Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19 (Political Power and Social Theory)

POLITICAL POWER AND SOCIAL THEORY Series Editor: Diane E. Davis Volume 1: 1980 Volume 2: 1981 Volume 3: 1982 Volum...

Author: Diane E. Davis | ed. Christina Proenza-Coles | Managing Editor

146 downloads 1966 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

POLITICAL POWER AND SOCIAL THEORY Series Editor: Diane E. Davis Volume 1:

1980

Volume 2:

1981

Volume 3:

1982

Volume 4:

1984

Volume 5:

1985

Volume 6:

1987

Volume 7:

1989

Volume 8:

1994

Volume 9:

1995

Volume 10:

1996

Volume 11:

1997

Volume 12:

1998

Volume 13:

1999

Volume 14:

2000

Volume 15:

2002

Volume 16:

2004

Volume 17:

2005

Volume 18:

2006

POLITICAL POWER AND SOCIAL THEORY

VOLUME 19

POLITICAL POWER AND SOCIAL THEORY EDITED BY

DIANE E. DAVIS Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, USA

CHRISTINA PROENZA-COLES Department of History and Philosophy Virginia State University Petersburg, VA, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

JAI Press is an imprint of Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2008 Copyright r 2008 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-76231-418-8 ISSN: 0198-8719 (Series)

Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Julia Adams

Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Lara Belkind

Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Mounira M. Charrad

Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Andy Clarno

Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL

Ivan Ermakoff

Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Chad Alan Goldberg

Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Edgar Kiser

Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Cedric de Leon

Providence College, Department of Sociology, River Avenue, Providence, RI, USA

Nora Libertun de Duren

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Pavla Miller

School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Pavel Osinsky

Department of Sociology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA

ix

EDITORIAL BOARD Ronald Aminzade University of Minnesota

Florencia Mallon University of Wisconsin-Madison

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Texas A&M University

Jill Quadagno Florida State University

Michael Burawoy University of California-Berkeley

Ian Roxborough State University of New York-Stony Brook

John Coatsworth Columbia University Susan Eckstein Boston University

Michael Schwartz State University of New York-Stony Brook

Peter Evans University of California-Berkeley

George Steinmetz University of Michigan

Nora Hamilton University of Southern California

John D. Stephens University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Evelyne Huber University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Charles Tillyw Columbia University

Eiko Ikegami New School University Graduate Faculty

Maurice Zeitlin University of California-Los Angeles

Howard Kimeldorf University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Sharon Zukin City University of New York

xi

EDITORIAL STATEMENT Political Power and Social Theory is a peer-reviewed annual journal committed to advancing the interdisciplinary understanding of the linkages between political power, class relations and historical development. The journal welcomes both empirical and theoretical work and is willing to consider papers of substantial length. Publication decisions are made by the editor in consultation with members of the editorial board and anonymous reviewers. Potential contributors should submit manuscripts in electronic format to [email protected]. Alternatively, authors may direct manuscripts to the mailing address below; please include four additional copies to the managing editor when submitting by post. Potential contributors are asked to remove any references to the author in the body of the text in order to preserve anonymity during review. Diane E. Davis, Editor Professor of Political Sociology Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue #9-521 Cambridge, MA 02139 Christina Proenza-Coles, Managing Editor Assistant Professor of Atlantic History Department of History and Philosophy P.O. Box 9070 Virginia State University Petersburg, VA 23806 [email protected] http://web.mit.edu/dusp/ppst/

xiii

LIST OF REVIEWERS Edwin Amenta

Roberto Korzeniewicz

Richard Bensel

Greta Krippner

Scott Bollens

Jan Lin

Neil Brenner

Martin Murray

Paolo Carpignano

Laurie Naranch

Miguel Centeno

Anya Paretskaya

Robert Cook

Dylan Riley

Frank Dobbin

Magali Sarfatti-Larson

Jonathan Eastwood

William Sites

Nina Eliasoph

Gregory Squires

Leila Farsakh

Joel Stillerman

Chad Goldberg

Susan Stockdale

Jack Hammond

John Tirman

Ann Hironaka

Robert Zussman

Menachem Klein

xv

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION This year’s volume of Political Power and Social Theory marks the end of my tenure as Editor. I thank the editorial board and all our dedicated readers for making this journal a leading venue for high quality scholarship in comparative and historical social science. I look forward to seeing the series continue under new leadership. The upcoming articles explore a variety of questions relating to states, citizenship and power, common themes examined with divergent analytical entry points and through deep knowledge of country cases as diverse as Russia, Germany, the United States, Israel, South Africa, Argentina and key nations in early modern Europe. Whether examined with a focus on revolutions and political parties, or cities and their physical and social transformation, or through development of the concept of the ‘‘familial state,’’ which marries a preoccupation with lineage and micro-cultures to that of national-state institutions, these articles expand our theoretical and methodological imagination of how citizens become included or excluded in local and national structures of power. Part I focuses directly on the theme of states and citizenship, albeit as focused primarily on earlier historical periods in both the US and Europe. The ﬁrst contribution in this section, Pavel Osinsky’s ‘‘War, State Collapse, Redistribution: Russian Revolution Revisited’’ raises questions about warmaking, statemaking and revolution. Inspired in party by the work of Charles Tilly, the author rejects actor-centered efforts to explain social revolutions and offers a sociologically structuralist account of the Russian Revolution. To do so, he compares the situations of early 20th century Russia and Germany and attempts to isolate a single structural factor that explains why communist revolution succeeded in the former and, despite agitation, did not in the latter. The author’s main argument builds around the strategies and alliance-building actions of the state. Osinsky suggests that it was the German provisional government’s capacity to negotiate a peace agreement and achieve internal political consolidation that prevented radicals from coming to power. In Russia, in contrast, the provisional government failed to exit the war and resolve problems of internal consolidation, bringing worsening socio-economic conditions that created structural opportunities for takeover of the state authority by a radical redistributive coalition. xvii

xviii

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

In ‘‘‘No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Liberal Capitalist Democracy: The Missing Link In Barrington Moore’s American Civil War’’ Cedric de Leon advances our understanding of democratization in general and the American Civil War in particular by demonstrating that mass inter-class parties have, in certain historical contexts, played a critical role in the forging of bourgeois capitalist democracy in the modern world. De Leon argues that the origins and outcome of the American Civil War cannot be understood without recognizing the changing logic of party politics, speciﬁcally that the Republican Party forged an antislavery alliance between capitalists and workers, therefore breaking the bonds of the anti-capitalist alliance that had held the Democratic Party together. Chad Goldberg’s article, ‘‘Pierre Bourdieu Meets T. H. Marshall: Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State,’’ takes us from mass movements to citizenship practices and welfare rights. His exploration of the Works Progress Administration challenges T. H. Marshall’s idea of a trajectory of citizenship cumulatively incorporating social rights and examines the development of U.S. welfare provisions as a more complex process of citizenship losses, not simply gains. Goldberg argues that the failure of the Workers Alliance and public ofﬁcials to fully mobilize the identity of ‘‘independent, able-bodied worker’’ as they were stymied by institutional constraints, political interests and racial politics, preserved the dependent status of ‘‘pauper.’’ While Part I centers on citizenship, as understood in terms of politics of inclusion and exclusion (with revolution the result of struggles for a politics of inclusion), and democracy, or the politics of governing structures/ political regimes, in Part II questions are raised about how democracy and/ or particular regimes ‘‘write themselves’’ in urban space, or the urban built environment. Nora Libertun de Duren’s ‘‘Intertwining National and Urban Policies: National Development Policies and Municipal Strategies in Greater Buenos Aires’’ examines how national development policies, and their changes in the context of globalization and democratization, affect the ‘‘suburbs’’ of Buenos Aires. She is particularly interested in the ways these two large processes interface with the decentralization of political and economic functions to local municipalities, how this in turn produces new patterns of social and income inequality in the urban periphery, and whether these new patterns of inequality within peripheral locales will change the social and political character of municipal politics. In ‘‘The Empire’s New Walls: Revanchism and Enclosure in Johannesburg and Jerusalem,’’ Andy Clarno successfully uses the two case studies to argue that enclosure (in the spatial, territorial and functional senses) is a

Editor’s Introduction

xix

fundamental process of restructuring of power relations at multiple geographical levels – from the local to the global. While neo-liberalism is helping to sustain and create new forms of separation and exclusion in postapartheid South Africa, it is pushing an emerging form of separation and enclosure in Israel/Palestine. The third paper in this section looks at virtual as well as physical space. In her article, Lara Belkind addresses what has become and will increasingly become a critical set of social, spatial, and political issues pertaining to the impact of the internet on urban space and the uneven development of metropolitan areas generally in ‘‘The Internet and the City: Blogging and Gentriﬁcation on New York’s Lower East Side.’’ While her speciﬁc focus on the role of weblogging in facilitating gentriﬁcation in the Lower East Side is timely, Belkind’s discussion raises larger issues and questions about the relationships between information, culture and economic development, local knowledge and global markets, ‘‘digital democracy’’ and the growing class divide as they relate to urban change. While Part I links states to war and welfare and Part II links states to cities, Part III links states to families. We are very pleased to have Julia Adams as the featured scholar of our Scholarly Controversy section. In her essay, ‘‘Paternity and Hegemony in Early Modern Europe,’’ Adams asks why the Dutch Golden Age came to and end. She explores the role played by family patriarchs – who were at the time both state-builders and merchant capitalists – in Holland, France and England in a tri-cornered race for domestic political power and imperial expansion. Adams raises important issues about the familial state, issues ably taken up by this year’s eminent commentators: Mounira Maya Charrad, Ivan Ermakoff, Edgar Kiser and Pavla Miller. Each tackles, extends and challenges Adams’ arguments from very different vantage points. Finally, let me close with a few personal remarks. I have worked with Christina Proenza on this journal for the last seven years, and have relished her great contributions to the production and development of each annual volume. Despite being separated by great distance (ah, the wonders of the internet!), we have managed to stay ‘‘virtually’’ in touch. She has carried much of the burden for this journal, and deserves considerable credit. As we turn over the reigns of the volume to a new editor, Christina no doubt will cycle out of her role as Managing Editor. I wish her well, and hope to see one of her own ﬁrst-rate pieces of comparative-historical research in one of the next few volumes. Finally and on a much sadder note, one of this journal’s longstanding editorial board members, Charles Tilly, passed away as this volume went to

xx

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

press. Chuck was the premier comparative-historical sociologist of our times, a man of global renown who inﬂuenced countless scholars, young and old. He gave tireless service to this journal, never rejecting a request to review a manuscript. He was a good friend to many, and will be greatly missed. This issue is dedicated to him. Diane E. Davis Cambridge, MA

WAR, STATE COLLAPSE, REDISTRIBUTION: RUSSIAN AND GERMAN REVOLUTIONS REVISITED Pavel Osinsky ABSTRACT This chapter examines why the political collapse of Russia and Germany in the end of the First World War resulted in massive expropriation of private property in Russia and consolidation of private property in Germany. This historical divergence is explained by the different measure of coercive capacities of the provisional governments and, consequently, their different ability to withstand the assault of the radical Left during the periods of turbulent political transitions. The measure of coercive capacities was determined primarily by support of the army, which, in turn, was contingent upon the provisional governments’ decisions to negotiate peace and exit the war.

INTRODUCTION Most historical accounts of the Russian Revolution prioritize the role of an ideologically driven transformative agency (e.g., the revolutionary labor Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 3–38 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19001-9

3

4

PAVEL OSINSKY

movement, the radical intelligentsia, the Bolshevik party, Lenin and so forth). In a similar fashion, these accounts view state socialism, the outcome of the revolution, as a radical experiment in social engineering: Lenin and the Communist Party were determined to build socialism in Russia and in doing so followed the general guidelines of the Marxian design of the new society (see Fitzpatrick, 2001; Malia, 1995, 2000; Pipes, 1996, 1997, 2003; Scott, 1998; Wade, 2000). Historical sociologists, on the other hand, examine the Russian Revolution through the lenses of macrosociological theories of social change. These theories focus at various structural determinants of the revolution: absence of commercial revolution in agriculture and survival of collectivist peasant institutions (Moore, 1966); a bureaucratic absolutist state subjected to extreme military pressures from abroad and persistence of strong peasant communities (Skocpol, 1979); autocratic capitalism and a revolutionary labor movement (McDaniel, 1988). These conceptions suggest that there existed speciﬁc institutional conditions that made a social revolution in Russia possible. These conditions were formed in the course of decades, if not centuries, of Russia’s historical development. While the contribution of both historical and sociological studies to our understanding of the Russian Revolution is enormous, these accounts cannot address few interesting questions. First, both revolutions in Russia (of 1905 and of 1917) took place in the end of unsuccessful wars that critically undermined the autocracy, the Russo–Japanese War and the First World War, respectively. Despite the recurrent economic hardship, famine, peasant revolts, political repression, labor unrest and various combinations of these and other social ills, the revolutions did not erupt before 1905 or in between 1905 and 1917. No matter how widespread peasant rebellions and labor uprisings were, these movements had not been able to challenge the autocracy until the Tsar’s authority was decisively undermined by the empire’s disastrous performance in war. May we neglect centrality of war in constructing narratives of the revolution? Second, in the wake of the First World War, not only Russia but several European states also experienced revolutionary crises. In the end of 1918, revolutionary socialists were close to victory in Germany. In spring 1919, the short-lived Soviet Republics were declared in Bavaria and Hungary. In 1919–1920, Italy went through a major revolutionary upheaval. In other words, Russia was the ﬁrst but not the only country that experienced a revolutionary crisis in the end of the war. It would be logical to suggest that these revolutions originated more in the common disastrous experience of the First World War rather than in peculiar structural conditions inside individual countries.

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

5

This chapter develops a new approach to explaining the Russian Revolution. Because it searches for an explanation of the revolution in the speciﬁc features of mass-mobilization warfare, it may be named a warcentered approach. It starts with a general premise that the First World War created a situation of a strategic stalemate which turned the conﬂict into a protracted war of attrition, in which nations that were denied access to international markets were likely to experience economic collapse and political breakdown. Among the major European nations, the states that maintained access to the world economy (e.g., Britain and France) were able to preserve social stability and avoided revolutionary crises during the war. The states excluded from the world economy and forced to rely on their own resources (e.g., Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany) suffered deep economic and political crises. These semi-absolutist states collapsed while the new provisional governments came to power (Osinsky, 2007). Although this argument seemed to be fairly consistent in interpreting the causes of breakdown of three empires, it did not explain the subsequent events. In most of Central Europe (e.g., Germany or Austria) the processes of political transition brought to power moderate social–democratic regimes that launched major economic and political reforms but left fundamental features of these societies intact. In Russia, where the Bolsheviks came to power, the revolutionary change resulted in a dramatic break with the past. Abolition of private property and establishment of collective ownership of the means of production signaled the beginning of an unprecedented economic and political transformation. Why was a communist revolution successful in Russia and not in other countries? Consider the closest comparable case, Germany. Both imperial states, Russia and Germany, experienced deep economic and political crises at the ﬁnal stage of the First World War. In both countries the imperial dynasties collapsed, provisional governments came to power and radical social movements launched frontal attack on existing authorities. As a consequence, in Russia the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and abolished private property of the means of production. In Germany, on the other hand, despite the vigorous challenge of the radical Left, the provisional government was able to stay in power and preserve economic institutions of capitalism. How can one explain such divergence of the revolutionary outcomes in these countries? The key difference, I would argue, was the extent to which state authorities in these two countries were able to make reasonable policy choices and, as a consequence, maintain their coercive capacities after the breakdown of the old regimes. Speciﬁcally, if a provisional government was

6

PAVEL OSINSKY

able to negotiate a peace agreement and achieve internal political consolidation, like it happened in Germany, it prevented radicals from coming to power. If a provisional government failed to exit the war and resolve problems of internal consolidation, like it happened in Russia, the worsening socio-economic conditions created structural opportunities for takeover of the state authority by the radicals. Thus, in contrast to most existing accounts of the revolution, this study places a primary emphasis on policy choices of a power incumbent (i.e., the provisional government) than mobilization strategies and political capacity of a revolutionary contender (i.e., the Bolsheviks).1 The ‘‘inexorable histories’’ of the Bolshevik Revolution notwithstanding, there was little that preﬁgured October in February. The crucial factor explaining success of the Bolshevik takeover was prolongation of war and, as a result, the turning of the masses of war-weary soldiers to the side of the radicals. The Bolsheviks coup d’etat could have been prevented had the new authorities been able to both stop war and resolve domestic problems.

REVOLUTION OR STATE BREAKDOWN? A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Although my emphasis on external structural determinants of internal political change resembles the argument of a state-centered theory of revolutions (see Goldstone, 2001, 2003; Goodwin, 1997, 2001; Skocpol, 1979, 1994), it originates in a different school of thought (see Collins, 1978, 1986, 1999; Mann, 1986, 1993; Tilly, 1975, 1985, 1990). Why does this difference matter? According to a state-centered theory of revolutions, a militaryﬁscal breakdown of the state, often caused by war and other exogenous factors, represents a necessary precondition and an important element of a revolution. For state-centered scholars, a revolution is thus a master narrative and a state breakdown is a sub-plot, an overture to the revolution. I suggest reversing the relationship between these concepts and viewing state breakdown, rather than a revolution, as a focal point of analysis. Drawing from Weber, I deﬁne state breakdown as a situation in which the central state authority does not uphold the claim to the monopoly of legitimate use of violence on the territory of its jurisdiction. In such situation, state authorities and other agents of power compete in their claims to a right to exercise violence. Because a political authority is challenged by contender(s), uncertainty about who will rule in future is a distinct feature of state breakdown, as contrasted to a normal political development (see Stinchcombe, 1999).

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

7

Not every episode of a state breakdown turns into a revolution. Conceptually, four potential outcomes of state breakdown may be identiﬁed: a restoration (after a period of uncertainty an old regime is restored with some insigniﬁcant modiﬁcations), a reform (an existing state authority, challenged by contenders, initiates a major institutional change), a replacement (a new authority comes to power but does not transform basic institutions) and, ﬁnally, a revolution (a new authority comes to power and initiates a major structural change).2 Political survival of a power incumbent in such situations hinges upon support of coercion-wielding institutions (army, police, secret police, etc.). State’s coercive capacity in this context refers to its ability to control and effectively deploy these forces, the army ﬁrst of all. By enlisting support of a military institution and effectively using troops, the government can suppress political contenders and consolidate its authority. Of course, selecting state breakdown rather than a revolution as a primary object of study is more a matter of preference dictated by the purposes of research than an intention to replace one research agenda by the other. In fact, recent state-centered studies of revolutions of the twentieth century, particularly a Goodwin’s research (2001), demonstrate inseparability of states and revolutions. According to Goodwin (2001, pp. 24–58), no states, no revolutions; states ‘‘construct’’ the revolutionary movements that challenge and sometimes overthrow them. Some states (patrimonial, exclusionary, infrastructurally weak) are more likely to be overthrown by revolutionary movements than other. While such convergence of two streams of research can only be welcomed, modern historical development renders studies of state breakdown increasingly informative on their own terms. In the world, in which the power of states becomes greater than the power of societies while international systems display strong interdependence among states, studies of international relations become indispensable for understanding the dynamics of domestic politics. Given the fact that many political crises are caused by exogenous forces (‘‘revolutions from abroad’’), the concept of state breakdown allows building a much-needed bridge between studies of international relations (including wars) and domestic political processes.

A STATE UNDER SIEGE After discussing the theoretical background of the argument, we can now apply it to the ﬁnal stage of the First World War (1917–1918). The macrocosm of the First World War strikingly resembled conditions of siege warfare

8

PAVEL OSINSKY

(Strachan, 2000). Economically, the Central Powers (i.e., Germany and Austria-Hungary) have found themselves in a situation of isolation similar to the conditions of fortresses besieged by enemy troops. The economic organization in these countries came to resemble methods historically employed in beleaguered cities where military authorities requisitioned all resources for the needs of combat. To some extent it was also true for Russia, despite the fact that this country fought on the side of the Allies. The disintegration of the European economy and the competing naval blockades severely constrained access of these states to resources from the outside world. Like commanders in besieged cities, the state authorities in Germany and Austria-Hungary had to introduce far-reaching administrative measures of ‘‘war socialism,’’ which involved centralized allocation of economic assets, including provision. These institutional mechanisms, as we know, did not prevent their collapse but allowed these nations to maintain social stability for almost four years in war. What happened in besieged cities if commanders failed to ensure equality of sacriﬁce while the gap between wealthy citizens and starving poor reached critical proportions? In such situations class struggle between the poor and the better-off reached its utmost intensity. Sometimes the poor turned their weapons against the better-off, seizing and equally distributing the property of the wealthy among the population. In other words, they made a revolution. This is exactly what happened in Russia in 1917.

SOCIALIZATION AS REDISTRIBUTION An economic system, which began taking shape in Russia in 1917 and later was copied (with some modiﬁcations) in several countries in Europe and Asia, is known as state socialism. State socialism refers to a type of a command economy in which the state possesses all or most economic assets of a nation. Transition to state socialism thus involves transfer of property rights over productive assets to the state or a state-directed socialization (nationalization) of major economic assets. Theoretically, such socialization may be conceptualized as a speciﬁc case of coercive redistributive action, by which one actor forcibly acquires properties of other actors. Coercive redistributive action differs from all other forms of collective action insofar as economic assets represent the primary object of contention and expropriation is carried out against the will of the owner. Such coercive expropriation may take various forms: a robbery by a mob, a requisition by the army or nationalization by the state.

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

9

Under normal course of events, a large-scale coercive redistributive action is unlikely. Individual economic assets constitute private property. If anyone attempts to seize someone’s property or interfere with exercise of property rights, the owner would appeal for the intervention of the authority and, if the latter is sufﬁciently effective, the perpetrator would be arrested and punished. Thus, the state’s protection of property rights prevents coercive redistributive action. What happens if state authority disintegrates? If repressive capacity of a state authority is critically undermined, a spontaneous process of coercive expropriation may be initiated. If there is no authority, laws and orders may no longer be enforced. Individual rights and freedoms (including property rights) may not longer be respected. The poor would begin seizing economic assets of the well-to-do classes: food, consumer goods, housing, land and other means of production. The greater the incapacitation of state authority, the greater the scope and intensity of coercive redistributive action. Surely, such scenario applies to a relatively narrow range of conditions characterized by a catastrophic scarcity of primary living necessities and extreme relative deprivation of poor classes, particularly if large segments of poor classes are concentrated in major cities and have access to ﬁrearms. In all other contexts, breakdown of authority may induce other forms of economically oriented collective action or may not affect economic relations at all.

WHAT ABOUT IDEOLOGY? From the viewpoint of conventional historical accounts such argument may seem incomplete. What is the role of ideology in this account? Can we evade studying ideology as a critical ferment of revolutionary change? It is certainly true that revolutionary rhetoric almost always accompanies popular redistribution. The key issue, however, is whether origins of radical claims are endogenous or exogenous in relation to mass collective action. Social theory offers strong arguments in favor of an endogenous interpretation of popular radicalism. According to Scott (1985, 1990), for example, poverty and inequality always express themselves in various (proto-) ideological constructions of lower classes, which usually display intense opposition to the existing social order. In fact, ‘‘hidden transcripts’’ of subordinate discourses often include utopian scenarios of social reversal (‘‘the world-upside-down’’) in which poor people win while rich individuals

10

PAVEL OSINSKY

suffer. Usually, however, such subversive tropes are suppressed by the dominant class, which upholds the ofﬁcial deﬁnition of the social order. A breakdown of the old regime puts an end to the monopoly of the dominant class over ideological production. Democratic liberties declared by a new regime foster rapid democratization of public discourse. Mass newspapers and brochures of all possible orientations proliferate. Since most of the press caters to the needs of mass public, ‘‘hidden transcripts’’ of subordinate classes become popular, if not dominant, themes of public discourse. In the multitude of voices of the revolutionary democracy, radical demands of coercive expropriation may not necessarily predominate. Initially, themes of law, order and property may still be popular. As war continues, economic crisis deepens and social polarization increases, radical antibourgeois rhetoric – captured, elaborated and ampliﬁed by socialist propaganda – gains broader acceptance among working classes (see Figes & Kolonitskii, 1999; Kolonitskii, 1994).

LOGIC OF THE ARGUMENT In the rest of the chapter I will focus at two episodes of state breakdown in the end of the First World War: Russia (February to October 1917) and Germany (November 1918 to July 1919). Although in both countries the semi-absolutist states collapsed and the transitional governments came to power, the outcomes of the political transitions differed. In Russia the collapse of the autocracy triggered widespread expropriation, which was ﬁnally institutionalized in the state-directed nationalization by the Bolshevik government. In Germany a new government was able to channel radical demands to the framework of legal-constitutional deliberations and suppress the socialization movement. The central thesis of the chapter is that these divergent trajectories can be explained by different coercive capacities of the provisional governments: lower in Russia and higher in Germany. This divergence came about because the German provisional government negotiated the armistice and thus secured support of the army; the Russian provisional government, on the other hand, failed to do that. In the next (second) section of the chapter I will compare intensity of coercive redistributive action in Russia and Germany in three areas: industrial facilities, provision and land. In the third section I will explain the difference in coercive expropriation by different degrees of state incapacitation in these two countries. In ﬁnal section I will highlight the role of the armed forces as a key factor in state incapacitation or state consolidation.

11

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

COERCIVE REDISTRIBUTIVE ACTION: RUSSIA AND GERMANY (1) Economic institutions in Russia were integrated in the ediﬁce of the autocratic state. To a larger extent than elsewhere these institutions were created, supported and reproduced by the autocracy (see McDaniel, 1988). As the monarchy and the administrative apparatus of the old regime came to pieces, a major change in economic relations began to unfold. Poor population, both in cities and countryside, began challenging the exiting distribution of wealth and, in some cases, seizing property of better-off classes. The ﬁrst object of coercive redistribution was property of industrial and commercial enterprises. The initial step in this direction was removal of the most hated managers and foremen. In the ﬁrst days of the revolution, workers often placed an unpopular manager in a wheelbarrow and rolled him with cheers through the factory gates in the nearby river or pond. Sometimes worse things happened; at the Putilov works, the director and his aide were killed by workers and their bodies were ﬂung in the Obvodnoi canal (Smith, 1983, 2004). Establishing workers’ committees in the factories was another step in taking control over enterprises. These practices began at state-owned enterprises and spread to private companies in Petrograd and other cities. Most of the factory committees functioned in metalworking and armaments industries and supported the war effort. These committees focused primarily in the daily operations of their workshops, had no speciﬁc political afﬁliations and rarely discussed political matters. The Bolsheviks played a minor, if any, role in the workers’ committees (see Keep, 1976; Mandel, 1983; Smith, 1983). Although outright seizures of enterprises were rare, as the economic crisis deepened, the scope of the workers control expanded. Some committees began gaining control over hiring and ﬁring workers and showing keen interest in their companies’ sales and ﬁnances. As many enterprises ran out of raw materials and fuel, the committees took upon themselves the task of supplying factories with these materials. To obtain fuel, they sent their ‘‘pushers’’ to the coal- and oil-producing regions of the South or requisitioned fuel in the neighboring establishments. In some factories in Petrograd, laborers ventured to run factories themselves.

12

PAVEL OSINSKY

Mandel (1983, pp. 149–150) describes how workers took over the Langezipen Machine-Construction Factory: The conﬂict came to a head on 2 June when the director announced his intention of closing operations, citing a 33 per cent decline in output, 10 million ruble losses on state orders, and lack of funds, all due to the eight-hour day, a 50 per cent decline in labour productivity, constantly rising prices, and ﬁnally, shortages of fuel and raw materials. At the request of the workers, the Central Soviet (CS) of Factory Committeesy enquired into the company’s ownership. Although the director refused to cooperate, it was ﬁnally ascertained that the original owner has been the Azov-Don Bank, but it had transferred its stocks to a certain Zhivitov, who in turn transferred them in the name of Kislyanskii. However, by this time, the director informed the workers that he had quite unexpectedly ‘come across’ 450 000 rubles, borrowed from an acquaintance, and production would go ahead full speed. But in the interim, the workers had set up full control over management. On 5 June, the factory committee reported: The situation of late at the factories of the Langezipen Co. Incy have placed us before the necessity of taking the following measures: 1) No goods or raw materials may be shipped out from the factory without permission of the factory committeey 2) All orders of the factory committee are binding on all workers and employees, and no order from the administration is valid without the sanction of the factory committee. 3) No papers or correspondence relating to the factory can be destroyed without the factory committee reviewing them. 4) To carry out the above tasks the elected control commission will begin to fulﬁl its duties from today. 5) The ﬁremen and guards are duty-bound to keep watch over the factory’s buildings against ﬁre.

