The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century

by Kim Voss

Why has the labor movement in the United States been so weak and politically conservative in comparison to movements in Western Europe? Kim Voss rejects traditional interpretations--theories of "American exceptionalism"--which attribute this distinctiveness to inherent characteristics of American society. On the contrary, she demonstrates, the American labor movement had much in common with its English and French counterparts for most of the nineteenth century. Only with the collapse of the Knights of Labor, the largest American labor organization of the century, did the U.S. movement take a different path.

Genres: Labor, History

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 1993

Reviews

[Jimmy Tarlau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is one of Becky's advisors at Berkeley. The thesis is that the US, English, and French labor movements were remarkably similar until the 1880s and the rise of the Knights of Labor. With the failure of the KOL the US Labor movement became a more conservative, craft based union movement up until the 1930s. She argues against the main historical theoreticians which discuss American exceptionalism (expanding territory, etc.) as the reasons the labor movement went in a different direction. She pins the blame on the strength of the employer associations which defeated the Knights in a bunch of strikes in the late 1880s. These associations were much stronger than what existed in Britain or France. Her book is based on a lot of data from the local Knights organization in New Jersey. It is the first 'sociological history' I have read. The statistical chapters are difficult to get through, but the introduction and concluding chapters are quite interesting.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voss argues, and very effectively too, that America's weak working-class institutions and conservative unions are NOT due to an absence of class struggle in the US. If you look historically, there was in fact a class struggle on par with and broadly similar to that of Britain and France. The explanation lies not in ethnic diversity, lack of class consciousness or etc, it lies in the fact that the employers won the class struggle between 1886 (Haymarket anyone?) and 1887, and that has shaped all future organizing. The fall of the Knights of Labor was a critical moment, and so this book explores their rise and fall using the normal qualitative data, but also quantitative data in a very rich and interesting way. I would have given this 5 stars but the material was so brilliant and fascinating and yet it was still so dry to read! Still, her finding that the presence of organized capital in the form of employers associations as one of the principal factors in labour's losses is a good thing to think about. And if you want further reading on anything, the footnotes are the best I've ever seen.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book provides an insight into the developments and deviations of American society, its working class as well as the employers and political leaders, from Europe, starting in the middle of the nineteenth century and culminating in the permanent stigma associated with class conflict. The author argues that the differences arose not from any inherent differences between European and American society, including the prevalence of social conflicts, but from the relative weakness of labour forces and the effective political action and propaganda of a new capitalist elite which benefitted from the opportunities provided by mass production, concentration of capital and liberal legislation and market policies.

Despite the mass of statistical data and the inclusion of calculations which are only of interest for the expert readers the majority of the narrative is successful in conveying the nuances of an exciting and important period in American social history and challenges some preconceptions on how free a free market really is.