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Labor History Theory and Practice Series

When a discipline prospers, there is little need for theoretical concerns and little interest in the field’s own history. This was the case with labor history. So long as the labor movement grew from strength to strength, labor history prospered in the academy and historians worked without considering the development of the field or deeper philosophic issues. A discipline secure in its academic position buttressed by the evident importance of its field of study could leave epistemology and causality to the philosophers. It was union decline that compelled a re-examination of first principles by forcing practitioners to reconsider the importance of their field and their causal models. At first, this rethinking could be restricted to questioning the institutions of class struggle without questioning the underlying model of social change through struggle. In the 1960s, the decline of the American labor movement and the rise of popular movements associated with the New Left spurred a re-examination of the role of formal union institutions. This led to a New Labor History that studied popular protest and social conflicts beyond the formal institutions of the labor movement. In a constructive and properly dialectical fashion, this challenge to the dominant labor history paradigm led to fruitful work integrating formal institutions and popular upheaval in a deeper understanding of the connections between formal labor institutions and popular protest. (The work of Charles Tilly, of course, illustrates this synthesis, as does the work of younger scholars, including Joseph McCartin, Beth Bates, Janet Irons, and many others.) Today, we have a deeper problem that requires a still more demanding rethinking of our approach to labor history. The collapse of the labor movement throughout the advanced capitalist world forces us to reconsider a vision of organized labor as the cutting edge of the future democratizing of society. Moreover, the waning of popular opposition to neoliberalism and corporate capitalism requires us to re-examine our