Interventions like these became widespread and the Provisional Government made earnest efforts to mediate relations between labor and industrialists (see Ferro, 1980, pp. 153–156). The Menshevik Minister of Labor Skobelev decried arbitrary actions of employees. He appealed to workers to pay attention not only to their rights but also sacriﬁces in the name of the revolution (Mandel, 1983, p. 161). In August, Skobelev issued a circular afﬁrming that issues of hiring and ﬁring fell in the exclusive jurisdiction of employers and forbade factory committees from meeting during working hours. Workers reacted with indignation and condemned the Ministry for ‘‘protection of capitalist interests’’ (Smith, 1983, 2004). Being unable to prevent labor intervention in running factories, Skobelev equally failed to establish working relationships with employers who mistrusted the ministry headed by socialists. As a result, the labor and the employers were not able to negotiate any sort of social pact similar to the Stinnes–Legien agreement negotiated between labor and industrialists in Germany in November 1918 (Smith, 1983, p. 171). Lacking an effective organizational framework for regulating employer–employee relations, the government failed to prevent ‘‘creeping socialization’’ of industrial enterprises. Germany represents a different picture in this respect. Almost immediately after the November Revolution, the issue of socialization of industry

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

13

came to the forefront of public debates. In contrast to direct popular action in Russia, however, in Germany the issue was tackled in an orderly and systematic way. On November 12, 1918, the government announced that it was about to launch a socialization program. The cabinet concluded that some industries (like coal and potassium) were ready for socialization and decided to refer the issue to a special ‘‘Commission of Nine,’’ which included such well-known socialist experts as Karl Kautsky and Rudolf Hilferding (Ryder, 1967, pp. 167–168). The Berlin Executive Council of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils agreed to entrust a socialization issue to the commission and proclaimed that the nationalization of industry ‘‘should only be undertaken by the government and should be carried out systematically and organically, taking both the domestic and foreign situation into account’’ (Mommsen, 1981, pp. 32–33). In contrast to the Russian workers, the German laborers did not interfere with management’s functions. In the overwhelming majority of cases the workshop managers and foremen worked as they did before. Instead of harassing unpopular managers, laborers fought for a greater role of factory councils (Betriebsra¨te) in factory affairs. Factory councils have been viewed as a primary way to socialization (Moore, 1978; Morgan, 1975; Oertzen, 1963). The fact that workers were not eager to resort to overt violence did not imply that they were passive and complacent. In January 1919, for instance, delegates of councils and trade unions at the conference in Essen announced a beginning of socialization of the Ruhr mines and elected their own ‘‘Commission of Nine’’ to negotiate with the government and implement the program of socialization. The labor activists argued that ownership of the means of production was to be passed onto society in general while plants were to be administered by factory councils (Morgan, 1975, pp. 224–225). The new authorities did not feel much enthusiasm of turning management of one of the key branches of the economy over to workers’ councils, yet the labor movement in the Ruhr was too strong to be ignored. As a compromise, the government proposed a mixed system of management in which workers, managers and the state would control the operation of the coal mines. However, miners in Ruhr were not satisﬁed with half-measures. In early February they issued an ultimatum: the government must accept the factory council system for the mines, assign to the councils the rights of supervision and recognize the authority of the ‘‘Commission of Nine.’’ The authorities were given 10 days to accept these conditions; otherwise miners would begin a general strike (Morgan, 1975). When in late February the general strike was announced in Berlin, the government began to retreat. All of a sudden, the government

14

PAVEL OSINSKY

ofﬁcials became receptive to the idea of socialization. On March 1, The Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands—SPD) faction in the National Assembly presented a resolution calling for socialization. The next day Berlin was placarded with ofﬁcial announcements ‘‘Socialization is on the march!’’ and ‘‘Socialization is here!’’ At its party congress on March 22–23, the SPD leaders promised to include councils in the new constitution. Ebert announced introduction of appropriate legislation. The conﬂict over socialization was channeled towards legislative procedures and, as the political situation began to normalize, petered out by the summer. (2) The second object of coercive redistributive action was provision. In March 1917, under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet, the Provisional Government declared a state monopoly on grain. Grohman, a Menshevik economist afﬁliated with the Petrograd Soviet, has compiled an ambitious project of a nationwide organization for mobilization and distribution of consumer goods, including provision, using a German system as a model (Sukhanov, 1984). However, the new authorities lacked even a rudimentary bureaucratic apparatus to enforce the monopoly of the provision. All efforts to organize a new system of supply were successfully sabotaged by merchants and local authorities. The attempts to extract grain by force confronted ﬁerce resistance of the rural population. Food supply in Petrograd was worse than in other big cities because the Baltic Sea navigation had been interrupted by the German ﬂeet and the railways were blocked. Due to shortage of food in big cities, the poor urban population resorted to a self-supply strategy, known as meshochnichestvo, or ‘‘sackmanism.’’ The sackmen, or ‘‘baggers,’’ as Argenbright (1993) called them, traveled to the peasant villages of the ‘‘surplus regions’’ to obtain grain, which they carried back home in a sack. The authorities that wished to enforce the monopoly regulations tried to ﬁght sackmen by forming a special food-supply militia, but their efforts were effective only against women and elderly. More energetic sackmen formed larger gangs, hijacked trains and conﬁscated grain (Lih, 1990, pp. 76–79). In Petrograd, workers and other employees organized food committees and food cooperatives. During 1917, membership of Petrograd workers food cooperatives increased threefold, from 50,000 to 150,000 (Smith, 1983, p. 87). In absence of stable supplies, however, these organizations offered little help. As the subsistence crisis deepened, the workers’ activities shifted

15

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

from the factory ﬂoor to the streets. Poor population called for searches of warehouses and apartments for hoarded food (Wade, 2000, p. 189). On paper only ofﬁcial authorities were empowered to authorize searches of hoarded food but because of proliferation of militias, the Red Guards and other self-appointed authorities, it was difﬁcult to distinguish legal searches and conﬁscations from illegal ones. Authorities issued orders strictly forbidding illegal searches but it was easy to forge search documents. Waves of coercive requisitions, often conducted by criminals, coincided with the periods of political crises, such as the July days, when the civil order evaporated from the streets of Petrograd completely (Hasegawa, 2004, pp. 48–49). In summers and autumns such searches and conﬁscations, both authorized and unauthorized, became routine phenomena in Petrograd, Moscow and other Russian cities (Koenker & Rosenberg, 1989, p. 259; Raleigh, 1986, p. 263). In Germany the November Revolution did not alter the existing mechanism of administrative allocation of provision, which was established in 1915–1916. The system of administrative allocation of food functioned as before. The Allied blockade remained in force until July 1919 and after the November 1918 armistice it had been rendered even stricter (Gerschenkron, 1966, p. 99). Because German authorities could ensure only meager rations, the subsistence crises created a phenomenon known as a Hamsterfahr, a selfsupply activity similar to the Russian sackmanism. Families from the industrial areas left cities in the early morning trains for the countryside and returned home in the late trains, laden with sacks and baskets. As Moeller (1986, p. 71) reports, some travelers used forged papers authorizing the conﬁscation of agricultural products, others disguised themselves as nurses and plead from farm to farm for food for their hospital, while still others resorted to theft from peasant homes. In one case the entire work force of a coal mine had walked off the job to countryside to look for food. In general, however, forced expropriation of food in Germany did not take such massive and ubiquitous character like in Russia. In contrast to Petrograd and Moscow, where armed mobs of soldiers and criminals broke in houses and searched for valuables, the civil order in Berlin and other German cities was generally maintained. (3) The third object of coercive expropriation was land. Land distribution before the war was extremely inequitable in most of Russia. The islands of large estates coexisted with a sea of smallholdings and peasant communes. The collapse of authorities came to the rural population as a complete

16

PAVEL OSINSKY

surprise and it took few weeks for countrymen to digest the news. Slowly, however, a tectonic elemental movement began to gain strength. Throughout the country peasants began violating century-old rights of ownership. With every new week encroachments on large estates became more and more frequent. The landmarks separating communal land from privately owned land were abolished and many tracts of land outside the commune were reintegrated into the communal holdings (Gill, 1979, p. 40). In spring 1917 most land seizures were still implemented by ‘‘surreptitious’’ methods. Instances of the outright seizure of all the land belonging to private landowners were still relatively few (Gill, 1979, pp. 40–42). In many regions the landlords, frightened by the revolution, abstained from the spring sowing. The authorities, concerned with the sowing, passed a resolution which provided that if a landowner refused to sow land, it should be placed at the disposal of the local food supply committees and rented at a fair price to local landowners, including peasants. The peasants quickly took advantage of the law and used it as a justiﬁcation for appropriating private estate lands (Perrie, 1992, p. 22; Wade, 2000, pp. 134–135). During the summer, as it became known that the Provisional Government decided to postpone a land reform until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, peasant communities began direct redistribution of land, seizures of crops, sacking estates and terrorizing (sometimes killing) landowners. In many provinces peasants took possession of church and monastery land. In order to prevent return of proprietors of estates, peasants often resorted to ‘‘smoking out’’ the landowners by burning down their estates (Perrie, 1992, p. 27). Keep (1976, p. 212) provides an interesting eyewitness account of the destruction of the estate in the village Zykov in Ryazan province: At mid-day the village assembly met to decide the fate of our property, which was large and well-equipped. The question to be decided was posed with stark simplicity: should they burn the house or not? At ﬁrst they decided just to take all our belongings and to leave the building. But this decision did not satisfy some of the present, and another resolution was passed: to burn everything except the house, which was to be kept as a school. At once the whole crowd moved off to the estate, took the keys from the manager, and commandeered all the cattle, farm machinery, carriages, stores etc. For two days they carried off whatever they could. Then they split into groups of 20, divided up the loot into heaps, one for each group, and cast lots which group should get which. In the very middle of this redistribution a sailor appeared, a local lad who had been on active service. He insisted that they should burn down the house as well. The peasants got clever. They went off to inspect the house a second time. One of them said: ‘What sort of a school would this make? Our children would get lost in it.’ Thereupon they decided to burn it down [the next day]. They went home quietly leaving a guard of 20 men, who had a regular feast: they heated the oven, butchered a sheep, some geese,

17

War, State Collapse, Redistribution ducks and hens, and ate their ﬁll until dawny this the night passed. The whole village assembled and once again the axes began to strikey . They chopped out the windows, doors and ﬂoors, smashed the mirrors and divided up the pieces, and so on. At three o’clock in the afternoon they set light to the house from all sides, using for the purpose eight chetverti of kerosene.

In autumn, violations of land and property rights became so widespread and diverse in character that they could be classiﬁed under numerous subtypes: destruction of estates; arson; seizure of estates, land, forests, livestock and equipment; illegal woodcutting and so forth. Many of these actions could be further subdivided in organized and unorganized forms. Malyavskii (1981) identiﬁed as many as 44 forms of the peasant movement and 16,298 peasant disturbances from February to October 1917. In contrast to Russia, post-war Germany did not experience a major land reform, the absence of which was regarded by some scholars (William Roepke) as ‘‘one of the great mysteries of our time’’ (Gerschenkron, 1966, pp. 92–93). In reality this mystery could be easily explained by the fact that in most of the European Russia peasant smallholdings coexisted side by side with large estates, a situation most propitious to coercive redistribution. In Germany these two types of land tenure usually did not mix: either small holdings predominated (in the West and South of Germany) or large Junker estates that used a hired migrant workforce (in the East) (Skocpol, 1979). To sum up, in both countries, Russia and Germany, collapse of state authority brought about increase in coercive redistributive action. This action resulted more from the war-time economic disorganization and political collapse than ideological projects of radical parties. In Germany this movement was more organized than in Russia. Yet, the scope and intensity of radical redistributive action were much greater in Russia than in Germany. In Germany, the labor movement just constrained and modiﬁed operations of market economy but did not, by and large, change the existing property relation. In Russia coercive expropriation began transforming property relations. It is important to note that this process started well before the Bolsheviks’ came to power in October.

STATE INCAPACITATION VS. STATE CONSOLIDATION: RUSSIA AND GERMANY (1) Peculiarity of land distribution in Russia may account for the massive redistribution of property in the countryside, but not in the cities. Why did

18

PAVEL OSINSKY

state breakdown result in greater expropriations in Russian cities than German cities? What was different in Russian urban politics if not the Bolsheviks? Below I will argue that difference in intensity of socialization should be attributed to different coercive capacities of the transitional state authorities. Most researchers described the Russian political arrangement in 1917 as a ‘‘dual authority,’’ a coexistence of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet of the Workers’ and Soldier’ Deputies. But if a dual authority did take place, one center of authority at least should have prevented another center from pursuing policies that threatened vital interests of its social constituencies. If the Provisional Government expressed interests of the Russian bourgeoisie and landowners, why would not it stop the campaign of forced requisitions of their possessions? This paradox can be easily resolved if one assumes that the Russian political structure was not precisely a ‘‘dual authority’’ in which power was split evenly among two pillars. The actual locus of power was the Petrograd Soviet or, more precisely, a pro-Soviet ‘‘revolutionary democracy,’’3 a coalition of workers, soldiers and sailors in Petrograd. In fact, already in March 1917 the Provisional Government lost most instruments of power. First, it did not control the army. In the ﬁrst days of the revolution, to ensure support of the insurgent troops, the Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1 which instituted soldiers’ committees in all military units, subordinated these committees to the Soviet, transferred arms to the disposal of the committees, granted soldiers’ rights of citizenship and so forth. Along with abolition of the disciplinary power of the ofﬁcers and instituting elective courts this meant that ofﬁcers lost power to keep soldiers in subordination. Soldiers at the front began electing their own authorities and ignoring the old chain of command. Troops affected by the Soviet’s paciﬁst campaign refused to ﬁght and deﬁed the orders of the commanders. During the summer, in the wake of the ill-fated ‘‘Kerensky’s offensive,’’ the army began a spontaneous self-demobilization. The failure of Kornilov’s putsch in the late August only accelerated this process. By September–October 1917, the old army essentially ceased to exist as a functional institution (see Wildman, 1980, 1987). Second, the government, following an agreement concluded with the Petrograd Soviet, dissolved police and local administration. On February 27–28, the headquarters of police, secret police and the Corps of Gendarmes were stormed by the revolutionaries. Many policemen were arrested, assaulted, some killed. Criminal records (ﬁles, photographs, ﬁngerprints)

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

19

were destroyed. Prisons were opened and prisoners, including convicted criminals, set free. In early March, the government ofﬁcially abolished the old police and the Corps of Gendarmes. All provincial governors and deputy governors in the provinces were dismissed and their authority was transferred to the chairmen of the provincial self-administration (zemstvo boards) who acted as the government’s commissars. The government instructed local authorities to form citizens’ militias commanded by elected ofﬁcers and operating under the authority of zemstvas. In most cities and towns, however, such militias enjoyed little authority. In short, the provisional government deprived itself of any instruments of coercive power (Daly, 2004, pp. 205–208; Pipes, 1990: 321–322). Third, the February insurgence led to mass acquisition of weapons by workers. The insurgents obtained 40,000 riﬂes and 30,000 revolvers from the Arsenal only. In addition, there existed many other sources for acquiring weapons: individual soldiers, police and plundered storehouses. By July there were over 50,000–60,000 riﬂes in Petrograd. After the July uprising, the government attempted to collect arms but these efforts proved to be unsuccessful. In the autumn, the arming of workers’ militias took an organized and systematic form (see Wade, 1984, p. 39, 160–161). Thus, the actual balance of power in the capital favored the Petrograd Soviet rather than the Provisional Government. The most perceptive members of the cabinet came to understand precariousness of their position soon after the February revolution. On March 9, in response to the army command’s appeals for the government’s action, War Minister Alexander Guchkov telegraphed to the Commander-in-Chief Alexeev that the Provisional Government had no real power of any kind and its orders were carried out only to the extent that this was permitted by the Soviet, which was in command of the most essential instruments of power including troops, railroads and the telegraph. A pro-Soviet ‘‘revolutionary democracy,’’ not the Provisional Government, controlled the situation in the capital. (2)

What was the political sociology of the ‘‘revolutionary democracy’’ in Petrograd? Three most active elements of radicalism can be identiﬁed: the Kronstadt sailors, the Red Guards and the Petrograd garrison (Figes, 1996). Most of the time these forces remained in the background of political developments, letting politicians play their roles, but every time the situation turned critical they appeared at the forefront of events.

20

PAVEL OSINSKY

The ﬁrst element of radicalism was about 80,000 sailors from the Kronstadt naval base located at Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland 20 miles west of Petrograd. The rebellion at Kronstadt, which began on February 28, turned into carnage. The Base Commander, Admiral Viren, was bayoneted to death, some ofﬁcers were murdered at their posts, others taken to a ditch in Anchor Square and executed and more than 160 ofﬁcers were arrested and imprisoned in the island dungeons (Figes, 1996, p. 395; Mawdsley, 1978, p. 14). By launching terror, the mutineers had burned bridges behind themselves. The naval hierarchy was completely destroyed and power passed to the Kronstadt Soviet. According to an eyewitness, it was a case of ‘‘October in February.’’ Kronstadt sailors rapidly politicized. On May 16, the Soviet declared itself a sovereign power and rejected the authority of the Provisional Government. About 600 Kronstadt agitators had been dispatched to the countryside to foment the unrest (Saul, 1978, p. 89). The Kronstadt sailors became the ‘‘ﬁghting crusaders of the revolution’’ (Trotsky, 1937, p. 431). The second source of radicalism was the Red Guards, a radical workers’ militia formed in workers’ districts to protect the gains of the revolution. After the February uprising, workers militiamen refused to disarm and pledged to defend their factories and neighborhoods against criminals and counter-revolutionaries. During spring and summer of 1917, the number of the Red Guards grew very fast. Petrograd workers willingly enlisted to the guards, and most of the guardsmen were young and literate. A majority sympathized to one of the radical parties, usually the Bolsheviks or the Anarchists. The Red Guards were particularly strong in the most strikeprone metal factories of the Vyborg district. On the eve of the October Revolution there were about 20,000 Red Guards in the capital (see Boll, 1979; Figes, 1996; Wade, 1984). The third element of the ‘‘revolutionary democracy’’ was the Petrograd garrison. The garrison played a crucial role in the fall of monarchy in February. According to the agreement between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, most of the garrison, which included about 300,000 servicemen, remained stationed in the capital after February. Political allegiances of soldiers varied; not every soldier sympathized with the socialists, of course. The most radical part of the garrison was the First Machine-Gun Regiment, the best-trained and literate troops in Petrograd, which was stationed in the Vyborg district with about 10,000 men and 1,000 machine guns. They considered themselves as the guardians of the revolutionary democracy in the capital (see Figes, 1996; Sobolev, 1971).

21

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

To sum up, in the middle of war the capital became a site of the armed ‘‘revolutionary democracy,’’ which neither the Provisional Government nor even the Petrograd Soviet were able to control (Boll, 1979, p. 125; Ferro, 1980, p. 9); during the wartime, this was a unique conﬁguration of power among all belligerent nations. (3) How did this unusual distribution of power affect a property institution? The most consequential outcome of turmoil in the capital was that the Petrograd workers obtained arms. Keep (1976, pp. 90–91) described the transformation which took place in the workplace after the insurrection: ‘‘When the men returned to work, some of those with arms took on the function of patrolling factory premises and maintaining order in industrial districts of the city. At ﬁrst they pursued limited aims of a defensive kind: for example restraining ‘hooligan elements’ who were liable to get drunk and engage in actions that would discredit the new order. It was not long, however, before they began to direct their energies against suspected ‘counter-revolutionaries,’ including of course managerial personnel.’’ The disintegration of authority institutions and arming of workers resulted in a major change in structural conditions of class relation in workplace. Under normal conditions, an employer had a backup of the legal enforcement institutions of the state: laws, regulations, courts and police. But what could an employer do if police and the system of administration were abolished by the revolution wholesale? The coercive relationship between workers and management was reversed: the workers possessed arms and organizational structures (the Red Guards), whereas management had lost its factory guards and the ultimate threat of troops and police. In some places the bosses who refused to make concessions were subjected to enforced appearance before the soviet or to arrest (Trotsky, 1937, p. 423; Wade, 1984, pp. 67–68). Employers closed their companies, declared lockouts and transferred their capital abroad. In Petrograd, for instance, the British owners of textile factories liquidated their accounts and shipped ﬁnished and semi-ﬁnished goods to nearby Finland (Mandel, 1983, p. 137). Between March and July, 568 factories employing about 100,000 workers shut down operations (Smith, 1983, p. 168). As Trotsky (1937, p. 413) summed up the situation, ‘‘The whole misfortune lay in the absence of a real government. The Provisional Government was paralyzed by the Soviet; the reasonable leaders of the Soviet were paralyzed by the masses; the workers in the factories were

22

PAVEL OSINSKY

armed; moreover, almost every factory had in the neighborhood a friendly regiment or battalion.’’ The spread of lockouts pushed workers to the idea of transferring factories in the hands of the state. The inference seemed natural because before lockouts the majority of private factories were working for the war, and that alongside them were state enterprises of the same type that continued to operate. Already in the summer, delegations of workers began to arrive in the capital from the various parts of Russia with demands that the factories should be taken over by the treasury, since the shareholders had stopped ﬁnancing them. Because poor economic conditions of individual enterprises hinged upon lamentable economic conditions of other industries and transportation, more and more workers’ representatives called for socialization and state regulation of industries at the national level. As the authorities refused undertaking decisive measures, workers came to the idea that it was necessary to change the authorities (Trotsky, 1937, p. 421). To sum up, Russian workers began taking control over industrial establishments before the Bolshevik coup d’etat and, to a large extent, independently of the Bolsheviks. They did so in order to maintain production and means of living. Their actions were driven primarily by the need of survival, not by ideological motives. (4) One more question needs to be addressed before we move on to discussing distribution of power in Germany. If, as indicated above, the pro-Soviet revolutionary democracy in Petrograd was a decisive force behind the scene from the beginning, why did it take eight months before the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government and seized authority? The issue needs to be viewed in the historical perspective. The collapse of the autocracy did not preordain the nature of the conﬂict that followed (Rosenberg & Koenker, 1987, p. 297). Initially, most soldiers of the Petrograd garrison did not ﬁght against the Provisional Government. Quite on the contrary, they supported the government hoping that it would bring long-waited peace and land reform. This hope was reinforced by the Soviet’s appeal for peace without annexations and indemnities of March 14. This appeal strengthened the common expectation that war would be over soon. The optimism of soldiers began to wane in the end of April when the public learned about the Foreign Minister Miliukov’s message to the Allies in which he had reconﬁrmed Russia’s determination to ﬁght until achieving

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

23

total victory. The news of the Miliukov’s communique´ outraged soldiers and civilians. On April 20, thousands of soldiers and workers came out to demonstrate on the streets of Petrograd. Many of them carried banners with slogans calling for the removal of the ‘‘bourgeois ministers,’’ for an end to the war and for the appointment of a new revolutionary government. They saw Miliukov’s note as a betrayal of the revolution’s promise to bring war to a democratic end. The demonstration of about 25,000 soldiers urged the Soviet to take power (Figes, 1996, pp. 381–382; Wildman, 1987, pp. 11–13). An appeal to the Soviet government was natural. In the days of the ﬁrst Russian Revolution of 1905, the Petrograd Soviet was a champion of the workers’ power. In 1917, when the Soviet was reborn, workers viewed the moderate socialist leaders who dominated the Soviet as part of ‘‘revolutionary democracy,’’ as their ‘‘comrades’’ (Mandel, 1983, p. 158). Therefore they found it difﬁcult to comprehend why the Soviet did not wish to take power. The Soviet leaders, meantime, avoided taking responsibility. The Menshevik and the SR leaders, who dominated the Petrograd Soviet, followed the Marxian thesis according to which the Russian Revolution was a ‘‘bourgeois’’ revolution. Hence they thought that the Provisional Government, not the Soviet, must lead the democratic transformation. As the war continued, the mood of the armed masses was far from doctrinal schemes. In mid-June the Russian army launched an offensive at the Southwestern front; two days later the Provisional Government decided to send 500 machine guns with their crews of the First Machine-Gun Regiment to the front. Formally, this decision violated the agreement between the government and the Soviet, according to which the troops that had participated in the revolution should not be sent to the front. The outraged machine-gunners decided to pass power to the Petrograd Soviet and sent their representatives to other regiments, factories and Kronstadt for support. On July 4, soldiers of the garrison and sailors from Kronstadt established control over the center of Petrograd. In the evening crowds of thousands of soldiers and workers gathered around Taurida Palace, the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet, and called for socialist members of the Provisional Government for negotiations. Miliukov (1978, pp. 201–202) left an interesting account of events unfolded before Taurida Palace that day: The Tauride Palace became the real storm center. All through the day armed military units arrived, angrily demanding that the Soviet ﬁnally take powery . Chernov came out to pacify the crowd. The mob threw itself at him demanding that he be searched for arms. Chernov announced that if they searched him, he would not deign to speak to them.

24

PAVEL OSINSKY The crowd fell silent. Chernov began a lengthy speech outlining the activities of the socialist ministers in general and his own as minister of agriculture in particular. As far as the Kadet ministers were concerned, he said – ‘‘good riddance to them.’’ In answer, voices shouted ‘‘why didn’t you say this before? Announce at once that the land is going to the toiling people and the power to the Soviets.’’ A sturdy worker, waving his ﬁst in front of the minister’s face, cried in frenzy: ‘‘Take power, you son of a bitch, when it is offered to you.’’ Amid the mounting tumult several people grabbed Chernov and pulled him towards a car. Others pulled him towards the palace. After ripping his coat, some Kronstadt sailors pulled him into the car and announced that they would not release him until the Soviet had assumed full power. Some anxious workers broke into the meeting hall crying: Comrades, they are beating up Chernov. Amid the turmoil Chkheidze announced that Comrades Kamenev, Steklov, and Martov were delegated to liberate Chernov. He was freed, however, by Trotsky who had just arrived on the scene. The Kronstadt people listened to him. Accompanied by Trotsky, Chernov returned to the hall.

Despite the charges of Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders in antigovernment conspiracy, the actual role of the Bolsheviks in July events was not great (Rabinowitch, 1968). The Bolshevik leaders were still not certain in the actual balance of power in the country. Russia as a whole was larger and politically more conservative than the revolutionary Petrograd. The position of the army at the front was not clear. The Bolsheviks were concerned that troops loyal to the Provisional Government would arrive and suppress the premature insurrection (as it actually happened later that day). In other words, the balance of power, they believed, was not decisively tipped to the radical forces yet. Instead of being the vanguard of the ‘‘revolutionary democracy,’’ as they were often depicted, in July the Bolsheviks found themselves dragging in the tail of events. The situation changed in August. A newly appointed Commander-inChief Kornilov put forward a program in which he demanded restoration of the order: imposition of the martial law throughout the country, the restoration of the death penalty, the militarization of railroads and munitions industry (Figes, 1996, p. 445). However, Prime Minister Kerensky accused Kornilov in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and intention to install a military dictatorship. Kornilov was dismissed from his position and arrested. Kornilov’s debacle demoralized the ofﬁcers’ corps and destroyed the last elements of order and discipline in the army. The failure of the troops sent by Kornilov to pacify revolutionary Petrograd meant that the government no longer had a reliable military force at its disposal. The last obstacle for the revolutionary democracy on the road to power, the army command, was removed. The rebellion in October, like the one in July, was ignited by the proposed transfer of troops of the Petrograd garrison to the front. Around October 6,

25

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

1917, when the Russian Navy suffered a major defeat in Baltic Sea and a direct threat of a German advance to Petrograd emerged, the government announced its intention to relocate about a half of the Petrograd garrison to the Northern Front. This news touched off vehement protests among soldiers and a thunderstorm in the left press. The radicals claimed that the government was planning to move to Moscow and to abandon the capital for Germans in order to suppress the revolution. These allegations were fueled by the revelations of the former speaker of the State Duma Rodzianko who declared, ‘‘Petrograd appears threatenedy I say, to hell with Petrograd!’’ (Figes, 1996; Rabinowitch, 1976). The threat of transfer to the front resulted in an explosion. Soldiers unanimously proclaimed lack of conﬁdence in the Provisional Government and demanded the transfer of power to the Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet (now dominated by the Bolsheviks) created a Military-Revolutionary Committee (MRC) for defense of the capital. On October 21 the MRC proclaimed itself the ruling authority of the garrison, sent its commissars to the regiments and informed the General Staff that all orders not countersigned by the MRC would not be implemented. By October 25, the capture of the garrison in the capital had already been completed and the Provisional Government became defenseless (Figes, 1996; Rabinowitch, 1976; Wade, 2004). Moore (1978, p. 374) summed up the gist of the story: ‘‘Far more important than the strength of the Bolshevik side was the weakness of the Provisional Government. This weakness was due to its inability or unwillingness to end the war, settle the land question, and get supplies moving into the cities.’’

(5) Why were the German workers unable to enforce a radical popular socialization of the Russian kind? In a sharp contrast to Russia, the German Provisional Government (Rat der Volksbeauftragen) proved to be stronger than the radical contenders. It was not obvious in the beginning, however. In November 1918 the political situation in Germany was more pro-Soviet than the one in Russia in February 1917. Broue´ (2005, p. 158) argues that the chances of a German Soviet revolution appeared in November 1918 to be more serious than those of a Russian Soviet revolution in February1917. In Russia, the moderate Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries made majority among most soviets across the country, including the Petrograd Soviet. In Germany, on the contrary, champions of the dictatorship of the proletariat led some of the most important councils. According to the agreement signed between

26

PAVEL OSINSKY

the government and the Soviet on November 22, the Executive Committee Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council was the ‘‘supreme organ of the revolution.’’ It claimed a ‘‘dictatorial power’’ and was empowered to appoint and dismiss members of Ebert’s government as well as ofﬁcials of the individual states (Coper, 1955, pp. 112–113; Ryder, 1967, p. 171). What was the political sociology of the revolutionary forces in Berlin? Three elements of radicalism can be identiﬁed. The ﬁrst element was the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, a group of radical labor activists led by Richard Mu¨ller. This organization originated in the turners’ branch of the Metal Workers’ Union. From the very outbreak of the war in 1914, turners opposed the ofﬁcial union’s policy of civil peace (Burgfrieden). During the war they managed to gain control over the whole munitions industry in the capital. Since May 1916, the Stewards organized massive workers’ strikes in the capital. During the summer of 1918, the leaders of the organization formed military groups in Berlin factories in order to take control over the streets with the outbreak of the revolution. These troops obtained arms from various sources, including soldiers who were home on furlough and from the army depots. The Shop Stewards remained at the vanguard of radical labor in the capital. The second group was a political amalgam of radical Independent Socialists, Spartakists and Communists. The Independent Social Democratic Party (Unabha¨ngige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands — USPD) was formed in April 1917 by the former members of SPD who disagreed with a conciliatory course of the Majority Socialists in the issues of war and peace. On November 9, three representatives of the USPD (Haase, Dittmann, Barth) joined (brieﬂy) the six-member Ebert’s government. However, the radical wing of the USPD, The Spartakus League, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, opposed the government’s policy. Until December 1918 they had been working within the general structure of the USPD. Disagreement with the USPD’s decision to participate in the elections to the National Assembly induced the Spartakists to leave the Independents and form a new party, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The third force of radicalism was the Naval People’s Division formed by the revolutionary sailors who came from Kiel and Cuxhafen to defend the revolutionary government. There were about 3,000 sailors in Berlin by the mid-December. Among the radical groups only the Naval People’s Division represented an organized and cohesive military force. Although formally the Naval People’s Division was subordinated to the pro-government’s ‘‘Republican Soldiers’ Army’’ (Republikanische Soldatenwehr), it enjoyed much autonomy in its actions.

27

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

In general, half-dozen pro-Left paramilitary organizations existed in Berlin (Watt, 1968, p. 207). In numbers, organization, arms, training and discipline they were no match to a quarter-million-strong force of the Petrograd soldiers, sailors and the Red Guards. Less than 10,000 men were determined to ﬁght for a revolution in Berlin. Their chances against regular units of the German army were small. The most distinctive feature of the Berlin radical movement was that for the most part it consisted of workers and party activists, not soldiers. Most of the workers were willing to strike but not to engage in armed struggle (Broue´, 2005, p. 246). (6) In November–December 1918 it seemed that the German military institution followed the pattern of dissolution similar to the collapse of the Russian army. However, it was not exactly the case. One difference was that the army command remained the legitimate authority while the chain of command had not been destroyed. On November 10, 1918, Prime Minister Ebert and General Groener (acting on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief Hindenburg) reached a secret agreement in which the army recognized legitimacy of the new government and pledged to support its authority; the government, on the other hand, committed itself to maintaining order and discipline of the troops. Following the armistice agreement signed on November 11 the army was to be demobilized in two weeks. The demobilization proceeded in a perfect order. Formally, the old imperial army ceased to exist. However, the basic institutional structure did not disappear: the army command still functioned, and many discharged servicemen maintained strong sense of loyalty to their corps and battalions. In these conditions new voluntary organizations of ex-servicemen began to emerge in mid-December. The ﬁrst such organization was created by the commander of the 214th Infantry Division General von Maercker in Westphalia. Soon similar formations emerged in other places, including Berlin. The new forces were organized along lines of storm troops, functioned autonomously and maintained strict discipline. The volunteers, who initially had been called Freiwillige Landesja¨gerkorps but quickly shortened their name to Freikorps, were required to have training in the Imperial Army. They were enlisted for a period of 30 days, which was renewable every month, and they were promised generous pay and beneﬁts. On January 4, Maercker’s Freikorps paraded before the pleasantly surprised Ebert and Noske; Freikorps showed

28

PAVEL OSINSKY

that troops willing to ﬁght the revolutionaries did exist (Watt, 1968, pp. 250–251). (7) The violent clash between the Freikorps and the radicals came about in the early January when the President of Berlin police Emil Eichhorn, a left-wing Independent Socialist, was dismissed by the Prussian state government; Eichhorn refused to resign and appealed to the USPD for support. On January 5, at the meeting in the police headquarters, about 70 activists including the Independents, the Revolutionary Shops Stewards and two Communists (Liebknecht and Pieck) decided to begin the armed uprising. The next day a general strike began and a massive workers’ demonstration went on the streets of Berlin. The insurgents occupied several ministries, newspapers and telegraph. They also seized the Brandenburg Gate, the editorial ofﬁce of the SPD newspaper Vorwa¨rts, and important railroad stations. By January 8 the government controlled only few buildings in the center of Berlin. Ebert and his supporters were barricaded in the Reich Chancellery. Noske, the Minister of Defense, managed to ﬂee the capital to a suburb named Dahlem; from this town he hoped to prepare an assault on the revolutionaries (Watt, 1968, pp. 254–258). As the uprising expanded, the resistance stiffened. In several places the insurgents entangled in ﬁerce street ﬁght with the newly formed Freikorps. By January 10 the uprising lost its momentum. The next day the Freikorps mobilized by Noske in Dahlem began marching to the center of the city. On the night of January 11 they recaptured the Berlin police headquarters. On January 12 the troops reestablished control of most of Berlin and began operations against the revolutionaries. Three days later, Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were arrested and brutally murdered by the Freikorps. In early March the radical Left undertook another attempt to seize power. The Berlin workers, led by Communists, began a general strike. The central workers’ demand was disarming the Freikorps. If the Freikorps were neutralized, the organizers reasoned, workers could dictate their conditions to the government. At ﬁrst, the strike was successful. However, the Communist leaders were not able to restrain the extremists. Armed revolutionaries attacked and captured several Berlin police stations. The Naval People’s Division, which declared neutrality in January, decided to join the insurgents. All this gave the government a pretext to use the full force of the Freikorps. The insurgents had been pushed to the east of Berlin

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

29

where they were rounded by the troops. About 2,000 of insurgents were killed, including Leo Jogiches, the leader of the KPD. As the Freikorps suppressed the radical labor movement in Berlin and other German cities, the government undertook strenuous efforts to ensconce the new regime in the constitutional framework. On February 6, 1919 the National Assembly convened in Weimar under protection of the Freikorps. The Assembly adopted a temporary constitution; Friedrich Ebert was elected a provisional President; a new coalitional government with Phillip Scheidemann of the SDP as a Chancellor was formed. On February 24 the delegates received a draft of a new constitution. In mid-March the political situation began showing ﬁrst indications of stabilization. There emerged signs of relief of food crisis: on March 12 the ﬁrst American ship arrived to Hamburg with six tons of ﬂour. Most Germans did not want politics anymore; they wanted order and stability. The program of socialization was one of the ﬁrst casualties of stabilization. The new constitution guaranteed rights of citizens, including property rights. Although the constitution stated that under certain circumstances economic establishments could be combined or socialized, all practical recommendations of commission on socialization were ignored. The commission came to a logical conclusion that the government had no intention of socializing anything and resigned in April (Watt, 1968, p. 313).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS In this chapter I have sought to explain why in Russia, in contrast to Germany, the breakdown of the central state authority resulted in dramatic redeﬁnition of property relations. I argued that coercive socialization, which had taken place in both countries, could be conceptualized as a speciﬁc form of coercive redistributive action. Hence, as the ﬁrst step towards the explanation, I suggested examining the scope and intensity of coercive redistributive action in these two countries after the breakdown of the old regime. As this research showed, in both Russia and Germany coercive expropriation of economic assets had taken place. In Russia these processes had a greater scope and intensity than in Germany. Most importantly, only in Russia they began transforming existing property relations, while in Germany, by and large, these relations did not change. What was unique in coercive redistributive action in Russia that turned it into socialization? Was it a massive and spontaneous land reform in the countryside? This land reform, after all, was clearly lacking in Germany.

