The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age, Rosanne Currarino, Champaign, IL.: University of Illinois Press, 2011
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Abstract
It is said we live in a second Gilded Age, which makes our understanding of the first all the more relevant. Rosanne Currarino’s The Labor Question in America makes the bold claim that, far from being a period of defeat for the Left, the original Gilded Age saw an expansion of democratic citizenship. A group of economists, social reformers and labour organisers transformed our understanding of political participation from the earlier, producerist to a more modern, consumerist ideal of social inclusion and collective agency. However, on her own telling, Currarino’s ‘expansion’ comes across more as a ‘substitution’. Some workers gained in wages what they lost in control of the means of production. Though Currarino fairly identifies the utopian aspirations underlying the demand for higher levels of consumption, her narrative relies on an overly rigid distinction between production and consumption, missing out on the way in which consumption came to be defined in ways that assumed the workplace would be a site of submission. Finally, The Labor Question fails to include, as parts of its narrative, the extraordinary violence that marked struggles over the labour question. In this context, the shift from ‘producerist’ emphases on worker control to ‘consumerist’ views of economic citizenship look more like an ideological displacement than they do a progressive expansion of democracy.
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Leikin Steven The Practical Utopians: American Workers and the Cooperative Movement in the Gilded Age 2004 Detroit Wayne State University Press
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1
Liebknecht 1917, pp. 140–1.
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3
Taft and Ross 1969, p. 328.
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4
Taft and Ross 1969, p. 280.
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6
Forbath 1991, p. 104.
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7
Liebknecht 1917, p. 146.
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9
Knights of Labor 1886, p. 33.
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10
Marx 1887.
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11
Rana 2010, quoted at pp. 251–2.
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12
Rana 2010, quoted at p. 246. See Rana’s excellent discussion of the limits of consumer citizenship and the ‘new democracy’ (Rana 2010, pp. 242–57).
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13
Fink 1985.
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14
Montgomery 1979.
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15
Leikin 2004.
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19
Marx 1970.
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20
Steward 1865, pp. 11–12.
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21
Steward 1873, p. 434.
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22
Steward 1868, p. 15.
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25
Sylvis 1872, p. 172.
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26
See Eagleton 1991, pp. 1–31.
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28
Pope 1997, passim.
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30
Quoted in Leuchtenburg 1963, p. 114.
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The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age, Rosanne Currarino, Champaign, IL.: University of Illinois Press, 2011
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Alex Gourevitch in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
It is said we live in a second Gilded Age, which makes our understanding of the first all the more relevant. Rosanne Currarino’s The Labor Question in America makes the bold claim that, far from being a period of defeat for the Left, the original Gilded Age saw an expansion of democratic citizenship. A group of economists, social reformers and labour organisers transformed our understanding of political participation from the earlier, producerist to a more modern, consumerist ideal of social inclusion and collective agency. However, on her own telling, Currarino’s ‘expansion’ comes across more as a ‘substitution’. Some workers gained in wages what they lost in control of the means of production. Though Currarino fairly identifies the utopian aspirations underlying the demand for higher levels of consumption, her narrative relies on an overly rigid distinction between production and consumption, missing out on the way in which consumption came to be defined in ways that assumed the workplace would be a site of submission. Finally, The Labor Question fails to include, as parts of its narrative, the extraordinary violence that marked struggles over the labour question. In this context, the shift from ‘producerist’ emphases on worker control to ‘consumerist’ views of economic citizenship look more like an ideological displacement than they do a progressive expansion of democracy.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 573 | 82 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 142 | 3 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 81 | 9 | 0 |
