Working-class formation in europe and forms of integration: history and theory

Mikkelsen, Flemming

doi:10.1080/00236560500144968

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Later in the 19th century this memory turned out to be the soil from which unions and eventually sprout the Labour Party as political expression of the organized working class. The making of working classes in other parts of Europe followed similar patterns as in England but was increasingly impacted by the formation of an international state-system with its divisions between centres and peripheries (Geary 1999;Mikkelsen 2005 Such division existed not only between colonial powers and their colonies but also within Europe between its core of industrial capitalisms in the Northwest and more rural peripheries in the South and the East. As a result, class identities were increasingly mixed or sometimes dominated by other identities, notably national and racial ones (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991;van Voss, van der Linden and Marcel 2002).…”

Section: Reclaiming the Idea Of Liberationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Counteracting Factors: The Unmaking and Remaking of Working Classes in Europe

Schmidt

2015

Perspect Global Dev Technol

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Drawing on the works of E. P. Thompson, Beverly Silver, and Rosa Luxemburg this article explores the unmaking of European working classes from the 1970s until today. This unmaking was a response to the challenges that labour and new social movements represented to capital rule from the late 1960s until the later 1970s. Yet, the success of weakening workers by unmaking the social fabric and the institutions upon which their bargaining power rested produces discontent and resistance. The article also addresses the question whether workers' experiences in diverse acts of resistance are laying the foundation for the making of new working classes in Europe. KeywordsWorking classes -social movements -experiences -neoliberal restructuring Neoliberalism reloaded. Keynesian demand management during the Great Recession was just an interlude. As soon as government and central bank interventions were successful in containing the economic downturn policy makers, backed by organized capital, turned back to the neoliberal triad of austerity, flexibilization of labour markets and privatizations. The Euro-crisis offered the chance for neoliberalism's swift and complete comeback. The string of riots, protests and strikes that was triggered by the neoliberal management of the crisis seemed to be completely ineffective. Neoliberalism is more powerful and less popular than ever. Neither organized labour nor the multitudes of the new social movements seem capable of organizing widespread discontent with neoliberalism into a social force strong enough to stop or transcend it.

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Section: Reclaiming the Idea Of Liberationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Counteracting Factors: The Unmaking and Remaking of Working Classes in Europe

Schmidt

2015

Perspect Global Dev Technol

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“…In Europe, population density revealed links between large production units and urbanization (Mikkelsen 2005), but this was less obvious in India. The Indian self-employment to wage labor transition was also less critical than transitions between various forms of proletarianization with distinctive regulations over settlement (Lucassen 2005;Krishnamurthy 1983;Kumar 1992).…”

Section: Liberalism and The Indian Republicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Seventeenth-century English transformation of labor markets and trade was fundamentally a town and city phenomenon where proletarians assembled in cities of different sizes (Hohenberg and Lees 1984;Tilly 1984;Mikkelsen 2005). Other parts of Europe witnessed more rural industrialization, thus physical location overall was vital in determining the political pressures of urban-rural, religious, and ethnic divides (Mikkelsen 2005).…”

Section: The Evolution Of Early Industrializersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Industrial welfare and the state: nation and city reconsidered

Srinivas

2010

Theor Soc

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Industrial welfare history presents important challenges to developmental state theories in "late" industrialization. This article expands the debate by examining how nation-states create statutory welfare by addressing institutional variety beyond markets. It is simplistic to argue linear growth of national welfare or of states autonomously regulating markets to achieve risk-mitigation. I contend that welfare institutions emerge from the state's essential conflict and collaboration with various alternate institutions in cities and regions. Using histories of Europe, India, and Karnataka, I propose a place-based, work-based, and work-place based welfare typology evolving at differential rates. Although economic imperatives exist to expand local risk-pools, it is precisely the alternate institutional diversity that makes late industrial nation-states unable or unwilling to do so. This results in institutionally "thin," top-down industrial welfare. Ultimately, theories that overly depend on histories of small nations, homogenous nations, or city-states, provide weak tests of the economics of industrial welfare. The state in late industrial welfareThe study of capital accumulation has generated the most influential state theories of the twentieth century. In most, the state is posed against markets and acts as the development institution of last resort in specifying cost structures and mitigating risks during industrial transformation. This article examines the evolution of industrial welfare during "late" industrial development. I analyze the historical record of how states institute welfare and regulate markets, thus managing conflicts between production and redistribution. I consider several questions: Are traditional models of linear growth of welfare institutions appropriate for late industrializing states? What is the appropriate scale of the "state": nation, city, or region? Finally,

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“…Consequently, workers' organizations were late to arrive in these trades. In the first half of the nineteenth century, mass protests and strikes against low wages and worsening labor conditions were not uncommon, but were poorly organized and usually unsuccessful, and they did not result in the emergence of structural forms of workers' interest representation (Hanagan 1988;Mikkelsen 1996). In this situation, there was no urgency for employers to organize.…”

Section: Destroyed Artisanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guilds in the transition to modernity: The cases of Germany, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands

et al. 2018

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One important aspect of the transition to modernity is the survival of elements of the Old Regime beyond the French Revolution. It has been claimed that this can explain why in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries some Western countries adopted national corporatist structures while others transformed into liberal market economies. One of those elements is the persistence or absence of guild traditions. This is usually analyzed in a national context. This article aims to contribute to the debate by investigating the development of separate trades in Germany, the United Kingdom, and The Netherlands throughout the nineteenth century. We distinguish six scenarios of what might have happened to crafts and investigate how the prevalence of each of these scenarios in the three countries had an impact on the emerging national political economies. By focusing on trades, rather than on the Theor Soc (2018) 47:255-291 https://doi

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Working-class formation in europe and forms of integration: history and theory

Cited by 13 publications

References 23 publications

Counteracting Factors: The Unmaking and Remaking of Working Classes in Europe

Counteracting Factors: The Unmaking and Remaking of Working Classes in Europe

Industrial welfare and the state: nation and city reconsidered

Guilds in the transition to modernity: The cases of Germany, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands

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