Capital & Class. - 1988. - Issue 34 by Conference of Socialist Economists

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Such a situation has political dangers : it defines the agenda of debate, assumes a radical break with the past, conflates and obscures complex and contradictory processes within the Flexibility organisation of work, and by asserting a sea-change of management strategy and employment structure, fuses description, prediction and prescription towards a self-fulfilling prophecy . A deconstruction of 'flexibility' as an extremely powerful term which legitimises an array of policy practices is long overdue .

2 per cent of total employment (Creigh et al, 1986) . While this may be associated with redundancy, it does not seem to be associated with flexibility strategies in large companies . Atkinson and Meager (NEDO, 1986 : 58) found the growth in self-employment 'negligible', except in financial services and the food and drink sector, and here the rationale did not appear to be to increase 'flexibility' . The evidence for a 'core' The `core' defined by recruitment criteria. To start with the problem of defining a 'core', the labelling of all permanent employees as the 'core' workforce is either tautologous or highly debatable if it overlooks segmentation in status, terms and conditions within the permanently employed .

As it retreated into the laager of empire, its monopoly position became ever more an obstacle which the US could not surmount . At the lowest point of the depression, when us production stood at 53 relative to 1929, British production had fallen to a mere 84. After Japan its recovery was the earliest, and its depression the shallowest, of the capitalist world . 37 Capital & Class 38 The following table shows how decisive Britain's military and political domination proved in the battle for markets.