|
|
|
REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS
| Clayton Sinyai, Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2006)
|
| CLAYTON SINYAI'S Schools of Democracy provides a unique discussion of the American labour movement's political history from the late 1800s through to the 1968 presidential election, with a brief postscript which surveys contemporary labour politics in the United States. |
1
|
|
Sinyai outlines the broad contours of American labour history using liberal democratic political theory as his narrative. Specifically, Sinyai argues that the American labour movement's conception of democracy and republicanism was inspired by the political thought of Jefferson, de Tocqueville, and Lincoln. Sinyai contends that unions sought to transform their organizations into "schools of democracy" in an effort to infuse the us working class with the strong civic virtues deemed necessary in a democracy by Aristotle and his philosophical successors in the United States. |
2
|
|
Theoretically, Sinyai attempts to stake out a middle ground between "socialist radicals" and "supply-side Republicans." This theoretical middle ground uses Jeffersonian conceptions of democracy and republicanism as the lens through which to study the labour movement's political trajectory. However, this approach, in a field dominated by social democrats and Marxists, falters based on the lack of empirical evidence Sinyai provides in support of his argument. |
3
|
|
The American democratic tradition, according to Sinyai, informed the labour movement's conception of democracy as embodying individual liberty, the rule of law, and civic virtue. This contention leads Sinyai to develop some bewildering conclusions. For example, Samuel Gompers is depicted as a Jeffersonian democrat of heroic proportions, while his radical critics are portrayed as undermining the labour movement's capacity to construct their own proper "governments whose jurisdictions were defined by trade rather than territory." (28) For Sinyai, Gompers' lack of concern for the material and political clout of the industrial working class is overlooked in favour of his attempt to "create labor organizations that would themselves cultivate and preserve civic virtues that the political economy could no longer provide." (26) |
4
|
|
Sinyai's nostalgic analysis presupposes, incorrectly in my view, that the material and political demands of Gompers' radical critics were inconsistent with the development of civic virtue within trade unions. Admittedly, more progressive segments of the labour movement envisioned building schools of socialism, or social democracy, rather than schools of liberal democracy, but Sinyai's narrow interpretation of democracy hurts his overall analysis. For example, in Chapter 4, Sinyai sharply criticizes the industrial-based Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), for breaking with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), on the basis that the CIO ought to have respected the democratic majority in the Federation who decided against actively pursuing aggressive industrial organizing. Although Sinyai does not deny the practical importance of the CIO in extending the collective benefits of unionization to industrial workers, his primary concern is with the theoretical idea that the division of the AFL and CIO represented an end to democratic self-government within the labour movement. Again, Sinyai's limited definition of democracy, which stresses its outward appearance (democracy as a formal vote taken by delegates at union convention), and not its substance (democracy as a tool to build working-class capacities and extend the bonds of class solidarity as widely as possible), allows him to dispense with radical critiques too easily. For example, in defending the AFL's decision to exclude unskilled workers from its ranks, on the basis that the Federation was guided by civic notions of self-rule, Sinyai does not fully come to grips with the practical limitations of union democracy or the fact that the overwhelming majority of workers in the United States were not represented in the AFL's decision-making process. |
5
|
|
In addition, Sinyai fails to engage in a serious discussion of gender, and does not consider race or ethnicity in any comprehensive way until Chapter 7, wherein he offers a thorough account of organized labour's important role in educating its members around the issue of civil rights. |
6
|
|
It is certainly noteworthy that a book about the labour movement relies more heavily on liberal democratic theory than on class analysis. In writing such a book, Sinyai is sure to ruffle ideological feathers. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Sinyai's Schools of Democracy does provide us with a unique analysis of organized labour's political development in the United States, but it suffers from a breakdown between its theoretical approach and the insufficient empirical evidence Sinyai uses to support it. It is this conceptual flaw that critically detracts from the author's arguments. |
7
|
| | |
LARRY SAVAGE
Brock University |
|
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|