--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> no matter what metric they used, American labor
> history stood out as
> outstandingly more violent than that of Europe
> during the formative period
> of the 1890s through the 1930s.
Several comments. First, the aforementioned period was particularly violent in the European history, so much of the violence was classified as "civil war" or just war instead of "suppression of labot unrest" (e.g. Commune of Paris, Spanish civil war). Second, most of what can be classified as civil unrest took place befor 1860 (esp. around 1848) and it was pretty violent. Third, the above comment does not indicate what was the source of violence - I would imagine that an armed mob (thanks to the cherished 2nd amenedment) called for more draconian responses. Fourth, it depends what you consider "Europe" - if you include the Russian Empire, labor suppression there was pretty violent.
The bottom line is that you cannot pin the absence of national labaor movement in the US on repression alone. There was repression, of course, but there was repression of labor almost everywhere in the world. In some places, like South Africa, it was much more severe than antyhing in the US, yet South Africa seems to have a much stronger labor movement today than the US does.
IMHO, the main reason for the weakness of national labor movement in the US is the structure of the US society and polity - its ethnic fragmentation due to migrations, its localism, its machine politics, the relative inclusiveness of the political system (contrary to Europe) that could partially absorb some of the working class into power structures.
Wojtek
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