04/16/2010

new deal lecture

question of the conditions under which reform under capitalism are possible.

the general argument, of course, is class struggle. but what is about class struggle that produces this?

thomas ferguson gives an argument that is reminiscent of botwinick's framework—concessions become rational when the cost of obstruction is greater than the cost of concession.

the consequence, of course, is that working classes have to impose cost on capitalists.

what ferguson shows is that the reform coalition within the american business community is constituted by the degree to which they feel the costs of upsurge—those that feel the costs of concesssions to labor the least, in other words, are most likely to feel the costs of the upsurge first (and can best afford those concessions, of course).

the second fact that these readings introduce is the 'blockian' argument that reform will be transmuted to be acceptable to the ruling classes, to capitalists. the mechanism for this, of course, will be that legislation will be shepharded through the State.

in these articles, the organization of the labor movement are black boxed. the lichtenstein reading foregrounds the micro-history of the organizing (chapter 7—the key point in that chapter is the inability to institutionalize the role of shop-stewards; instead, it had to resort to a bureaucratized grievance procedure as a means for expressing workers' power. this makes shop stewards a cop, rather thana mobilizer).

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additional social organizing is not redundant to labor organizing, and maybe not even just additive—but possibly interactive/multiplicative. calling into question the entire social order, not just economic questions.

first new deal coalition as an attempt to shore up the old order (you see this today, too), but it didn't ­work (today the crisis has abated, and without a labor upsurge)

question of whether capitalists approach the state as an 'organized fraction,' or whether the State itself does the organizing of 'fractions', etc.

american political economy after new deal characterized by two things

1. welfare state
2. an expansionary push