30

PAVEL OSINSKY

True, land redistribution in Russia represented the most ubiquitous form of coercive expropriation. Yet, the revolution in the countryside did not involve the change in the nature of economic relations. Division of landlord estates and absorption of separate peasant holdings by the commune did not lead to a socialized state-directed agriculture. Peasants wanted land, not collective farms managed by state-appointed ofﬁcials. As soon as they obtained land, they reverted to a century-old mode of self-sufﬁcient production. The whole transformation in the countryside reinforced the archaic microcosm of the commune rather than preﬁgured a modern collectivized agriculture. Efforts to establish centralized allocation of provision and other consumer goods did not transform the existing economic order either. All earnest efforts of the central authorities to enforce state monopoly of food have failed. The collapse of the ofﬁcial food supply system triggered popular expropriation and pushed most transactions to the black market. In 1917, war socialism in this sphere was declared but not enforced. As far as provision was concerned, Russia experienced more anarchy and disorganization than socialization. It was socialization of industrial enterprises, which began transforming economic and political institutions in most fundamental way. Under conditions of severe economic crisis and campaign of lockouts, Russian workers began taking management of enterprises in their own hands. Although direct seizures of enterprises were relatively few and the process of socialization in most cases reached only an intermediate stage (control over hiring/ﬁring, sales and supplies, company ﬁnances), the tendency towards socialization of industrial enterprises became unambiguous. Of course, socialization of industrial enterprises by itself did not resolve their problems because most of these problems originated in disorganization of economic system in general. Therefore, to keep factories running, workers (and local authorities) tried to ﬁnd mechanisms of economic coordination among enterprises. Because the market mechanism was destroyed, such coordination could only be accomplished by administrative methods (see Smith, 1983, pp. 177–178). Thus, the very logic of socialization led step-bystep to the state-run economy. Why did industrial socialization succeed in Russia and not in Germany? Was it because of the revolutionary character of the Russian labor movement and the reformist nature of the German labor movement? The bulk of the historical literature shows that the Russian working class was deﬁnitely militant but not necessarily revolutionary or socialist. Until midsummer 1917 labor concerns encompassed a variety of economic and

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

31

political issues but rarely the demands to overthrow the government or begin nationalization (Koenker & Rosenberg, 1989; Rosenberg & Koenker, 1987). If one compares labor movement in Germany and Russia at the point of the breakdown, one would ﬁnd that forces of labor radicalism (e.g., campaign for socialization) had been stronger in Germany than in Russia. The radical labor movement in Germany failed not because it was insufﬁciently radical but because it was precisely a labor movement. Should the processes of socialization be attributed to the Bolsheviks and their effective leadership? The process of coercive expropriation began independently of the Bolsheviks and before their takeover in October. The coercive redistributive action was driven by economic disorganization and necessities of economic survival, not by socialist parties or socialist doctrines. Eventually the Bolsheviks became a critical ferment of political change, but only after several months of deepening crisis and disorganization. During most of the transitional period, the Bolsheviks were politically marginalized and persecuted by the authorities. In July, when the existing authorities in Petrograd (both the government and the Soviet) had collapsed, the Bolsheviks failed to take power. Only in September the Bolsheviks won majority in the Soviets and established themselves as a major political force. In contrast to most historical accounts, this chapter sought to develop a structural approach to explaining revolutionary outcomes in Russia and Germany. In contrast to most structural accounts, this study sought the explanation in the dynamics of political transitions in these countries. Speciﬁcally, I argued that policy choices and coercive capacities of provisional governments determined transitional outcomes. As it follows from the evidence presented above, the position of the armed forces proved to be the decisive factor in changing balance of power to one side or the other. During the war, the Tsarist government turned Petrograd into a huge military training base and the arsenal of munitions. In February 1917, about 300,000 soldiers quartered in Petrograd and its vicinity; this was a unique situation among all belligerent nations. Did other countries have training and rehabilitation facilities for their troops? Yes, of course. Were there instances during the war when troops refused to depart and mutinied in other countries? Yes, there were. In spring 1917 mutinies were registered in a half of all French divisions at the Western front, for instance. These troops, however, were located at the front, but not in Paris or other French cities. In Russia the largest concentration of troops happened to be located in the capital city, which also happened to be the largest industrial center with a militant working class.

32

PAVEL OSINSKY

Furthermore, in the days of the February Revolution the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet reached an agreement, according to which authorities were not allowed to remove revolutionary troops from Petrograd. Every time the Provisional Government attempted to relocate troops to the front, soldiers mutinied. As the consequence, by October the Provisional Government became hostage of a quarter million disgruntled soldiers and sailors. Expecting that the conﬂict would be over in the nearest future, the soldiers did not want to go ﬁghting. Eventually, when it became obvious that the government did not intend to negotiate peace, soldiers became resolved to overthrow the Provisional Government. They were not able to succeed in July because the Bolsheviks were not yet sure in the balance of forces, which hinged upon the position of the acting army in the front. After the failure of the Kornilov’s revolt, it became obvious that the acting army fell into pieces and would not be able to restore the order. When the Provisional Government decided to remove a large part of the garrison in October, the troops mutinied again. This time the Bolsheviks provided effective leadership and the revolt succeeded. Thus, labor radicalism and property expropriation in Petrograd and other Russian cities came about to a large extent as a by-product of plebeian praetorianism. Presence of a huge military force undergoing rapid radicalization was critical in changing balance of power in the capital. Soldiers, not workers or peasants, turned to be the real driving force of the revolution (also see Moore, 1978, p. 43). Viewing the situation in more general terms, it was critically important that the end of the monarchy did not cause an end of the war, which continued for a whole year after February 1917. As a result of the prolongation of the conﬂict, a large part of the population, including troops, turned against the Provisional Government despite the initial popular support it enjoyed in the spring. As Carsten (1972, p. 19) explains: ‘‘Indeed, in Russia war and civil war continued for years after the outbreak of the revolution, while in central Europe the war reached its end with the collapse of the monarchies. Opposition to the war and to the semi-autocratic re´gimes no longer provided the impetus of revolutionary movements; the vast armies quickly dissolved themselves; the masses above all desired the return of peaceful and orderly conditions, and not new upheavals. All this explains why the revolution petered out so quickly, why the extreme left remained so isolated, and why the Bolshevik revolution did not spread to central Europe.’’ Would reaching a separate peace abate social radicalism? Again, the German case is instructive. In early November 1918, it seemed that radical revolution of the Russian kind was inevitable. Yet, the Kaiser abdicated and

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

33

the Provisional Government of socialists came to power. Immediately after the revolution, on November 11, the new government concluded the armistice with the Allies. The army began demobilization. Most soldiers wished to get home and the authorities allowed them to do so. Soldiers returned to civilian life and tried to adjust to new realities. Although the domestic situation was extremely difﬁcult, the issue of war ceased to be a factor of radicalization. Why was the German communist revolution prevented? Lack of knowledge of consequences of political action (or inaction) disappears when these consequences come about. The failure of the Russian Provisional Government to exit the war prompted the German ruling class to be much more considerate when the war-induced crisis had approached the critical point. When the crisis reached the critical point the ruling elite chose to preempt a revolution from below by a ‘‘revolution from above.’’ Such decision involved negotiating an armistice and forming a government by moderate forces that agreed to make necessary social reform but leave the foundations of the economic system intact. The German Provisional Government succeeded in gaining support of the existing institutions, facilitating an agreement between trade unions and employers and forestalling the radical socialists from coming to power. Thus, it is not unreasonable to suggest that socialist revolutions in other countries were likely to be prevented after the ﬁrst socialist revolution had taken place because knowledge of the consequences of authorities’ inaction induced provisional governments in other countries to act. Effectiveness of counter-revolutionary action was enhanced by international coordination of ruling elites. Because the revolution was a direct outcome of a war-induced economic crisis, these efforts included providing economic assistance to the population of nations most threatened by the revolution. Because ruling elites were effective in their preemptive action, they were able to prevent the communist takeover. It proved, however, to be far more difﬁcult to suppress the revolutionary regime in Russia because such endeavor required a considerable amount of troops and resources in the situation when economic and military capacities of the Allied nations were seriously undermined. It was possible to contain the communist revolution but it proved more difﬁcult to suppress it in its birthplace. It was not an accident that a socialist experiment had to be undertaken initially in one country. In conclusion, a brief note on theoretical implications of this analysis would be appropriate. A war-centered explanation of state breakdown leading to popular coercive redistribution developed in this study invites to reconsider our interpretations of several similar transformations.

34

PAVEL OSINSKY

The Russian Revolution was not the ﬁrst precedent of radical socialists’ coming to power. The ﬁrst such uprising, the Paris Commune, took place almost half a century before, in spring 1871. Consistently with the argument developed in this chapter, the uprising of Parisian workers began after the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war. This war and the siege drove the poor populations of the city to utmost exhaustion. In March 1871, Parisian workers rebelled against the government, seized power and introduced a social legislation that included the right of employees to take over and run an enterprise deserted by its owner. At the end of the First World War, radical socialists, as I argued above, were close to seizing power in Germany. In fact, the Independent Socialists and the Spartakists established control over several large German cities. Radical forces were particularly strong in Munich, where the independents and anarchists proclaimed the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. As increasingly radical factions came to power in Munich, more far-reaching policies of coercive expropriation were declared. At the end of March 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Budapest. The Council of People’s Commissars introduced martial law and drafted proposals for socialization of factories, apartment houses and latifundia (see Mayer, 1969; Mitchell, 1965). Massive political dislocations in Europe, generated by the First World War, including weakening of state authority and rise of radical redistributive movements, gave birth to the ominous phenomenon, the (proto)fascist paramilitary counter-mobilization, which was, to some extent, a response of the ‘‘forces of order’’ to the threat of communist-led property expropriations. Post-war Italy became the ﬁrst country where fascist movement came to power in 1922. Finally, this chapter invites to reexamine the origins of the ‘‘secondgeneration’’ communist states in the East Asia and the South-East Asia after the Second World War: the People’s Republic of China, the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Consider China, for example. Since 1931 China was involved in the devastating war against Japan. The existing political authority, the Kuomintang regime, has collapsed. Both communist and nationalist forces had to rely on domestic resources for war. In the end, to ensure popular support, communist forces launched a campaign for massive redistribution of land in the countryside. Does not this look similar to the argument suggested above? One should be aware, however, of the fact that the Chinese communist revolution took place in the world that had changed dramatically since 1917. The existence of the USSR, the activities of the Comintern and the massive assistance provided by

35

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

the Soviet Union contributed to success of the communist revolution in China and other countries.

NOTES 1. For making this claim, I am indebted to Barrington Moore’s ‘‘Injustice,’’ a voluminous and a heavily Marxist account of the German labor movement, containing an excellent comparison of the Russian and German revolutions, in which Moore came to the conclusion that for a success of the Russian revolution weakness of the state authority was far more important than the strength of the Bolsheviks. Furthermore, Moore (1978, pp. 374–375) suggested that state of the competing armies, not of the working class, has determined the fate of these revolutions. These insights, however, were not sufﬁciently developed to break out of the general Marxian perspective in which they were embedded. 2. In this study I do not discuss such potential outcome as irreversible disintegration of the state. 3. In the context of the revolution the term ‘‘democracy’’ assumed a distinct classbased meaning. The revolutionary democracy was identiﬁed with the ‘‘toiling people’’ in opposition to the upper and middle classes, or the ‘‘census society’’ (see Figes & Kolonitskii, 1999; Kolonitskii, 2004).

REFERENCES Argenbright, R. (1993). Bolsheviks, baggers, and railroaders: Political power and social space, 1917–1921. Russian Review, 52, 506–527. Boll, M. (1979). The Petrograd Armed Workers’ Movement in the February Revolution (February–July, 1917): A study in the radicalization of the Petrograd Proletariat. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Broue´, P. (2005). The German revolution, 1917–1923. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Carsten, F. (1972). Revolution in central Europe, 1918–1919. London: Temple Smith. Collins, R. (1978). Some principles of long-term social change: The territorial power of states. Research in Social Movements, Conﬂicts, and Change, 1, 1–34. Collins, R. (1986). Weberian sociological theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collins, R. (1999). Macrohistory: Essays in sociology of the long run. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Coper, R. (1955). Failure of a revolution: Germany in 1918–1919. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daly, J. (2004). The watchful state: Security police and opposition in Russia, 1906–1917. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Ferro, M. (1980). October 1917: A social history of the Russian revolution. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Figes, O. (1996). A people’s tragedy: The Russian revolution, 1891–1924. New York: Penguin Books.

36

PAVEL OSINSKY

Figes, O., & Kolonitskii, B. (1999). Interpreting the Russian revolution: The language and symbols of 1917. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fitzpatrick, S. (2001). The Russian revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. Gerschenkron, A. (1966). Bread and democracy in Germany. New York: Howard Fertig. Gill, G. (1979). Peasants and government in the Russian revolution. London: Macmillan Press. Goldstone, J. (2001). Towards a fourth generation of revolutionary theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 139–187. Goldstone, J. (2003). Comparative historical analysis and knowledge accumulation in the study of revolutions. In: J. Mahoney & D. Rueschemeyer (Eds), Comparative historical analysis in the social sciences (pp.41–90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, J. (1997). State-centered approaches to social revolutions: Strengths and limitations of a theoretical tradition. In: J. Foran (Ed.), Theorizing revolutions (pp.11–37). London and New York: Routledge. Goodwin, J. (2001). No other way out: States and revolutionary movements, 1945–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hasegawa, T. (2004). Crime, police, and mob justice in Petrograd during the Russian revolutions of 1917. In: R. Wade (Ed.), Revolutionary Russia: New approaches (pp.46–72). New York: Routledge. Keep, J. (1976). The Russian revolution: A study in mass mobilization. New York: W.W. Norton. Koenker, D., & Rosenberg, W. (1989). Strikers and revolution in Russia, 1917. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kolonitskii, B. (1994). Antibourgeois propaganda and anti-’Burzhui’ consciousness in 1917. Russian Review, 53, 183–196. Kolonitskii, B. (2004). Democracy’’ in the political consciousness of the February revolution. In: R. Wade (Ed.), Revolutionary Russia: New approaches (pp.75–90). New York: Routledge. Lih, L. (1990). Bread and authority in Russia, 1914–1921. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Malia, M. (1995). Soviet tragedy: A history of socialism in Russia. New York: Free Press. Malia, M. (2000). Russia under western eyes: From Bronze Horseman to Lenin’s Mausoleum. New York: Belknap Press. Malyavskii, A. (1981). Krestianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1917g., mart-oktiabr. Moscow: Nauka. Mandel, D. (1983). The Petrograd workers and the fall of the old regime: From the February revolution to the July days, 1917. London: Macmillan. Mann, M. (1986). The sources of social power, Volume 1: A history of power from the beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1993). The sources of social power, Volume 2: The rise of classes and nation states, 1760–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mawdsley, E. (1978). The Russian revolution and the Baltic ﬂeet: War and politics, February 1917–April 1918. London: Macmillan. Mayer, A. (1969). Politics and diplomacy of peacemaking: Containment and counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919. New York: Knopf. McDaniel, T. (1988). Autocracy, capitalism and revolution in Russia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Miliukov, P. (1978). The Russian revolution. The revolution divided: Spring, 1917 (Vol. 1). Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.

War, State Collapse, Redistribution

37

Mitchell, A. (1965). Revolution in Bavaria, 1918–1919: The Eisner Regime and the Soviet republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Moeller, R. (1986). German peasants and agrarian politics, 1914–1924: The Rhineland and Westphalia. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Mommsen, W. (1981). The German revolution 1918–1920: Political revolution and social protest movement. In: R. Bessel & E. Feuchtwanger (Eds), Social change and political development in Weimar Germany (pp.21–54). London: Croom Helm. Moore, B. (1966). Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Boston: Beacon Press. Moore, B. (1978). Injustice: The social bases of obedience and revolt. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Morgan, D. (1975). The socialist left and the German revolution: A history of the German independent social democratic party, 1917–1922. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Oertzen, P. (1963). Betriebsra¨te in der Novemberrevolution: Eine politikwissenschaftliche Untersuchung u¨ber Ideengehalt und Struktur der betrieblichen und wirtschaftlichen Arbeiterra¨te in der deutschen Revolution 1918/19. Du¨sseldorf. Osinsky, P. (2007). A state under siege: Military origins of command economies. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Sociology, Northwestern University. Perrie, M. (1992). The peasants. In: R. Service (Ed.), Society and politics in the Russian revolution (pp.12–34). London: Macmillan. Pipes, R. (1990). The Russian revolution. New York: Knopf. Pipes, R. (1996). A concise history of the Russian revolution. New York: Vintage Books. Pipes, R. (1997). Three ‘‘whys’’ of the Russian revolution. New York: Vintage Books. Pipes, R. (2003). Communism: A history. New York: Modern Library. Rabinowitch, A. (1968). Prelude to revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 uprising. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rabinowitch, A. (1976). The Bolsheviks come to power: The revolution of 1917 in Petrograd. New York: W.W. Norton. Raleigh, D. (1986). Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rosenberg, W., & Koenker, D. (1987). The limits of formal protest: Worker activism and social polarization in Petrograd and Moscow, March to October 1917. American Historical Review, 92, 296–326. Ryder, A. (1967). The German revolution of 1918: A study of German socialism in war and revolt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saul, N. (1978). Sailors in revolt: The Russian Baltic ﬂeet in 1917. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scott, J. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skocpol, T. (1994). Social revolutions and mass military mobilizations. In: T. Skocpol (Ed.), Social revolutions in the modern world (pp.279–298). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

38

PAVEL OSINSKY

Smith, S. (1983). Red Petrograd: Revolution in the factories, 1917–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, S. (2004). Petrograd in 1917: The view from below. In: R. Wade (Ed.), Revolutionary Russia: New approaches (pp.13–32). New York: Routledge. Sobolev, G. (1971). Petrogradskii garnison v 1917g. (chislennost’, sostav, vooruzhenie, raspolozhenie). Istoricheskie Zapiski, 88, 56–90. Stinchcombe, A. (1999). Ending revolutions and building new governments. Annual Review of Political Science, 2, 49–73. Strachan, H. (2000). From cabinet war to total war: The perspective of military doctrine, 1861–1918. In: R. Chickering & S. Fo¨rster (Eds), Great war, total war: Combat and mobilization on the western front, 1914–1918 (pp.19–34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sukhanov, N. (1984). The Russian revolution 1917. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tilly, C. (1975). Reﬂections on the history of European state-making. In: C. Tilly (Ed.), The formation of national states in Western Europe (pp.3–82). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tilly, C. (1985). War making and state making as organized crime. In: D. Rueschemeyer, P. Evans & T. Skocpol (Eds), Bringing the state back in (pp.167–191). New York: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1990. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Trotsky, L. (1937). The history of the Russian revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster. Wade, R. (1984). Red guards and workers’ militias in the Russian revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wade, R. (2000). The Russian revolution, 1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wade, R. (2004). ‘‘All power to the Soviets’’: The Bolsheviks take power. In: R. Wade (Ed.), Revolutionary Russia: New approaches (pp.211–242). New York: Routledge. Watt, R. (1968). The kings depart: The tragedy of Germany: Versailles and the German revolution. New York: Dorset Press. Wildman, A. (1980). The end of the Russian imperial army: The old army and the soldiers’ revolt (March–April 1917). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wildman, A. (1987). The end of the Russian imperial army: The road to Soviet power and peace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

‘‘NO BOURGEOIS MASS PARTY, NO DEMOCRACY’’: THE MISSING LINK IN BARRINGTON MOORE’S AMERICAN CIVIL WAR Cedric de Leon ABSTRACT Moore (1966) once argued that the American Civil War was a fundamentally ‘‘bourgeois’’ revolution. As such, Moore’s account falls in line with much of the larger literature on democratization, which emphasizes the class dimensions of democratic expansions and transitions, but is largely silent on how party politics are implicated in those processes. Such approaches miss a great deal of the party, inter-elite and discursive dynamics that are crucial to understanding the origins and consequences of democratic change. This chapter seeks to discern the impact of mass party formation and political discourse on modern routes to democracy through an examination of mid-19th-century Chicago politics. It holds to Moore’s conclusion that the American Civil War was indeed a bourgeois revolution, while demonstrating that the trajectory of party politics before, during and after the war challenges Moore’s interpretation of how class forces were mobilized in the American case. Partisan shifts, for example, worked at turns to weaken and strengthen the rhetorical and organizational basis of working-class mobilization, suggesting that

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 39–82 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19002-0

39

40

CEDRIC DE LEON

democratization and the class coalitions that give rise to it are shaped and re-shaped by the context of partisan struggle.

In his foundational Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Moore (1966) argued famously that the driving revolutionary force behind democratization was a strong bourgeoisie. Using the American Civil War as his case, he claimed that the most formidable obstacle to the democratic project was a landed aristocracy, since its wealth invariably depended on labor-repressive systems of agriculture. Democracy could only be achieved, therefore, when a substantial degree of antagonism existed between industrial and landed elites and when such antagonism culminated in the violent overthrow of the latter as an important political and economic force. Thus, in the American Civil War the industrial elite of the northeast and the independent farmers of the Midwest joined forces to eliminate the southern planter aristocracy. A central feature of Moore’s narrative is that the northern alliance was possible only once northeastern industrialists had shattered a pre-existing alliance between Midwestern farmers and southern planters. This crucial connection, Moore argued, ‘‘helped to make unnecessary for a time the characteristic reactionary coalition between urban and landed elites’’ (Moore, 1966, p. 141). There are, however, at least two empirical problems with this line of argument. First, antebellum farmers and planters tended to vote for different parties even in the South and disagreed bitterly over almost every question of economic policy. Nationally, Midwestern farmers were allied with the yeomanry and artisans of other regions in the Democratic Party. Second, the ‘‘characteristic reactionary coalition’’ of urban and landed elites had already existed. The planters of the Old South comprised the rank-and-ﬁle of the Whig Party, the Democrats’ main challenger, and were allied nationally with northeastern big business interests. As Wilentz writes, ‘‘The largest planters, ranging from the sugar growers in Louisiana to state-rights men in the eastern states, gravitated to the Whigs, taking with them districts where slaveholding was most thickly concentrated y the Democrats came to depend largely on yeoman farmers in the less developed areas y who were distrustful of the planters’ power, fearful of commercial banks and other monied institutions’’ (Wilentz, 2005, p. 431).1 These oversights point out at least four gaps in the wider literature on democratization. First, with few exceptions the principal agents of democratization are seen as class actors, not party actors or a combination

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

41

thereof.2 Where parties are mentioned at all, a one-to-one correspondence between class and party is typically assumed in spite of political systems like that of the 19th-century United States which, though not ‘‘competitive capitalist democracies’’ in Moore’s sense, nevertheless saw parties aggregate and disaggregate voting blocs from differing class positions to win mandates. Second, few accounts take political discourse seriously as a factor in democratic revolution, yet in the American, European and Latin American cases cited in the literature, elites and non-elites alike have tended to employ populist claims to power in order to mobilize peasants and workers against the landed aristocracy. Third, whereas the establishment of bourgeois democracy in America requires an analysis of Republican Party hegemony and therefore of elites and their rank-and-ﬁle constituents, very little work has been done to synthesize the elite- and working-class-driven approaches that have split the democratization literature in two. Finally, much of the research on democratization has focused primarily on the transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes, yet the mid-19thcentury United States was decidedly not authoritarian. Jacksonian America was instead a primordial soup of Moorean possibilities. On the one hand, the antebellum period was dominated by the Democrats and their farmer–artisan base, whose coalition in the Jacksonian era (1828–1852) was built upon a populist critique of ‘‘dependency’’ under monopoly capitalism. Known collectively as the ‘‘money power,’’ incipient ﬁnance and industrial capitalists were said to undermine the ability of white men to become, and then remain, independent farmers and artisans. For Moore, Luebbert (1991) and others, a dominant peasant–worker coalition such as this is predictive of a communist route to modernity. On the other hand as we have seen, the Whig Party, which was chronically in the opposition, united the urban and landed upper-class fractions of Moore’s classic authoritarian coalition. Given the cleavages of antebellum politics, Moorean class analysis places us in a double bind, for we are left with not one, but two, possible routes to American modernity, the communist and the fascist. Indeed, the balance of class power in the 19th-century United States resembles that of Paige’s (1997) Central American cases if only in the sense that the rise of American capitalist democracy required the dissolution, not of a farmer–planter coalition as Moore famously framed it, but instead of an urban and landed elite coalition, which Moore assumed had not existed in America to that point. Additionally, because the Whigs were already embattled in this period especially in the all-important Midwest where they had little to no hope of electing a governor or Congressman let alone a president, urban elites

42

CEDRIC DE LEON

required the support of the historically hostile Democratic base in states like Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin (Holt, 1999). Since the northeast’s partnership with the Midwest was so critical to Moore’s argument, the puzzle that animates this chapter is why these entrenched Midwestern class coalitions reorganized in support of a liberal capitalist democracy. As Moore rightly noted, the long discredited argument that southern slavery by its mere existence set in motion an ‘‘irrepressible conﬂict’’ of civilizations will not do as an explanation (Cole, 1934, p. 242; Moore, 1966, p. 114). Urban and landed elites were warm business associates and the peculiar institution had existed at that point for more than a century without a civil war. Put another way, the notion that ‘‘it simply could not have been otherwise’’ cannot explain why the Civil War began in 1861, instead of say, 1789, 1820 or 1850 when other ﬁerce disputes over slavery took place (Holt, 1978). My abridged answer to the aforementioned puzzle is that Midwestern class coalitions were reorganized by intraparty factionalism in the early 1850s and the subsequent rise of the Republican Party, the combined force of which shifted the terms of political discourse away from the formerly dominant Jacksonian critique of dependency under monopoly capitalism towards a critique of dependency under slavery, thereby uniting northern elites, farmers and workers against their southern counterparts despite having been united nationally along class lines just a decade earlier. Though the end of slavery was one consequence of the war, another was the political tactic of ‘‘waving the bloody shirt,’’ the branding of antimonopolist Jacksonian dissent as an unpatriotic apologia for the treasonous pro-slavery South. Thus, the American Civil War was revolutionary to the extent that it ended the institution of slavery, but fundamentally bourgeois to the extent that it both undermined the rhetorical and organizational basis of working-class mobilization and vastly expanded the coercive prerogatives of the state to protect industrial capital.3 Posing and addressing the problem of American democratization in this way foregrounds the role of mass party formation and political discourse in shaping democratic expansion and transition, suggesting that Moore’s founding statement, ‘‘no bourgeoisie, no democracy,’’ may be revised thus: no bourgeois mass party, no democracy.

MOORE’S CIVIL WAR By 1976, a decade after the publication of Social Origins, no other case had received more critical attention than the American (Wiener, 1976). As liberal democracy spread in a post-1989 world, even non-Americanists joined in

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

43

their dissatisfaction with ‘‘no bourgeoisie, no democracy,’’ a theoretical dictum derived largely from Moore’s most famous positive instance thereof, the American Civil War. This seemingly endless scrutiny suffers from a twofold problem, the resolution of which will require a fresh intervention that is at the same time anchored in the fundamentals of Moore’s project. First, some of Moore’s critics, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the book’s debut, appear to have misunderstood the character of Moore’s class analysis in general and the basic objective of his account of the American Civil War in particular. This applies mainly to those who charged Moore with economic determinism and with sidestepping the radicalism of the American Revolution. Second, while many have grappled with Social Origins on its own terms, few scholars have bothered to return to Moore’s Civil War and attempt a synthesis of the state-of-the-art in the social sciences and historiography. This is especially true of studies which suggest that Moore slighted the importance of urban classes, state repression, institutionalized electoral practices and supranational factors. Among the ﬁrst charges leveled at Moore was that Social Origins was a paean to economic determinism (Almond, 1967; Lowenthal, 1968; Rothman, 1970; Benson, 1972; Zagorin, 1973). One weakness of this charge is that Moore explicitly rejected purely economic explanations of the Civil War, since nothing in the antebellum economic order precluded the alignment of urban and landed elite interests. As Wiener (1976) (himself a student of Moore), Stone (1967) and others have noted, the assumptions of economic determinism are not the same as those that proceed from class analysis: the former insists that all non-economic forms are epiphenomenal to material conditions, whereas the latter advances a more delimited claim that classes are the key actors in initiating routes to modernity. This chapter accepts the view that classes are important units of analysis, but adds that mass party formation and political discourse may work to aggregate and disaggregate class groupings. To wit, the politics of the American Civil War divided farmers, workers and elites by region and form of labor control. Some like Bendix (1967) and Lowenthal (1968) wondered why Moore had not focused on the American Revolution. The implication of this critique is that by 1860 the United States had long been both democratic and capitalist. But if 19th-century America was not fascist or communist, then neither was it a bourgeois capitalist democracy. As Laurie (1989) points out, to talk of factory production prior to 1860 would be to apply Gilded Age concepts to antebellum realities. A majority of Americans still lived on the land in 1860, and artisans, though increasingly sweated, were not the industrial proletariat that had only begun to emerge in the 1850s. Furthermore, while

44

CEDRIC DE LEON

it is true that universal white manhood suffrage increasingly became the rule in the antebellum period, the party of America’s incipient bourgeoisie was almost always in the opposition, clamoring for, but largely not getting, what an urban elite would need to truly ﬂourish: a banking system, a protective tariff and even a national currency. In sum, the economy was not bourgeois and the party of the bourgeoisie was not in power. It is probably for this reason that Moore called Jacksonian America an ‘‘agrarian democracy’’ in contradistinction to a liberal bourgeois democracy (Moore, 1966, p. 116).4 The esoteric debate surrounding the non-economic causes of the Civil War and the precise turning point of U.S. capitalist development serves to underline yet another misinterpretation of Social Origins. Moore was not so much concerned with the causes of the war as he was with the antebellum conditions that led to the consequences of the war. This paper aims to hold to Moore’s project by examining the antebellum political conditions that gave rise to a new conﬁguration of class power in the post-bellum era. There is nevertheless a great deal of research that accepts the utility of class analysis on its own terms, but criticizes Moore for slighting factors that tend to interact with class in forging paths to modernity. Downing (1992), for instance, has argued that state coercion may tip the balance of power against an emerging class coalition. Jones (1972), Skocpol (1973), Paige (1975, 1997) and Ross (1998) suggest that supranational forces may be equally determinative of paths to modernity as those operating at the national level. Others contend that institutionalized electoral practices (e.g., patronage systems) may affect the choice of liberalism over competing alternatives (Luebbert, 1991; Skocpol, 1992, 1998). And still others insist on a place for ideas, intellectuals, ideology and culture (Black, 1967; Stone, 1967; Lowenthal, 1968; Rothman, 1970; Peel, 1973; Walzer, 1998). Though each of these approaches enhances our knowledge of Moore’s problem, the sum total of gaps enumerated in the literature amounts to what Moore once criticized as ‘‘intellectual chaos,’’ and few social scientists have attempted a synthesis, least of all of their favorite straw man, the American Civil War (Moore, 1966, p. 135). Furthermore, few if any have envisioned party formation or political discourse as the focal point for such a synthesis. I will argue that this results from the assumption, also apparently held by Moore, that political parties are especially animated by underlying institutional or class bases and therefore have no signiﬁcant autonomy of their own, for instance to reorganize class coalitions, wield state power or take political advantage of international contingencies. Neither a synthesis nor its potential basis in a more agentic conception of political elites, however, is possible without a synthesis of the central divide in the democratization literature.

