IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v52y2020i3p487-505.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Social Structures of Accumulation and the Labor Movement: A Brief History and a Modest Proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Kimberly Christensen

Abstract

The economic and political crisis of the 1970s undermined the postwar social structures of accumulation (SSA) and gave rise to the current globalized, neoliberal, financialized (GNF) SSA. Under GNF, we have witnessed the explosion of the precariat and the reemergence of simpler forms of labor control characteristic of earlier SSAs. This article discusses the response of the labor movement, broadly defined, to these changes, including the rise of worker centers, worker ownership, campaigns for increased state regulation, and cross-border organizing. Finally, it raises the question of whether the current national labor federation can act as an incubator for the experimentation and structural changes necessary for the labor movement to meet the challenges of the GNF-SSA.

Suggested Citation

  • Kimberly Christensen, 2020. "The Social Structures of Accumulation and the Labor Movement: A Brief History and a Modest Proposal," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 487-505, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:52:y:2020:i:3:p:487-505
    DOI: 10.1177/0486613418820664
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0486613418820664
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0486613418820664?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kimberly ChristenseN, 2014. "'Dark as a dungeon': technological change and government policy in the deunionization of the American coal industry," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 2(2), pages 147-170, April.
    2. Kessler-Harris, Alice, 2003. "Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 20, number 9780195157093.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Keaney, 2023. "Book Review: Normalized Financial Wrongdoing: How Re-regulating Markets Created Risks and Fostered Inequality," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 55(3), pages 516-520, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Inés Berniell & Leonardo Gasparini & Mariana Marchionni & Mariana Viollaz, 2022. "Lucky Women in Unlucky Cohorts: Gender Differences in the Effects of Initial Labor Market Conditions in Latin America," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0294, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    2. Berniell, Inés & Gasparini, Leonardo & Marchionni, Mariana & Viollaz, Mariana, 2023. "Lucky women in unlucky cohorts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor movement; precariat; social structures of accumulation; worker center;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • J54 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Producer Cooperatives; Labor Managed Firms
    • J58 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Public Policy

    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:reorpe:v:52:y:2020:i:3:p:487-505. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.urpe.org/ .

    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.