Leftist Labor History

Between the years of 1886 and 1929, organized labor takes on a variety of forms. Craft unionism springs up in the American Federation of Labor, and radicals form the Industrial Workers of the World. Capital responds with both persuasion and violence.

Labor movement since the 1880s led to the state recognizing the demands of workers. In this episode I discuss what workers gained and what they conceded to get a measure of protection from the government.

This bonus episode examines the biases of labor historians, especially those of the New Left from the 1960s and 1970s. Writing from a perspective that privileged militant action among wage laborers in factory jobs, these seminal historians reproduced a societal bias against traditionally feminine work.

After World War II breaking the power of organized labor was a top priority for US companies. Deindustrialization was the process by which firms automated their operations and moved them to parts of the country with no union presence. At the end of the episode I examine some explanations for the decline of Big Labor.

This final episode brings us up to the present, examining the neoliberal era. Silicon Valley is a microcosm of neoliberalism, and many boosters point to its successes (or, increasingly, to a lack of an alternative). By peeling back the history of the place, we find that it is founded in a Cold War, anti-labor ideology.