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afterword residues of the Labor Question The Progressive Era’s expansion of the labor question from a struggle over the means of production to a quest for economic democracy has been roundly criticized for at least fifty years. Selig Perlman, one of the originators of labor history, claimed that the American Federation of Labor (and by extension other proponents of economic democracy) substituted “a communism of opportunity” for a more rigorous and radical “communism of productive property,” and the basic outline of this argument has not disappeared in the historiography or in popular culture.1 Perlman understood the relations to the means of production as the most central, most crucial and most concrete relations in society. To abandon or expand the struggle over production, then, was to relinquish any notable quest for meaning or “real” change in social relations. Such an abandonment is one of the reasons— perhaps the main reason—why so many historians have been profoundly disappointed in the Progressive Era’s answers to the labor question, answers that are seen as moving away from class analysis or class-based politics and toward a broader, most innocuous liberal politics that evades or elides the question of ownership of the means of production. Instead, elite and middleclass Progressive reformers allowed a politics of appeasement and reconciliation to overtake a producerist commitment to class-based reform.2 Such critiques assume that class was and remains determined by relations to the means of production. Reforms, whether political or social, that do not directly confront the question of ownership and control of the means of production cannot be seen as truly committed to radical systemic change and are equally uncommitted to the American democratic experiment. The substitution of economic democracy, which turns to daily life, including consumption, as the site of democratic engagement, for producerism must thus be read as the substitution of “trivial [acts] in the most basic sense” for actions of “larger social meaning.”3 In the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, this move away from class-based politics meant the cruel curtailment of any possibility for social revolution and hence historiography’s emphasis on the defeats or declines of organizations and individuals such as the Industrial Workers of the World or the Knights of Labor that sought to wrest control of the means of production.4 In contemporary America, the desertion of producerism has made any sustained engagement with or even recognition of the material bases of class difficult, even for those furthest removed from controlling the means of production. As a result, Thomas Frank claims in his study of conservative Kansas voters, Americans act and vote against their class interests, deluded into believing that they share ideological concerns with owners, capitalists, and other members of the economic elite.5 The Progressive Era rejection of producerism seems to have had dire consequences for modern America: less democratic commitment, limited possibilities for social change, a more passive citizenry. Such a tragic narrative makes for fairly depressing reading, especially in light of the grim economic news that has filled American newspapers since 2000. Real wages have fallen steadily even as productivity climbed, and wages are likely to continue their downward slide. The value of benefits, which had long offset the stagnating or falling real wage rate, began to decline as well, making the drop in wages more sharply felt.6 Even the majority of Americans who do not fall below the poverty line have diminishing opportunities to participate in the American Dream of prosperity, the good life, and comfort. Ever more Americans work more than one job, and by 2001, Americans could claim the dubious honor of working more hours per week than citizens of any other industrialized nation.7 Listening to Americans speak poignantly about their aspirations, their frustrations, and their hardships, the central components of the labor question—questions about the nature of citizenship and the meaning of democracy—seem to be ongoing concerns. Yet if so many early-twentieth-century Americans turned their backs on Perlman’s “communism of productive property” in favor of a less rigorous “communism of opportunity,” is there much point in continuing to hope for change? Are the debates regarding the labor question of any value today? I think the proponents of economic democracy would say yes, largely by agreeing with Perlman’s assessment of their ideas. Many Americans from a wide range of social and economic backgrounds indeed came to imagine residues of the labor question · 147 [18.191.5.239] Project MUSE...

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