IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecoind/v10y1989i1p7-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aggressive Economism, Defensive Control: Contours of American Labour Militancy, 1947-81

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Wallace

    (The Ohio State Universily)

Abstract

This paper argues that important dynamics of class relations can be revealed by the analysis of strike patterns. A theoretically informed analysis of disaggregated American strike data by issue, industrial sector, contract status and duration between 1947 and 1981 suggests that American labour militancy has displayed a somewhat contradictory pattern of 'aggressive economism and defensive control'. The role of the postwar accord between capital and labour, and the segmentation of the industrial structure into monopoly and competitive sectors, are seen as key structural determinants of this pattern. The emergence of the 'worker insurgency' of the late 1960s and the 1970s is seen as a rank-and-file response to the increasingly narrow economic focus of the capital-labour accord and an attack upon management, union leadership and, implicitly, the state.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Wallace, 1989. "Aggressive Economism, Defensive Control: Contours of American Labour Militancy, 1947-81," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 10(1), pages 7-34, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:10:y:1989:i:1:p:7-34
    DOI: 10.1177/0143831X89101002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X89101002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0143831X89101002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:10:y:1989:i:1:p:7-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ekhist.uu.se/english.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.