming to an end. The authors explained that flexible methods of manufacturing were making small-sized firms more competitive than mammoth corporations [pp. 281-308]. The outmoded systems had placed limited demands on the workers' mental powers. Showing up on time, bathed and sober, was the key ingredient for success in the factory. In the age of mass production, the role of the government was limited to (1) maintaining aggregate demand at levels adequate to keep labor fully employed, (2) persuading the avaricious labor unions to adhere to wage increases that were in line with productivity gains, and (3) encouraging exports (corporate sales abroad).

By the 1970s the old game was almost gone. The mass production economy was in decline and flexible methods in manufacturing were establishing new rules and new objectives. The role labor and the unions might play in the fledgling economy remained, as Piore and Sabel pointed out on the final pages of their book, "open questions" [p. 308].

It is now a decade later and we have Piore's Beyond Individualism to explain what role labor unions can play in the new manufacturing order. The analysis of the labor market, however, is subordinated to a sweeping and impressive diagnosis of changes in the political situation in the United States over the last few decades.

Piore declares that the American economy is now "inhospitable to the structures of mass production" [p. 69]. Translated into simple English this means that in the modern economy the collective bargaining arrangements of the past do not work any more. Today, it is difficult to balance the aspirations of ordinary people and the requirements of the modern manufacturing system. The flexible production structures of the 1990s require team work, and team work requires good communication. In (northern) Italy and Japan, local workers have had less difficulty changing their work habits and social attitudes than their counterparts in the United States have recently had. The reason has to do with a richer culture. In Italy and Japan, the collectivist ethic of teamwork dominates all phases of life because society is viewed in organicist terms. In the United States...