11/30/2011

two issues

1. what was the political context for the emergence of American social democracy
2. what were the limitations of this framework (i.e., the New Deal)

the theoretical challenge, which is addressed to State theory, is to understand how to make sense of these policies.

the reason that this is a challenge, simply, to State theory is to make sense the content of all of these policies associated with the New Deal.

in the 1980s, a challenge was posed by Skocpol, suggesting that Marxists tended to collapse State power into class power. Marxists, she thinks, didn't give sufficient weight to goings-on in the State in their own right. She countered with 'state-centrism,' which was distinguished by it allowed for autonomy far more thoroughgoing than 'relative autonomy.' see 1983 article in Politics and Society, which launched the debate

she argued that the State was autonomous in two senses: (1) autonomous from class forces; (2) State managers have interests of their own, which are distinct and often independent from classes

the New Deal, for her, was an example of this.

there are two explanations of the New Deal.

the established position, against which Skocpol arguing, was called 'corporate liberalism'--brought about by far-sighted, enlightened capitalists in respose to the Great Depression, in order to rationalize the political economy. two ends: (1) revive the economy; (2) achieve labour peace.

the New Deal policy is explained as an expression of capitalist preferences, and the State more-or-less follows these dictates.

the neo-Marxist position, noting that big chunks of the capitalist class were opposed to the New Deal, asked why it was that unenlightened capitalists lost out to enlightened capitalists? both Ferguson and Goldfield make the claim that the core elements of the New Deal were opposed by capitalists. what drove them to accept the reforms was driven by the labour insurgency. the key trigger being the enormous costs that the labour mobilization imposes on capital.

here, in Ferguson, those elements which could best afford the costs (foreign-oriented, capital-intensive) come around to the reforms. the textile industry, the Southern plantocracy are opposed, then, by the Rockefeller bloc which breaks away and supports the reforms.

Goldfield's argument is more-or-less consistent with this. he's more interested in directly rebutting Skocpol, of course. the claim is that Skocpol overlooks the fact that it wasn't until the labour movement reached its zenith that the Roosevelt administration came around to the Wagner Act. the intensification of the labour movement, in other words, gave the administration the wherewithal to approach the capitalist class pleading for concessions, and it gave them the support of a powerful fraction of the bourgeoisie. the State found a political base within the ruling class.

the Lichtenstein reading was meant to convey some sense of the limitations of the power that labour achieved. in Chp 7, he shows that the actual powers that labour was able to wrest away from management remained quite limited—the key thing was the system of institutionalized negotiations that was put into place on a day to day level, between the UAW and management. the instrument for negotiation in the 20s and 30s centered around a very powerful shop-steward culture—the shop stewards were in a constant state of negotiation/challenge over the conditions of work. plants were run through constant negotiation between management and shop stewards.

the UAW tried to initially institutionalize this power on the part of shop stewards. rank-and-file constantly pushed shop stewards to represent their militancy. the union was always a union movement, even in day to day reproduction.

Auto industries found this intolerable. in 1940 there's an epochal stand-off between GM and the UAW. GM demands that an arbitration system replace the shop stewards system. Reuther concedes, which is remembered as an act of betrayal. one reason that he did this, of course, was to marginalize the Left within the UAW, as part of his alliance with other elements against the Communists/Socialists, who were arguing for a system of institutionalize shop-steward power.

this had the effect of de-mobilizing the rank-and-file. the shop-steward was replaced by a Committeeman. workers had to wait for days/weeks/months. over time this transformed the structure of the union—the whole point was that grievances were to be handled without disruption of production. what this did was it took the rug out from any possibility of wildcat/extra-contractual action. the union quickly became a guarantor of labour peace.

Lichtenstein emphasizes the importance of this turn. it incapacitated the unions for later decades—this was an important step towards the enfeeblement of the labour movement. obviously it wasn't exposed in the boom years, but as the crisis set in, so did the movement's rot.

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shop-steward counterfactual is not just imaginary—England and Sweden had strong shop-steward movements.