Wars as Hostile and Hospitable Environments for Labor

Corey R. Payne, University of Richmond

Scholars have tended to understand wars either as hostile environments for workers and their movements (often characterized by increased state repression, restrictions on means of subsistence, and dangerous conditions of work), or, alternatively, as hospitable environments for workers’ movements (as demand rises, labor markets tighten, and states intervene more heavily in enterprises). This paper aims to make sense of this variation by examining the relationship between wartime labor struggles and military-industrial change in the US over the past century. I argue that war’s effect on labor varies significantly based on how war-making as a social process is organized at particular junctures. I find that, in direct response to successful workers’ unrest during the wars of the early/mid-twentieth century, elites transformed the organization of the US war economy in order to undermine its widespread hospitability to labor. While this reaction was successful at eroding the sources of power for some wartime workers’ movements (e.g., among US-based manufacturing labor and dockworkers), they ultimately enhanced those of others (e.g., among non-citizen service labor, tech workers, and engineers). By examining the relationship between US wars and workers’ structural power over time, I make three contributions: First, I advance our understanding of war as a complex phenomenon that must be socially constructed, with effects unevenly distributed across time, space, and sector. Second, I uncover how workers’ struggles, and elite responses to them, have resulted in shifts in the organization of war-making (and its consequences for labor) over time. Third, I identify the environments that are most hospitable to wartime labor movements today, amidst the prospect of continued “endless wars” and escalating great power rivalries.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 51. War as a Complex Mechanism