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

45

ELITES OR NON-ELITES? As scholars gradually moved beyond Moore’s Social Origins, a new controversy emerged within the democratization literature: Were elites or non-elites the prime movers of democratic change? The centrality of this question in the ﬁeld works to obscure four facets of the American bourgeois revolution, which correspond in turn to the aforementioned gaps in Moore’s work. The ﬁrst is that elites and non-elites together gave rise to bourgeois democracy in the United States. The second is that this revolutionary coalition was bound together by two concurrent discourses: a ‘‘free labor’’ ideology from above and a producerist discourse of dependency from below. The third is that the formation of the Republican Party and the subsequent defeat of the Democrats set the stage for both the violent overthrow of slavery and the reconstruction state’s repression of non-elites. The fourth is that Republicans capitalized on international contingencies for political advantage, especially the rise of anti-slavery Irish nationalism, the immigration of German workers ﬂeeing the counterattack on the Revolutions of 1848 and the end of the Crimean War, which helped to precipitate the Panic of 1857. In sum, a fuller accounting of Moore’s American Civil War requires a synthesis of elite/non-elite relations, political discourse, party formation, state repression and supranational forces. The elite/non-elite divide, however, has rendered the literature somewhat ill-equipped for a broader synthesis.5 The elite-driven ‘‘transitions’’ literature, for instance, inaugurated by the work of O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), argues that the shift from authoritarianism to democracy is mainly the result of bargaining between elite incumbents and moderate elites of the opposition, in which popular movements and other collective actors are secondary at best and mere tools of the contending elites at worst (see also DiPalma, 1990; Burton, Gunther, & Higley, 1992). The exact opposite is true for Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992) who argue that bourgeois elites have tended to seek limited rights for property and exchange, and are therefore just as likely as not to support the enfranchisement of lower classes. The working-class, by contrast, who embody the central contradiction of the capitalist system, are the more consistent exponents of democratization, since their struggle for the franchise is necessarily a call for broader societal inclusion (see also Therborn, 1979). Paige’s (1997) analysis of democratization in Central America offers a way to bridge the elite/non-elite divide, while also foregrounding the role of political discourse. Although Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador had become neo-liberal democracies by the end of the 20th century, they had

46

CEDRIC DE LEON

neither the divided elite nor the full-blown working-class that Moore, the transitions literature and Rueschemeyer et al. had argued were the key conditions for democratization. The landed and agro-industrial elites in those countries were bound too closely by blood for one to destroy the other, while the workers in question were all but forbidden to self-organize. Without the weapon of the strike and with the bonds between upper-class fractions weaved so tightly, Paige argued that the only available route to democracy in Central America was armed revolution from below. Revolutionary socialism, in turn, forced urban elite factions in all three countries to retrieve the discourses of liberty (Nicaragua), progress (El Salvador) and democracy (Costa Rica) from bygone anti-colonial struggles and wield them to justify both a break with their landed kin and a coalition with popular movements. Thus, it was not a strong bourgeoisie as such that gave rise to the neo-liberal coalitions of that region, but rather the convergence of armed socialist revolutionaries and an embattled liberal elite who were compelled to express offense at the status quo. As one Nicaraguan grower hollowly insisted, ‘‘The cotton growers opposed Somoza as citizens, not as cotton growers’’ (Paige, 1997, p. 356). Paige’s analysis is a critical intervention for at least four reasons. First, it is a rare synthesis of the extant literature, in that neither the elite nor the non-elite were given exclusive credit for democratization.6 Second, Paige offers a testable sequence of events that might plausibly describe how elites and non-elites reorganize to forge liberal revolutionary coalitions. Nonelites set themselves adrift of old allegiances (in this case engaging in open revolt), while elites split into factions, of which one is able to join with nonelites on the road to democracy. Next, political actors exploit international relations, in Paige’s case the Cold War and American imperialism. Lastly, the mechanism that binds these inimical class fractions is not economic interest as such, but the convergence of two discourses – revolutionary socialism from below and classical liberalism from above. Though party elites are still absent in Paige’s case, his formulation compliments the implications of the party formation literature. Like the democratization literature, students of party formation have their own elite/ non-elite divide. ‘‘Electorate-driven’’ approaches in sociology argue that parties are generated by, and therefore may be read directly off, the principal cleavages in a given society. Its touchstone is Weber’s foundational essay, ‘‘Class, Status, Party,’’ in which parties are said to ‘‘vary according to the structure of domination within a community’’ (Weber, 1946, p. 195). Likewise, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) hold that parties ‘‘have an expressive function’’ and ‘‘develop a rhetoric for the translation of contrasts in the

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

47

social and cultural structure into demands for action’’ (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967, p. 5). These ‘‘contrasts’’ or cleavages are ‘‘inherited’’ from ‘‘critical junctures’’ in a nation’s distant past such as the Industrial Revolution, which split European polities along class lines and eventually gave rise to parties representing those interests (Rokkan, 1999, pp. 302, 304, 305).7 The electorate-driven approach is useful to the analysis of democratization insofar as it identiﬁes a cause for the emergence and transformation of oppositional identities, namely, the critical juncture. Furthermore, it deﬁnes workers not as a unitary actor (i.e., ‘‘the electorate’’ or ‘‘the working-class’’), but as a series of organized voting blocs that emerge and reorganize in response to transformative historical events. Much of the ‘‘party-driven’’ literature shares the emphasis on historical turning points, but rejects Lipset and Rokkan’s depiction of party actors as merely ‘‘expressive’’ of pre-existing social cleavages. As leaders of factions within established parties, party elites can create and reshape cleavages as they struggle for hegemony (Gramsci, 1971; Przeworski, 1977; Przeworski & Sprague, 1986; Desai, 2002). For example, Aminzade (1993) contends that the decision of Parisian artisans to go to the ballot box or take to the barricades during the municipal revolutions of 1871 depended on whether a liberal, radical or socialist faction controlled local Republican parties. Ansell (2001) likewise employs religious analogies to suggest that when the French Left has split into different factions or ‘‘sects’’ as they did in 1882 and 1922, the labor movement has divided neatly along party lines. Taking these cues from Paige, Lipset and Rokkan, and the party-driven literature, this chapter sees the relationship between mass party formation and class forces as fundamentally dialogical. That is, the relationship is forged mutually through political dialog and contestation. While there are people who undoubtedly farm, plant, invest and make manufactures for a living, none of these is a priori a basis for political conﬂict or mass mobilization. It is the political party (which above all seeks power) that articulates a society’s principle cleavages, usually in a way that aligns the party with a discursively constructed ‘‘majority’’ or hegemonic bloc. These cleavages need not be class-based: the great mass of the people may be said to be a regional, national, religious or ethnic majority, for example. As Przeworski (1977) once put it, there can be no struggle between classes unless there is a discursive struggle about class.8 At the same time, actors on the ground are not passive. For example, in their struggle for power a given party may attempt to mobilize voters along class, as opposed to religious or ethnic, lines. In that case, the politicization of class inequality or conﬂict must resonate with the lived experience of voters;

48

CEDRIC DE LEON

merely shouting class slogans is not enough. Furthermore, once coalitions between party elites and the governed take hold, the latter come to develop expectations of their respective political patrons even in authoritarian regimes (see, e.g., Scott, 1985). When expectations are met or exceeded, party elites retain hegemony; when they are not met (e.g., in an international economic crisis), unfulﬁlled expectations may destabilize the existing regime and even the regime type itself. Formerly hegemonic coalitions divide into factions and in so doing open the door to the reorganization of existing cleavages (e.g., elites versus non-elites) along new discursive lines (e.g., northerners versus southerners), inaugurating what Lipset and Rokkan call a critical juncture.9 If a new mass party emerges to unite urban elites and segments of the nonelite (e.g., German workers and commercial farmers) against the remaining class fractions, a liberal capitalist democracy becomes possible. Often this involves the convergence of two ideologies: classical liberalism from above and some form of producerism from below. When the same party then uses its popular appeal to justify and carry out a successful offensive using the state’s means of coercion on the opposition, a liberal capitalist democracy is achieved. The new mass party may then choose to secure the liberal regime by employing the state machinery to repress non-elite dissent within its own ranks in the name of the now sovereign people.

CHICAGO AT THE CROSSROADS: CASE SELECTION AND DATA To illustrate the importance of these interlocking elements in modern routes to democracy, this chapter employs the case of 19th-century Chicago from 1833, the year of the town’s incorporation, to 1877, the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Chicago was a crossroads in ways that are indispensable to testing the empirical and theoretical claims of the democratization literature. First, if the alliance of elite northeastern and Midwestern economic interests is the sine qua non of Moore’s analysis, then one could do no better than 19thcentury Chicago, which served as the primary commercial link between the growing outposts of the Midwest on the one hand and New York by way of the Erie Canal in the East on the other. Second, Chicago was home to growing numbers of industrial workers, allowing us to observe the behavior of the democratic agents privileged by Therborn and Rueschemeyer and the Stephenses. Third, Civil War era Chicago was highly signiﬁcant politically. After two and a half decades of almost uninterrupted Democratic Party rule, Chicago became a battleground city in the home state of Abraham Lincoln and

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

49

Stephen A. Douglas (Lincoln’s main Democratic adversary in the North), and as such was a key theatre in the transformation of 19th-century party politics and discourse. The city was therefore something of a bell-weather for the entire nation, for if staunchly Democratic Chicago could defect to the Republicans, then surely the rest of the North could do so as well – as it ultimately did. The study draws on ward-by-ward electoral returns by class and party and is therefore novel in that available Civil War era electoral statistics (e.g., ICPSR Study 1) seldom disaggregate county-level returns.10 The study then integrates qualitative evidence from Chicago newspapers to recover how voters and party elites thought about the political allegiances revealed in the voting data. Newspapers were the ofﬁcial organs of parties and party factions in the 19th-century United States and frequently published the minutes of local non-elite organizations like trade unions (Nord, 1985; Jentz, 1991). In total, the entire runs of seven newspapers available on microﬁlm for the years 1833–1877 were reviewed. The Chicago Democrat was the organ of the ‘‘locofocos,’’ the dominant faction of the Democratic Party led by presidents Jackson and Van Buren, for most of the Jacksonian Era, and of the ‘‘free soil’’ Democrats in the late 1840s; it then became a Republican organ in 1857 when its editor, John Wentworth, was elected the ﬁrst Republican mayor of Chicago. The Chicago Times was the organ of Stephen A. Douglas’s ‘‘Young America’’ Democrats, who purged the free soil faction from the city’s Democratic establishment in 1856. The American and Chicago Express were the successive organs of the Whig Party, while the Daily Journal and the Chicago Tribune were competing Whig sheets, representing the Whig establishment and renegade Republican faction, respectively. For the perspective of Chicago’s workers, the minutes of trade union meetings published in the above party papers were collected and analyzed along with articles from the Workingman’s Advocate, the city’s English language trade union paper. The Chicago data, in turn, were compared with county-level electoral returns from the rest of Illinois to assess whether the claims of Moore and the democratization literature stand up to the observable voting behavior of independent Midwestern farmers. As with Chicago workers, letters from farmers to the aforementioned newspaper editors were used to make sense of any patterns that emerged from the returns. In the following empirical analysis, then, I will attempt to show that mass party formation and political discourse played a critical role in bringing formerly antagonistic class fractions into the Republican Party, thereby setting the stage for Moore’s last capitalist revolution. I begin by describing the anti-monopolist implications of Democratic Party hegemony in the smallholder republic of the Jacksonian era. Next, I describe the critical

50

CEDRIC DE LEON

juncture of the 1850s. Here I examine the political, economic and international context for the decline of the Whig and Democratic parties as well as the concomitant rise of the Republican Party and then lay out the consequences of free labor ideology for the old Democratic critique of dependency. Lastly, I outline in brief the limited character of post-war bourgeois democracy by detailing the Republican Party’s use of state coercion and the memory of the war to undermine trade unions during Reconstruction.

HIRELING AND SLAVE: THE CHICAGO PARTY SYSTEM, 1833–1852 With the dredging of a town harbor in 1835 that made the Chicago River accessible from Lake Michigan, Chicago became an important link between the western frontier and the northeastern ports of the Great Lakes waterway (Cronon, 1991, pp. 55–60; Einhorn, 1991, pp. 29–31). At the root of this transformation was the rise of commercial middlemen known as merchant capitalists, whose aim was to drive down the cost of commodities by marketing them in unprecedented quantities (Pessen, 1967, pp. 4–5). Meanwhile revolutionary improvements in transportation made it possible for these large orders to move about the country at substantially reduced costs. Together, the advent of merchant capitalism and transcontinental transportation inaugurated an era of frenetic competition that led to the decline of household production in the city and the countryside (Pessen, 1967; Laurie, 1989; Sellers, 1991). The Democratic Party’s aim, in the face of these developments, was to restore the nation to what Welter has called an ‘‘economy of nature,’’ the pure and simple design of an earlier America dominated by independent farmers and artisans (Welter, 1975, p. 85). Though Chicago Democrats were by no means opposed to the economic growth of their city,11 they saw any interference with the role of local small-scale agriculture and manufacture in that project as a presumptuous attempt on the part of the ‘‘aristocrats’’ to deprive freemen of their birthright. Accordingly, the point of electoral politics was to discipline the ‘‘uneven development’’ of the incipient market economy by mobilizing the might of the common man against a new aristocracy of bankers and speculators, whom the Democrats referred to ominously as the ‘‘money power’’ (Wilentz, 2005). What was at play in these politics was a deep distrust for any form of government that would nurture dependency as the natural condition of men. It is anchored in what Fraser and Gordon (1994) have referred to in another

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

51

context as the ‘‘discourse of dependency.’’ Dependency, in Jacksonian parlance, was a state of non-citizenship reserved for sweated wage laborers, slaves and women, whose current or potential deprivation was said to make them incapable of reﬂecting upon the broad interests of the republic as a whole. Conversely, white male subsistence farmers and artisans were the icons of independence, for it was imagined that they lived comfortably enough off their own labor that they could steer the course of the republic without prejudice to their own enrichment. The implications of the discourse were threefold. First, as we shall see below, it served as the ideological justiﬁcation for a farmer–worker Democratic coalition. Second, incipient captains of American industry and ﬁnance, though economically independent, were not to be counted in the same number as farmers and workers, since they were deemed incapable of seeing beyond the horizon of their next speculatory scheme. The result is that the ﬂedgling American bourgeoisie joined southern planters in the Whig Party who were similarly excluded from the farmer–worker coalition (Thornton, 1978; Watson, 1981; Ford, 1988; Wilentz, 2005). Third, citizenship in its Jacksonian form was conﬁned to self-employed white men, and as such was deeply inﬂected by ethnoracial, gender and class distinctions (Boydston, 1991; Roediger, 1991; Fraser & Gordon, 1994). The racial and gender implications of the discourse of dependency would eventually allow the Republican Party to unite northern white men across class lines against the threat of southern enslavement, and thereby undermine the class basis of the Jacksonian party system. For the meantime, however, this broad construal of dependency to include and therefore to stigmatize not only women and blacks, but also sweated white men as unfree, exempliﬁed the dominant locofoco brand of Democratic politics. It rendered incipient capitalist institutions such as the wage system, large banks, tariffs and a national paper currency the main targets of political attacks, and set the terms of political debate through the 1830s and 1840s (Blau, 1954; Wilson, 1974; Thornton, 1978; Ashworth, 1983; Watson, 1990; Sellers, 1991; Wilentz, 2005). Owing to a peculiar ‘‘intimacy between federal, state, [and] local politics,’’ Chicago Democrats freely insisted that the city and the republic were likewise divided by questions of economic interest: farmers, artisans and the Democratic Party were opposed to the tyrannical exactions of the money power, and all others were the hirelings of capital, known only by their advocacy of big business measures and their allegiance to the Whig Party (Pierce, 1937, p. 364). In this, there was perhaps no other issue more divisive or more illustrative of the Democratic preoccupation with dependency than that of banking.

52

CEDRIC DE LEON

The Chicago Democrat routinely linked the party’s opposition to banks with the plight of embattled journeymen. In the following passage, the paper’s editor, John Wentworth, writes in support of striking iron workers in Pittsburgh who wish to start their own mill. He notes that in ruining the latter’s credit, the employers have ‘‘ﬁxed matters in such a way as will compel their workmen to continue in the position of dependents,’’ adding, The honest hard-working man cannot get bank facilities to the amount of a dollar, while the nonproducer, who speculates upon the laborer’s toil, can have accommodation to the amount of tens of thousands. There is not an iron mill about Pittsburgh that has not one or more representatives in all the Banks of that city. The voice of one of them can destroy the credit of an honest man at their board; and we have no doubt but they are ready and willing to use the advantages that circumstances have given them. This is conclusive evidence that the present system of banking will never permit the laborer to come into the enjoyment of his rights; that it altogether favors the capitalist at the expense of the laborer; that it is unequal in its working, giving the speculator the lion’s share; that it must be so reformed as not to be obnoxious to those objections, or it will end in the degradation of one class and the demoralization of another of the people of any country. If it cannot be reformed it must be entirely abolished. (Chicago Democrat, Feb. 12, 1850, p. 2)

These are the terms of Jacksonian Democratic politics par excellence. Wentworth articulates the party’s preference for independent manufacture and decries the employers’ conspiracy against the worker-owned mill as an unnatural preference for dependency. This fact leads him not only to call for the abolition of banks, but also to situate Democrats and workmen in diametric opposition to both industrial and ﬁnancial elites. But if the Democratic Party’s commitment to personal independence resonated among white workers, then it was due at least in part to the fact that early 19th-century workers had ‘‘elaborated their own variant of American republican ideology, bound to their expectations about workshop production’’ (Wilentz, 1984, p. 15). The depression of wages due to greater competition in the Jacksonian era made it increasingly difﬁcult for journeymen to become independent artisans (Laurie, 1989, p. 36). Moreover, since the capital requirements to do business in this period grew daily, banks ﬂourished due to their lending power. The result was that aspiring master mechanics began to acquire permanent debt (Hugins, 1960; Pessen, 1967). Meanwhile a ﬂuctuating paper currency made consumer prices increase to almost unlivable levels on a regular basis. During the Panic of 1837 alone, the Federal Reserve’s cost-of living index rose a full 41.2 percent. In the Midwest, this resulted in an increase in the wholesale prices for all commodities of as much as 56 percent. Wages, however, had been cut by as

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

53

much as 50 percent, and as many as one-third of the nation’s workers were unemployed (Pessen, 1967, pp. 36, 37, 44, 49; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1961, pp. 121, 124, 127). Democratic and working-class interpretations of these new arrangements reinforced each other, generating a hegemonic critique of monopoly capitalism that cast the Democrats as the party of the common man. Because the price of staples rose and fell erratically in response to a ﬂuctuating paper currency, Jacksonian era workers opposed the use of paper money, referring to it routinely by the name fastened upon it by the Democratic Party: ‘‘rag money.’’ Additionally, since more and more mechanics were being saddled with debt, workers also opposed the banking system in general, reserving special venom for the Second Bank of the United States, which they called the ‘‘Monster Bank’’ and the ‘‘mammoth monopoly’’ very much as the Democrats did, and against which they incited their members to engage in a ‘‘war of extermination’’ (Hugins, 1960, pp. 24, 28, 33–34). Ultimately, because Democrats and workers shared so much in common politically, journeymen from New York to Louisville rallied against the Whig Party, then the leading exponent of big business measures (Hugins, 1960; Pessen, 1967; Wilentz, 1984). As the social betters of farmers and workers, the Whigs recoiled from the subversive implications of Democratic politics, which they referred to as ‘‘the agrarian, radical and revolutionary doctrines of the locofoco party’’ (Chicago American, May 4, 1842, p. 2). But with the albatross of elite collusion hung ﬁrmly around their necks, the Whigs could not help but maneuver within the terms of debate set by the Democrats, and so did their best to tilt the focus of the discourse of dependency away from economic power and inequality towards the virulent partisanship of Democratic Party politics. If there were any scheme to undermine the personal independence of the common man, they argued, it consisted in the Democrats’ rearguard attempts to stall economic progress for the sole beneﬁt of party leaders. For that reason, the Whigs portrayed Democratic administrations as hives of dependency: The General and State Governments together control 87,000 [public positions]. This is exclusive of army, navy, and the troop of persons employed by the executive ofﬁcers of the national and State governments. The dependents upon all these swell the number to half a million, and makes what may well be regarded as a frightful picture of power upon one hand and dependence upon the other. (Chicago Daily Journal, Oct. 8, 1845, p. 2)

In contrast to the Democratic appeal to a timeless producers’ republic, the Whigs therefore preached that American liberty was a state-sponsored

54

CEDRIC DE LEON

process that was ‘‘cumulative and ongoing’’ (Wilson, 1974, pp. 4–5). Through an activist national government the Whigs hoped to fulﬁll a corporatist vision of progress known as ‘‘the American System’’ which, though reliant on state-driven commercial measures such as the Second Bank of the United States and a protective tariff, was intended to enrich the collective life of the nation over time (Howe, 1979; Holt, 1999). This statist approach to economic policy became attractive to Americans during the Panic of 1837, which helped to deliver a Whig to the White House in 1840, but the Whigs’ support of banks and a national paper currency more often than not lent credence to the Democratic Party’s exhortations against them. The second and third columns of Table 1 report Chicago’s presidential and gubernatorial returns for the 1852 election. Since the proportion of skilled workers throughout the city remained stable at about 25 percent in the 1850s, working-class wards (signiﬁed in bold) are those in which unskilled workers comprised at least an additional one-third of the male labor force, giving skilled and unskilled workers together a comfortable voting majority. The resulting ward designations reﬂect the natural break between Chicago’s afﬂuent lakeshore communities represented by wards 1 and 2 where unskilled workers comprised less than one-quarter of the labor force and the interior of the city where the proportion of unskilled workers ranged from more than

Table 1. Percentage Share of Chicago’s Popular Vote for Democratic Candidates in 1852, 1856, 1858 and 1860 by Ward and Class (Working-Class Wards Bolded). Ward

1852 Pres

1852 Gov

1856 Pres

1858 Tre

1860 Pres

1860 Gov

1 2

48.7 In Ward 1 Count 65.1 74.9 56.1 73.2 86.8 63.5 In Ward 8 Count n/a

49.8 In Ward 1 Count 65.3 75.2 56.3 72.8 95.7 62.8 In Ward 8 Counta n/a

28.3 37.0

41.7 48.8

36.5 42.1

34.3 41.8

39.1 48.2 38.7 40.6 55.2 51.1 51.4

51.1 55.4 36.6 41.3 48.1 47.6 49.2

46.3 50.05 731 short of majority 34.8 48.2 44.2 49.1

45.1 47.7 Unavailable 34.8 44.6 44.0 48.8

n/a

55.9

57.8

57.8

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Sources: For socioeconomic statistics, Einhorn 1991: 261, 263; for electoral returns, the Chicago Democrat, Nov. 9, 1852: 2; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 7, 1860: 1. a Voters in wards 1 and 2 shared the same polling station, as did voters in wards 8 and 9.

55

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

one-third (wards 5, 6, 8 and 9) to as high as one-half in the most ‘‘proletarianized’’ ward (7) (Einhorn, 1991, pp. 249, 261). The Democratic Party carried all ﬁve of the city’s working-class wards as well as the two least-prosperous non-working-class wards (3 and 4), with majorities ranging from 56 to 95 percent. The Whigs carried the remaining two wards (1 and 2) on the ‘‘Miracle Mile’’ corridor. The latter’s relatively strong showing in wards 5 and 8 was due to the substantial presence of nativeborn skilled working- and middle-class voters in ward 5’s northern neighborhoods and the Yankee elite minority of ward 9’s lakeside neighborhood, whose votes were cast at the same polling station as those of ward 8. In contrast, the city’s Democratic base consisted mainly of immigrant workers: (a) the North side’s 7th through 9th wards which were dominated by German workers; (b) the mixed German and Irish working-class West side 6th ward and (c) the lower portion of the South side’s 5th ward and increasingly the 4th ward, which were mainly Irish working-class neighborhoods. These patterns were not speciﬁc to urban Chicago, however. There was a similar pattern statewide, with poorer to middling farmers voting with urban workers for the Democrats. The second column of Table 2 lists the number of Illinois counties voting Democratic in the 1852 presidential election by quartile of capital investment in manufacturing. Capital investment, which I use as an inverse index for the centrality of independent farming in county economies, is categorized by quartile, where quartile 1 consists of counties that had consistently posted the highest level of investment in manufacturing both in absolute dollars and dollars per capita from 1840 to 1860.12 It bears noting that there is a high degree of convergence between capital investment and large-scale commercial farming: all but one of the largest cash crop counties in Illinois were in the top two quartiles of capital investment in manufacturing (U.S. Census Ofﬁce, 1840, 1860; ICPSR, 1999). Table 2. Capital Quartile 1 2 3 4

(N ¼ 8) (N ¼ 12) (N ¼ 9) (N ¼ 10)

Total (N ¼ 39)

Number of Counties Voting Democratic by Quartile of Capital Investment in Manufacturing. 1852

1856

1860

5 7 7 9

3 5 7 9

3 5 6 9

28

24

23

Sources: For capital investment in manufacturing, U. S. Census Ofﬁce (1840; 1860); for electoral returns, ICPSR (1999).

56

CEDRIC DE LEON

The 1852 electoral returns reveal a discernible political rift between middling to poor farming counties on the one hand and counties with large commercial farming and manufacturing on the other. A total of 84 percent of small farming communities (the third and fourth quartiles) voted Democratic, compared to 60 percent of their larger and more industrial counterparts. Moreover, the Democrats carried 62 percent of the popular vote in rural counties and only 47 percent in urban counties. Farmer support for the Democratic Party was rooted, as it was for workers, in a mistrust of banks. In a letter to the editor of the Chicago Democrat, one farmer announced that he was not bothered by the tendency of ‘‘federalists y to denounce all objections raised to banks, as being dangerously ultra and radical,’’ for he himself was ‘‘one of those unfortunate democrats who doubts the utility of banks.’’ Seemingly to make public the rationale for his own position, he then quoted an article from an agricultural journal, introducing it this way: ‘‘I am, Mr. Editor, a practical farmer, and as such take the Cultivator, an agricultural paper, edited by Judge Buel, a thorough going federalist, but one who is honest enough to speak his real sentiments respecting the mischievous tendencies of banks.’’ The article reads, The creation of immense amounts of purely artiﬁcial and ﬁctitious capital produces a dangerous delusion with individuals on the public mind y . This money is loaned to what are called men of business – a class of men who as far as they are money brokers, are the mere exchangers of commercial products, without any increase of their value, or speculators in lands, who add little or nothing to the wealth of the community y . But on the other hand, the obtaining of land for agricultural purposes, for production, and the actual creation of wealth is by this enhanced price rendered the more difﬁcult to the man whose labor is his only capital. (Chicago Democrat, September 25, 1839, p. 2)

Thus, for this rank-and-ﬁle Democrat, and for many like him if the rural returns are any indication, the ‘‘federalist’’ or Whig Party had reversed the natural order of things as delineated by the discourse of dependency. Like Wentworth’s Pittsburgh industrialists, Judge Buel’s ‘‘men of business’’ were ‘‘a class’’ of non-producers trafﬁcking in ‘‘ﬁctitious capital’’ who nevertheless prospered, while those who worked to increase the value of land by dint of old-fashioned hard work were made to suffer. As late as 1852, then, less than a decade out from Moore’s last capitalist revolution, poorer Illinois farmers joined Chicago’s immigrant workers in supporting the Democratic Party, whose anti-bank policies and critique of dependency in the new market economy resonated powerfully with their experience of a changing world.

