Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States

Reviews / Votes

Rather than write a comprehensive history of labor in the US, Kolin (Hilbert College) investigates labor repression by looking at events at specific points in time. He views these events entirely through the lens of class conflict between labor and capital and studies the beginnings of repressive policies in the pre-industrial era during and in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution. Then he turns to labor's response to the rise of the factory system. Next, he shows how workplace policies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries excluded labor from decision making. The reasons for continuing political repression of labor during the expanding economy of the 1920s are investigated. Labor and the New Deal are dealt with next. The role of communists and labor's role in purging communists from its ranks takes the next two chapters. Capital's backlash against labor from the 1970s forward is the final historical topic. The author concludes by outlining the steps needed to establish a truly democratic economy in the US. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice Reviews * [T]he history detailed in Kolin's text should be essential knowledge for those hoping to resurrect the necessary and noble endeavor labor unions once were. * Counterpunch * Kolin has read widely and points to the many ways in which economics and law serve as weapons to preserve the rule of the few. * Anarcho-Syndicalist Review * Kolin deserves credit for bringing the story of antiunion repression to the present period through a critique of business unionism, institutional liberalism, and capitalist hegemony. * LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas * Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States is a comprehensive and rigorous account of the complex history of capital-labor relations from the settler-colonial state to the present era through examining the endless determination of capital and the ruling class to assert dominance and hegemony over a frequently restive and militant working class. This work is a valuable contribution to students of American labor and working class history. -- Immanuel Ness, University of Johannesburg This book guides readers through the many oscillations that have occurred in the pattern of efforts to repress American workers from colonial times to the present day. Boldly venturing beyond a detailed description of the past, Dr. Kolin offers his audience hope for a better future built upon an expansion of economic democracy and an extension of social ownership within the world of production. -- Daniel E. Saros, Valparaiso University By focusing explicitly on the issue of labor repression, Kolin brings into stark relief key aspects of the capitalist class struggle in the United States from its inception to contemporary crises. Most important is that he uses this sweeping view of capitalism's past and present to suggest ways that labor can create a future with true economic democracy where labor repression would be consigned to the past. -- LouAnn Wurst, Michigan Technological University Notwithstanding a cumbersome structure and a narrative prone to repetition, Kolin makes an important contribution to our understanding of how capital has thwarted labour's capacity to fulfil one of its historically fundamental aims, that is, workers' emancipation. * Anarchist Studies *