1. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE ABSENCE OF A FEUDAL BACK-GROUND UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT IN AMERICA.
- Author
-
Delson, Harry
- Subjects
WORKING class ,DEVELOPED countries ,OPPRESSION ,FEUDALISM ,ECONOMIC systems - Abstract
Students of the American working-class movement have often contended that the absence of a feudal background in the U.S. retarded the development of the working-class movement. The basis of this contention is that America is not only the one highly industrialized country without a powerful working-class movement but that it is also the one highly industrialized country without a feudal background. As early as 1886, Engels offered as one of the reasons for the weakness of the American working-class movement the fact that we "developed in a purely bourgeois fashion without any feudal past." Nevertheless, neither Engels nor any other writer has gone very far beyond mere assertion. There are of course many factors that account for the retarded development of the American working class. This paper attempts to explain the manner in which the absence of a feudal background contributed to the creation and intensified the operation of those factors. The proximate determinants of the strength of a movement for the emancipation of an oppressed class in a highly industrialized society are: (1) degree of actual oppression; (2) extent to which existing conditions are conducive to arousing resentment against and organizing or position to the given degree of oppression.
- Published
- 1936
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