Progressivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Y. Heimburger
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Robber Baron

Progressivism was a political and socioeconomic movement central to American national politics from the Gilded Age (1890s) to the end of the Roaring Twenties. At its heart, it was a populist, bipartisan reaction to the excesses of the wealthy ‘robber-baron’ classes and the threat of revolution from the disenfranchised working class – many of whom did not share in the dramatic economic growth of the age – accompanied by a distinctly anti-immigrant nativism.

America

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-167
Author(s):  
Graham Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
The World ◽  
Colonial Economy

This chapter sets out a detailed account of America’s capitalist transformation from the early 1700s. It shows how homestead and plantation agriculture generated a colonial economy. It stresses the importance of independence and then the civil war to the construction of a state and a nation. The chapter looks in detail at the varied forms of production throughout the territory and highlights the centrality of frontier expansion and dispossession. It discusses the role of plantation slavery and its abolition in capitalist growth. It then goes on to look at the ‘gilded age’ as one of developmentalism: forging a national economy, promoting industry, and conflating security issues with economic growth. It notes the slow social progress and crisis-prone nature of capitalist development, arguing that this is in the nature of capitalist transformation. It concludes by noting that the world of ‘late’ development is constructed by Britain and America’s capitalist transformations.

Madrid: History, social processes and the growth in inequality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Briggs ◽  
Rubén Monge Gamero
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Political Disaffection ◽  
Organic Process ◽  
Domestic Economies ◽  
The City

The evolution of Valdemingómez should not just simply be seen as some organic process whereby working class and immigrant people have somehow ended up congregating there in search of economic security and work in the city but as a consequence of macro processes of economic growth and technological advancement and how rural domestic economies submitted to urban industrialization in Spain. Equally, its configuration as a ghetto, compounded by drug markets should not be viewed as a consequence of poverty saturation but of spatial and structural processes which have rendered people in the urban metropolis increasingly socially redundant resulting in their destitution and political disaffection. Here in this chapter, we look at these processes charting the evolution of the Cañada Real Galiana in which is situated Valdemingómez, and how economic change in Spain, which led to the growth of the suburbs, collided with the economic crisis, increasing zonal inequalities in the capital and expanding drug markets.

THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE CAPITALIST FIRM, c. 1950–1970

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIM TOMLINSON
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Issue Framing ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Capitalist Firm ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

One of the most profound challenges facing the Labour party in the post-war period was its ability to understand and make policy to reform the private sector. Before the Attlee government, Labour had little to say on this issue, but that government's experience exposed the dangerous ‘vacuum’ this involved. In the 1950s the nature of the capitalist firm ranked alongside the alleged ‘embourgoisement’ of the working class as an issue framing Labour's ideological and policy debate. The centrality of this issue reflected the fact that understanding the firm was inextricably linked to a raft of broader arguments within the Left about the nature of modern capitalism. The benign view of the corporation that flowed from the revisionist wing of the party was challenged by the ‘declinist’ politics of the 1960s, and in office after 1964 Labour pursued a modernizing agenda which centrally involved seeking to shape the behaviour of the private sector in order to deliver the higher economic growth that Labour so much desired. The failure of this growth to materialize led to great disillusion across the party about the policies pursued by the Wilson government, and this in turn led to a fundamental rethink of policy that was to underpin the radical agenda of the party in the 1970s.

“Fuck Him, He Wasn’t With Us”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bussel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Urban Revitalization ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines the convergence of events that thrust Harold Gibbons into the maelstrom of national politics and led to his estrangement from the Teamsters's hierarchy. It first considers how Gibbons's rifts with Teamsters played out among Local 688's membership in St. Louis, which helped oust Gibbons in the summer of 1973, terminated his political partnership with Ernest Calloway, and signaled the demise of their quest for total person unionism and working-class citizenship. It then discusses Calloway's gradual withdrawal from direct involvement in civil rights activism and union affairs by the end of the 1960s, assuming instead the role of respected community elder. It also describes Gibbons's opposition to the Vietnam War and his difficulty in finding outlets for political expression during the last years of his career, even as he continued with his advocacy of interracial politics and comprehensive strategies for urban revitalization. Finally, it reflects on Calloway's death on December 31, 1989.

The Political Economy of Voting Rights Enforcement in America's Gilded Age: Electoral College Competition, Partisan Commitment, and the Federal Election Law

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott C. James ◽  
Brian L. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Critical Force ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Election Law ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Federal Election ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
Voter Fraud

We develop a model of electoral college competition and apply it to the transformation of nineteenth-century voting rights enforcement. The Federal Election Law (1872–92) was born of an effort to secure political power for southern blacks, yet it developed into an expansive machinery to police federal elections in northern cities. We argue that the Reconstruction commitment to black suffrage gradually succumbed to the competitive structure of Gilded Age presidential elections, crowded out by a growing preoccupation with registration and voter fraud in the volatile swing states that typically determined electoral college victory. More broadly, we view the electoral college as a critical force in shaping American political development. With its structured system of competition for doubtful states and pivotal groups, the electoral college injects a unique logic into the dynamics of national politics.

Miners and National Politics in Peru, 1900–1974

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Laite
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Processes

For much of the twentieth century the Peruvian working-class has been limited in size and divided between different groups with divergent political objectives. Successive Peruvian governments have been able to capitalize on these features in their attempts to control the working-class, directly regulating workers' organizations or playing off one group against another. Yet, despite these limits and divisions, workers have on several occasions staged general strikes and pressured governments into taking account of their demands. Consequently, the political development of sectors of the working-class at the local level has been closely affected by political processes at the national level.

Agrarian Capitalism and Rural Labour: The Hacienda System in Central Chile, 1870–1920

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAUDIO ROBLES-ORTIZ
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Central Chile ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Agrarian Capitalism ◽  
Different Types

AbstractUsing a variety of new sources directly pertaining to different types of rural estate, and contrary to interpretations of rural Chile as a traditional society unaffected by economic modernisation, this article analyses the transition of the hacienda system in central Chile towards agrarian capitalism during the period of export-led growth from the 1860s to 1930. It argues that the expansion of the ‘landowner enterprise’, along with developments in mechanisation and irrigation, resulted in the marginalisation of the precarious ‘peasant enterprises’ operated by tenants and the gradual proletarianisation of the agricultural workforce. The development of agrarian capitalism transformed the collective action of rural workers, which assumed modern forms such as strikes and unionisation, and thus became significant in national politics. The first wave of rural conflicts, which took place in the early 1920s, can therefore be understood as the response of the emerging rural working class to the agrarian expansion that Chile experienced as part of the process of capitalist modernisation.

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