----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Johanning" <jjohanning at igc.org>
And by repeating the orthodox wisdom about the universality of classical liberalism in American political culture, Hamby fails to acknowledge recent demonstrations that, for instance, American labor law before Roosevelt was in fact based in feudalism. Before the passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, courts habitually struck down laws reforming the workplace by following common-law doctrine -- that the 'master-servant' relationship could not be interfered with through legislation. It is therefore false to claim, as Hamby does, that American trade unions achieved justice and benefits only for their members."
The language has changed, but there is certainly a lot of "feudalism" left in employer-worker relationships.
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The locus classicus for the above thesis is Karen Orren's "Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law and Liberal Development in the US." Also *extremely* worthwhile are Robert Steinfeld's two books on the history of Anglo-American labor law from 1350-1900.
There's also quite a bit of discussion of neo-feudalism and neo-medievalism going on in the International Relations lit. over the past few years..........
Ian