The 2022 annual conference of historians in the German Association of America Studies (DGfA/GAAS) was dedicated to issues of “labor and capital in U.S. history.” The conference took place in a hybrid format to allow for as wide a participation as possible under pandemic conditions. Taking its cue from recent developments, such as the transnational turn in labor and economic history, the conference featured an international group of scholars, PhD poster presentations, a roundtable discussion, and two prestigious keynoters. In bringing into conversation various strands of the recent historiography, the conference explored issues ranging from political economy, labor migration, patterns of consumption, middle-class formation, social mobility and new forms of social solidarity to an unconditional basic income.

The first panel combined social, cultural, and intellectual history approaches to trace the “normalization” of neoliberalism in three distinct case studies. In regard to the natural and organic foods movement, ANJA-MARIA BASSIMIR (Mainz) identified the 1970s as a pivotal period when anti-capitalist critiques and cooperative ventures seemed to point towards an alternative economic order. Instead, she showed that the field of natural food production, distribution, and retailing, while changing the conversation about personal and planetary health, incorporated countercultural ideals and made them operational within a neoliberal market logic. While notions of ethical consumption thereby became mainstream, questions of ethical democratic production fell by the wayside. TORSTEN KATHKE (Mainz) took a closer look at Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s non-fiction bestsellers Future Shock and The Third Wave.1 He explained that the Tofflers’ all-encompassing definition of the market as a mediating mechanism uncoupled it from capitalism in their thought. Although the Tofflers had come out of the labor movement, they advocated societal change through individual marketplace actions, thus putting themselves on the trajectory of neoliberalism defined as a “normative order of reason” in which “all conduct is economic conduct.”2 AXEL SCHÄFER (Mainz) explored the political significance of the ties between evangelicalism and the counterculture. He argued that evangelicals utilized religious conversionism to absorb the spiritual impulses of the counterculture and to funnel them into a vision of the self-realizing entrepreneurial individual within a “spiritualized” market capitalism. This became a crucial element in forging the cultural imagery, socioeconomic structures, and political alignments of neoliberalism.

The second panel combined three papers on “Socialism and Marxism.” SEVERIN MÜLLER (Virginia) argued that taking seriously Marx’s thoughts on social and spatial divisions created by capitalism helps in countering popular claims to Appalachian exceptionalism. The region can be seen as a mirror of the nation’s development of increasing wealth inequality and labor conflict. CORD SCOTT (Okinawa) related high school students’ insufficient understanding of the terms “communist” and “socialist” to history textbook representations of Marxist thought as solely linked to immigrants, thus marginalizing labor issues in the U.S. According to Scott, this has led to considerable distrust in education and anti-intellectual sentiment among many Americans. In a similar vein, OLGA THIERBACH-MCLEAN (independent scholar) showed how recent media has challenged the notion that socialist thought is “un-American” and thus placed current labor activism in a longer tradition of U.S. social protest. She traced such efforts in popular books, such as John Nichols’ The ‘S’ Word: A Short History of an American Tradition… Socialism and Kurt Andersen’s Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, which reinscribe socialist thought into American national history.3 Noting recent shifts in mood towards embracing government regulation and corporate income taxation, Thierbach-McLean argued that the pandemic might promote this even further.

The conference roundtable, chaired by Anja-Maria Bassimir and Torsten Kathke, prompted participants to relate historical labor conditions to current developments within the market economy. NATALIE RAUSCHER (Heidelberg), AXEL JANSEN (Washington, D.C.), JAN LOGEMANN (Göttingen) and DIRK HOERDER (emeritus Arizona, Bremen) explored particularly the role and meaning of work. The postindustrial setting produced the new service sector economy and, together with a renewed desire for independent work, the gig economy. Though recently marked by growing labor activism, these sectors had to contend with union busting, a tenuous (im)migrant workforce, and a fraying social safety net. Technological and social transformations also prompted new questions about the effects of automation on labor, how technology shapes individual and social identities, and whether the function of work requires rethinking. The discussion showed that historicizing these questions draws attention to issues such as consumption, the (welfare) state, and the future of work and leisure. Likewise, it made apparent that studies of class require engagement with race, gender, (dis)ability, and immigrant status.

Panel three grouped together papers on internationalism, transnationalism, and empire. In the context of World War I, DAVID BEBNOWSKI (München) argued that the nation-state was a powerful ideological construct, allowing organizations like the National Civic League to employ anti-German sentiment in their opposition to radical unionism. He emphasized the role pamphlets played in delegitimizing radical labor activism in general and the International Workers of the World in particular. RICHARD SAICH (Cambridge, UK) looked at how the nation as well as U.S. empire-building in the 1980s and 1990s affected immigrant worker organization in Los Angeles. As a result of neoliberal policies, the service sector in Los Angeles was to a large degree sustained by undocumented immigrant workers from Mexico and South America. Defying expectations of managers and unions alike, this exploited workforce was willing to unionize and did so successfully in, for example, the Justice for Janitors campaign of the Service Employees International Union. Saich linked the strategic use of this “social movement unionism” to the transnational flow of workers, their cultural resources, and political power.