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

57

FREE LABOR OR SLAVE POWER: THE CHICAGO PARTY SYSTEM TRANSFORMED, 1853–1860 The windy city, like the rest of the North, was therefore not the limited bourgeois democracy that Moore rightly described as the outcome of the American Civil War, but rather a commercial crossroads in a smallholders’ republic. The dominant political order was a patchwork of Jeffersonian ideals, anti-statism and producerism, all of which militated against a national currency, a national bank and protective tariffs – in short, everything that an incipient big business bourgeoisie would need to ﬂourish in what was then still a largely agrarian and artisanal society. Politically, the place of Whiggism was tenuous especially in Midwestern states like Illinois, and indeed, that party would cease to exist within the next two years. But for the present, the representatives of the urban and landed elite merely stared across the aisle at the self-styled representatives of the common man, whose majorities were a never-ending source of frustration for the former. Moore’s coalition of the northeast and Midwest seemed a distant if not inconceivable future, but a critical juncture from 1853 to 1857, punctuated by the KansasNebraska Act of 1854, the subsequent Kansas crisis and the Panic of 1857, would give urban elites in the Whig Party the chance to craft the liberal free market democracy they had always wanted but could never achieve with their landed associates. Chicago continued to experience rapid economic growth throughout the 1850s, due principally to the construction of railroads and the city’s canal, which connected the northeast and Midwest to the Mississippi River by way of Lake Michigan for the ﬁrst time. The city’s workers, however, were doing worse in 1860 than they had been doing in 1850. In the ensuing decade, a day’s wages in Illinois for unskilled and skilled workers increased by about 20 percent, but the price of room and board had increased by almost 50 percent (U.S. Census Ofﬁce, 1850, Vol. 4, p. 164, 1860, Vol. 1, p. 512). In an editorial about the disjuncture between workers’ wages and the cost of living in 1850s Chicago, the Times lamented, Rents are beyond precedent in any city on the globe y . The mechanic who here earns two dollars per day pays one dollar for house-rent y . If he have a wife and two children, the most rigid economy will hardly enable him to supply the wants of his table with the other dollar. (Chicago Times, May 3, 1855, p. 1)

But whereas workers and Democratic leaders had once advanced mutually reinforcing interpretations of the new economy, the Democrats, having lost their bearings after the death of their charismatic leader, Andrew

58

CEDRIC DE LEON

Jackson, turned inward to focus on the emerging contest over leadership succession facing the party. A new generation of politicians calling themselves ‘‘Young America’’ espoused a platform of westward expansion and economic growth to distinguish itself from, and supplant, the older but still narrowly dominant faction led by former president Martin Van Buren. Van Buren, who foresaw that politicizing westward expansion would divide the country over slavery, staked out an anti-expansionist position (Klunder, 1996). The power struggle initially split the Democratic Party into two factions: the Young America (sometimes known as ‘‘hunker’’) faction of Lewis Cass and Chicago’s own Stephen A. Douglas on the one hand, and the old locofoco (or ‘‘barnburner’’) faction of Van Buren, a large portion of which eventually opposed the expansion of slavery to the western territories and therefore became known as the ‘‘free soil’’ faction (Spencer, 1977; Klunder, 1996; Widmer, 1999; Wilentz, 2005). The emergence of the latter, in turn, gave rise to the southern rights wing of the party, leaving the Democrats divided into no fewer than three factions, two of which resumed competing operations in Chicago when Douglas purged locofoco free soiler and Chicago Democrat editor, John Wentworth, from the city’s Democratic establishment (Nichols, 1948; Fehrenbacher, 1957; Einhorn, 1991, p. 164). The unraveling of the Democrats presented an opening for the Whigs, but even they self-destructed as one after another Whig faction broke off to challenge the political establishment as a third party. The Liberty Party, for instance, was organized exclusively around the abolition of slavery. The Temperance or ‘‘Maine Law’’ Party sought to prohibit the sale and consumption of wine and spirits. The nativist Know-Nothing Party, which was also a Whig spin-off in the main, mobilized voters against immigration and the Roman Catholic Church. But as we shall see, it was the emergence of the ‘‘fusion’’ or ‘‘Republican’’ faction that would most weaken the Whig organization in Chicago, a process that culminated in the disastrous midterm elections of 1854. With the major parties in disarray, and with the Democrats in particular unable to secure the common man’s economic independence as they had promised, workers in Chicago and elsewhere organized extra-political movements in an effort to meet their immediate economic needs (Holt, 1978). Though there are no direct quotations prior to 1854 from selfidentiﬁed workers stating that their actions were a response to the vacuum in political leadership, there are data that speak indirectly of the relationship between party practice and autonomous worker activism. First, Democratic voter turnout was unusually depressed in 1852. Workers delivered Chicago’s

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

59

Cook County to the Democratic Party that year to be sure, but the votes cast for Democrats numbered only 4456 compared to 5680 just four years later, an increase of almost 30 percent. If we take into account the additional fact that two out of the ﬁve working-class wards in Chicago voted Republican in 1856 (see Table 1, column 4), then a substantial number of the Republicans’ 9020 votes are likely to have been Democratic workingclass voters who sat out the election of 1852 (ICPSR, 1999). Second, letters to the editor of the Chicago Tribune point to growing disenchantment between 1852 and 1854 with the inability of the Illinois Democratic establishment to deliver their promises to working people. One letter writer argued that the Democratic-controlled State Assembly had been putting special interests ahead of the ‘‘mass of people’’: Few are met with in this ‘lower house’ who have not some selﬁsh scheme to be forwarded, some object of private interest to be obtained at the sacriﬁce of public interests. The mass of people, for whom general laws should be enacted commensurate with their wants, have no delegates here. True, they have their representatives in the General Assembly, but unluckily for the uninformed masses they have not been sagacious enough to send outside members; members to set the ball of legislation [rolling] and to direct its course. (Chicago Tribune, January 26, 1853, p. 2)

It is notable that the author does not offer the Whig Party as an alternative here, nor does s/he think that the Democrats will serve working people of their own accord. Instead, the author advises the ‘‘uninformed masses’’ to send ‘‘outside members’’ to lobby on their behalf. Another letter in the same issue likewise opined that business moguls in Alton and nearby St. Louis ‘‘have alternately controlled legislation, right in the face of the interests and rights of the masses of the people’’ (ibid.). The very next day, still another letter to the editor joked that instead of either the State House or the Senate, ‘‘The lobby is decidedly the most active branch of the General Assembly’’ (Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1853, p. 2). At almost exactly the same time, there was an unusual proliferation of Luddite mob violence. The winter of 1853 saw a series of riots directed at important segments of railroad and canal routes into Chicago. A railroad rioter is reported to have ‘‘indulged in the most savage threats of vengeance, and made appeals to the mob to resist the grinding oppression of railroad companies.’’ Another rioter is quoted as saying, using the imagery of slavery, ‘‘We will whip them – will whip them – will bury them so deep that electricity can’t reach them – we will whip them – we’ll whip the guts out of them’’ (Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1854, p. 2). Riots were becoming so frequent in this period that the editors of the Tribune wrote, ‘‘unless immediate steps are taken by the general government for the protection of

60

CEDRIC DE LEON

the public y a movement among the people of this part y will entail disaster for the whole country’’ (Chicago Tribune, December 29, 1853, p. 2). Moreover, whereas worker activism in Chicago took the form of Democratic Party clubs and benevolent and mechanical societies in the early years of the Jacksonian period, Chicago’s ﬁrst full-ﬂedged trade unions emerged in the early 1850s. In that time, shipwrights, caulkers, iron and brass molders, cabinet makers, masons, bricklayers, painters, railroad workers, typesetters, shoemakers, and tailors organized and struck (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 4, 1851, p. 2; April 23, 1853, p. 2; May 4, 1853, p. 2; Nov. 16, 1853, p. 3; Pierce, 1940, p. 160, 165, 166; Schneirov, 1991, p. 385). The emergence of labor consciousness in Chicago seemed to be tied to a feeling expressed by some workers that they had scarcely any free time to themselves. The city’s ﬁrst union, the Chicago Typographical Union, appeared in printing, one of the most badly sweated industries of the day (Laurie, 1989, p. 38). Because their pay was worth less in 1860 than in 1850, workers worked longer hours to make ends meet. A clerk who titles his letter, ‘‘A time for labour and a time for rest,’’ writes, How many is there that live up to this rule? y look at the clearks of this city that are obliged to work from six in the morning to nign, or ten, at night. what time have them to improve the mind, or for enjoyment. None y I propose that the clearks get up a society and regulate this matter. if they could all joyn in the projict there could be something accomplished’’ [sic]. (Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1854, p. 2)

What seems to underlie these glimpses into worker subjectivity is what Daniel T. Rodgers has called ‘‘the ﬁrst American Dream,’’ an expectation of personal independence that placed a premium not only on hard work, but also on leisure. Workers in Chicago – like others across the country – formed trade unions in this period, in part because they felt their independence slipping from their grasp (Rodgers, 1978), and accordingly likened their state uncomfortably to that of black bonded slaves. Indeed, it was not uncommon for mid-19th-century white workers to riot and protest in blackface (Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1855; Roediger, 1991). Thus, a dual process unfolded in the years immediately following the 1852 election. On the one hand, the dissolution of the Democratic Party alienated working class voters, but this process worked the other way too, for the disaffection of the base dissolved the party further still. While these developments did not send workers into the waiting arms of the Whigs or any other party but rather into their own organizations, they nevertheless comprised the ﬁrst tentative steps toward an unprecedented coalition,

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

61

repeated across the North, between the working-class voters of Chicago’s North and West sides and the elites of the lakeshore. It is with the Democrats’ sponsorship of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 that we ﬁnd the ﬁrst explicit working-class denunciations of that party and thus an underlying rationale for why workers eventually defected into the Republican camp. The act, authored by Chicago’s Stephen A. Douglas in 1854, nulliﬁed the Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery above the Mason-Dixon Line, by allowing settlers to decide whether their territories would be admitted into the Union as free or as slave states. Since such referenda or ‘‘popular sovereignty’’ raised the specter of enslaving white workers in the North, passage of the Act heightened existing anxieties about the expansion of slavery as part of the emerging industrial order. The result was the immediate founding of the Republican Party later that same year (Gienapp, 1987; Richardson, 1997). At a mass meeting of Chicago’s German workers, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was roundly condemned for ‘‘reducing the free foreigner to the position now occupied by the slave, who is politically without any rights, depriving him of all inﬂuence against the phalanx of slaveholders,’’ adding that ‘‘we have lost our conﬁdence in, and must look with distrust upon, the leaders of the Democratic party, to whom, hitherto, we had conﬁdence enough to think that they paid some regard to our interests’’ (Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1854, p. 4). In September that year, Senator Douglas would come under ﬁre at home for his role in the Kansas controversy. Hoping to defend his actions at a rally in the German working-class North side, Douglas was greeted by the sight of American ﬂags ﬂying at half mast in anticipation of his arrival and, more ominously, an angry crowd of 8,000, whose ‘‘popular indignation was so great and so loud, that after waiting to be heard until after 10 o’clock, he was at last obliged to leave the stand’’ (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 6, 1854, p. 1; Lewis & Smith, 1929). A reporter noted the abrupt shift in public opinion, observing, ‘‘This man, who eight months ago, could have called to his support nearly the entire state, now ﬁnds himself hooted and hissed’’ (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 6, 1854, p. 1). The passage of the act also gave rise to a Paigean rift among Chicago’s better-off citizens. The Whig Party and its native-born middle-class to elite base in wards 1, 2, 5 and 9, split in two with the ‘‘Silver Gray’’ Whig establishment urging compromise with the landed southern wing of their party and the ‘‘Woollie’’ or Republican faction calling for ‘‘fusion’’ with the free soil Democrats and their working-class base in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The feud culminated in the Congressional elections of 1854 when the

62

CEDRIC DE LEON

Republican faction nominated a free soil Democratic candidate, Chicago Mayor James Woodworth, while the Silver Grays, who found the nomination of their sworn enemy intolerable, nominated the more conservative Whig stalwart Robert S. Blackwell. Woodworth’s Republican coalition won a clear majority, but Blackwell, who mustered only one-ﬁfth of the popular vote, took 40 percent of the Whig base with him. As Holt (1999) notes, with the Republican faction in the ascendant, ‘‘the Chicago Whig organization had not been completely supplanted, but it had been ripped apart’’ (ibid., p. 870).13 The Kansas question soon deepened into a crisis, for while Congress had allowed Kansas residents to decide for themselves whether their new state would become free or slave, the exact outcome of that decision took years to ascertain. Popular sovereignty was derailed when so-called ‘‘border rufﬁans’’ from Missouri had crossed into Kansas to ‘‘vote early and often’’ for slavery, causing both the free and slave factions to claim victory and establish alternate territorial governments (Reynolds, 2005). The indecision of successive Democratic administrations in the face of such outright fraud served to conﬁrm the perception propagated by Chicago Republicans that the Democratic Party was acting at the behest of southern interests. This sentiment was registered at the polls in 1856, when the Democratic presidential candidate, James Buchanan, drew a smaller share of votes in every ward, but especially so in Chicago’s strongest working-class neighborhood. Recall that in 1852, just two years prior to the passage of the KansasNebraska bill, the Democrats had carried Chicago overwhelmingly, capturing all ﬁve of the city’s working-class wards (5 through 9) and the two least-prosperous non-working-class wards (3 and 4). The fourth column of Table 1 shows that the Democrats retained only three of these in the 1856 presidential election, and witnessed a steep erosion of their base even in the wards they still controlled. The Democratic Party’s share of the popular vote dropped by double-digits throughout Chicago, but the decline was most precipitous in the solidly working-class German 7th ward. Still, the rout was incomplete: a thin majority of German working-class North side voters, including those in the dramatically precarious 7th ward, remained loyal to Douglas.14 Newspaper reports conﬁrm that the working-class defection came principally from free labor sentiments in the German wards of the city. In the lead-up to the 1856 election, the latter ﬁlled Chicago’s imposing German Theatre and then marched in a torchlight procession in support of the Republican presidential ticket of Fremont and Dayton. The theme throughout the night’s speeches was said to be a ‘‘determination to battle zealously and untiringly for free labor.’’ Signiﬁcantly, the Turner Association,

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

63

one of Chicago’s earliest and most radical German–American labor organizations, was a prominent guest and presence at the event (Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1856, p. 2). Commenting on the German Democratic exodus with approbation, the editors of the Tribune wrote in terms reminiscent of Barrington Moore: ‘‘We are glad to notice this movement, as it betokens the ﬁnal separation of the liberal German element from the intolerant Pro-Slavery Democracy’’ (Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1856, p. 2).15 A similar shift took place in the less rural counties of Illinois where the Democrats were more deeply divided over slavery extension and where former Whigs were more eager to unite with the free soil element of the opposition (Holt, 1999). The third column of Table 2 reports that the Democrats lost a third of their strength among commercial farming and manufacturing counties. Of the most rural counties, by contrast, the Democrats lost two and gained two, a zero net loss, suggesting that small farmers had once again voted with a shrinking but still extant majority of Chicago workers. This result is corroborated by the average decline in the Democratic share of the popular vote, which was most precipitous in counties with the highest rate of investment in manufacturing. In the top quartile, the Democratic share dropped by 10.5 percent, double the state average loss of 5.27 percent and altogether divergent from the numbers in the lowest quartile where the Democrats actually gained in strength by 2.1 percent of the popular vote. Still, as in Chicago, the Democrats were able to secure a slim statewide majority of just under 10,000 votes. But if the partisan controversy over Kansas had done the crucial work of splitting working-class voters off from the Democrats and dividing the Whigs’ middle-class to elite base, then the subsequent politicization of the Panic of 1857 constituted the last straw in that process, since it helped to move the North side into the Republican column and thereby unite renegade elite and non-elite factions. Railroad failures and rising inventories along with British divestment and Russian re-entry into global markets after the Crimean War burst a bubble economy that had been inﬂated by widespread speculation. The panic, which was eventually touched off by the failure of New York’s Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company in late August, sent shock waves through Chicago. In a city whose total population numbered a mere 93,000, the panic left 20,000 workers unemployed (Pierce, 1940, p. 156; Skogan, 1976; Huston, 1987). In response to the ensuing deprivation, Chicago’s working-class voters continued to organize their own autonomous movements, which, fueled by the economic collapse, spread for the ﬁrst time beyond the point of production to include living conditions in the North side working-class

64

CEDRIC DE LEON

wards that had delivered majorities to the Democrats just one year earlier. In the ﬁrst week of November, with the local economy bottoming out, the North side’s tenants banded together to demand, and ultimately win, a reduction in rent (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 5–7, 1857). A few days later, working-class residents of the North side and the West side’s 6th ward began holding mass meetings to assist the ranks of the unemployed, inspired in part by similar mobilization efforts in New York where workers were starting to riot for ‘‘bread or work’’ (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 17, 1857, p. 1). In contrast to the syndicalist and riotous movements of the early 1850s, these community mobilizations fed more directly back onto party politics as Republican elites insinuated that the Democratic Party had been compelled by their southern masters to adopt a low-tariff trade policy to the economic ruin of workers and farmers in the West. At the same time, however, workers did not then abandon their organizations simply because a party of some discernible stature had ﬁnally emerged to replace the Democrats. Unions and other working-class organizations had produced real results, including, it seemed, a shake-up of the party elite. Thus, in that same bleak November, while workers were in the streets winning reduced rents and demanding relief for the unemployed, North-side German voters also went to the polls in midterm national and municipal elections and delivered their neighborhoods to the Republicans. Once the results were announced, jubilant voters ‘‘drove all through the North side, congratulating their friends on the glorious victory over rufﬁanism and slaveocracy’’ (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 5, 1857). This was not an isolated outcome. The Panic of 1857 triggered a similarly small but decisive shift to the Republicans among working-class voters throughout the northern United States (Huston, 1987; Wilentz, 2005). Electoral returns from 1856 to 1858 reveal that the economic crisis had a dual signiﬁcance. On the one hand, a North-side majority had eluded the Republicans as late as March 1857 when former Democrat John Wentworth became the ﬁrst Republican mayor of Chicago, just ﬁve months before the downturn (Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1857, p. 1). The results of the 1858 mid-term election for state treasurer ﬁgured in the ﬁfth column of Table 1 show that after the panic, the Republicans had at last begun posting majorities in the 7th through 9th wards (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 5, 1858, p. 1). On the other hand, the shift in the popular vote was relatively minor compared to that of 1856. Thus, while the salience of economic interests issued the ﬁnal blow to Democratic hegemony, it was primarily the political realignment of 1853–1856 that emptied the ranks of the Democratic bloc – especially in the German working-class North side – in effect setting the panic up to seal the revolutionary cross-class coalition one year later.

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

65

That the Kansas crisis in particular inﬂamed such vast numbers so quickly was due in part to the grand old party’s (GOP’s) deployment of a discourse that had once been discredited by its earlier association with the radical abolitionists of the Liberty Party. The Republicans warned that upon settling the western territories, southern planters would tip the balance of power in Congress toward the slave states, legalize slavery nationally and of necessity come to enslave every free white man in the North (Davis, 1969; Foner, 1970; Wilson, 1974; Holt, 1978; Gienapp, 1987; Wilentz, 2005). In 1854, for example, the Tribune ridiculed the national Democratic administration, charging that they ‘‘cry ‘the people, the people’’’ for election purposes, but ‘‘degrade every poor white man below even the slave himself.’’ The ‘‘grand aim’’ of the South and its northern collaborators, the Tribune continued, was ‘‘centered in the accomplishment of one object – the degradation of all free labor, and as an inevitable necessity, the mental and physical enslavement of the great mass of the people’’ (Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1854, p. 2). Accordingly, a territory’s refusal to become a slave state was described as ‘‘a preference for white men and white labor’’ (Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1858, p. 2), while embracing slave state status was derided as a preference for ‘‘intense ‘niggerism’’’ (Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1857, p. 1). Such claims, however fantastic, appeared real enough to northern workers, whose racial and masculine anxieties over the security of their independence had been elevated by the politicization of the KansasNebraska Act, the Kansas crisis and the panic. It did not take long for the leadership of the city’s white workers to see that they had been taken in by Republican race-baiting, but even the leadership admitted to its initial effects. Commenting on the Republicans’ inability to reconcile their gloriﬁcation of white workingmen in the antebellum period with the harsh reality of their growing impoverishment in 1864 (Richardson, 1997), the editors of the Workingman’s Advocate, a Chicago trade unionist paper wrote, When it can do nothing else it can bleat about ‘slave-drivers.’ Alas! gentlemen (?) of the Tribune, your old demagoguecial [sic] cry is worn out. We are no longer going to permit you to make dupes of us by your false statements and past hypocritical catch-words, nor mislead us from protecting our own interests and rights. You have already made yourselves rich by bleating about the Negro, for whom you cared not a ﬁg y . This is a white man’s question. Our brave soldiers in the ﬁeld are taking good care of the ‘slave owners and slave drivers.’ To them we leave them y . That game is up y . We are determined to prevent a wholly unscrupulous set of scoundrelly and hypocritical politicians and purse-proud, moneyed aristocrats from bringing want and slavery to the doors of the FREE LABORING MEN OF THE NORTH’’ [their capitals, emphasis, and parentheses]. (Workingman’s Advocate, September 17, 1864, p. 2)

66

CEDRIC DE LEON

Alongside their new-found animosity toward the Republican Party, the city’s workers had come to see the ‘‘white man’s question’’ as intricately bound up with their class and gender status as ‘‘FREE LABORING MEN OF THE NORTH.’’ While they would ‘‘no longer’’ permit Republican elites to ‘‘make dupes’’ of them by invoking ‘‘past hypocritical catch-words’’ (‘‘that game was up’’), it was clear that what Chicago’s white working-class came to fear more on the eve of the Civil War was not their ﬁgurative enslavement as dependent wage earners under capitalism, but rather their literal enslavement at the hands of southern planters. The Republican Party therefore exploited the racial and gender underpinnings of the Jacksonian discourse of dependency to reorganize the now badly compromised class basis of the old party system, and in doing so set the stage for Moore’s bourgeois revolution. Where the preoccupation with dependency had served previously to undermine the legitimacy of sweated wage labor and thus of incipient industrial capitalism, the Republicans, in the context of an increasingly harsh economic order, crafted an even broader coalition of disaffected elites and non-elites by shifting the focus from economic issues to the singular question of slavery’s extension to the West. This reframing all but erased the once potent class distinctions that placed industrialists, ﬁnancers and their sweated hirelings at odds with farmers and independent artisans – a powerful discursive move that redeﬁned deskilled capitalist wage labor as ‘‘free’’ simply because it was neither formally feminized nor black. As the last two columns of Table 1 demonstrate, the continuing political conﬂict over slavery seems to have merely consolidated this cross-class coalition. By 1860 the Republicans had captured all but two wards in the entire city much as the Democrats had done in 1852, but with an alliance of the lakeshore and the North and upper West sides. Of the two Democratic wards, ward 4 was essentially a tie, with the Democrats winning the presidency by a single vote and losing the gubernatorial race by a much larger margin. That left only the Irish working-class 10th ward, a new ward that had been gerrymandered by the Republicans out of the poorer southern half of the old 5th ward in 1857 (see Fig. 1), as the sole stronghold of the Democrats who mustered 58 percent of the vote.16 In sum, Republicans carried four of the city’s now six working-class wards, the middle-class 5th and 8th, and the Yankee elite of the perennially afﬂuent 1st and 2nd wards. The fact that workers came to identify themselves as ambassadors of free white labor rather than as objects of industrial servitude was evident

67

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

N

8 6

L A K E

7

9

CHICAGO RIVER

1 3

5 4

2

Becomes the northern boundary of the new 10th ward in 1857

City Line Ward Line Waterfront 1

Fig. 1.

Chicago Ward Map, 1847–1863.

Ward No.

M I C H I G A N

68

CEDRIC DE LEON

throughout the course of the 1860 presidential campaign. Witness the various ﬂoats and banners on display at this parade for Abraham Lincoln: There was a huge frame on wheels y ﬁlled, below and on top, with machines y . On this y was a four-horse-power portable engine, driving turning lathes, and furnishing power for various machinists. There were blacksmithing, planning, sawing, boring and hammering, and ﬁfty other things a doing y 49 men from the corn planter factory for Lincoln! y On wheels was a blacksmith shop and forge; ﬁve grim smiths sledgehammered a bar of iron, striking in time y . Other wagons bore along loads of cabinetmakers, house builders, carpenters, brick layers, stone cutters, tinners, shoemakers, dusty millers, harness-makers y . A platform on wheels had a farm in miniature on it. There was a small log cabin, worm fence, corn ﬁeld, wheat, oats, meadow, all kinds of fruits in the orchard, a grape vine climbing the side of the house loaded with luscious grapes. (Chicago Tribune, Aug. 23, 1860, p. 1)

This scene is an admixture of occupational categories that would have been unimaginable in the Jacksonian era when farmers and journeymen clamored against their descent into the ranks of sweatshop and manufactory operatives. The parade juxtaposed the ﬂoats of wage hands from ‘‘a corn planter factory’’ and a model factory, ‘‘ﬁlled, below and on top, with machines’’ alongside the quintessential Jacksonian images of the smallholder republic, that of a ‘‘blacksmith shop and forge’’ and an opulent ‘‘farm in miniature.’’ This unprecedented coalition gave the Republicans an 11,753 vote (or 3.5 percent) statewide majority out of a total 333,427 votes cast. As the last column of Table 2 suggests, very few counties actually changed hands between 1856 and 1860, further evidence that the political realignment of 1853–1856 was more instrumental in delivering the Republicans to power than the economic panic of 1857. Four-ﬁfths of the Republican advantage came mainly from counties where the Democrats continued to lose ground in their share of the popular vote, of which roughly 60 percent came from the most capitalized counties. The remainder of Republican support came from a scatter of more rural counties, which continued to post Democratic majorities. A letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune provides us with a window into the dynamic between some Illinois farmers and the Republican Party. During the depths of the panic, one farmer calling himself ‘‘Shem,’’ wrote, There seems to be a league of the whole commercial community, to make out of farmers the entire losses of the recent revulsion. So it has always been, and so it will be until farmers become aware of the power in the State, and use it. By unequal laws, by indirect taxation, by paper money, and other commercial conspiracies, and by a thousand unfair

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

69

means, the agriculturalists of this country have been compelled to bear the larger share of taxation, and to suffer in times of panic like these, for the extravagance, folly, and dishonesty of the commercial world. (Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1857, p. 2)

Here Shem recuperates the old terms of Jacksonian Democratic dissent with its characteristic charge of a money power, as opposed to a slave power, conspiracy. Rather than give credence to the charge or appear willing to logroll a protective tariff for homesteads as Barrington Moore suggests the GOP did, the Republican Tribune scolded the farmer: ‘‘If he has wheat to sell, and will not accept the market price therefore, his are the chances of loss not ours. When, however, he charges that there is a conspiracy between the railroads, editors, merchants and bankers, to make up their losses out of the farming community, he certainly states that which he cannot know and which is as certainly untrue’’ (ibid.). Unlike Chicago workers, then, for whom the Panic of 1857 was merely a further proof of the shadowy inﬂuence of the South, some Illinois farmers seemed to be unwilling to divest themselves of Jacksonian rhetoric, and the Republican Party, which had forged a comfortable majority in more prosperous commercial farming counties in any case, seemed unwilling to abase itself before the entire altar of the agricultural interest. It bears noting that the Democratic defeat in Chicago was facilitated partly by certain demographic shifts. Middle-class proprietors moved into the once working-class 8th ward, further securing it for the Republicans. Other shifts infused the working-class population with values that were at least sufﬁciently consistent with Republican liberalism. The newest wave of German immigrant workers, for instance, consisted of veterans of the Revolutions of 1848 who had ﬂed the rapidly ascendant counter-revolution. For the so-called ‘‘48ers’’ who were more liberal in their politics than the socialists who would immigrate to Chicago a decade later, a ﬂight from the Metternichs of Europe to the waiting arms of southern slave-drivers was unacceptable, and they quickly delivered the North side as ward captains of the Republican Party. In the meantime, Fenian Irish nationalists had begun to inﬁltrate their countrymen in the West and South sides of the city, turning a sizeable minority away from the pro-compromise politics of the Catholic Church and Democratic Party (Pierce, 1937, pp. 49, 174, 419; U.S. Census Ofﬁce, 1860, p. 613; Einhorn, 1991, pp. 261, 263; Jentz, 1991, p. 229; Schneirov, 1991, p. 383). But demography notwithstanding, there can be no doubt that the rise of the Republican Party and its relentless deployment of the slave power conspiracy were critical to reshaping the terms of electoral competition in Chicago. By 1860 the issue of slavery extension had crowded out all other potential issues for organizing party competition in Chicago. Table 3 shows

4 1842 1846

6 1842 1847

Liberty

3 1844 1849

Indept Dem (Free Soil)

8 1849 1853

Dem w/o Formal Nomination

2 1852 1854

Temperance

1 1855 1855

KnowNothing

1 1856 1856

‘‘ProNebraska’’ Dem (Douglas)

Chicago Mayoral Tickets by Party, 1842–1860.

Source: Chicago Public Library Digital Archives (2002).

No. of tickets First Ticket Last Ticket

Whig

Table 3.

1 1856 1856

‘‘AntiNebraska’’ Dem (Free Soil)

14 1842 n/a

Dem (Douglas)

4 1857 n/a

Rep

70 CEDRIC DE LEON

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

71

not only the proliferation of internal and third-party factions in this period, but also the gradual extinction of non-slavery extension issues, from the old questions of economic inequality debated by the Whigs (whose last mayoral ticket was launched in 1846) to the causes of temperance and nativism (whose last tickets were launched in 1854 and 1855, respectively). In time, the Republican Tribune would enforce a blackout on Jacksonian rhetoric by discrediting critics of big business as apologists for slavery. When, for instance, the aforementioned unemployed workers were hatching plans to demand ‘‘bread or work,’’ the Republicans drew the improbable relationship between European socialism and the slave power, writing, When the Slave Power is dominant, then will be the time in which the claims of the poor and unfortunate upon the authorities, for what they eat, drink and wear can be maintained y Let us have no European socialism here. (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 16, 1857, pp. 1)

Taking advantage of the stigma of dependency, the Republican Party succeeded for a time in branding socialism as the political program of slaves who were incapable of taking care of themselves, and indeed Chicago did not see a march of the unemployed that month or any month until some years later. Defeating the slave power, on the Republicans’ account, was one and the same with precluding the conditions under which workers could legitimately organize against the state. After the war, elites from both parties used the slave power conspiracy as a rhetorical tool to undermine trade unionism and secure the emerging industrial order. For example, to justify the state’s repression of Chicago’s ﬁrst general strike for an eight-hour day, the Tribune denounced the job action as an effort to prevent men from selling their own property (their labor) on such terms as were agreeable to both seller and purchaser. It was the voice of the slave power crying out – You shall work only when, where and on such terms as we dictate. (Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1867, p. 2)

This same logic animated their rationale for subsequent battles with labor, including the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in which local police, state and private militia, and the U.S. Ninth Infantry unleashed 20,000 armed personnel to crush labor’s uprising in the infamous Battle of Chicago (Foner, 1977, pp. 151–156). Eventually the state’s rationale for such acts would be shorn of its Civil War rhetoric until all that remained was the politics of free market liberalism itself. In 1888, Chief Justice Mellville W. Fuller, one of the leaders of the Chicago Democratic Party and a loyal Douglasite, led the U.S. Supreme Court to write the doctrine of freedom of contract into constitutional law, to

72

CEDRIC DE LEON

gut the Sherman Antitrust Act and to declare labor unions conspiracies in restraint of trade. By the turn of the century, a man’s capacity to sell himself to the highest bidder, though once an act as vile as slavery itself, had at last become a metaphor for freedom (Stanley, 1998).

