Critical Sociology current issue

Notes from the Editor

Fasenfest, D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

About the Authors

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

Solidarity in Question: Critical Theory, Labor, and Anti-Semitism

Smith, D. N. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

During World War II, Frankfurt School researchers studied attitudes in factories across America, finding high levels of anti-Semitism. Since the CIO’s birth in 1935, labor had grown meteorically and seemed fundamentally progressive. But the Frankfurt study of Labor anti-Semitism showed the other side of the coin — namely, that many workers held anti-Semitic views of a kind familiar from fascist propaganda, even during an anti-fascist war. In this issue of Critical Sociology, we excerpt Paul Massing’s contribution to this large unpublished study. Massing’s findings, and those of his co-authors, went almost entirely unnoticed and the corrosive bias they exposed has now largely vanished in the USA. Yet the findings of this study remain pertinent at a moment when, after many shifts of register and key, both labor and anti-Semitism remain significant global forces. The articles by present-day authors that accompany Massing’s article address related issues.

Es Kommt Die Nacht: Paul Massing, the Frankfurt School, and the Question of Labor Authoritarianism during World War II

Worrell, M. P. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

During World War II, Paul Massing, a research assistant at the Institute of Social Research (the famous ‘Frankfurt School’), helped conduct one of the most important research projects in the history of Marxist sociology. Following on the Institute’s earlier work on family and authority dynamics as well as the Weimar proletariat study, the wartime American labor anti-Semitism study resulted in a massive report that was never published. This article introduces Paul Massing, his role in the labor study, and some important findings regarding the effect of union affiliation and other key variables in regard to working-class authoritarianism.

Union Influence on Worker Anti-Semitism during World War II

Massing, P. W. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

Resistance to anti-Semitism, the avant-garde form of political and emotional authoritarianism, was found to be higher among the younger and more highly educated workers organized by the CIO during World War II than those belonging to the AFL or simply unorganized. The CIO’s greater integration of women also contributed greatly to this group’s lower levels of anti-Jewish hatred.

Race-Making and the Garrison State

Cassano, G. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

This essay explores the implications of Paul Massing’s findings that CIO union members were slightly more resistant to authoritarianism than AFL affiliated unionists. I begin by sketching the contours of the different forms of union consciousness produced by the AFL’s craft unionism and the CIO’s industrial unionism. Then, paying special attention to the ‘ethnic’ constituency of CIO unions, I argue that the CIO offered a particularly egalitarian vision of union democracy, at least until the onset of World War II. In the second half of the essay, I examine cinematic representations of race and the manner in which those representations corresponded to a changing racial consciousness among American workers. I end with a discussion of the contours of Cold War unionism, the decline of union democracy as a result of the wartime ‘no-strike’ pledge and Taft-Hartley, and the manner in which the American union movement displaced exploitation onto a racialized ‘Third World’ work force.

Speculative Profit Fetishism in the Age of Finance Capital

Krier, D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

This article tracks the rise of a new speculative form of ‘profit fetishism’ in the American stock market in the late 20th century as the control of American corporations shifted decisively from production-oriented managers to earning-oriented stockholders. During these years, speculative capitalists made the trading price of corporate stock the primary focus of corporate management. The heightened focus upon stock price coincided with a convergence of stock market actors upon the capitalized earnings model as the primary frame used to value corporate stock, displacing two formerly dominant frames, which focused (respectively) on hard assets and dividend payouts. Despite the notoriously unreliable and unstable nature of speculative accounting with respect to projected future earnings, such accounting profits have become the fetish of an age of speculative finance capital.

Maquiladora Production, Rising Expectations, and Alterglobalization Strategy

Horowitz, M. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

Hailed by advocates as engines of job growth, the export factories in Mexico’s maquiladora zone often spur severe criticism in activist circles for worker exploitation and abuses. Yet how do workers themselves perceive their wages and working conditions? In this essay I draw from several years of cross-border advocacy and 130 interviews with maquiladora workers in Reynosa and Juarez, Mexico to describe workers’ perceptions. I demonstrate that workers’ views are dynamic and ambivalent, bound up with their migratory histories and cross-border reference groups. Specifically, workers tend to express contentment with their working conditions, while sharply condemning their wages. Next, I consider the implications of the growing ‘cross-border justice movement’ along the Mexico-US border. I argue that a deepening of transnational advocacy networks holds the most strategic promise as a ‘counterhegemonic’, progressive politics.

A Tough 'Cell': Implementing Lean Production at Toledo Jeep

Howison, J. D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

This article attempts to expose the contradictions embedded in lean production by examining the early stages of transition from a Fordist to ‘lean’ model at the Toledo Jeep Assembly Plant in north-west Ohio. Initial research was conducted during 1999 and 2000 — prior to the opening of the new production facility — and is based on interviews with production workers, UAW representatives, and plant management, in addition to direct observations and content analyses of DaimlerChrysler documents. The effort is seen as part of a larger literature that deals with changing perceptions of, resistance to, and acceptance of new forms of work.