Development study, about the developing world, has been invariably taken as appendage of theories forwarded to understand the stages of capitalist society. If a lesson is to be derived from the history of the industrial society that is useful to the developing world, the industrial society must be scrutinized from its unique features that make it different from hitherto societies, and that allowed it to dramatically change the productive forces outside "the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins .. "(Marx, Karl, 1974:703-4); the protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism (Weber); the accumulation of capital and prerequisites for take offs (Rostow and Gerschenkron); and most of all the idea that capital needed for further development is generated by extraction of surplus from labor power. This paper, by basing the productivity and sustainable growth of industrial society in a unique type of management and trade union relationship at the enterprise level, and the two traditions of liberalism and socialism, at the larger society level, forwards a development theory. In industrial society although not in developing societies as interest representation in the enterprise is based on the twin grounds of productivity (interest of the management) and social justice (that of trade unions); we have now a socio-economic system, for the first time in history, whereby the political structure and economic growth of the industrial society are its concomitant basic identifying features. This paper by taking the assumption that technological innovation and surplus for further capital formation come from the competitive nature of enterprises within the setting of the above relations in the competing enterprises raises trade union management relationship into a theorizing point for development studies.