CONCLUSION This chapter has argued that while class analysis is crucial to understanding the onset and implications of the American Civil War, the reorganization of the decisive class coalitions in that conﬂict cannot be accounted for without also appreciating the trajectory of 19th-century mass party formation and political discourse. Moore’s exclusively class-centered account is limited in at least three ways. First, Chicago’s road to war was shaped not by concerted bourgeois class action per se, but by party politics. In a time of rampant factionalism, the leadership of the Republicans was critical to reorganizing the class basis of the party system and focusing the resulting regional crossclass partnership on the problem of the slave power. Furthermore, the Democratic critique of early monopoly capitalism, which had been so fundamental to Jacksonian politics, and the advocacy of compromise by the Whig and Democratic establishment in the years leading up to the Civil War, were among the most formidable obstacles to liberal bourgeois democracy and revolution. The division and defeat of the Democratic Party along with the supplanting of the conservative wing of the Whig Party by its emergent Republican counterpart eliminated these obstacles. Second, the emergence and consolidation of Republican hegemony depended upon the transformation of political discourse, which also was not exclusively bourgeois in its origins. Free labor ideology, which combined strains of Jacksonian and abolitionist politics with the anxiety over, and producerist rhetoric surrounding, economic dependency among working people on the ground served to unify party factions and formerly hostile voting blocs against the South. That said the liberal free market agenda of the Reconstruction era would eventually be driven by the bourgeois implications of free labor ideology, which recast all subjects of the new economic system as free, in spite of the pre-existing critique of wage dependency. Since this placed the capacity to buy and sell labor at the core of one’s liberty, working-class Civil War veterans could neither strike their employers nor organize their fellows without the threat of state repression. Third, because Moore’s units of analysis are classes, there is insufﬁcient room to differentiate among sub-groups within a given class or to conceive

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

73

of party politics as the cause of such differentiation. Thus, it is difﬁcult within a Moorean framework to speak of pro- and anti-southern urban elite Whigs, but as we have seen, the defeat of the former and the emergence of the latter were critical to the ascendancy of the Republican Party in Chicago. Likewise, German and native-born, but less so Irish, workers comprised the working-class base of the Republican Party. Finally, as Hobsbawm (1967) once noted of Moore, Social Origins misses the subtle differences in rural society, so that while there is mention of a ‘‘dominant upper stratum of Western farmers,’’ more often than not Moore referred to a unitary group that consisted of ‘‘the family farm’’ itself, which, in contrast to the non-slaveholding family farm in the South was ‘‘a successful commercial venture’’ (Moore, 1966, pp. 128–129). Broad categories such as these, along with ‘‘yeomanry’’ and ‘‘peasantry’’ which Moore also used interchangeably to describe Western farmers, do not capture the divergent political allegiances of largely Democratic small farmers on the one hand, and of mainly Republican cash crop farmers on the other, all of whom were technically ‘‘commercial farmers’’ to the extent that by 1860 most farmers took their surplus crops to market. Though the claim that party dynamics correspond closely with dominant class interests also limits the work of Rueschemeyer et al., the presence of an emergent working-class just prior to the Civil War is perhaps a more interesting departure point for evaluating their work. The account advanced here squares with the general terms of the latter’s argument. Reconstruction-era Chicago reveals the limits of bourgeois democracy for the workingclass, and workers, while notable in Moore’s account only by their absence, do in fact set the stage for America’s revolution against the southern landed elite. In the particulars, however, the case of Chicago diverges in ways that suggest revisions to the statement, ‘‘no working-class, no democracy.’’ Workers do not actually strike for the franchise in this case. Universal white manhood suffrage had been in place in Chicago as early as 1841 (Sparling, 1898, p. 29). Workers’ disavowal of the Democratic Party – a ‘‘desertion from below’’ if you will – did nevertheless destabilize the party system and open party politics to an alternative organizing principle. Thus, workingclass political unrest, even when not in the form of a strike or for the purposes of achieving the franchise, may have democratizing effects. That said, working-class mobilization, both by parties and workers, was deeply inﬂected by race and gender in the American context and was therefore not a linear and heroic struggle for freedom. The ‘‘radical’’ faction of the Republican Party was a vocal proponent of black suffrage among other civil rights to be sure, and indeed the radical Republicans provided

74

CEDRIC DE LEON

much of the elite impetus behind the passage of the 13th through 15th amendments (DuBois, 1935; Montgomery, 1967; Foner, 1988). However, the politics of free labor on the ground in the years leading up to the Civil War was built not upon the cry for black suffrage, but on the desire of white male workers to distance themselves from, and thereby further degrade, black slaves at precisely the moment of their formal emancipation. Later, in the Compromise of 1877, the Republican Party would sell out the project of black Civil Rights to retain control of the White House in a tight race with Democrat Samuel Tilden (Woodward, 1951). Moreover, as Montgomery (1967) has noted, even the radical Republicans ultimately foundered on the shoals of the labor question. After showing initial support for the eight-hour day immediately after the war, many fell in with the more conservative elements of their party to put down the movement. Finally for Paige, the critical question of democratization in Central America lay in the process by which industrial elites came to disavow their landed kin. The analysis here holds to Paige’s class and cultural analyses. Unlike Moore who believed that a formal urban-landed elite coalition had not taken hold in the United States, this chapter has argued that the coalition had already become institutionalized in the Whig Party. But because the Whigs were politically unsuccessful relative to their Democratic counterparts, any realignment along bourgeois democratic lines would require a mass party coalition with farmers and workers and a radical split with their landed elite compatriots to the South. In Chicago, the elite split occurred in the mid-term Congressional elections of 1854, while the mass party was formed between 1854 and 1857, not in a revolution, but in an exodus out of the Democratic Party, from below. Furthermore, like the tropes of ‘‘liberty’’ and ‘‘progress’’ in Central America, free labor served to justify the urban elite’s break with their landed counterparts, despite having been politically aligned throughout the Jacksonian era. However, this chapter also suggests that some part of the variance must be reserved for party formation. For it was the breakdown of the Jacksonian two-party system and the subsequent ascendancy of the Republican Party that shifted the terms of political debate from an economic divide that united voting blocs nationally to a sectional divide that recast America’s landed and urban elites as mortal antagonists. In sum, this chapter has attempted a synthesis of Jeffery Paige’s work in Coffee and Power and two strands of the party formation literature, Lipset and Rokkan’s emphasis on social cleavages at critical junctures and the more party-driven approach of Przeworski, Aminzade, Ansell, Desai and others. It has done so ﬁrst by underlining the role of both elites and

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

75

non-elites in shaping the American path to liberal capitalist democracy, and second, by employing a more agentic conception of party formation, in which political elites at opportune moments are able not only to reorganize class coalitions, but also to wield state power, advance resonant mass ideologies, transform the terms of electoral competition and seize openings presented by international contingencies. In Chicago and in Illinois more generally, the possibility of a liberal capitalist democracy emerged at the critical juncture of the 1850s when Whig, but especially ruling Democratic, elites failed to meet taken-for-granted expectations that the state safeguard the independence of free white men. The factious obsession with leadership succession squandered any pre-existing popular consent from the masses to be governed. Consequently, segments of the Democratic non-elite base, particularly larger commercial farmers and German workers, abandoned and thereby further destabilized their old party, while the elite Whig base split into pro- and anti-southern factions with the latter joining the aforementioned non-elites in 1854 in a mass coalition led by the insurgent Republican Party. The mechanism that bound these formerly inimical class fractions into a revolutionary force was not the mere convergence of class interest per se, but the convergence of two mutually reinforcing discourses – a producerist discourse of dependency from below and a Republican free labor ideology from above. Additionally, the Republican Party was able to exploit international contingencies such as the migration of German 48ers and the Panic of 1857, to make inroads into previously hostile class-based voting blocs. The resulting popular basis of the Republican Party, realized most famously in Abraham Lincoln’s elevation to the presidency in 1861, then became the justiﬁcation for a revolutionary offensive using the state’s means of coercion against the formerly class-based, but now secessionist, voting blocs of the South. Once victorious, the Republicans used the state machinery again, this time to repress non-elite dissent within their own ranks in the name of the now redeemed and reunited sovereign people, inaugurating Moore’s liberal capitalist democracy.

NOTES 1. The Democratic critique was not an indictment of capital or the bourgeoisie in toto, but rather of what Marx calls uneven development, the concentration of capital in an ever-shrinking number of ﬁnancial-industrial elites. 2. Unlike much of the literature, Bendix (1964), Rueschemeyer et al. (1992), and Collier (1999) acknowledge that party politics may help or hinder democratic change.

76

CEDRIC DE LEON

3. One notable exception is Republican support of railroad regulation during Reconstruction. It was a Republican Supreme Court, for instance, that declared such regulation constitutional in the Granger Cases. Still, it bears noting that, as Summers (1984) suggests, Republicans were also outspoken proponents of government aid to railroads in the same period. 4. That said Moore underestimated the extent to which a market-mentality had already taken hold in the Jacksonian era. There is evidence to suggest that early 19th-century farmers, for example, sold their surplus crops for specie currency, which they assiduously conserved to pay taxes and purchase land for themselves and their children (see, for instance, Laurie, 1989). 5. It is also ill-equipped because the American case is not a transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Still, the analytical categories in the ‘‘authoritarianism to democracy’’ literature are instructive here of the impasse that must be traversed for the sake of synthesis. 6. Collier’s (1999) is another. 7. In political science, the canonical electorate-driven approaches are Downs’s (1957) spatial or economic theory of voting behavior and the critical realignment school of Key (1955) and Burnham (1970). 8. In political science, the principal exponents of this approach are Rabinowitz and MacDonald (1987), Carmines and Stimson (1989) and Aldrich (1995). This perspective also dovetails with the ‘‘political constructionist’’ literature, which has focused largely on the ways in which racialization takes place in the political arena. See, for example, Marx (1998), Gerteis (2003), Redding (2003) and Valelly (2004). 9. Some might prefer to interpret durable shifts in political power as changes in the appeal of platforms as issue bundles, rather than as a shift in discourse. My position is that the two are not mutually exclusive. Discourse is causally prior to, and organizing of, issue bundles. As we shall see, both the Jacksonian economic issues and the question of slavery’s extension to the western territories were framed in terms of the independence of free white men. The shift I focus on is not that of the issues per se though they are certainly part of the narrative, but the transformation of the discourse of dependency that happened in conjunction with the change in issue bundles, namely from connoting dependency under monopoly capitalism to connoting dependency under slavery. It was that shift – not that of the issues per se – that I argue shaped the elite/non-elite coalition, which eventually prosecuted the American bourgeois revolution. 10. Historians seem more willing to reconstruct precinct- or ward-level dynamics from manuscript census data. See, for example, Watson (1981), Ford (1988) and Einhorn (1991). 11. Indeed, Midwestern Democrats were at variance with their party in favoring state aid to ‘‘internal improvements’’ for surface roads, canals and railroads. 12. Counties that were not present in 1840, that reorganized under different names in the lead-up to the Civil War, or that did not stay in the same quartile between 1840 and 1860 are not included in this table. 13. This reconﬁguration of bourgeois class fractions in response to the onset of the Civil War was widespread, but was not true of New York City where the war occasioned the uniﬁcation of mercantile, ﬁnancial, and industrial elites (Beckert, 2001).

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

77

Both conﬁgurations, however, set the conditions for a capitalist revolution against the South. 14. This lends credence to Formisano’s (1971) thesis that the realignment of the 1850s involved ethnocultural factors. 15. The Tribune overstates the uniformity of the Democratic Party here. As we have seen the latter was divided into at least three factions, only one of which was explicitly ‘‘pro-slavery,’’ and the Republicans were not ‘‘anti-slavery’’ as such, but opposed to the extension of slavery to the West. Nevertheless, this statement is signiﬁcant in that by 1856 the planter-heavy Whig Party was no longer a national contender, leaving large southern slaveholders in 1860 to forge political alliances either with wings of the Democratic Party or with the anti-secessionist (and largely Whig) Constitutional Union Party. 16. The tenth was the only new ward created between 1847 (when the preceding ward map was established) and 1857. The other nine wards preceded the political crisis of the 1850s.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all those who have commented on earlier drafts of this and other related papers, especially Howard Kimeldorf, Mark Mizruchi, Kent Redding, Jeff Paige, Daniel Goh, Manali Desai, Elisabeth Clemens, Jeff Manza, Tony Chen, Rob Mickey, Richard Bensel, Diane Davis, Christina Proenza-Coles and the anonymous reviewers of Political Power and Social Theory. Howard and Mark have seen countless iterations of this piece, while Kent provided some critical last-minute advice on his second read. Jeff Paige recommended PPST as an outlet for my work. They deserve special thanks for their patience and good will.

REFERENCES Newspapers and Archives of Origin Chicago American (Chicago Historical Society and University of Illinois). Chicago Daily Journal (Chicago Historical Society and University of Illinois). Chicago Democrat (Chicago Historical Society and University of Illinois). Chicago Express (Chicago Historical Society and University of Illinois). Chicago Times (Chicago Historical Society). Chicago Tribune (University of Michigan). Workingman’s Advocate (Newberry Library).

78

CEDRIC DE LEON

General References Aldrich, J. H. (1995). Why parties? The origin and transformation of political parties in America Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Almond, G. L. (1967). Review essay of social origins of dictatorship and democracy. American Political Science Review, 61, 768–770. Aminzade, R. (1993). Ballots and barricades: Class formation and republican politics in France, 1830–1871. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ansell, C. K. (2001). Schism and solidarity in social movements: The politics of labor in the French third republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ashworth, J. (1983). ‘Agrarians’ & ‘Aristocrats’: Party political ideology in the United States, 1837–1846 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press). London: Royal Historical Society. Beckert, S. (2001). Monied metropolis: New York City and the consolidation of the American bourgeoisie. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Bendix, R. (1964). Nation-building and citizenship: Studies of our changing social order. New York: Wiley. Bendix, R. (1967). Review essay of social origins of dictatorship and democracy. Political Science Quarterly, 82, 625–627. Benson, L. (1972). Toward the scientiﬁc study of history. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Black, C. E. (1967). Review essay of social origins of dictatorship and democracy. American Historical Review, 72, 1338. Blau, J. L. (1954). Social theories of Jacksonian democracy: Representative writings of the period, 1825–1850. New York: The Liberal Arts Press. Boydston, J. (1991). Home and work: Housework, wages and the ideology of labor in the early republic. New York: Oxford University Press. Burnham, W. D. (1970). Critical elections and the mainsprings of American politics. New York: Norton. Burton, M., Gunther, R., & Higley, J. (1992). Elites and democratic consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe: An overview. In: J. Higley & R. Gunther (Eds), Elites and democratic consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (pp. 323–348). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carmines, E. G., & Stimson, J. A. (1989). Issue evolution: Race and the transformation of American politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chicago Public Library Digital Archives. (2002). Chicago’s mayors. Retrieved March 22, 2002. Available at: http://cpl.lib.uic.edu/004chicago/mayors/mayortxt.html Cole, A. C. (1934). The Irrepressible Conﬂict, 1850–1865. New York: Macmillan. Collier, R. B. (1999). Paths toward democracy: The working class and elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cronon, W. (1991). Nature’s metropolis: Chicago and the great west. New York: Norton. Davis, D. B. (1969). The slave power conspiracy and the paranoid style. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Desai, M. (2002). The relative autonomy of party practices: A counterfactual analysis of Left Party ascendancy in Kerala, India, 1934–1940. American Journal of Sociology, 108, 616–657. DiPalma, G. (1990). To craft democracies: An essay on democratic transitions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

79

Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row. Downing, B. M. (1992). The military revolution and political change: Origins of democracy and autocracy in early modern Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DuBois, W. E. B. ([1935]1992). Black reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Atheneum. Einhorn, R. L. (1991). Property rules: Political economy in Chicago, 1833–1872. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fehrenbacher, D. E. (1957). Chicago giant: A biography of ‘Long John’ Wentworth. Madison, WI: American History Research Center. Foner, E. (1970). Free soil, free labor, free men: The ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. Foner, E. (1988). Reconstruction: America’s unﬁnished revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row. Foner, P. S. (1977). The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. New York: Monad Press. Ford, L. K. (1988). Origins of southern radicalism: The South Carolina upcountry, 1800–1860. New York: Oxford University Press. Formisano, R. P. (1971). The birth of mass political parties: Michigan, 1827–1861. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fraser, N., & Gordon, L. (1994). A genealogy of dependency: Tracing a keyword of the U.S. Welfare State. Signs, 19(2), 33–58. Gerteis, J. (2003). Populism, race, and political interest in Virginia. Social Science History, 27(2), 197–227. Gienapp, W. E. (1987). The origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856. New York: Oxford University Press. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1967). Review essay of social origins of dictatorship and democracy. American Sociological Review, 32, 821–822. Holt, M. F. (1978). The political crisis of the 1850s. New York: Norton. Holt, M. F. (1999). The rise and fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian politics and the onset of the Civil War. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howe, D. W. (1979). The political culture of the American Whigs. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hugins, W. (1960). Jacksonian democracy and the working class: A study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1828–1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Huston, J. L. (1987). The Panic of 1857 and the coming of the Civil War. Baton Rouge, LA and London: Louisiana State University Press. ICPSR – Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. (1999). United States historical election returns, 1824–1968 [Computer ﬁle], Part 0057: Election Returns for Illinois, 1824–1878. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Jentz, J. B. (1991). Class and politics in an emerging industrial city: Chicago in the 1860s and 1870s. Journal of Urban History, 17, 227–263. Jones, G. S. (1972). The history of U.S. imperialism. In: R. Blackburn (Ed.), Ideology in social science: Readings in critical social theory (pp. 207–237). New York: Pantheon. Key, V. O. (1955). A theory of critical elections. Journal of Politics, 17, 3–18. Klunder, W. C. (1996). Lewis Cass and the politics of moderation. Kent, OH and London, UK: Kent State University Press.

80

CEDRIC DE LEON

Laurie, B. (1989). Artisans into workers: Labor in nineteenth-century America. New York: Hill and Wang. Lewis, L., & Smith, H. J. (1929). Chicago: The history of its reputation. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Lipset, S. M., & Rokkan, S. (1967). Party systems and voter alignments: Cross-national perspectives. New York: Free Press. Lowenthal, D. (1968). Review essay of social origins of dictatorship and democracy. History and Theory, 7, 257–278. Luebbert, G. M. (1991). Liberalism, fascism, or social democracy: Social classes and the political origins of regimes in interwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press. Marx, A. W. (1998). Making race and nation: A comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press. Montgomery, D. (1967). Beyond equality: Labor and the radical republicans, 1862–1872. New York: A. A. Knopf. Moore, B. (1966). Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Nichols, R. F. (1948). The disruption of American democracy. New York: Macmillan. Nord, D. P. (1985). The public community: The urbanization of journalism in Chicago. Journal of Urban History, 11, 411–441. O’Donnell, G., & Schmitter, P. C. (1986). Transitions from authoritarian rule: Tentative conclusions about uncertain democracies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Paige, J. M. (1975). Agrarian revolution: Social movements and export agriculture in the underdeveloped world. New York: Free Press. Paige, J. M. (1997). Coffee and power: Revolution and the rise of democracy in Central America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peel, J. D. Y. (1973). Cultural factors in the contemporary theory of development. Archives europe´enes de sociologie, XIV, 283–303. Pessen, E. (1967). Most uncommon Jacksonians: The radical leaders of the early labor movement. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Pierce, B. L. (1937). A history of Chicago (Vol. I). New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf. Pierce, B. L. (1940). A history of Chicago (Vol. II). New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf. Przeworski, A. (1977). Proletariat into a class: The process of class formation from Karl Kautsky’s the class struggle to recent controversies. Politics and Society, 7, 343–401. Przeworski, A., & Sprague, J. (1986). Paper stones: A history of electoral socialism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rabinowitz, G., & MacDonald, S. (1989). A directional theory of issue voting. American Political Science Review, 89, 93–121. Redding, K. (2003). Making race, making power: North Carolina’s road to disenfranchisement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Reynolds, D. S. (2005). John Brown, abolitionist: The man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded Civil Rights. New York: A. A. Knopf. Richardson, H. C. (1997). The greatest nation of the Earth: Republican economic policies during the Civil War. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Rodgers, D. T. (1978). The work ethic in industrial America, 1850–1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy

81

Roediger, D. R. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class. New York: Verso. Rokkan, S. (1999). State formation, nation-building, and mass politics in Europe: The theory of Stein Rokkan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ross, G. (1998). Fin de Sie`cle globalization, democratization, and the Moore thesis: A European case study. In: T. Skocpol (Ed.), Democracy, revolution, and history (pp. 230–255). Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Rothman, S. (1970). Barrington Moore and the dialectics of revolution: An essay review. American Political Science Review, 64, 61–82. Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E. H., & Stephens, J. D. (1992). Capitalist development and democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Schneirov, R. (1991). Political cultures and the role of the state in labor’s republic. Labor History, 32, 376–400. Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sellers, C. (1991). The market revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press. Skocpol, T. (1973). A critical review of Barrington Moore’s social origins of dictatorship and democracy. Politics and Society, 4, 1–34. Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Skocpol, T. (1998). Did the Civil War further American democracy? A reﬂection on the expansion of beneﬁts for union veterans. In: T. Skocpol (Ed.), Democracy, revolution, and history (pp. 73–101). Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Skogan, W. G. (1976). Time series data for Chicago, 1840–1973. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), 7389. Sparling, S. E. (1898). Municipal history and present organization of the city of Chicago. Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 23, Economics, Political Science, and History Series, 2(2), 75–188. Spencer, D. (1977). Louis Kossuth and Young America: A study of sectionalism and foreign policy, 1848–1852. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Stanley, A. D. (1998). From bondage to contract: Wage labor, marriage, and the market in the age of slave emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stone, L. (1967). News from everywhere. New York Review of Books, 9. Summers, M. W. (1984). Radical reconstruction and the gospel of prosperity: Railroad aid under the Republicans, 1865–1877. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Therborn, G. (1979). The travail of Latin American democracy. New Left Review, 113–114, 71–109. Thornton, J. M. (1978). Politics and power in a slave society: Alabama, 1800–1860. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1961). Historical statistics of the United States, colonial times to 1957. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. U.S. Census Ofﬁce. (1840). Sixth census of the United States, 1840 (vol. 3). New York: N. Ross Pub. U.S. Census Ofﬁce. (1850). Seventh census of the United States, 1850. vol. 4. Compendium. New York: N. Ross Pub. U.S. Census Ofﬁce. (1860). Eighth census of the United States, 1860. Vol. 1. Population. New York: N. Ross Pub.

82

CEDRIC DE LEON

Valelly, R. (2004). The two reconstructions: The struggle for black enfranchisement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walzer, M. (1998). Intellectuals, social classes, and revolutions. In: T. Skocpol (Ed.), Democracy, revolution, and history (pp. 127–142). Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Watson, H. L. (1981). Jacksonian politics and community conﬂict: The emergence of the second American Party System in Cumberland County North Carolina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Watson, H. L. (1990). Liberty and power: The politics of Jacksonian America. New York: Hill and Wang. Weber, M. (1946). Class, status, party. In: H. H. Gerth & C. W. Mills (Eds), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 180–195). New York: Oxford University Press. Welter, R. (1975). The mind of America, 1820–1860. New York: Columbia University Press. Widmer, E. L. (1999). Young America: The ﬂowering of democracy in New York City. New York: Oxford University Press. Wiener, J. M. (1976). Review of reviews: Social origins of dictatorship and democracy. Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. History and Theory, 15, 146–175. Wilentz, S. (1984). Chants democratic: New York City and the rise of the American working class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilentz, S. (2005). The rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Wilson, M. L. (1974). Space, time and freedom: The quest for nationality and the irrepressible conﬂict, 1815–1861. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Woodward, C. V. (1951). Reunion and reaction: The compromise of 1877 and the end of reconstruction. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Zagorin, P. (1973). Theories of revolution in contemporary historiography. Political Science Quarterly, 88, 23–52.

T. H. MARSHALL MEETS PIERRE BOURDIEU: CITIZENS AND PAUPERS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE U.S. WELFARE STATE Chad Alan Goldberg ABSTRACT The insights of T. H. Marshall and Pierre Bourdieu are drawn upon, integrated and extended to show how social spending policies have been key sites for historical struggles over the boundaries and rights of American citizenship. In the 19th century, paupers forfeited their civil and political rights in exchange for relief. Rather than break deﬁnitively with this legacy, major policy innovations in the United States that expanded state involvement in social provision generated struggles over whether to model the new policies on or distinguish them from traditional poor relief. At stake in these struggles were the citizenship status and rights of the policies’ clients. Both the emergence of such citizenship struggles and their outcomes are explained. These struggles emerged when policy innovations created new groups of clients, the new policy treated clients in contradictory ways and policy elites formed ties to social movements with stakes in the status and rights of the policy’s clients. The outcomes of the struggles have been shaped by the institutional structure of the policy and the manner and extent to which the policy became entangled in racial politics. Historical evidence for these claims is provided by a case study of Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 83–116 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19003-2

83

84

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

the Works Progress Administration, an important but understudied component of the New Deal welfare state.

More than half a century after T. H. Marshall delivered his celebrated lecture on ‘‘Citizenship and Social Class,’’ it remains a touchstone for the sociology of the welfare state. This chapter builds on Marshall’s contributions, including his threefold typology of civil rights, which are necessary for individual freedom and encompass the rights to own property, ‘‘conclude valid contracts’’ and ‘‘follow the occupation of one’s choice’’; political rights to participate in the exercise of political power and social rights to at least ‘‘a modicum of economic welfare and security’’ (Marshall, 1964, pp. 71–72, 75). At the same time, the chapter draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural sociology to complicate the evolutionary view typically ascribed to Marshall in which a steady enrichment of the status of citizenship (i.e., the addition of new rights) accompanied a steady increase in the number of those on whom the status was bestowed.1 In the Anglo-American tradition, full citizenship was initially restricted to property owners on the grounds that property prevented their personal dependence and subordination. Propertyless wage earners were deemed unﬁt for full citizenship because, in the words of the English jurist William Blackstone, they had ‘‘no will of their own’’ and would therefore cast their votes ‘‘under some undue inﬂuence’’ (Keyssar, 2000, p. 10). When propertyless white workingmen demanded and obtained voting rights in the United States in the ﬁrst half of the 19th century, they expanded the boundaries of citizenship to encompass wage laborers as well as property owners. Although economic independence remained a prerequisite for full citizenship, property-less white workingmen successfully challenged their classiﬁcation as dependents by 1850, relocating themselves on the more privileged side of the boundary (Keyssar, 2000, Chapter 2). Paupers, who ‘‘lived not on wages but on poor relief,’’ were left on the other side (Fraser & Gordon, 1994, pp. 315–316). Indeed, ‘‘states adopted ‘pauper’ exclusions as they moved to eliminate formal property qualiﬁcations for the votey. Far from being anachronisms, pauper exclusions were integral to a new, nineteenth century way of deﬁning full membership in a republican polity’’ (Steinfeld, 1989, pp. 335, 337; cf. Montgomery, 1993, pp. 21–22; Smith, 1997, pp. 126, 214–215; Keyssar, 2000, pp. 61–65). Where wage earners and recipients of poor relief had once occupied the same political status, the enfranchisement of the former and the exclusion of the latter now divided

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

85

‘‘the undifferentiated propertyless of the colonial era y into two distinct categories’’ (Steinfeld, 1989, p. 337). This division would endure well into the 20th century. At the time of the Great Depression, ‘‘the constitutions of fourteen states [still] denied the franchise to paupers’’ (Piven & Cloward, 1977, p. 42). Social welfare provision thus operated as a boundary institution in a double sense; it not only regulated the ﬂow of workers into and out of the labor market (Piven & Cloward, 1993), but also their incorporation into the political community. An important but neglected contribution of ‘‘Citizenship and Social Class’’ was to draw attention to this boundary work. As numerous commentators have observed, Marshall associated social rights with the 20th-century welfare state. However, he did not claim that social rights were a creation of the welfare state. In fact, Marshall (1964, p. 80) noted, social rights were established well before the modern welfare state, but they were ‘‘detached from the status of citizenship.’’ In other words, paupers forfeited their civil and political rights in exchange for relief. Traditional poor relief thus ‘‘treated the claims of the poor, not as an integral part of the rights of the citizen, but as an alternative to them – as claims which could be met only if the claimants ceased to be citizens in any true sense of the word’’ (ibid., p. 80). Furthermore, Marshall pointed out, ‘‘this divorce of social rights from the status of citizenship’’ was a gendered phenomenon that extended beyond relief to the regulation of labor markets (ibid., p. 81). Legislators and judges, he observed, initially refused to apply protective labor laws ‘‘to the adult male – the citizen par excellence. And they did so out of respect for his status as a citizen, on the grounds that enforced protective measures curtailed the civil right to conclude a free contract of employment. Protection was conﬁned to women and children, and champions of women’s rights were quick to detect the implied insult. Women were protected because they were not citizens. If they wished to enjoy full and responsible citizenship, they must forgo protection’’ (ibid., p. 81). Thus, in the 19th century, full citizenship was equated with manly independence and liberty of contract, while relief and protective labor laws were understood to be incompatible with it. In Marshall’s view, the modern welfare state broke with this legacy, not by establishing social rights, but by incorporating social rights into the status of citizenship.2 Insofar as Marshall recognized the separation of paupers from the community of citizens, his perspective converges with more recent conceptions of citizenship as an instrument of social closure through which people monopolize valuable material and symbolic goods while excluding

86

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

others (Brubaker, 1992). This process is generally understood in terms of the exclusion of non-citizens from the rights and beneﬁts conferred upon citizens. However, if citizenship is understood as a gradated category rather than a status that one either wholly possesses or completely lacks, then citizenship may also be seen as a means of internal social closure, an ‘‘instrument of social stratiﬁcation’’ in Marshall’s words (1964, p. 110), which operates within the boundaries of the polity. From this perspective, people who are nominally citizens (i.e., members of the polity) but whose citizenship rights are circumscribed or curtailed also experience a form of civil exclusion: They are excluded from some (though generally not all) of the beneﬁts associated with full citizenship.3 This chapter takes as its point of departure Marshall’s suggestion that civil and political rights could be and sometimes were treated as an alternative to social rights rather than a foundation for them. However, it challenges Marshall’s claim that the 20th-century welfare state broke deﬁnitively with this practice. Instead, it suggests that the transition from poor relief to the welfare state was, at least in the United States, quite a bit messier. In the United States, major policy innovations that expanded the state’s involvement in social provision often generated conﬂicts over whether to model the new policy on or sharply distinguish it from traditional poor relief. As in Britain, new policies were shaped by the ‘‘reaction against the poor law’’ and the search for ‘‘an alternative to poor relief’’ for those deemed deserving (Heclo, 1974, p. 317). However, reformers in the United States were constrained again and again by conservatives (in the literal sense of the word) who drew different lessons from the past and sought to preserve or reproduce many of the features of traditional poor relief. At stake in these struggles were the citizenship status and rights of the policies’ clients, who struggled not only to acquire new social rights, but also to avoid losing their civil and political rights in the process. These struggles continued to emerge well into the 20th century, shaping the meaning and boundaries of American citizenship. To illuminate and explain these struggles over the citizenship status and rights of welfare state claimants, this chapter draws upon and extends the insights of Bourdieu (1984, 1985, 1989, 1991, 1994).4 More speciﬁcally, it brings Marshall into dialogue with Bourdieu in order to clarify why such struggles have emerged in the course of U.S. welfare state development and why their outcomes have varied. Why, in other words, were some welfare state claimants classed as dependent paupers whose civil or political rights were curtailed while others successfully obtained recognition as independent, rights-bearing citizens? In brief, I argue that such struggles emerged

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

87

soon after policy innovations created new groups of claimants, particularly when the new policy treated claimants in contradictory ways and when dominant elites were divided over whether to improve the claimants’ status and rights. Historically, the outcomes of these struggles in the United States have been crucially shaped by the institutional structure of the policy and the manner and extent to which the policy became entangled in racial politics. Through most of American history, African Americans enjoyed neither full civil and political rights (like white men) nor social protection (like white women). When new policies potentially challenged these racialized patterns of social closure – especially when they challenged both forms of closure simultaneously – claimants’ efforts to preserve (or expand) their civil and political rights while acquiring new social rights met with greater resistance and less success.5 These claims are supported throughout the chapter with empirical evidence from a historical case study of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), an important but understudied component of the New Deal welfare state that provided temporary public employment for millions of ablebodied unemployed Americans from 1935 to 1942. The WPA was selected for this purpose because it was an important policy innovation that postdated traditional poor relief, it created an extensive new group of claimants whose status and rights were contested and it coincided with and was part of a key moment of social crisis and reform during which political and judicial changes dramatically transformed American citizenship. Indeed, the WPA was central to the New Deal in terms of size, spending and importance. By 1939, it ‘‘absorbed both the greatest amount of public spending and public attention’’ (Amenta, 1998, p. 81); it was ‘‘Roosevelt’s top priority in social policy’’ (ibid., p. 83); it ‘‘had become the most comprehensive, ambitious, and controversial government program’’ (Porter, 1980, p. 61) and it was ‘‘regarded as the cornerstone of domestic relief ’’ (ibid., p. 70). To investigate the struggles that occurred over the citizenship status and rights of WPA workers, this chapter relies on a qualitative analysis of both archival records and secondary sources.

