Jim Devine wrote:
On 10/9/07, Michael Nuwer <nuwermj-/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In my view it was not the industrial capitalist who understood the
relationship between mass production, high wages and mass consumption. I
think it was the new deal state, in the 1930s, that pushed this piece
onto capital.
and it was the Bonus March and a lot of other mass struggles (sit-down
strikes, etc.) that pushed the New Deal state to do anything it did
that was worthwhile.
I don't disagree, but I do wish to emphasis that the New Deal state did
not implement or adopt the demands of the mass struggles. It implemented
something different.
The specific issue that I'm emphasizing in this thread is that these
struggles were not only, or primarily, demanding a share of the benefits
from a mass production economy. Significant parts of the labor force
were not yet "prisoners of the America dream," to borrow a phrase from
Mike Davis.
Throughout the period from 1880 to the 1930s important parts of the
working class struggled for something which never emerged. And, for
sure, that struggle was not for a piece of the modern mass consumption pie.
It was only after labor's alternative (trade-union autonomy) was
closed-off by the courts and statute that industrial pluralism could,
and did, emerge. American capital was forced to make compromises to
labor under this newly emerging system, but these compromises in no way
threatened the primary prerogative to manage the production process or
to determine the social division of labor.
