The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America: The Movement for Economic Democracy

Description

Through moments of social protest, policy debate, and popular mobilization, this book follows the campaign for economic democracy and the fight for full employment in the United States. Starting in the 1930s, Dennis explores its intellectual and philosophical underpinnings, the class struggle that determined the fate of legislation and the role of left-wing civil rights activists in its revival. With an emphasis on the grassroots perspective, The Full Employment Horizon highlights how social movements reshaped the idea of full employment, expanding its democratic parameters and highlighting its potential to liberate workers across the racial and ethnic spectrum. Demonstrating how the campaign for full employment intersected with movements for women’s liberation and civil rights, it explores how social groups and oppressed minorities interpreted and appropriated the promise of full employment and economic emancipation. In this book, Dennis uncovers the class dimensions and the resistance to full employment in the US, and demonstrates how the inequalities and inherent tensions within a capitalist society meant the social vision of full employment was doomed to fail. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Political Struggle and the Promise of Full Employment 1 The Horizon of Possibility: The Great Depression and the Idea of Full Employment 2 The Expandting Horizon of Full Employment: Thought and Activism in the 1940s 3 A War against Want: Senator James E. Murray and the Political Campaign for Full Employment 4 The People’s Struggle for Full Employment in the Aftermath of War 5 Out of Rebellion and into the Morass: Full Employment in the Postwar Years 6 “The Day of Structural Economic Reform Is Not Over:” The Full Employment Revival, 1960–1973 7 The Vitality of the Improbable: The Campaign for a Job Guarantee and the Radical Possibilities of Full Employment in the 1970s 8 Regeneration and Stasis: An Idea in Search of a Movement Conclusion Bibliography Index