Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progessive Era 1890- 1920.

called "political" strike and points out, among other things, that (a) the distinction between an "economic" and a "political" strike is likely to be class based; (b) such strikes are likely to occur in greater profusion where (as in Italy and France) management is often represented by government; and (c) the "political" strike will be better understood when it is recognized to be not a revolutionary instrument (as many Italian jurists claim) but simply a quite natural weapon in the arsenal of the trade union qua political pressure group. In Melotti's view, Italian attempts to distinguish among strikes may be understandable juridically, but are absolutely unacceptable in terms of the norms of democratic pluralism. In support of this view, he cites extensively from the writings of Italian trade union leaders who represent every point in the ideological spectrum-Communist, Socialist, Catholic, and Democratic Socialist. The evidence suggests that attempts to limit the use of the strike in Italy are ultimately efforts to modify an important basis for healthy pluralistic democracy. The author himself seems to understand this but becomes enmeshed unfortunately in exactly the kinds of juridical hair-splitting against which his central theses are presumably arrayed. It is precisely this ambivalence about jurisprudence, this confused shifting from sociological to juridical analysis, that constitutes the book's major weakness. Melotti, like many young Italian sociologists, is largely self-educated in the social sciences. Thus, his attempt at sociological analysis is amateurish at best and chaotic at worst. For every page of insightful analysis there are at least twenty of the arid and tedious discussions and recitations that are so typical of Italian juridical scholarship. Little utility is served by twenty-five d finitions of the strike, a list of factors that impinge on the efficacy of the strike, an arid typology of strikes that is not subsequently used for comparative analysis, an abstract outline of the evolution of strikes and of management's countermeasures, and so on. The volume also abounds in confusing tables (for which sources are often omitted) and in striking contradictions as, for example, when he explains the short "demonstration strike" in one place as the outcome of quick trade union victories (which is highly improbable) and in another place as the inevitable and unhappy result of the notorious lack of strike funds among Italian unions (which is much more to the point). The methods whereby Italian trade unions have sought to overcome this serious handicap include a wide array of tactics such as "passive resistance," "sit downs," "checkerboard strikes," etc. These labor weapons are treated only briefly, and largely in a juridical rather than sociological manner. It is regrettable that the author ranges so widely over the law of the strike and so superficially over the complex history of such things as the general strike. Greater self-disciplined attention to the volume's title would have produced, I imagine, a much more interesting book.