The Southern Key, Michael Goldfield
The Southern Key, Michael Goldfield
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The Southern Key
Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s

Author: Michael Goldfield

Narrator: Tom Parks

Unabridged: 19 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/19/2020


Synopsis

The golden key to understanding the last seventy-five years of American political development, the eminent labor relations scholar Michael Goldfield argues, lies in the contests between labor and capital in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. Labor agitation and unionization efforts in the South in the New Deal era were extensive and bitterly fought, and ranged across all of the major industries of the region.

In The Southern Key, Goldfield charts the rise of labor activism in each and then examines how and why labor organizers struggled so mightily in the region. Drawing from meticulous and unprecedented archival material and detailed data on four core industries—textiles, timber, coal mining, and steel—he argues that much of what is important in American politics and society today was largely shaped by the successes and failures of the labor movements of the 1930s and 1940s. Most notably, Goldfield shows how the broad-based failure to organize the South during this period made it what it is today. He contends that this early defeat for labor unions not only contributed to the exploitation of race and right-wing demagoguery in the South, but has also led to a decline in unionization, growing economic inequality, and an inability to confront and dismantle white supremacy throughout the US.


About Michael Goldfield

Michael Goldfield is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and currently research fellow at the Fraser Center for Workplace Issues at Wayne State University. A former labor union and civil rights activist, Goldfield's work focuses on the study of labor, class, race, and American politics.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Diana

“I have suggested that the CP did not establish its most important roots by subordinating itself to liberal politicians and moderate labor leaders. There is some evidence that the CP gained its most reliable support when it followed left-wing policies based on a class struggle approach, taking stron......more

Goodreads review by Jody

Unfortunately the sections on Stalinism call into question the rest of the historiography, as he even goes so far as to cite Robert Conquest (!). Nevertheless, the rest of the book is quite interesting and useful to considering questions of organizing today.......more