Class and power in the New Deal : corporate moderates, southern Democrats, and the liberal-labor coalition
G. William Domhoff (Author), Michael J. Webber (Author)
Domhoff (sociology, U. of California at Santa Cruz) and Webber (sociology, U. of San Francisco) seek to explain the New Deal origins and implementation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act through their theory of class dominance in the United States (rooted in the work of sociologists C. Wright Mills and Michael Mann) as critically compared to three rival theories: historical institutionalism, Marxism, and protest-disruption theory. In essence, they argue that Northern corporate moderates proposed all three major policies (sometimes in response to pressures from organized labor and other leftist activists), that corporate ultraconservatives opposed the policies to little effect because they were not well-represented in Congress, and that the Southern Democrats were able to shape the proposals to fit the needs of plantation capitalists and other large agricultural interests throughout the country
Print Book, English, 2011, ©2011
Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2011, ©2011
ix, 288 pages ; 24 cm.
9780804774529, 9780804774536, 0804774528, 0804774536
700468598
The power actors
The Agricultural Adjustment Act
The National Labor Relations Act
The Social Security Act
Aftermath and implementation
The shortcomings of alternative theories of the New Deal