michael goldfield, "worker insurgency, radical organization, and new deal labor legislation" (1989)

(1258): thesis--'labor militance' and 'radical organization' did have a major influence on the passing of the 1935 NLRA. this opens up questions for (1) the study of US politics and (2) the study of the modern State.

(1258): noting that, prior to the 1930s, unions were de facto illegal.

(1259): skocpol's explanation for the NLRA, in four parts

1. state as potentially autonomous
2. new deal period as a time in which the state was quite autonomous from social influence
3. against six contending explanations: not (1) multi-interest reform coalition; (2) roosevelt; (3) liberal corporate elites; (4) capital-intensive industries; (5) working-class disruption, a la Piven/Cloward; (6) working-class strength, i.e., in order to control workers.
4. key is understanding the 'autonomous' milieu in which robert wagner operated; particularly autonomous at this time, in fact, due to widespread state incapacity.
   

(1262): key--goldfield wants to distinguish between four kinds of influence that capitalists can have over the State.

1. providing impetus for a bill to pass
2. dominating the content of a bill
3. the policy-outcome of a bill is what was wanted
4. the ability to block legislation, to force compromises, and otherwise control the decision-making agenda.
   

(1262-1263): key argument is that skocpol says that the state is autonomous because no one has a strong form of influence3--but goldfield's argument is that this misses influence1, influence2, and weak forms of influence3

(1263): similarly, capitalist opposition is not simply influence4, but can be a 'whole family of activities'

(1264-1265): four understandings of labor influence

1. becoming a rival 'power elite'. this has "virtually never happened," and is not the argument. many who attempt to attack the notion that the w-class had something to do with the new deal, though, attack this straw man.
2. the Sweden model (negotiations with elites on behalf of w-class). but this is not applicable to workers' insurgency, he's noting
3. piven/cloward disruption model--too much emphasis on spontaneity, misunderstands the degree to which protest was organized.
   

concessions granted by the government in order to stem working class militance and organized radicalism. insurgency can change capital's preferences [this is what he wants to argue.]

(1265-1268): there are three arguments against labor influence. goldfield does a very good job, here, of showing them to be untenable.

1. legislation preceded upsurge--well, NLRB actually settled very few cases until 1937, coming at the very end of the '34-'38 upsurge. the dam was broken without the help of the NLRB.
   
2. labor was too weak
3. causality, in fact, goes the other way--in fact, NLRA could actually be called responsible for inhibiting the further growth if we follow Skocpol's logic, re: the '38 downturn. but she's wrong, and this would be mistaken.

(1268-1268): the counter-model, in five parts

1. labor legislation was a result of interaction between labor movement, radical organizations (CP), liberal reformers, government officials.
   
2. the impetus for the passage was a direct result of the broad labor upsurge, conflicts within labor movement, and growing influence of radicalism
3. the ties of reformers to the AFL leaders are central--they actually had narrow room for maneuver, contra skocpol
4. the legislation itself was not so radical, nor was it so unambiguously pro-labor
5. the key is understanding two aspects of labor's development: (1) the unemployed movement, farmer-labor party, etc. -- added breadth and broad-based support to labor upsurge; (2) tremendous conflict within the labor movement, with a conservative AFL and more
   

(1270-1276): the model depends on three linkages

1. connection between labor upsurge and social movements (unemployed and CP, farmers' movements, etc.)
   
2. political conflict within the labor movement, with power shifting left (strikes as 'grim reaper' for the AFL)
   
3. these phenomena had an impact on the reform process (it truly alarmed elites--reform was a more compelling option than repression, becase they actually thought revolution was on the cards. this is what the AFL was telling them, too. reformers were terrified.)

(1278): acknowledging that conjunctural factors are important, too. doesn't mean to discount those. [maybe a way to bring in the ferguson]

thomas ferguson, from normalcy to new deal

(45): importance of looking not just at labor policy, but also foreign economic policy (which was "so spectacularly" a hallmark of the later new Deal)

(46): important--what stands out is the novel type of 'political coalition' built by Roosevelt: a 'historical bloc' of capital-intensive industries, investment banks, and internationally oriented commerical banks. this piece is a "formal theory" of industrial partisan preference as the "joint consequence" of class conflict and the differential impact of the world economy" [this last part is key--without class conflict, none of this applies]

(47-48): a theory of class coalitions in two parts

1. a static theory: two axes--first (49), the overarching question is the exact 'price' that businesses have to pay to obtain support from the workforce. again, this will vary, he's arguing, by the nature of your industry (two extreme example--robot workforce or machinery-less labor process); second (53), another question has to concern the position of various firms within the world economy (internationalists vs. nationalists).
   
2. a dynamic theory: the system of '96 bloc was premised on an old, protectionist and labor-intensive bloc. but there was a transition to the capital-intensive, internationalist bloc (the two ideal transitions are via boom and via crisis (56-57)), leading up to the new deal. much of the piece concerns itself with the specifics of this transition.

(58-59): in event of depression--if world trade contracts, 'economic nationalism', at first, is likely to grow. but it will also lead to secondary crises, most notably over money supply--many industries (and most people, in fact) will want lower interest rates, eventually, since deflation is seen as determinental (especially for capital-intensive industries). yet this is not in the interests of big international banks, insurance companies and bond holders.

(62): historically, the system of '96 collapsed in three stages

1. period immediately following WWI, and the boom--an emergent multinational bloc and the weakening of the old coalition (see pg 70)
   
2. after great crash of 1929, division on the question of the gold standard
3. slowly emerged the american political world as is currently known

(64): Banks needed Europeans to export surpluses, to pay back loans, so they had an interest in lowering tarriffs (presumably this is counteracted to the extent that they have given loans to companies who depend on tarriffs)

(83): as i am understanding this, abandonment of the gold standard was an attempt to kickstart 'inflation'--to seek their independence from the 'money market', in effect (French and British threatened a run on gold)

(85): first new deal coalition--initially the NRA (1933) pleased the economic nationalists, but began to self-destruct from the moment in came into operation

(87): second new deal coalition--first successful capital-intensive led political coalition (here is where we get NLRB and Wagner and whatnot, in 1935)

(89): the opposition to all this was a bloc of protectionist and labor-intensive industries

(93-94): four conclusions

1. by 1938, a 'system of '36' was in place--social welfare, oil price regulation, free trade, even 'keynesianism'
2. we need to specify the role that labor played in shaping the new deal, integrating it into the differential cost-benefit framework specified here.
   
3. note the inadequacy of traditional ways of conceptualizing business (big vs. small, monopoly vs. competitive)
4. this study has implications for contemporary politics--how much we don't know about events we've studied (noting the archival material he waded through)
   

Under huge pressure from Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats alike to cut the budget and reduce the exponential increase in the national debt, what choices would President Obama be forced to make early in his administration? More than likely comprehensive health-care will be whittled down to a barebones plan, "alternative energy" will simply mean the fraud of "clean coal," and anything that remains in the Treasury, after Wall Street's finished its looting spree, will buy bombs to pulverize more Pashtun villages, ensuring yet more generations of embittered mujahideen and jihadis.