The complex interrelation of the state, labor, and labor rights was addressed by papers in Panel four. DOMINIC ALLEN (Glasgow) returned to the question whether the Wagner Act of 1935 effected greater social cohesion by diminishing ethnoracial tensions. Innovatively combining labor and disability studies, SYDNEY RAMIREZ (Kassel) examined child labor in Massachusetts in the Progressive Era. Organized in the National Child Labor Committee, reformers documented children’s physical disabilities and promoted medical inspection laws, initiating a shift in jurisdiction over children’s work from parents to physicians. These regulatory interventions defined the able body as the norm, regulated bodies rather than working conditions, and stigmatized welfare dependency. Ramirez concluded that the reformers’ disregard of children’s experiences, discriminatory employment practices, and narratives of incapacity funneled into a broader discourse on labor. ELIZABETH TANDY SHERMER (Chicago) explored the connection between access to higher education and the labor question. Originally intended to manage the labor market, the New Deal’s work-study programs and the GI Bill first cemented the idea of federal tuition assistance. In the postwar era, policymakers decided to extend loan programs rather than subsidize education institutions. As a result, programs such as Sallie Mae and Guaranteed Student Loans, modeled on the New Deal banking and housing legislation, required further private borrowing, raised tuition costs, and encouraged financialization, ultimately exacerbating entrenched inequalities. DARIUS CALEB SMITH (New Orleans) traced the Civil Rights Act (1964) Title VII lawsuit case Parson v. Kaiser. He demonstrated that racially discriminatory workplace practices, such as promotion biases, tests, and seniority systems, were negotiated and legally codified only over time and with the direct influence of African American labor activists – such as Harris Alfred Parson – and civil rights lawyers. Labor and civil rights history thus requires a sustained look beyond the Sixties.

In addition to the panels and roundtable discussion, the conference featured two keynote addresses. ELIZABETH FAUE’s (Detroit) talk explored collaboration and conflict in the relationship between labor and new social movements during three crisis moments. In the 1930s, Chicago’s Packinghouse Union combined unionism, antiracism, and community activism after racial conflicts had pulled it apart in the 1920s. During the 1970s and 80s, social movements re-energized labor unions particularly in campaigns for occupational health and safety measures. In recent decades unions in the healthcare and education sectors have shifted the discursive terrain by addressing social reproduction rather than just production issues. The confluence of labor activism and social movements resulted in new alliances and the sharing of resources. DAVID ROEDIGER's keynote theme was whether the U.S. has historically been a middle-class nation, whether it delivered on its promise to be one, and how politics create a middle-class constituency. He found that the middle class as an ideology emerged in the 1940s, was shaped by gendered and racialized power structures, and entered the political discourse as a constituency in need of support only after the Reagan presidency. Stanley Greenberg, the 1992 Clinton campaign pollster, effectively defined the white “hard-working forgotten middle class” as a key voting constituency for the Democratic Party4, deemphasizing more traditional working-class politics. In a segment that related to Elizabeth Shermer’s discussion of student debt, Roediger pointed out that financing college education has not only made a middle-class lifestyle harder to attain but has also left the middle class both overspent and overworked.5 This reinforces the “middle-class misery” of a constant dissonance between the demands for hard work and the simultaneous expectation to be hedonistic consumers seeking instant gratification.6 As the ability to reproduce middle-class lifestyles and identities weakens, it remains to be seen how labor relations might resurface in the political arena.

In summation, the conference challenged a range of common assumptions in the field. These include the notion that precarious service sector work in neoliberal regimes failed to bring about union activism; that neoliberal economics constituted a rejection of Cold War liberalism and the Sixties; and that the legendary American middle class was a pervasive and stable element of the body politic. The debates also indicated, however, that labor history needed to find new ways of engaging with other pressing issues. These include the impact of climate change, the relationship between human work and nonhuman actors, and how decentering the nation in labor history provides additional ways of exploring relations of power, resistance, and solidarity.

Conference overview:

Conference Opening

Axel Schäfer (Mainz)

Panel I: Normalizing Neoliberalism
Chair: Simon Wendt (Frankfurt am Main)

Anja-Maria Bassimir (Mainz) / Torsten Kathke (Mainz) / Axel Schäfer (Mainz)

Gather.town I + 2: Doctoral Poster and Organization Presentation
Ayman Al Sharafat (Budapest) / Venus Bender (Frankfurt am Main) / Sandra Meerwein (Mainz) / Alexander Reineke (Bochum)

Panel II: Socialism and Marxism
Chair: Pia Wiegmink (Bonn)

Severin Müller (Virginia) / Cord Scott (Okinawa) / Olga Thierbach-McLean (independent scholar)

_Keynote I:
Introduction: Alfred Hornung (Mainz)

David Roediger (Lawrence): Is the U.S. a Middle-Class Nation? Past and Present

Roundtable: Changing Labor Conditions
Chair: Anja-Maria Bassimir, Torsten Kathke

Dirk Hoerder (emeritus) / Axel Jansen (Washington, D.C.) / Jan Logemann (Göttingen), Natalie Rauscher (Heidelberg)

Panel III: Internationalism, Transnationalism, and Empire
Chair: Johannes Paulmann (Mainz)

David Bebnowski (München) / Richard Saich (Cambridge, UK)

Panel IV: Labor Law and Labor Rights
Chair: Philipp Gassert (Mannheim)

Dominic Allen (Glasgow) / Sydney Ramirez (Kassel) / Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Chicago), Darius Caleb Smith (New Orleans)

Keynote II
Introduction: Axel Schäfer (Mainz)

Elizabeth Faue (Detroit): “’Fighting for it Under a Different Name:’ Collaboration and Conflict, Labor and the New Social Movements”

Notes:
1 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, New York 1970; ders. , The Third Wave, New York 1980.
2 John Nichols, The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition - Socialism, London 2011; Kurt Andersen, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, New York 2020.
3 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (MIT Press, 2015), p. 9–10.
4 Stanley B. Greenberg, Middle Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority, New York 1996.
5 Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer, New York 1998; Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, New York, 2000.
6 Terry Eagleton, After Theory, New York 2003, p. 28