Friday, November 6 2-4pm
Mike McCarthy - More to Lose Than
Your Chains: American Employment
Schemes and Working-Class Politics in
Comparative Perspective, 1870-1929
A striking feature of American political development, as compared to her counterparts in Europe and Australasia, is an industrial working class that never fully supported a working-class party. Portions voted for the United Labor parties in 1886, the labor-populist parties in 1894, the Socialist Labor Party in the late 1890s, the American Socialist Party in the early 1900s and the farmer-labor parties after World War I. But none of these parties were able to consolidate and expand a base of industrial working-class support. Yet, an additional point of clear divergence in the US prior to the New Deal was the relative absence of state-initiated social welfare policies that had already taken root in every other advancing capitalist country. Instead, firms provided social welfare provisions. Furthermore, private fringe-benefits remain an important aspect of America’s unique approach to welfare. Recently, private social benefits in the US represented more than 8.3 percent of GDP, whereas in ten other advanced capitalist countries they represented an average of less than 2.2 percent.
The proposed research will investigate two core research questions. First, does the unique role that firms in the US play as providers of social welfare help to explain the lack of industrial working-class support of a labor-based party in the US? Second, does variation in firms’ welfare provisions across municipalities account for variation in the degree of working-class support in the US?