THE EMERGENCE OF CLASSIFICATION STRUGGLES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE U.S. WELFARE STATE Conﬂicts over the citizenship status and rights of welfare state claimants are a particular instance of what Bourdieu calls classiﬁcation struggles. To be

88

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

more precise, they are struggles to class claimants as citizens or paupers. At stake in classiﬁcation struggles is ‘‘the power to make people see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the legitimate deﬁnition of the divisions of the social world and, thereby, to make and unmake groups’’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 221). The last point is perhaps the most important: Classiﬁcation struggles are not merely struggles between existing groups over how to interpret the social world, but rather struggles that help form groups in the ﬁrst place. Because classiﬁcatory schemes are ‘‘the basis of the representations of the groups and therefore of their mobilization and demobilization,’’ struggles over classiﬁcatory schemes help to ‘‘bring into existence the thing named’’ and ‘‘contribute to producing what they apparently [only] describe or designate’’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 479, 1991, pp. 220, 223, emphasis in the original). In these struggles, stratifying factors like gender, race or ethnicity may be constitutive of the groups formed, or they may constitute competing sources of social division (Swartz, 1997, pp. 153–158). Regardless of how and where people draw group boundaries, they include some in the group and exclude others, thereby deﬁning the group’s identity. While in Bourdieu’s writings the concept of classiﬁcation struggles is mainly used to explain the formation and mobilization of social classes, I show how it also helps to explain the formation and development of citizenship. (Indeed, one might say this article is concerned more with ‘‘citizenship struggles’’ than class struggles, though classiﬁcation is an essential dimension of both.) In particular, I argue that historical struggles over the boundary between citizens and paupers have shaped both the meaning of American citizenship and access to the corresponding material and symbolic proﬁts. Classiﬁcation struggles, Bourdieu suggests, cannot be understood apart from the social arenas or ‘‘ﬁelds’’ in which people struggle to accumulate and monopolize different kinds of resources (economic, cultural, social and symbolic), which he describes as forms of capital. These ﬁelds are in turn structured by the amount and type of capital that people possess. The dominant groups within the ﬁeld struggle over the relative value of different types of capital, while dominated groups control little capital of any kind. This insight has been usefully extended to the sociology of the welfare state by Peillon (1998, 2001), who postulates the existence of a ‘‘welfare ﬁeld’’ wherein state ofﬁcials, service providers, employers, clients, unions and social movements struggle to convert the resources they possess (economic, political, cultural or symbolic) into the kinds of capital they seek to accumulate (greater legitimacy, better services and beneﬁts, lower taxes, inﬂuence over policy administration and so forth). From this perspective, citizenship itself may be seen as a form of political capital that constitutes

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

89

both a stake of classiﬁcation struggles (insofar as the citizenship status and corresponding rights of welfare state claimants are contested) and a resource that people use to appropriate other valued goods (insofar as citizenship rights enable one to acquire property [Marshall, 1964, p. 88], employment in the occupation of one’s choice [ibid., p. 75], a share in the exercise of political power [ibid., p. 72], social protection [ibid., p. 87], economic welfare and security [ibid., p. 72], and so forth). The concepts of ﬁeld and capital also encourage us to think about social welfare policy in relational terms, which in turn helps to explain when and why policies generate classiﬁcation struggles. These struggles tend to emerge soon after the introduction of new policies, suggesting that policy innovations provide a window of opportunity to deﬁne the status and rights of the policy’s clients relative to other clients in the ﬁeld. Since the standing of clients is relational, already existing policies serve as important benchmarks in these classiﬁcation struggles, providing models to be avoided or standards of treatment to which clients can aspire. Furthermore, policies and their elite patrons frequently stand in a competitive relationship, which may contribute to classiﬁcation struggles as well. The bureaucratic ofﬁcials who administer a policy, for example, may have institutional, organizational and professional interests in raising it to a dominant position (in terms of prestige and resources) within the welfare ﬁeld. As in other ﬁelds, this is generally achieved through social distinction; administrators seek to distinguish their policy sharply from others, emphasizing its merits and conversely the ﬂaws of its competitors. Such efforts need not be merely symbolic, but may also involve efforts to incorporate and monopolize valued policy features. (These policy features may therefore be seen as another form of capital over which social agents struggle in the welfare ﬁeld.) The classiﬁcation of clients is shaped by these competitive struggles among policymakers and administrators. Finally, classiﬁcation struggles are more likely to emerge when clients occupy an intermediate position within the welfare ﬁeld. Although ‘‘the objects of the social world’’ always include a degree of indeterminacy, vagueness and ‘‘semantic elasticity’’ that make classiﬁcation struggles possible, ‘‘it is in the intermediate positions of social space ythat the indeterminacy and objective uncertainty of relations between practices and positions is at a maximum, and also, consequently, the intensity of symbolic strategies’’ (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 20). Within the welfare ﬁeld, it is the clients of hybrid policies, positioned in some respects as rights-bearing citizens but in other respects as dependent paupers in need of discipline and supervision, who occupy these intermediate positions. Their indeterminate status is not merely a product of muddled minds or linguistic

90

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

confusion, but also reﬂects how social provision is organized, which in turn reﬂects how classiﬁcatory schemes are institutionalized. When inconsistent or contradictory classiﬁcatory schemes are objectiﬁed in policies, the policies are likely to encourage classiﬁcation struggles.6 This thesis is consistent with historical-institutionalist views of the welfare state. As previous studies have shown, institutions structure political struggles and their outcomes in a variety of ways. Institutions inﬂuence the formation of groups and their political capacities, ideas and demands; they shape how individuals and groups deﬁne their interests and goals and they provide models, schemas or scripts for behavior (Skocpol, 1985; Steinmo, Thelen, & Longstreth, 1992; Clemens & Cook, 1999). From this perspective, ‘‘policies themselves must be seen as politically consequential structures’’ that restructure politics (Pierson, 1994, p. 46). In other words, policies are not merely an outcome or a consequence of past political struggles, but also inﬂuence subsequent struggles through their material and symbolic effects on political elites, interest groups and mass publics (Pierson, 1993; Mettler & Soss, 2004). Historical institutionalists have described these effects as ‘‘policy feedbacks’’ (Skocpol & Amenta, 1986, pp. 149–151; Quadagno, 1987, pp. 118–119; Weir, Orloff, & Skocpol, 1988, pp. 25–27; Skocpol, 1992, pp. 57–60; Pierson, 1994, pp. 39–50). While stressing the causal importance of symbolic classiﬁcation, this chapter does not counterpose cultural and institutional inﬂuences on political struggles. Rather, it proceeds from the assumption that culture and institutions are inseparable, since classiﬁcatory schemes are objectiﬁed in institutions and institutions have a cultural aspect or dimension (Meyer & Rowan, 1991; Dobbin, 1994). These theoretical points are well illustrated by the struggles over the classiﬁcation of WPA workers in the 1930s and early 1940s. Though modeled on earlier experiments with public works (Salmond, 1967; Schwartz, 1984; Sautter, 1991), the WPA created a new group of welfare state claimants whose standing relative to those assisted by other policies was initially unclear. Would WPA employment reproduce disciplinary forms of work relief like those found in the poorhouse – an institution that had by no means disappeared in the 1930s (Wagner, 2005) – or would it be sharply distinguished from them? Would the WPA provide relief as an alternative to citizenship rights or as an integral part of them? In the struggles that ensued, punitive forms of poor relief served as a model for WPA workers and sympathetic New Dealers to avoid, while New Deal labor policies set new standards against which they could measure injustices.7 The ‘‘Janus-like nature’’ of the WPA also contributed to the uncertainty about WPA workers’ status and rights. From its inception, ‘‘neither

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

91

Congress nor administrative ofﬁcials’’ ever clariﬁed ‘‘how far the WPA should be regarded as a relief program as opposed to a work program’’ (Howard, 1943, p. 246, see also pp. 247, 251, 421–422; Lescohier, 1939; Bremer, 1975). The policy included features of both relief and public employment, which provided plausible bases for competing classiﬁcatory claims and encouraged political struggles to push it more consistently in one direction or the other (Goldberg, 2005). Thus, both the innovative nature of the WPA program and the intermediate position of WPA workers encouraged struggles over workers’ status and rights. Perhaps the most forceful advocate for WPA workers in these classiﬁcation struggles was the Workers Alliance of America, a social movement organization that sought to mobilize and represent WPA workers from 1935 to 1941.8 The Workers Alliance vigorously opposed the pauperization of WPA workers, which in practice meant striving to eliminate those policy features that the program shared with direct relief. At the same time, the Workers Alliance resisted threats to strip relief workers (and relief recipients more generally) of their civil and political rights. Such threats were very real in the 1930s. As millions of workers became relief recipients and new federal relief programs proliferated, controversy arose over how and to whom pauper exclusion laws applied. Some public ofﬁcials tried to enforce the laws, and their efforts were accompanied by new proposals to curb or eliminate relief recipients’ citizenship rights (Keyssar, 2000, pp. 237–244). Although most Americans opposed disfranchisement of relief recipients in the 1930s, a substantial minority supported the idea. According to a 1938 poll conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion, nearly one in ﬁve Americans (19 percent of those polled) supported disfranchisement of the unemployed on WPA and relief, and a similar survey conducted in 1939 by Fortune revealed that 18 percent of Americans favored disfranchisement of relief recipients (Work, October 22, 1938, p. 1; Keyssar, 2000, p. 243). ‘‘National support [for disfranchisement] was sufﬁciently widespread that a countermovement was launched to promote a Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution to guarantee the citizenship rights of the unemployed’’ (Keyssar, 2000, p. 240). In this context, one of the principal aims of the Workers Alliance was to resist any ‘‘curtailment of citizenship rights to those receiving unemployment or public assistance’’ (Work, November 5, 1938, p. 2). The Workers Alliance sought not only to protect the existing rights of WPA workers, but also to expand them. Just as labor unions tried to create ‘‘a sort of secondary industrial citizenship’’ for workers in private industry through collective bargaining (Marshall, 1964, pp. 93–94, 111), the Workers

92

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

Alliance struggled to create something similar for WPA workers. By 1939, three-quarters of Workers Alliance members were WPA workers, for whom the organization served as a kind of labor union. However, since the status of WPA workers as employees was contested, so too were their rights in the workplace. As Workers Alliance president David Lasser ruefully noted, ‘‘the papers scoffed at our attempt to ‘raise the wages of those on relief.’ Reliefers, it was said, were being given charity. They should be thankful for whatever was bestowed!’’ (Work, July 16, 1938, p. 5). It was therefore imperative, as he demanded in a 1936 letter to President Roosevelt, that WPA workers ‘‘be taken out of the twilight zone in which they are not on relief and yet have an essentially relief status. We WPA workers want to work and be treated as workers’’ (New York Times, August 25, 1936, p. 11). But what did it mean to be treated as workers? The material and symbolic proﬁts that correspond to the name ‘‘worker’’ are not inherent in the category itself. To develop such an understanding, the Workers Alliance pointed to federal employees, Public Works Administration employees and workers in private industry as salient reference groups with whom WPA workers could and should demand parity (Goldberg, 2005). Moreover, parity with workers in private industry became a moving target as those workers won new gains. Successful labor struggles in private industry – especially the electrifying victories of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1936 and 1937 – stimulated the mobilization of WPA workers as well (Seymour, 1937, p. 45).9 Just as newly enacted New Deal labor policies encouraged and legitimized organizing efforts in private industry (Piven & Cloward, 1977, pp. 111–115; Skocpol, 1980), the Workers Alliance invoked the same policies to encourage and legitimize protest among WPA workers. After Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935, making collective bargaining rights enforceable for workers in private industry, the Workers Alliance claimed the same rights for WPA workers. Similarly, though the applicability of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to WPA workers was contested, the Workers Alliance used it as a benchmark for deﬁning the rights of WPA workers and invoked its minimum-wage provisions to make claims on their behalf (Goldberg, 2005, pp. 358–360). Invoking a discourse of industrial democracy that was resurgent and widespread during the New Deal, the Workers Alliance insisted that citizenship rights, including the right to organize, had to be extended to WPA workers to prevent the program from becoming ‘‘a system of forced labor in which the workers have no rights,’’ a ‘‘situation abhorrent to democracy’’ (Roosevelt, Papers as President, Ofﬁcial File, File #2366). ‘‘Perhaps in Germany labor battalions ﬁt the social and political scheme of

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

93

things,’’ Lasser wrote in 1939, ‘‘but we have no use for them here. And to tell free Americans that they must work at any wages ﬁxed for them, or starve; to tell them that they will go to jail if they strike; to tell them that they are just ‘reliefers’ and have no rights, is an impossible situation’’ (Work, July 15, 1939, p. 6). Like the Workers Alliance – and sometimes in collaboration with it – WPA administrators also promoted recognition of WPA workers as rightsbearing citizen-workers. Their efforts were in part a response to the increasingly conservative and hostile policy environment in which the WPA operated. Early on, conservative opponents of the WPA sought to decentralize administration of the program or to replace it altogether with less costly direct relief (Howard, 1943, Chapters 30 and 31). Republican legislators in Congress began to push these competing policies as early as 1936 with the support of organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Economy League (Howard, 1943, pp. 740n2, 746–747, 760–761). In response, top-level WPA ofﬁcials, including F. C. Harrington, Harry Hopkins, Howard Hunter and Aubrey Williams, defended the continuation and national administration of the WPA in testimony to Congress, radio addresses to the public and WPA press releases (Howard, 1943, pp. 735, 740, 743–744, 747–748, 761–762, 766, 768). President Roosevelt himself made a public ‘‘plea for the continuance of federal operation of the WPA program’’ in April 1939 (Howard, 1943, p. 759). This conﬂict over whether to continue the WPA program and how to administer it had important implications for the status and rights of WPA workers. As Mettler (1998, pp. 12–13) has shown, ‘‘social citizenship determined by the states, judging by its ability to incorporate citizens on a broad and equal basis, has generally tended to be inferior to social citizenship with national standards for eligibility and administration.’’ WPA ofﬁcials were aware of these implications, and they used this very argument to discredit and ward off competing policy proposals from the right. WPA ofﬁcials emphasized the program’s work aspects over its relief aspects and insisted that the WPA protected workers’ citizenship rights better than competing policy proposals, which they equated with traditional poor relief. In 1938, for example, Deputy WPA Administrator Aubrey Williams testiﬁed to Congress that the WPA’s opponents sought to reduce ‘‘this whole thing [unemployment relief] to a level where you force people to accept the status of pauperism, denying them votes in many places, forfeiting their citizenship’’ (New York Times, June 28, 1938, p. 1; Howard, 1943, p. 766). Similarly, in a press release dated May 15, 1939, WPA administrator Howard Hunter declared: ‘‘People who propose to abandon the WPA for a

94

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

system of grants-in-aid to States y do not like a program of work which enables these temporarily unemployed people to maintain their self-respect, bargaining power and rights of citizenship.’’ Hunter went on to suggest that earlier attempts to administer relief through federal grants to states had failed in part because ‘‘there was no recognition given to the fact that these newly unemployed people y were a new kind of poor people. They were not the same old paupers who had normally been handled under the archaic poor-laws in most of our states. They were able-bodied unemployed citizens – the same kind of people as you and I’’ (Work, October 12, 1939, p. 4; Hopkins, Container 35; Howard, 1943, pp. 761–762, 768). The Workers Alliance, WPA ofﬁcials and their conservative opponents all understood that political and industrial citizenship were not only stakes in these classiﬁcation struggles, but were also forms of political capital that relief workers could use, in Lasser’s words, for improving their ‘‘economic position’’ and ‘‘winning work and relief’’ (Work, September 10, 1938, p. 5). According to the Workers Alliance, disfranchisement was intended to curb ‘‘the growing economic and political power of the organized unemployed’’ (Work, April 23, 1938, p. 12; Work, October 22, 1938, p. 1). This power, whether real or exaggerated, was a major concern of the movement’s opponents. When the Workers Alliance sent 2,000 delegates on a job march to Washington in July 1937, Virginia congressman Clifton Woodrum warned that ‘‘the WAA would soon be a powerful political organization unless the federal government shifted relief back to the states and the municipalities. If this did not happen, said Woodrum, no congressman would be able to win reelection without acceding to WAA demands’’ (Folsom, 1991, p. 421). A year later, an alarmed New York Times editorial (August 12, 1938, p. 16) warned that the Workers Alliance was becoming ‘‘an enormous pressure group compared with which the American Legion and the farm lobbies may pale into insigniﬁcance.’’ These fears were deeply rooted in American history. Americans who favored decentralization of relief or disfranchisement of relief recipients ‘‘saw the nightmare that [English jurist William] Blackstone had characterized and [American jurist James] Kent had predicted: an army of ‘dependents’ marching to the polls; a mass of propertyless men ready to seize the property of others (through taxes); men ‘with no will of their own’ who easily could be manipulated by a clever politician or demagogue.’’ They echoed these 18th- and 19thcentury fears when they denounced Roosevelt as ‘‘a masterful and manipulative politician’’ who used ‘‘federal tax dollars to build a national political machine’’ kept in power by ‘‘a permanent, government-supported army of indigents’’ (Keyssar, 2000, pp. 240–241).

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

95

THE OUTCOMES OF CLASSIFICATION STRUGGLES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE U.S. WELFARE STATE Theoretical insights drawn from Marshall and Bourdieu help to explain why struggles emerge over the civic classiﬁcation of welfare state claimants, but what about their outcomes? Why are some welfare state claimants classed as dependent paupers whose civil or political rights are curtailed while others successfully obtain recognition as independent, rights-bearing citizens? As previously noted, I focus on the institutional structure of the policy and the manner and extent to which it becomes entangled in racial politics as key determinants of these outcomes. However, this is not meant to imply that institutions or racial groupings are simply given features of the social world. Rather, in keeping with Bourdieu’s constructionist structuralism, I suggest that the institutions and racial divisions that structure classiﬁcation struggles are themselves constructed through past struggles. In this case – the struggles in the 1930s over the citizenship status and rights of WPA workers – the resources that were available to participants, their positions in social space and the manner in which they grouped themselves and deﬁned their interests (including their propensity to group themselves along racial lines) were shaped by previous struggles during Reconstruction and the Populist insurgency of the 1890s (Goldberg, 2007). Of course, these earlier conﬂicts were more than struggles over classiﬁcation, but classiﬁcation struggles were an essential dimension of them. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully demonstrate the historical legacies of past struggles, they should nevertheless be borne in mind as an important element of the explanation elaborated below. As these remarks indicate, classiﬁcation struggles and social policies are related in two ways. On the one hand, a successful classiﬁcation struggle internalizes new classiﬁcatory schemes in the minds of social agents and objectiﬁes them in policies (among other things). Recognition of welfare state claimants as rights-bearing citizens thus entails more than a change in discourse or categories of thought; it requires institutional changes as well. On the other hand, the institutional structures of already existing policies shape subsequent classiﬁcation struggles. The form of public provision – in other words, how the provision of beneﬁts is organized – communicates something about the status of the recipients and thus serves an important symbolic function. The more isomorphic a new policy is with traditional poor relief (i.e., the more policy features they share), the more likely it is that clients of the new policy will be classed as paupers. Welfare state claimants

96

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

are also more likely to be classed as paupers when the new policy is linked to or dependent upon traditional poor relief for distributing beneﬁts, determining eligibility and so forth. Conversely, policies confer dignity and independence to the extent that they are separated and differentiated from traditional poor relief. A variety of policy features have been used to accomplish this end. In the 1930s, for example, policymakers ﬁnanced Old Age Insurance through payroll taxes in order to avoid any resemblance to relief. For similar reasons, policymakers rejected dependents’ allowances for unemployment insurance and restricted eligibility to persons who were ‘‘ordinarily’’ and regularly employed (Mettler, 1998, pp. 126, 150). Though the particular means may vary, the separation and differentiation of a new social welfare policy from traditional poor relief is crucial for the favorable classiﬁcation of the policy’s clients. Like policy structure, racial politics both reﬂects past struggles and inﬂuences subsequent struggles. Simply put, the clients of a policy are more likely to be classed as paupers when the policy’s opponents mobilize a signiﬁcant racial backlash against it. To be sure, this kind of backlash is not altogether independent of policy structure: Policies that become vehicles for the advancement of black citizenship rights, challenge racialized patterns of social closure or expand the political or other forms of capital available to black workers are more likely to generate a racial backlash. In addition, because federal authorities have generally been more committed than local authorities to racial fairness, decentralized administration has also made policies more vulnerable to racial backlash. However, racial backlashes are not a product of policy structure alone; they also depend on political agency, including the symbolic work that is required to mobilize individuals along racial lines. Of course, political entrepreneurs do not create racial divisions or racist sentiment de novo, but symbolic work is required to make racial divisions salient (and more so than competing sources of social division), activate racial antagonism and turn potential racial groupings (what Bourdieu might call ‘‘racial-groupings-on-paper’’) into real, mobilized racial groups. The success of those efforts is, in turn, shaped by the historical legacies of past classiﬁcation struggles over the meaning and boundaries of American citizenship. These theoretical points are again well illustrated by the struggle over the classiﬁcation of WPA workers during the New Deal. The failure of this struggle is evident in three ways. First, it is apparent from public opinion. To be sure, large majorities of Americans favored continuation of the WPA (Schiltz, 1970, pp. 114–117) and opposed disfranchising WPA workers. In that respect, the existing political rights of WPA workers remained secure;

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

97

the unemployed did not have to sacriﬁce them in exchange for new social rights. However, at a time when the citizenship rights of American workers were expanding, the public opposed the extension of these new rights to WPA workers. A 1939 poll showed broad public support for the dismissal of striking WPA workers, and a 1940 poll found that large majorities of the public believed that WPA workers should not be allowed to form unions and should not have the right to strike (New York Times, January 10, 1940, p. 13; Work, January 18, 1940, p. 3). In other words, public opinion supported continuation of the works program, but one shorn of the valued policy features that would have conferred industrial citizenship on WPA workers. Relative to workers in private industry – or at least those on the more privileged side of the gender and racial divide in the coverage of new U.S. labor standards – relief workers remained second-class citizens. Second, failure is also evident from the demise of the Workers Alliance itself in 1941: The movement’s collapse was in part a consequence of the classiﬁcation struggles in which it was engaged and its failure to impose a favorable vision and division of the social world (Goldberg, 2003). Third, the pauperization of relief workers is evidenced by the changing institutional structure of the WPA, which is addressed in more detail below. In sum, neither in minds nor in things, neither in agents’ categories of thought nor in social institutions were WPA workers ever classed as full citizens. The most obvious explanation for this failure is the decline in mass unemployment as the United States became embroiled in the Second World War, which presumably rendered the WPA obsolete and made the civic classiﬁcation of WPA workers a moot question. However, this explanation is inadequate upon closer examination. First, retrenchment of the WPA and repression of the Workers Alliance began in the late 1930s, when unemployment was still high (in fact, unemployment rose sharply during the recession of 1937 to 1938) and before America’s entry into the war. Thus, the war did not so much eliminate the rationale for the works program as reinforce political trends that had already emerged beforehand. Second, there was no tight connection between the unemployment rate and political efforts to retrench or dismantle the WPA. Falling unemployment provided conservatives with an expedient justiﬁcation for retrenchment, but so too did rising unemployment from 1937 to 1938, which conservatives blamed on the ‘‘anti-business’’ policies of the Roosevelt administration (Rauch, 1944, p. 295). Third, it was not certain that wartime recovery had eliminated the nation’s need for a works program. Many elites and the general public (as shown by wartime public opinion polls) expected mass unemployment to return after the war ended, and New Dealers accordingly

98

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

planned to make the works program a permanent feature of the postwar welfare state (Howard, 1943, pp. 361–368; Harvey, 1989, pp. 18–19, 106–107; Amenta, 1998, pp. 194–195, 199, 237–240; Amenta, 2001, p. 264). Fourth, the WPA could have been re-oriented to solve new problems other than mass unemployment. Some congressmen envisioned an increase in WPA projects to assist the national defense, and some leaders of the unemployed movement sought cooperation with national defense agencies to promote the training of the unemployed (Work, November 23, 1939, p. 1; Howard, 1943, pp. 132–133; Rauch, 1944, pp. 314–315, 326; Roosevelt, President’s Personal File, File #6794). Indeed, by 1942 the WPA was already ‘‘becoming more of a work agency to carry on defense and war projects than a work relief agency. Projects were then selected more on the basis of their value for the major task of the nation than on the basis of their suitability for furnishing employment to unemployed on relief rolls’’ (Meriam, 1946, p. 403). These considerations suggest that economic recovery alone does not account for the retrenchment and eventual termination of the WPA or the failure of WPA workers to obtain recognition as full citizens. While changing economic conditions undoubtedly affected the fate of the WPA and its workers, the impact of those conditions was politically mediated. Consistent with the theoretical framework sketched above, I argue that the WPA’s institutional structure constrained efforts to obtain recognition of WPA workers as full citizens. First, the WPA incorporated several policy features that made it similar in form to traditional poor relief. For example, the WPA paid a monthly ‘‘security wage’’ deliberately ﬁxed below that paid in private industry so as to encourage the unemployed to take jobs in private industry when they became available (Howard, 1943, p. 255; Rose, 1994, p. 98). This wage differential, rooted in the traditional poor relief principle of less eligibility, served to distinguish WPA workers from those in private industry.10 The security wage also resembled the ‘‘supplemental’’ wages historically paid to female dependents more than the ‘‘family’’ or ‘‘living’’ wage that served as ‘‘a benchmark of freedom, independence, and citizenship’’ for male workers (Glickman, 1997, p. 3; see also KesslerHarris, 1990). Second, the WPA was not only similar in form to traditional poor relief, but was also structurally linked to it; the program employed almost exclusively workers who were certiﬁed as needy and referred by local relief agencies (Howard, 1943, pp. 247, 354; Brown, 1999, pp. 73–74). Indeed, policymakers restricted WPA employment to relief recipients on the grounds ‘‘that if workers are to be brought to the realization that WPA employment is a form of relief rather than ‘just another job,’ it is necessary

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

99

to require them to accept relief as an antecedent to a job’’ (Howard, 1943, p. 409). This link to public relief was widely regarded as socially polluting. As New York City WPA Administrator Hugh Johnson put it, WPA employment failed to prevent ‘‘the humiliation of home relief,’’ since ‘‘to go on work relief, the rules require that a man ﬁrst go on home relief. To get there, he must submit to the equivalent of a pauper’s oath’’ (quoted in Howard, 1943, pp. 412–413). These institutional features made it harder for WPA workers to obtain recognition as independent, rights-bearing citizenworkers. The WPA’s institutional structure not only shaped classiﬁcation struggles, but was also shaped by them. When the Workers Alliance formed in the mid-1930s, it mobilized relief recipients as workers (i.e., as part of the labor movement) and as members of the Popular Front against fascism, broadly inclusive identities that brought Communists and non-Communists together in the same organization.11 However, in the late 1930s, an incipient congressional coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats sought to de-legitimize and disorganize the Workers Alliance by strengthening a crosscutting division between Americanism and Communism. This boundary work, which was greatly facilitated by the 1939 non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, provided a new basis for excluding relief workers from full citizenship: disloyalty rather than dependency. More to the point, these congressional conservatives objectiﬁed their vision and division of the social world through a series of institutional reforms that excluded Communists from participation in the federal works program (a provision used broadly against Workers Alliance members, not all of whom were Communists), restricted the eligibility of foreigners (often viewed as social carriers of communism) for unemployment relief and limited WPA employment to 18 months. Thus, by the time Congress terminated the WPA in 1942, conservative reforms had signiﬁcantly transformed it, reinforcing the illiberal and disciplinary policy features it shared with traditional poor relief (Goldberg, 2003). In this way, the changing institutional structure of the WPA reﬂected struggles over the classiﬁcation of WPA workers as much as it inﬂuenced them. These conservative reforms of the WPA were at odds with what New Dealers and WPA administrators envisioned. As we have seen, WPA ofﬁcials sought to distinguish their program sharply from traditional poor relief in order to ward off competing policy proposals. However, their efforts to do so placed them in the contradictory position of denigrating the very relief programs to which the WPA remained tied. To be persuasive, their campaign required the institutional separation of the WPA from

100

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

conventional poor relief, but the program’s administrators lacked the authority to do so. Any such change required approval from Congress. Still, these institutional constraints only partly explain why WPA workers were classed as paupers. In fact, this explanation only pushes the question back a step. If WPA ofﬁcials lacked the authority to upgrade the WPA and separate it from local and conventional forms of relief, why didn’t Congress grant them the necessary authority or do the task itself? The answer to this question points to the deeper, underlying inﬂuence of racial politics: In brief, attempts to class WPA workers as rights-bearing citizen-workers rather than ‘‘reliefers’’ with curtailed rights threatened powerful Southern interests in Congress. In the 1930s, the Southern economy was labor-intensive, largely agrarian and heavily dependent on a black workforce. As a result, Southern politicians opposed social spending programs that ‘‘might reduce the supply of low-wage labor’’ or ‘‘provide sufﬁcient beneﬁts for African Americans to disrupt the Southern agrarian economy’’ (Manza, 2000, p. 309; cf. Quadagno, 1988b, 1994; Alston & Ferrie, 1999; Brown, 1999). At stake was not just the cost of labor, but the paternalistic method of labor control upon which the Southern economy depended: ‘‘The political economy of the South y was based on the utter economic dependence of mostly black agricultural labor. Any welfare policy that gave Southern farm workers sources of income independent of the planter elite and the political institutions that it dominated had the potential to undermine the rigid racial and class structures of the South’’ (Lieberman, 1998, p. 27; cf. Alston & Ferrie, 1999, Chapter 1). For similar reasons, Southern planters and their political representatives in Congress opposed ‘‘nationalization of y potentially intrusive labor market regulations’’ (Manza, 2000, pp. 309–310; cf. Katznelson, Geiger, & Kryder, 1993; Alston & Ferrie, 1999; Brown, 1999). These material interests did not necessarily lead Southern congressmen to oppose social spending programs or federal labor standards during the New Deal, but they did demand that such policies accommodate their interests by sacriﬁcing either federal control or inclusiveness (Lieberman, 1998, pp. 30, 37–38). Southern support was, in turn, crucial for the enactment of new policies because institutional arrangements in the 1930s and 1940s – most notably, the disfranchisement of Southern blacks and poor whites, the absence of signiﬁcant party competition in the South and the inﬂuence of Southern Democrats over key congressional committees – created a powerful ‘‘Southern veto’’ in Congress (Katznelson et al., 1993). Southerners were willing to support policies such as Aid to Dependent Children and Old Age Assistance that sacriﬁced federal control, allowing states to set low beneﬁt

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

101

levels and restrict eligibility when expedient. Indeed, ‘‘Southern politicians aggressively embraced programs that combined federal resources with local control’’ (Manza, 2000, pp. 309–310; cf. Katznelson et al., 1993; Lieberman, 1998, p. 37; Brown, 1999). Alternatively, Southerners were willing to support federally controlled social and labor policies that excluded African-American workers and limited coverage as far as possible to white, urban, industrial workers. Thus, Old Age Insurance and the Fair Labor Standards Act covered neither agricultural nor domestic workers, which were occupations that accounted for two-thirds of black employment (Alston & Ferrie, 1999, Chapter 3; Amenta, 1998, pp. 226–227; Goldﬁeld, 1997, p. 211; Hamilton & Hamilton, 1997, pp. 29–30; Lieberman, 1998; Mettler, 1998, p. 186; Quadagno, 1988a, 1988b; Valocchi, 1994, p. 354; Palmer, 1995). In the WPA’s existing form, four lines of defense mitigated its disruptive potential, ensuring that it would not pose a serious threat to the Southern agrarian economy or arouse serious opposition from Southern congressmen. First, regional differences in WPA wage rates minimized the danger that the WPA would reduce the dependence of black workers on Southern planters or diminish the supply of low-wage labor. WPA wages varied widely among states and were set especially low in the South (Howard, 1943, pp. 182–183, 201, 206–207, 395, 770). Second, WPA ofﬁcials set up elaborate administrative safeguards against the danger of labor shortages (Howard, 1943, pp. 487–488, 490). In the South, this meant releasing black workers at harvest time, which ‘‘forced them to take low-paying, seasonal jobs in the ﬁelds’’ (Wolters, 1970, pp. 207–208; see also Rose, 1994, pp. 100–104; Valocchi, 1994, p. 353; Hamilton & Hamilton, 1997, p. 25; Brown, 1999, pp. 85–87). Third, some states established special restrictions on WPA employment of sharecroppers, tenants and farm laborers, further minimizing any threat the WPA posed to the Southern agrarian economy (Howard, 1943, pp. 506–509). Fourth, selective exclusion of African Americans from the WPA rolls also minimized the WPA’s threat to the Southern agrarian economy. Congress prohibited racial discrimination in WPA employment, and WPA administrators at the federal level were generally committed to racial fairness, but local authorities were able to circumvent the federal prohibition against racial discrimination in a variety of ways (Amenta, 1998, pp. 157–159; Brown, 1999, p. 83; U.S. Department of Labor, 1940, p. 638; Durant, 1939; Foley, 1997, pp. 175, 178–180; Goldﬁeld, 1997, pp. 208–209; Hamilton & Hamilton, 1997, pp. 24–26; Howard, 1943, pp. 285–287, 291–296, 386, 390, 452–453, 768–769; Rose, 1994, pp. 100–104; Valocchi, 1994, p. 353; Wolters, 1970, pp. 10–11, 204). Although African Americans were sometimes over-represented on WPA rolls elsewhere, local authorities

