On 3/14/06, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> On the pain of oversimplification, Fitch's argument can be interpreted as
> follows - the US unions suck because of their fragmented and
> compartmentalized nature, which fails to take universal interests of the
> working class, but instead it focuses on defending the interests of its
> clients.
-this compartmentalization reflected the relatively decentralized -nature of US capitalism during the period in which the AFL and (to a -lesser extent) the CIO developed. In other "western industrial" -countries, on the other hand, capital was very centralized, so labor -organizations tended to be so, too.
Huh? US capital is considered historically far more centralized; to this day, Italian and German manufacturers maintain a far stronger middle-size manufacturing sector compared to the more centralized sectors in the United States. What is true is that capital in Europe was more coordinated through employer associations and cross-holdings, but the concentration of capital controlled by the great trusts -- from US Steel and Standard Oil -- in their heyday, when the AFL was formed and shaped, had no parallel in Europe.
Unions were banished from the core of capitalism until the 1930s and the CIO. As I've repeatedly recommended, one of the best recent books on this dynamic is Andrew Cohen's RACKETEERS PROGRESS, which examines Chicago at the turn of the early 20th century leading up to the 1905 Teamster strike that Fitch cursorily discusses. It is a far deeper and more engaged study of the choices facing unions, their strategies, and the clash between unions holding on in the smaller capital sector even as they faced defeat at the hands of the emerging power of concentrated capital in the United States.
-- Nathan Newman