Dismantling Solidarity

Why has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers' reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth.Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging: occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change, Dismantling Solidarity mounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of America’s private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welfare state. McCarthy weaves together a theoretical framework that helps to explain pension marketization with structural mechanisms that push policymakers to intervene to promote capitalist growth and avoid capitalist crises and contingent historical factors that both drive them to intervene in the particular ways they do and shape how their interventions bear on welfare change. By emphasizing the capitalist context in which policymaking occurs, McCarthy turns our attention to the structural factors that drive policy change. Dismantling Solidarity is both theoretically and historically detailed and superbly argued, urging the reader to reconsider how capitalism itself constrains policymaking. It will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, historians, and those curious about the relationship between capitalism and democracy.

95 documents on the events that represent a pivotal moment in modern Polish and world history: 16 months between August 1980 when the Solidarity trade union was founded and December 1981 when Polish authorities declared martial law and crushed the nationwide opposition movement that had grown up around the union. Transcripts of Soviet and Polish Politburo meetings give a detailed picture of the goals, motivations and deliberations of the leaders of these countries. Records of Warsaw Pact gatherings, notes of bilateral sessions of the communist camp provide additional pieces to the puzzle of what Moscow and its allies had in mind. Materials are included from Solidarity, too.

Downsizing, outsourcing, and intensifying performance management have become common features of corporate restructuring. They have also helped to drive up job insecurity and inequality. Under what conditions do companies take alternative approaches to restructuring that balance market demands for profits with social demands for high quality jobs? In Exit, Voice, and Solidarity, Doellgast compares strategies to reorganize service jobs in the US and European telecommunications industries. Market liberalization and shareholder pressure pushed employers to adopt often draconian cost cutting measures, while labor unions pushed back with creative collective bargaining and organizing campaigns. Their success depended on the intersection of three factors: constraints on employer exit, support for collective worker voice, and strategies of inclusive labor solidarity. Together, these proved to be crucial sources of worker power in fights to keep high quality jobs within core employers, while extending decent pay and conditions across increasingly complex networks of subsidiaries, subcontractors, and temporary agencies. Based on research at incumbent telecom companies in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Germany, France, Italy, UK, US, Czech Republic, and Poland, this book provides an original framework for analyzing cross-national differences in restructuring strategies and outcomes.

We find our way forward by going back. The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home." Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity? Braiding together historical, scientific, and cultural analysis, Indigenous ways of knowing, and the vivid threads of communal memory, Krawec crafts a stunning, forceful call to "unforget" our history. This remarkable sojourn through Native and settler history, myth, identity, and spirituality helps us retrace our steps and pick up what was lost along the way: chances to honor rather than violate treaties, to see the land as a relative rather than a resource, and to unravel the history we have been taught.

This handbook draws on research from a range of academic disciplines to reflect on the implications for provisions of pension and retirement income of demographic ageing. it reviews the latest research, policy related tools, analytical methods and techniques and major theoretical frameworks.

François Ewald's landmark The Birth of Solidarity—first published in French in 1986, revised in 1996, with the revised edition appearing here in English for the first time—is one of the most important historical and philosophical studies of the rise of the welfare state. Theorizing the origins of social insurance, Ewald shows how the growing problem of industrial accidents in France throughout the nineteenth century tested the limits of classical liberalism and its notions of individual responsibility. As workers and capitalists confronted each other over the problem of workplace accidents, they transformed the older practice of commercial insurance into an instrument of state intervention, thereby creating an entirely new conception of law, the state, and social solidarity. What emerged was a new system of social insurance guaranteed by the state. The Birth of Solidarity is a classic work of social and political theory that will appeal to all those interested in labor power, the making and dismantling of the welfare state, and Foucauldian notions of governmentality, security, risk, and the limits of liberalism.

Social Movements and Solidarity Structures in Crisis-Ridden Greece explores the rich grassroots experience of social movements in Greece between 2008 and 2016. The harsh conditions of austerity triggered the rise of vibrant mobilizations that went hand-in-hand with the emergence of numerous solidarity structures, providing unofficial welfare services to the suffering population. Based on qualitative field research conducted in more than 50 social movement organizations in Greece's two major cities, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the contentious mechanisms that led to the development of such solidarity initiatives. By analyzing the organizational structure, resources and identity of markets without middlemen, social and collective kitchens, organizations distributing food parcels, social clinics and self-managed cooperatives, this study explains the enlargement of boundaries of collective action in times of crisis.

From the acclaimed author of Dog Whistle Politics, an essential road map to neutralizing the role of racism as a divide-and-conquer political weapon and to building a broad multiracial progressive future "Ian Haney López has broken the code on the racial politics of the last fifty years."—Bill Moyers In 2014, Ian Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics named and explained the coded racial appeals exploited by right-wing politicians over the last half century—and thereby anticipated the 2016 presidential election. Now the country is heading into what will surely be one of the most consequential elections ever, with the Right gearing up to exploit racial fear-mongering to divide and distract, and the Left splintered over the next step forward. Some want to focus on racial justice head-on; others insist that a race-silent focus on class avoids alienating white voters. Can either approach—race-forward or colorblind—build the progressive supermajorities necessary to break political gridlock and fundamentally change the country's direction? For the past two years, Haney López has been collaborating with a research team of union activists, racial justice leaders, communications specialists, and pollsters. Based on conversations, interviews, and surveys with thousands of people all over the country, the team found a way forward. By merging the fights for racial justice and for shared economic prosperity, they were able to build greater enthusiasm for both goals—and for the cross-racial solidarity needed to win elections. What does this mean? It means that neutralizing the Right's political strategy of racial division is possible, today. And that's the key to everything progressives want to achieve. A work of deep research, nuanced argument, and urgent insight, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America is an indispensable tool for the upcoming political season and in the larger fight to build racial justice and shared economic prosperity for all of us.