Here's What I Think About the Missed Opportunity of "Industrial Democracy"

I think its bunk. There are a lot of serious historians out there who think that just before, or just after World War II, there was a chance (they'd call it an opportunity) to change the relationship between labor and capital permanently. They point out that there were a significant number of radicals in the labor movement before the War, some point out that there was significant government control of the economy during the war (like the Office of Price Administration that set prices throughout the economy), and that there were some pretty radical ideas floating around. Before WWII, for example, Walter Reuther at the UAW proposed "industrial counsels" in which labor would share with management decisions over how capital would be used, and Local 600, the big, radical UAW union in Detroit, that suggested a court case that their inaliable right to work allowed them to participate in decisions about whether the Big Three Automakers should invest in plants outside the city of Detroit. The pushed, in other words, not just for higher wages or differint working conditions but for labor participation in how corporations should use their capital.

Different scholars point to different events that destroyed this radical movement - captialists' response to World War II made the government decide they could be trusted, the Roosevelt Recession damanged the radical momentum of the New Deal, the post war capitalists conspired with Congress to keep the people down. But all of them assume the the American people were ready for this. That all along the American people were ready to reject captialism, they just lacked the leadership and/or suffered from false consciousness.

I think if anyone is suffering from false consiousness, it's the academics that support these arguments. How about this, must simpler, explanation. The depression and World War II were rough. Americans were willing to consider some fairly radical steps during those dark times. When those dark times passed, they went right back to supporting the capitalism that seemed like it was a pretty good way to do things, despite its problems. When everyone got a suburban home, a new GE refridgerator, a Ford, and free tuition to college curtesy of the GI Bill, they were even more convinced this capitalism thing was a good idea. Maybe, just maybe, the radicals are the elites, not the people.