--- Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> If we discuss the post-WWII period, Yoshie's is a
> clearly and dramatically
> false comment. Corporate power in Europe was
> decimated by WWII, leaving
> workers with far weaker opponents and a state
> strongly favoring union
> organization. This was diamettrically opposed to the
> US where corporate
> America emerged from WWII fat with profits and a
> strategy of combined
> McCarthyism and legal changes to cripple the union
> movement. The state
> violence used to destroy the radical unions -- both
> arresting leadership and
> using state machinery to displace them with more
> conservative unions -- was
> overwhelming.
You have a valid point that Fitch does not talk about the role of the state, but I think you exaggerate that role a bit. First of all, your comparison of post WW2 Europe and US is a bit mismatched. If you intend to show that the US gov't was generally much more repressive toward labor than its European counterparts - it does not work because labor repression occured at different time periods on the two sides of the pond.
In terms of labor vs. state relations, Europe was after 1945 roughly where the US was in the 1930s. However, the US had it much easier after 1945 than Europe had it in the 1920s and the 1930s. That is to say, the US capital was on its knees in the 1930s, and the FDR government was generally supportive of unions pretty much the same way as the Europe was after WW2.
However, the fascist repression of labor in the 1920s and the 1930s - not just in Italy and Germany, but countries like Poland (the 1926 military coup which decimated the socialist labor movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanacja) or even Sweden where the government dispatched troops to Adalen to break up a strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalen_shootings killing five (which btw caused the collapse of the conservative gov't) not to mention Spain or Portugal - was much harsher on labor than Mc Carthyism after WW2.
There were no concentration camps for labor unionists in the US, there was no systematic extermination of all labor-related organizations, not just unions but cooperatives and mutual associations.
Stated differently, the US unions had a similar chance to establish itself as a national political force under the FDR administration as the Europen unions did after WW2 - yet the US unions blew it, and European unions did not.
And to be honest to Fitch, he did say that the US union leadership systematically rejected any cooperation with the government, opting instead for collective bargaining as the means of achieving its powers. The argument is burried in his corruption stories, but it is still there.
In short, government repression of labor movement occured on both sides of the pond, albeit at different time periods, and European governments were generally far more repressive than the US government, especially during the 1840s uprisings, the slaughter of the Paris Commune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune), but even the liberal Sweden sent troops to break up a strike in 1931. So government violence falls a bit short of explaining the diffrent outcomes of labor movements in the US and Europe. However, if Fitch is to be believed, the US unions were generally far more antagonistic toward government and government social welfare policies than their Eurpean counterparts, prefering direct negotiations with employers to "government welfarism." If true, this looks like a good explanatory factr of the difference to me.
Wojtek
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