David Montgomery (1927-2011) was one of the great historians of the US labor movement. His discipline-redefining work examined the complexities of American-working class life and culture and emphasized the importance of the “militant minority” of left-wing union activists in building a class-conscious labor movement.
The following piece is adapted from the introduction to a recently released collection of published and unpublished work by Montgomery, A David Montgomery Reader: Essays on Capitalism and Worker Resistance, edited by Shelton Stromquist and James R. Barrett (University of Illinois Press, 2024).
History yielded no “typical” working-class experience for David Montgomery. It seemed vital to document the great diversity of this story in all aspects of life, and then to see how these diverse experiences related to broader narratives.
His determination to document the complexity of working-class life is displayed most dramatically in the first three chapters of his major work of US labor history, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925, where he analyzed the work life and mentalities of skilled workers, common laborers, and factory operatives. This detailed examination of the workplace and community lent to his approach the “gritty” quality that many readers have observed and the “pointillist” methodology that he affirmed.
The connections in his work between race, ethnicity, and other forms of social difference have not always been recognized, but they have been at the center of his scholarship from the outset. Such social differences could create divisions and even conflict, as they did in Philadelphia during early…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Shelton Stromquist
