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6. Workers' Social-Wage Struggles during the Great Depression and the Era of Neoliberalism: Internat
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6 Workers’ Social-Wage Struggles during the Great Depression and the Era of Neoliberalism International Comparisons alvin finkel The early working-class movements scorned notions of a “social wage” provided by state programs, extolling equal wages for all workers, though Karl Marx argued that such abstract equality ignored the special needs of individuals and households.1 The organized-labor and socialist movements disdained early bourgeois proposals for social insurance because these were actuarially based, relying on forced savings of individuals rather than redistribution of wealth. When Bismarck copied Napoleon III’s contributory pension fund (1850) and accident-insurance (1868) plans in Germany in 1883, adding a sickness-insurance plan for the poorest groups of blue-collar workers that covered medical costs and a partial payment of wages during lost workdays,2 German Social Democrat leaders responded scornfully that they were no substitute for decent wages and guarantees of work. Socialists in Britain and France contemptuously concurred .3 But rank-and-file workers supported programs that might spare them from the hardships of Poor Law and private charity when unemployment or illness struck. So socialist parties relented and became the chief promoters of a wide expansion of social insurance.4 Generally, they advocated redistributive programs that embody a notion of social wages rather than forced savings.5 This essay traces and compares workers’ and especially workers’ organizations ’ responses in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia during the Great Depression and the crisis of capital accumulation that has been more or less steady since 1975. It suggests that the extent to which the organized working class has been willing and able to defend prior social gains during times of crisis depends upon the degree of organization and militancy present within the working class before the crisis begins. In countries where class collaboration is deeply embedded in the ideology of the trade-union and labor political leadership, the response of the organized working class to economic crisis has paralleled that of capital: “national” sacrifice is required, and that means the workers giving up some social gains along with making wage sacrifices. In others, especially where the workers’ movements have been unable or unwilling to integrate closely with capital at a political level, or where labor has a political dominance to which capital has partly accommodated, the working-class movement has made improved social wages its central demand, and made the continued existence of private capital dependent on its accommodating that demand. Origins of Social Wages Before the Great Depression, many countries introduced programs of limited social protection for Bismarckian reasons, only to see them expand under working -class pressures.6 In Germany, by 1925, about twenty-one million workers, or two thirds of the work force, were enrolled in old-age pension and disability plans, as well as health-insurance plans, that the state had mandated.7 The Social Democratic party used its participation in the early postwar governments to support the creation of Ambulatorien, outpatient clinics funded by health insurance that provided everything from physician and dental care to spectacles, infant gymnastics, and holiday camps.8 In France, the government’s limited social interventions before World War I were precipitated by natalist concerns about fertility and infant mortality and targeted mothers and young women. The Roussel Law in 1874 legislated statefinanced maternal pensions and work leaves, along with child-health programs, though this early welfare legislation needs to be seen in the context of what Mary Lynn Stewart calls the “social patriarchy” embodied in the sex-specific labor legislation that characterized French labor policies before the 1920s.9 Pressures from labor and the left parties built up mini–welfare states at the local level after World War I, which in turn produced an impetus for national action. In 1928, France passed a social-insurance bill providing health, maternity, death, and seniors’ pensions benefits to about a third of the population, mostly the poorest sections who had no private coverage.10 Former charity hospitals came increasingly under the control of municipalities, and medical services were increasingly viewed as a social right.11 The French trade-union movement from 1922 to 1936 was bitterly divided between the Socialist-leaning Conféderation générale du travail (CGT) and the Communist-led Conféderation générale du travail unitaire (CGTU). The CGTU regarded social-welfare programs as a bourgeois deception. By contrast, the CGT were major proponents of universal social programs; they also pushed for 114 . alvin finkel [18.232.88.17] Project...