Monopsony Capitalism
Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age

Explores the combination of capital's changing composition and labour's subjective agency.

Ashok Kumar (Author)

9781108731973, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 October 2020

290 pages
22.2 x 15 x 1.7 cm, 0.36 kg

'Monopsony Capitalism is ambitious, engaging, and provocative, revealing much about the dynamics of conflict and regulation, mainly in the global garment industry ... [a] stimulating contribution that deserves serious attention by all advanced students and scholars interested in eliminating sweatshops.' Stephen J. Frenkel, ILR Review

This book explores the combination of capital's changing composition and labour's subjective agency to examine whether the waning days of the 'sweatshop' have indeed begun. Focused on the garment and footwear sectors, it introduces a universal logic that governs competition and reshapes the chain. By analysing workers' collective action at various sites of production, it observes how this internal logic plays out for labour who are testing the limits of the social order, stretching it until the seams show. By examining the most valorised parts of underdeveloped sectors, one can see where capital is going and how it is getting there. These findings contribute to ongoing efforts to establish workers' rights in sectors plagued by poverty and powerlessness, building fires and collapses. With this change and a capable labour movement, there's hope yet that workers may close the gap.

Acknowledgements
Introduction. The return of the sweatshop
Part I. Past: 1. The bottleneck
2. The global sweatshop
Part II. Present: 3. China: a strike at a giant footwear producer
4. India: a warehouse workers struggle at a 'full package' supplier
5. Honduras: A transnational campaign at a cotton commodity producer
Part III. Future: 6. Cartels of capital
7. Labour's power in the chain
8. Conclusion. The end of the sweatshop? Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic systems & structures [KCS], Political economy [KCP], Development economics & emerging economies [KCM], Economic growth [KCG], Labour economics [KCF], Economics of industrial organisation [KCD], Macroeconomics [KCB], Economics [KC]