Why Do Workers Bother?

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to deal with questions which arose in the course of research using participant-observation in some factories in the south of England. Sabotage and class warfare were not immediately obvious to the observer, indeed, activities which superficially appeared as workers' colluding in their own exploitation were more common. What I shall argue here is that resistance to the demands of capital may take different forms, only one of which is open confron tation. Some of these aparently collusive strategies may simultaneously be ways of asserting human agency under dehumanising conditions.