------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (February 2006)  
  
Larry G. Gerber, _The Irony of State Intervention: American   
Industrial Relations Policy in Comparative Perspective, 1914-1939_.   
DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. viii + 212 pp.   
$40 (cloth), ISBN: 0-87580-347-4.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gerald Friedman, Department of Economics,   
University of Massachusetts at Amherst,  
  
  
"How Many Exceptions?" There was a time when social scientists   
explored American Exceptionalism and debated why the United States   
lacked a strong socialist movement. But then American labor   
historians challenged the premise of American Exceptionalism by   
showing the strength of labor radicalism in the United States; and   
experience has challenged the assumption that capitalism generally   
leads to socialism because labor movements throughout the world have   
become more conservative over time and have lost power and   
membership. Now, instead of one there are many "exceptionalisms" and   
the task for social scientists has become to explore the divergent   
responses by workers in different countries to capitalist economic   
development.  
  
 From this perspective Larry Gerber, Professor of History at Auburn,   
has written a book that addresses questions of exceptionalism in a   
way that also provides insight into current policy debates. Comparing   
state policy towards labor relations in the United States and the   
United Kingdom, he asks why countries with similar political cultures   
adopted such different policies in the 1930s. "No nation," Gerber   
contends, "is more identified with the philosophy and practice of   
limited government than the United States." However, in the field of   
industrial relations, "the American state has long played an active   
and critically important role" culminating in 1935 with the enactment   
of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). By contrast, Gerber   
argues, such intrusive "state intervention would have been   
inconceivable during the same period in Britain, the one other major   
industrial democracy generally viewed as having a 'weak state'" (p.   
3).  
  
Gerber attributes the paradox of an activist American liberal state   
to a pattern of industrialization that weakened American labor   
unions. The rapid development of large-scale enterprises in the   
United States concentrated economic power, allowing powerful   
capitalists to crush labor unions in major industries, such as steel,   
automobiles, chemicals, and electric equipment manufacture. By   
contrast, the slower pace of British industrialization allowed   
British craft unions to survive and even flourish in older industries   
left intact with large numbers of independent firms using older   
technologies dependent on traditional craft labor. Because British   
collective bargaining was established firmly when industry was still   
overwhelmingly competitive and conducted in small firms, many British   
employers came to rely on industry-wide collective bargaining to   
contain competition. Without strong or hostile employers, British   
labor did not need to go to the state for help, leaving antistatist   
ideology, or "collective laissez-faire," unchallenged among workers.   
By contrast, weak American unions needed state power to force   
employers to accept collective bargaining.  
  
Note that Gerber here reverses the popular social-democratic model   
where stronger labor unions and working-class political organizations   
win state support. Instead, his argument relies on some outside   
motive for state officials to help relatively weak labor   
organizations. Gerber argues that this happened during the Great   
Depression of the 1930s when national politicians, notably New York's   
powerful Senator Robert F. Wagner, sought to build up labor unions to   
restore purchasing power by raising wages. Politicians with similar   
concerns in Britain found little support among workers and unions;   
but they were welcomed by American labor in desperate need of support   
against overwhelmingly powerful employers. One might anticipate an   
extension of Gerber's thesis to the last twenty years or so where   
British unions have turned to the state for support against powerful,   
anti-union employers who are behaving more like their earlier   
American counterparts, and American unions have found little response   
to appeals for labor law reform from state officials who no longer   
believe in Keynesian ideas about restoring purchasing power by   
redistributing income.  
  
By integrating employers into a study of class conflict, Gerber's   
work is a major advance. He adds a dimension to labor history, often   
written as if only workers were active participants, and to political   
history, which too often neglects the economy and social conflicts   
completely. Nonetheless, his analysis remains too narrow. His   
argument is essentially technological: rapid technological change in   
American industry led to a larger scale of production using   
semi-skilled workers where employers had the bargaining power to   
resist unions but slower technological change denied British   
employers this power. Immediately, one may question the direction of   
causality: was slow technological change the cause, or was it the   
consequence, of union strength? Were British unions strong because   
technological change was slow in Britain? Or was technological change   
slow because it was inhibited by strong trade unions? Recent work by   
Chris Howell, _Trade Unions and the State_ (Princeton, 2005),   
suggests the latter. Dismissing the concept of collective   
laissez-faire as a myth, Howell rewrites the history of British   
industrial relations by showing the _crucial_ role of state officials   
in establishing industry-level collective bargaining before World War   
I.  
  
Gerber may also underestimate the importance of worker action in his   
analysis of the development of American labor law. Rather than the   
result of beneficent political action by liberal politicians with   
proto-Keynesian economic notions, the NRA and the Wagner Act can be   
seen as a response to labor and political unrest. An attempt to   
contain strikes by establishing strong union institutions, these laws   
were also part of a strategy by Democratic politicians to solidify   
the emerging Roosevelt coalition. Concessions to organized labor were   
meant to win working-class votes; and politicians hoped that   
established union institutions would hold these votes for the   
Democrats.  
  
To be sure, these criticisms are a little unfair: the text of   
Gerber's book is only 152 pages and we should not expect him to do   
much more than to present and support an intriguing new thesis in   
that space. As it is, Larry Gerber has written an important book that   
adds to our understanding of class conflict and the state. It should   
be read by anyone interested in comparative twentieth-century history   
or the history of industrial relations systems.  
  
  
  
Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,   
Gerald Friedman has written numerous works in labor economics and in   
the history of France and the United States in the nineteenth and   
early-twentieth centuries including a study of the origins of the   
modern labor movement, _State Making and Labor Movements: France and   
the United States, 1876-1914_ (Cornell, 1999). He is currently   
writing a book on union decline in advanced capitalist economies,   
titled, _Reigniting the Labor Movement_ (Routledge, forthcoming).  
  
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