Against Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Subverts Democracy and Disciplines Workers

How do markets function? Who creates, shapes and organizes them? And what do they mean for the relationship between labor and capital?

This open access book examines how the state and capital use markets to discipline the working class. Ian Greer and Charles Umney provide a comprehensive overview of the European political economy, from the European Commission to the workplace, to show how neoliberal principles translate into market mechanisms and reshape the lives of workers.

Drawing on dozens of conversations with policymakers, administrators, businesses, workers, and trade unionists across many European countries, Greer and Umney unpack marketization. They go beyond liberal theories that see markets as natural forms of economic organization and broad-brush left critiques of neoliberalism, looking behind the scenes in the current European political economy to examine the practicalities of how markets are created and manipulated by employers, policymakers and bureaucrats in pursuit of greater profitability. Far from leading to greater freedom, these processes often override the rights of individuals, degrade the status and security of workers, and undermine democratic accountability.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The University of Leeds and Cornell University.

Ian Greer is Director of the ILR Ithaca Co-Lab at Cornell University, USA.

Charles Umney is Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, UK.