Worker Insurgency, Radical Organization, and New Deal Labor Legislation

Debates over the reasons for the passage of class legislation during the New Deal era have been of continuing interest to social scientists. Of special importance has been the problem of explaining the passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), often considered the most significant and radical bill of the period. In this article, I examine the influence of worker insurgency and radical organization on the passage and final form of the NLRA. I argue that other analytic approaches fail to take into account the importance of this influence and the degree to which it constrained and structured the responses of key political actors. I conclude that the theories that downplay the importance of worker insurgency and radical organization are both wrong in the particulars and suspect as general theories; this applies especially to the perspective that emphasizes the autonomy of the state from societal forces.