102

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

made it difﬁcult for them to get WPA jobs in the rural South, where the program would pose the greatest threat to the Southern agrarian economy (Amenta, 1998, p. 158; Brown, 1999, pp. 77–79, 84; Howard, 1943, pp. 288–289; U.S. Department of Labor, 1940, p. 636; U.S. Federal Works Agency, 1946, p. 45; Wolters, 1970, pp. 205–206). While the WPA in its existing form did not pose a serious threat to Southern interests, the struggle over the classiﬁcation of WPA workers did. This struggle was not merely discursive. When the Workers Alliance demanded recognition of WPA workers as independent, rights-bearing citizen-workers, it sought to objectify this classiﬁcatory scheme by incorporating valued policy features into the WPA. Hence, the struggle over the classiﬁcation of WPA workers had institutional implications and involved material as well as symbolic stakes. The struggle threatened Southern interests in at least three ways: by potentially strengthening federal control, extending federal labor standards and mobilizing black workers. First, the struggle over the status and rights of WPA workers threatened the capacity of local authorities to selectively exclude black farm laborers from WPA employment. Insofar as local and state relief agencies certiﬁed the unemployed for WPA employment, the WPA allowed local authorities to exercise considerable control over who got onto WPA rolls. However, classiﬁcation of WPA workers as independent, rights-bearing citizen-earners would have entailed the separation of the WPA from relief, which was in fact a key demand of the Workers Alliance. ‘‘We believe,’’ Lasser testiﬁed to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in 1939, ‘‘that the W.P.A. program suffers from its characterization as a relief program, and because the W.P.A. workers are called ‘relief workers.’ We believe it should not be necessary for decent self-respecting Americans to reach the relief level before they can secure useful work and earn wages on a works program.’’ Without the relief test, Lasser emphasized, the WPA ‘‘would not stigmatize the workers as ‘relief clients’’’ (U.S. House of Representatives, 1939–1940, p. 34). While the Workers Alliance conceded that need should continue to be an important consideration in certifying the unemployed for WPA jobs, it insisted that need be determined ‘‘without forcing the unemployed to go through the relief rolls’’ (Work, May 7, 1938, p. 1). Separation of the WPA from relief would, in turn, have eliminated or minimized the role of local relief agencies in certifying the unemployed for WPA employment, thereby weakening the inﬂuence of local authorities and increasing federal control over certiﬁcation. Second, successful classiﬁcation of WPA workers as independent, rightsbearing citizen-workers would have entailed the extension of federal labor

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

103

standards to WPA workers. Although the National Labor Relations Act did not cover WPA workers, and application of the Fair Labor Standards Act to WPA workers was unclear and contested, the extension of this legislation to WPA workers was another key demand of the Workers Alliance. In contrast, Southern Democrats opposed the extension of federal labor standards, especially the minimum-wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. To be sure, the FLSA provided ‘‘extremely low minimum wage rates: twenty-ﬁve cents an hour in 1938 increasing to a maximum of forty cents an hour by 1945’’ (Mettler, 1998, p. 195). However, since WPA wages in the South were as low as 15 cents an hour, extension of the newly established national minimum wage would have made possible ‘‘a substantial increase in the [wages of the] lowest paid WPA workers’’ (Work, September 24, 1938, p. 6). Some of these low-paid WPA workers were African-American, and still more blacks would beneﬁt if Congress reduced the role of local authorities in certifying the jobless for WPA employment. Applying the FLSA’s wage protections to WPA workers would thus have accomplished an end run around the law’s occupational exclusions and potentially extended its coverage to many black workers who would otherwise be left out. The efforts of the Workers Alliance to extend federal labor standards to WPA workers, in the context of vocal support from some WPA ofﬁcials for higher wages in the South and a marked rise in WPA wages in Southern states after 1935, undoubtedly alarmed Southern congressmen (Howard, 1943, pp. 159, 162–163, 166). Third, it was not only the demands of the Workers Alliance and the backing of WPA ofﬁcials in Washington that alarmed Southern Democrats, but also the efforts of the Workers Alliance to mobilize Southern black workers in support of those demands. These efforts were most clearly evident in the Alliance’s 1936 Southern organizing drive and its 1938 campaign to ‘‘raise the wages of 2,600,000 WPA laborers in low-wage categories,’’ which was also primarily concentrated in the South (The Workers Alliance, ‘‘Second March Issue’’ [1936], p. 1; Work, July 16, 1938, p. 1; Work, August 26, 1939, p. 3). Black WPA workers, who were usually among the lowest paid, stood to beneﬁt the most from the wage increases demanded and sometimes won by the Workers Alliance.12 In addition, the Workers Alliance struggled to expand the civil and political rights of Southern blacks in a variety of ways: opposing WPA discrimination against blacks, registering blacks to vote and ﬁghting for the abolition of the poll tax, which the Alliance denounced as a tool for disfranchising the poor and unemployed (Bunche, 1973, pp. 422–424; Kelley, 1990, p. 202; Porter, 1980, p. 133; Sullivan, 1996, pp. 144–145; Work, May 7, 1938, p. 7, July 16, 1938,

104

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

pp. 7, September 24, 1938, p. 1, October 22, 1938, p. 6, December 3, 1938, p. 3, April 8, 1939, p. 7, June 17, 1939, p. 3, July 29, 1939, p. 9, September 14, 1939, p. 6, September 28, 1939, p. 7, October 12, 1939, p. 2, October 26, 1939, pp. 1, 4, April 25, 1940, p. 1). The Workers Alliance also formed growing ties to black civil rights organizations in the late 1930s, including the National Negro Congress and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (Krueger, 1967, pp. 22–23; Work, May 21, 1938, p. 5, September 24, 1938, p. 1, October 8, 1938, p. 9, November 5, 1938, p. 5, December 3, 1938, p. 5, April 25, 1940, p. 1). The classiﬁcatory demands that the Workers Alliance made on behalf of WPA workers, the rights and policy changes that those demands entailed and the Alliance’s efforts to mobilize blacks in support of those demands generated a strong racial backlash against the movement, a backlash that sometimes expressed itself in the form of anti-Communism. This was not coincidental. Communists were active in the Workers Alliance, and they were also largely responsible for its efforts on behalf of Southern blacks. In the 1930s, the American Communist Party was an ‘‘aggressive advocate’’ of racial equality, elevating ‘‘black communists to the party’s central committee’’ and expelling ‘‘white members who refused to socialize with blacks – gestures no other white organization was willing to match’’ (Babson, 1999, p. 64; cf. Howe & Coser, 1957, pp. 204–216ff.; Goldﬁeld, 1997, Chapter 6; Stepan-Norris & Zeitlin, 2003, Chapters 8–9). Southern racial conservatives were aware of this connection between Communism and black political mobilization, which helps to explain why prominent Southern Democrats like Clifton Woodrum, leader of the House Subcommittee on the WPA, and Martin Dies, chairman of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, played leading roles in the anti-Communist crusade against the Workers Alliance and the WPA in the late 1930s. As Dies saw it, ‘‘subversive elements [were] attempting to convince the Negro that he should be placed on social equality with the white people; that now is the time for him to assert his rights’’ (quoted in Gellermann, 1944, pp. 245–246). These Southern Democrats worked with Republicans to de-legitimize the Workers Alliance as a front for the Communist Party, discredit the WPA as a source of funding for Communist subversion, cut WPA expenditures and eventually dismantle the program (Patterson, 1967; Porter, 1980; Sexton, 1991; Goldberg, 2003). Analysis of congressional roll-call votes conﬁrms this supposition. Although Southern Democrats were generally favorable to the WPA on budgetary votes during the program’s early years, their support for spending declined over time, and by 1939 most of them were voting against WPA spending (either against

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

105

increases or for reductions). In addition, most Southern Democrats joined Republicans to maintain a prohibition on deﬁciency appropriations in 1938, oppose payment of prevailing wages in 1939 and support time limits on WPA work between 1939 and 1941. Of the 30 staunchest opponents of the WPA in the U.S. Senate, nearly half were from the South (Amenta & Halfmann, 2000; Amenta, 2001, pp. 267–275). Of course, opposition to the Workers Alliance and the WPA was not conﬁned to Southern Democrats, nor was it motivated exclusively by racism. However, ‘‘organized business and the Republicans could not have been effective as they were without the aid and leadership of southern Democrats’’ (Amenta, 1998, pp. 142, 219–225). Southern Democrats were therefore crucial to the failure of WPA workers to obtain recognition as rights-bearing citizen-workers. The racial backlash against the Workers Alliance and the WPA was evident not only in the reaction of Southern congressmen at the national level, but also in violent and often racially charged resistance to the movement at the local level. Workers Alliance members and organizers were harassed, prohibited from meeting, forced out of town, tear-gassed, jailed, beaten and shot (New York Times, December 22, 1935, p. 9; Workers Alliance, ‘‘Second January Issue’’ [1936], p. 2; Work, May 7, 1938, p. 2, June 4, 1938, pp. 3, 9, 10, June 18, 1938, p. 4, July 15, 1939, p. 3; Bunche, 1973, p. 501). Perhaps the most notorious attack came in Tampa, Florida, where a Workers Alliance organizer was tarred, feathered and beaten to death by Ku Klux Klansmen (The Workers Alliance, ‘‘First January Issue’’ [1936], p. 1). In these instances, especially when the Alliance’s activities on behalf of relief workers challenged the exclusion of African Americans from the material and symbolic proﬁts of full citizenship, its organizing efforts were aggressively and even brutally suppressed. Moreover, despite the vigorous opposition of Workers Alliance leaders to racial discrimination, a racial backlash even emerged within the ranks of the movement itself. For example, a Workers Alliance local in Atlanta, Georgia, had to be rid of ‘‘disturbing Ku Klux Klan elements,’’ whom movement leaders expelled by December 1938 (Work, July 30, 1938, p. 2, September 24, 1938, p. 11, December 17, 1938, p. 4). Likewise, ‘‘racial equality and Communism were seen as two sides of the same coin’’ in Alabama, leading many whites to leave the organization ‘‘on the pretext that its racial practices alone proved it was a Communist front’’ (Kelley, 1990, p. 156). To be sure, such instances of racial backlash within the movement were more the exception than the rule. Most Workers Alliance members refused to make political claims on the basis of race and generally forswore the wages of whiteness. Nevertheless, these internal struggles weakened the Workers

106

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

Alliance and undermined its efforts to secure work relief as an integral part of (not an alternative to) its members’ citizenship rights. The racial animus against and within the Workers Alliance may have merged with a broader racial backlash against the WPA in the late 1930s. Despite continued exclusion in the rural South, the proportion of blacks on WPA rolls grew nationwide because African Americans faced greater difﬁculty ﬁnding private employment and left the rolls less rapidly than whites (U.S. Federal Works Agency, 1946, p. 45). Brown (1999, pp. 77–79, 89) argues that this trend, combined with ‘‘widespread racist stereotypes’’ of black workers as ‘‘lazy, irresponsible, [and] indolent,’’ ‘‘undoubtedly contributed to the erosion of public support after 1938 for expanding WPA and relief expenditures, despite continuing high levels of unemployment.’’ In sum, once the Workers Alliance and the WPA became vehicles for challenging racialized patterns of social closure, both the movement and the program became targets of racial hostility at the elite and mass levels. This reaction made it difﬁcult for WPA workers to establish new claims to social provision without a concomitant curtailment of their civil, political or industrial rights.

CONCLUSION Classiﬁcation Struggles in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State Combining insights from T. H. Marshall, Pierre Bourdieu and historical institutionalism, this chapter has provided a general explanation of the emergence and outcomes of recurring struggles over the citizenship status and rights of welfare state claimants in the United States while applying this theory to the particular case of the WPA. Major innovations in social welfare policy, I have argued, typically generate struggles over whether to model the new policy on or distinguish it from traditional poor relief. At stake in these struggles are the citizenship status and rights of the policies’ clients, who must struggle not only to preserve new social rights, but also avoid losing their civil and political rights in the process. These conﬂicts, I have suggested, may be usefully conceptualized as classiﬁcation struggles through which state ofﬁcials, service providers, employers, clients, unions and social movements seek to appropriate valuable symbolic and material resources in the ﬁeld of social welfare provision. In the case of the WPA, the program created a new group of claimants within the welfare ﬁeld whose status and rights relative to other claimants were initially uncertain.

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

107

Furthermore, the policy’s hybrid nature as both a relief program and a work program placed WPA workers in an intermediate position within the ﬁeld, which provided a plausible basis for competing classiﬁcatory claims. In addition, the threat posed to the WPA by competing policy proposals encouraged WPA ofﬁcials to emphasize the preservation of their clients’ citizenship rights. By means of this strategy, they sought to distinguish their program from its competitors in a manner that would legitimize the former and discredit the latter. Finally, the citizenship status and rights of relief workers were contested because citizenship itself was a valuable resource that facilitated (at least potentially) access to other kinds of resources. All of these conditions contributed to conﬂict over the status and rights of WPA workers in the 1930s and early 1940s. The outcomes of these classiﬁcation struggles, I argued, are crucially shaped by policy structure and racial politics. This theoretical claim is also evinced by the case of the WPA. The Workers Alliance sought not only to obtain recognition of WPA workers as independent, rights-bearing citizenworkers, but also to institutionalize that status. Achievement of this goal required structural reforms of the WPA to separate and distinguish it more clearly from existing relief arrangements – in short, strengthening the program’s work aspects and minimizing its relief aspects. WPA ofﬁcials had a shared interest in such reforms and generally supported them, but the Alliance’s activities and demands challenged racialized forms of social closure (especially in the South) and therefore triggered the ‘‘Southern veto’’ in Congress. Southern Democrats joined with Republicans to thwart the agenda of the Workers Alliance, repress the movement and eventually dismantle the WPA. This reaction from congressional conservatives was compounded by a broader racial backlash at the local level, within the Workers Alliance itself, and perhaps in public attitudes toward WPA expenditures.

Implications for the Sociology of the Welfare State Although the ﬁndings presented in this chapter are limited to a single social spending program over seven years, they have broader implications for how we understand U.S. welfare state development. The WPA was by no means a unique case; other U.S. policies and programs have generated analogous struggles over the citizenship status and rights of their clients. Proponents of an expanded Civil War pension system, for example, successfully ‘‘deﬁned [it] in opposition to charity or public programs for paupers at state and local

108

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

levels’’ (Skocpol, 1992, p. 149). Similarly but with less success, maternalist reformers sought to characterize mothers’ pensions as compensation for mothers’ service to the nation rather than poor relief or public charity. ‘‘We cannot afford to let a mother, one who has divided her body by creating other lives for the good of the state, one who has contributed to citizenship, be classed as a pauper, a dependent,’’ declared the president of the Tennessee Congress of Mothers in 1911 (quoted in Skocpol, 1992, p. 450). Likewise, House Ways and Means chairman Robert Doughton insisted in 1935 that recipients of Old Age Insurance were ‘‘in a different class from the ordinary relief case’’ (quoted in Tynes, 1996, p. 52), though the application of pauper exclusion laws to recipients of Old Age Assistance remained contested into the 1950s (see, e.g., Hines v. Winters, No. 37743 Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1957 OK 334, 320 P.2d 1114; 1957, Okla. LEXIS 643, December 24, 1957). More recent struggles have been fought over the classiﬁcation of workfare workers and recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit (Goldberg, 2007). These examples suggest that struggles over the citizenship status and rights of welfare state claimants are a chronic feature of U.S. welfare state development in need of sociological explanation. The arguments put forward in this article in regard to WPA workers may help to explain these other struggles as well. The ﬁndings presented in this chapter also have implications for how we understand the relations among work, welfare and American political culture. According to a longstanding and inﬂuential view, Americans are generally hostile to social spending programs because of their historical commitment to classical liberal values of anti-statism, laissez-faire, individualism and so forth. In line with this view, it is frequently assumed that policies that link beneﬁts to work will receive more support in the United States because they are more consistent with liberal American values of self-reliance. The research presented here challenges or least qualiﬁes this view of how liberal values inhibit or facilitate the development of the American welfare state. The case of the WPA shows that conditioning new social rights upon work does not always legitimize them, nor does it ensure that claimants’ other rights – civil, political or industrial – will be respected. Just as anti-statist antagonism to the welfare state grew stronger when the welfare state was linked to racial conﬂict and black political mobilization (Quadagno, 1994), so too the work ethic generated less support for work-based social spending policies when those policies became linked to the pursuit of civil, political and social rights for African Americans. The color of work mediated the effects of liberal values during the New Deal, much as the color of welfare mediated their effects 30 years later during the War on Poverty.

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

109

Theoretical Contributions This chapter has not only built on the insights of T. H. Marshall and Pierre Bourdieu, but also developed and extended them in new directions. As Marshall is typically read, the modern welfare state represents the last stage in a steady development of citizenship over the past three centuries, from civil to political to social rights. This narrative of a cumulative expansion of citizenship rights provides the theoretical framework for most studies of the welfare state, which have mainly tried to explain why the development of (social) citizenship has advanced further in some countries while lagging behind in others. In contrast, my reading of Marshall suggests a more complicated view of citizenship in which civil and political rights could be and often were treated as an alternative to social rights rather than a foundation for them. When welfare state development is viewed in this way, it raises a different set of questions: Why in some cases have newly established social rights been integrated into the status of citizenship while in other cases they were detached from it? To answer these questions, I drew upon Bourdieu’s concept of classiﬁcation struggles. However, rather than using the concept of classiﬁcation struggles as Bourdieu did to explain the formation and mobilization of social classes, I have used it to investigate the boundary work through which social agents deﬁne the meaning of citizenship, regulate access to its material and symbolic proﬁts and link it to other social categories (class, race, gender, nation and so forth). This boundary work constitutes a promising new ﬁeld of inquiry for the sociology of the welfare state.

NOTES 1. Following Marshall (1964, p. 84), citizenship refers in this chapter to a status with corresponding rights and duties that is bestowed upon the members of a political community. In principle, citizenship is a uniform status that confers equal rights and duties. However, as noted below, it may in practice be a gradated status that members possess to a greater or lesser extent. 2. Although Marshall’s remarks about poor relief and protective labor laws refer to Britain, they are true for the United States as well. On the loss of civil rights through internment in almshouses and workhouses, see Rothman (1971, Chapter 8). On the disfranchisement of paupers, which was not completely abolished until the 1960s, see Steinfeld (1989) and Keyssar (2000, pp. 61–65, 271–272). On protective labor laws for women, see Skocpol (1992, pp. 373–423), Mettler (1998, pp. 34–37) and Glenn (2002, pp. 84–85). As in Britain, American courts struck down protective labor laws for men on the grounds that such laws violated their civil rights – in particular, their constitutionally guaranteed liberty of contract. This interpretation

110

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment was enshrined by the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York (1905) and not seriously challenged until the 1930s. 3. On social closure, see Weber (1978), Parkin (1979) and Murphy (1988). 4. Following Marshall, I use claimant as a generic term to indicate a person who claims state beneﬁts, regardless of what form the beneﬁts take (cash or in-kind), how eligibility is determined or how the beneﬁts are ﬁnanced. In this case study, the claimants were WPA workers. More generally, welfare state claimants included recipients of oldage or mothers’ pensions, unemployment beneﬁts and so forth. I use the term claimant interchangeably with client, though the former has a more active connotation. 5. As these remarks indicate, some groups in United States – most notably women and African Americans – lacked full civil or political rights during their struggles for new social rights. Rather than preserve their civil and political rights while acquiring new social rights, they had to struggle for civil, political and social rights simultaneously. 6. Although Bourdieu (1985, 1989) emphasizes the state’s role in classiﬁcation struggles as the ‘‘supreme tribunal’’ and the ‘‘holder of the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence,’’ this role must not be exaggerated. First, ‘‘the holders of bureaucratic authority never establish an absolute monopolyy. In fact, there are always, in any society, conﬂicts between symbolic powers that aim at imposing the vision of legitimate divisions, that is, at constructing groups’’ (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 22, original emphasis). These conﬂicts create opportunities for dominated groups to contest their classiﬁcation. Second, in contrast to the ‘‘pessimistic functionalism’’ of social control theories, Bourdieu regards the state itself as an arena of struggle, not a uniﬁed apparatus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 102, 111–115; Bourdieu, 1994). As a result of internal struggles, the state may unintentionally create indeterminacy through inconsistent and contradictory classifying practices, further expanding opportunities for dominated groups to contest their classiﬁcation. 7. On eligibility for WPA employment, see Howard (1943, pp. 269–527). Generally speaking, need and employability were the primary considerations. The WPA was prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex or race, but women found it harder to get work for various reasons (ibid., pp. 278–285). WPA employment was initially open to aliens, but restricted after 1938 to ‘‘United States citizens, Indians, and others (such as Filipinos) owing allegiance to the United States’’ (ibid., p. 303). 8. The Workers Alliance had its roots in earlier efforts to organize the unemployed by the Socialist Party, A. J. Muste’s Conference on Progressive Labor Action, and the American Communist Party (Rosenzweig, 1975, 1979, 1983; Piven & Cloward, 1977, pp. 68–76). The Alliance’s attempts to link work and citizenship reﬂected its organizational and ideological origins, the movement’s growing ties to the new federal works program, and the rising proportion of Workers Alliance members who were WPA employees. 9. Although federal policy prohibited WPA workers from striking against the federal government, WPA workers engaged in strikes anyway (Ziskind, 1940; Howard, 1943, pp. 222–227). ‘‘What is most noteworthy about this general consensus [that WPA workers had no right to strike],’’ observed one contemporary, ‘‘is that many who share it do so not because the struck jobs were ‘government’ jobs but because they were relief, not real, jobs’’ (Howard, 1943, p. 222). 10. The principle of less eligibility stipulates that relief must always be less desirable than even the worst employment. The 1938 Emergency Relief

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

111

Appropriation Act required the WPA to pay its workers the prevailing wage or the federal minimum wage, whichever was greater. However, instead of raising the WPA security wage, Congress reduced ‘‘the hours of labor until the amounts of the original security wage translated into hourly terms equaled the prevailing wage’’ (Macmahon, Millett, & Ogden, 1941, p. 156). In 1939, Congress abandoned the prevailing wage policy and set hours uniformly at 130 per month (Rose, 1994, p. 98). 11. Since WPA workers had diverse occupational backgrounds, they possessed varying amounts of economic and cultural capital and were thus dispersed in social space. This dispersion may have constrained efforts to mobilize WPA workers as part of the labor movement. WPA workers with white-collar or professional backgrounds, for example, may have been less likely to embrace such an identity and therefore less likely to join the Workers Alliance. Nevertheless, the Workers Alliance was able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of WPA workers, and it is apparent from newspaper evidence that the movement’s membership included workers with professional backgrounds (see, e.g., The Professional Worker). This ﬁnding is consistent with Kocka (1980), who argues that white-collar employees in the U.S. have had relatively little difﬁculty identifying with the labor movement. 12. A sit-down strike of WPA workers led by the Workers Alliance in Birmingham, Alabama, is particularly noteworthy because it was opposed by none other than Public Safety Commissioner Eugene ‘‘Bull’’ Connor. The strike succeeded in raising the minimum WPA wage there from $36 to $40.80 per month (Work, September 24, 1938, p. 3).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful for the suggestions and advice I received on earlier drafts of this chapter presented at the Conference on Bourdieuian Theory and Historical Analysis at Yale University in 2005; the 2006 meeting of the Law and Society Association; the Center for the United States and the Cold War, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, in 2007; and the 2007 meeting of the Social Science History Association. I am also grateful for the suggestions I received from the editors and anonymous reviewers for Political Power and Social Theory.

REFERENCES Archival Sources Hopkins, Harry L. Container 35. File: Federal emergency relief administration: Works progress administration: Releases, Speeches, etc., 1938–1939. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.

112

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

Roosevelt, Franklin D. Papers as President, Ofﬁcial File. File 2366 (Workers Alliance of America, 1935–1942). Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY. Roosevelt, Franklin D. President’s Personal File. File 6794 (American Security Union). Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY. The Professional Worker. (1936–1937). Berkeley: Union of Professional Workers (Workers Alliance afﬁliate). Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. The Workers Alliance, newspaper of the Workers Alliance of America, published in Milwaukee, WI, from Aug. 15, 1935 (Vol. 1, No. 1) through ‘‘First September issue’’ of 1936 (Vol. 1, No. 18). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Workers Alliance of America, 1935–1936, Microﬁlm R1569, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. United States House of Representatives. (1939–1940). Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 76th Congress, 1st sess., acting under House Resolution 130. Record Group 233, National Archives, Washington, DC. Work, newspaper of the Workers Alliance of America, published in Washington, DC, from Apr. 9, 1938 (Vol. 1, No. 1) through Nov. 1940 (Vol. 3, No. 13). Microﬁlm R1568, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University.

Secondary Sources Alston, L. J., & Ferrie, J. P. (1999). Southern paternalism and the American welfare state: Economics, politics, and institutions in the South, 1865–1965. New York: Cambridge University Press. Amenta, E. (1998). Bold relief: Institutional politics and the origins of modern American social policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Amenta, E. (2001). Who voted with Hopkins? Institutional politics and the WPA. Journal of Policy History, 13(2), 251–287. Amenta, E., & Halfmann, D. (2000). Wage wars: Institutional politics, WPA wages, and the struggle for U.S. social policy. American Sociological Review, 65(4, August), 506–528. Babson, S. (1999). The unﬁnished struggle: Turning points in American labor, 1877-present. New York: Rowman & Littleﬁeld. Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]). In: R. Nice (Trans.), Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1985). The social space and the genesis of groups. Theory and Society, 14(6, November), 723–744. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7(1, Spring), 14–25. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Identity and representation. In: J. B. Thompson, (Ed.), G. Raymond & M. Adamson (Trans.), Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1994). Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic ﬁeld. Sociological Theory, 12(1, March), 1–18. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reﬂexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

113

Bremer, W. W. (1975). Along the ‘American way’: The New Deal’s work relief programs for the unemployed. Journal of American History, 62, 636–652. Brown, M. K. (1999). Race, money, and the American welfare state. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Brubaker, R. (1992). Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bunche, R. J. (1973). In: D. W. Grantham (Ed.), The political status of the Negro in the age of FDR. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Clemens, E. S., & Cook, J. M. (1999). Politics and institutionalism: Explaining durability and change. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 441–466. Dobbin, F. R. (1994). Cultural models of organization: The social construction of rational organizing principles. In: D. Crane (Ed.), The sociology of culture: Emerging theoretical perspectives (Chapter 5). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Durant, R. (1939). Home rule in the WPA. Survey Midmonthly, 75, 273–275. Foley, N. (1997). The white scourge: Mexicans, blacks, and poor whites in Texas cotton culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Folsom, F. (1991). Impatient armies of the poor: The story of collective action of the unemployed, 1808–1942. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado. Fraser, N., & Gordon, L. (1994). A genealogy of dependency: Tracing a keyword of the U.S. welfare state. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 19, 309–336. Gellermann, W. (1944). Martin Dies. New York: The John Day Company. Glenn, E. N. (2002). Unequal freedom: How race and gender shaped American citizenship and labor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Glickman, L. B. (1997). A living wage: American workers and the making of consumer society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Goldberg, C. A. (2003). Haunted by the specter of communism: Collective identity and resource mobilization in the demise of the Workers Alliance of America. Theory and Society, 32, 725–773. Goldberg, C. A. (2005). Contesting the status of relief workers during the New Deal: The Workers Alliance of America and the Works Progress Administration, 1935–1941. Social Science History, 29(3, Fall), 337–371. Goldberg, C. A. (2007). Citizens and paupers: Relief, rights, and race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to workfare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goldﬁeld, M. (1997). The color of politics: Race and the mainsprings of American politics. New York: New Press. Hamilton, D. C., & Hamilton, C. V. (1997). The dual agenda: Race and social welfare policies of civil rights organizations. New York: Columbia University Press. Harvey, P. (1989). Securing the right to employment: Social welfare policy and the unemployed in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Heclo, H. (1974). Modern social politics in Britain and Sweden: From relief to income maintenance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Howard, D. S. (1943). The WPA and federal relief policy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Howe, I., & Coser, L. (1957). The American Communist Party: A critical history (1919–1957). Boston: Beacon Press. Katznelson, I., Geiger, K., & Kryder, D. (1993). Limiting liberalism: The Southern veto in Congress. Political Science Quarterly, 108(2), 283–306.

114

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

Kelley, R. D. G. (1990). Hammer and hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Kessler-Harris, A. (1990). A woman’s wage: Historical meanings and social consequences. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. Keyssar, A. (2000). The right to vote: The contested history of democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books. Kocka, J. (1980). In: M. Kealey (Trans.), White collar workers in America, 1890–1940: A social-political history in international perspective. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Krueger, T. A. (1967). And promises to keep: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 1938–1948. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Lescohier, D. D. (1939). The hybrid WPA. Survey Midmonthly, 75, 167–169. Lieberman, R. C. (1998). Shifting the color line: Race and the American welfare state. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Macmahon, A. W., Millett, J. D., & Ogden, G. (1941). The administration of federal work relief. Chicago: Public Administration Service. Manza, J. (2000). Political sociological models of the U.S. New Deal. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 297–322. Marshall, T. H. (1964 [1949]). Citizenship and social class. Class, citizenship and social development (pp. 65–122). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Meriam, L. (1946). Relief and social security. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Mettler, S. (1998). Dividing citizens: Gender and federalism in New Deal public policy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mettler, S., & Soss, J. (2004). The consequences of public policy for democratic citizenship: Bridging policy studies and mass politics. Perspectives on Politics, 2(1, March), 55–73. Meyer, J. W. & Rowan, B. (1991). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. In: W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds), The New institutionalism in organizational analysis (Chapter 2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Montgomery, D. (1993). Citizen worker: The experience of workers in the United States with democracy and the free market during the nineteenth century. New York: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, R. (1988). Social closure: The theory of monopolization and exclusion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Palmer, P. (1995). Outside the law: Agricultural and domestic workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Journal of Policy History, 7(4), 416–440. Parkin, F. (1979). Marxism and class theory: A bourgeois critique. London: Tavistock. Patterson, J. T. (1967). Congressional conservatism and the New Deal: The growth of the conservative coalition in Congress, 1933–1939. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Peillon, M. (1998). Bourdieu’s ﬁeld and the sociology of welfare. Journal of Social Policy, 27(2, April), 213–229. Peillon, M. (2001). Welfare in Ireland: Actors, resources, and strategies. Westport, CT: Praeger. Pierson, P. (1993). When effect becomes cause: Policy feedback and political change. World Politics, 45(July), 595–628. Pierson, P. (1994). Dismantling the welfare state? Reagan, Thatcher, and the politics of retrenchment. New York: Cambridge University Press. Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1977). Poor people’s movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. New York: Vintage Books.

Citizens and Paupers in the Development of the U.S. Welfare State

115

Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1993 [1971]). Regulating the poor: The functions of public welfare (Updated edition). New York: Vintage Books. Porter, D. L. (1980). Congress and the waning of the New Deal. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press. Quadagno, J. (1987). Theories of the welfare state. Annual Review of Sociology, 13, 109–128. Quadagno, J. (1988a). From old age security to supplemental security income: The political economy of relief in the South, 1935–1972. In: M. Weir, A. S. Orloff & T. Skocpol (Eds), The politics of social policy in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Quadagno, J. (1988b). The transformation of old age security: Class and politics in the American welfare state. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Quadagno, J. (1994). The color of welfare: How racism undermined the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press. Rauch, B. (1944). The history of the New Deal, 1933–1938. New York: Creative Age Press. Rose, N. E. (1994). Put to work: Relief programs in the Great Depression. New York: Monthly Review Press. Rosenzweig, R. (1975). Radicals and the jobless: The Musteites and the Unemployed Leagues, 1932–1936. Labor History, 16(1, Winter), 52–77. Rosenzweig, R. (1979). ‘Socialism in our time’: The Socialist Party and the unemployed, 1929–1936. Labor History, 20(4, Fall), 485–509. Rosenzweig, R. (1983). Organizing the unemployed: The early years of the Great Depression, 1929–1933. In: J. Green (Ed.), Workers’ struggles, past and present: A ‘‘radical America’’ reader (Chapter 8). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rothman, D. J. (1971). The discovery of the asylum: Social order and disorder in the New Republic. Boston: Little, Brown. Salmond, J. A. (1967). The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942: A New Deal case study. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sautter, U. (1991). Three cheers for the unemployed: Government and unemployment before the New Deal. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schiltz, M. E. (1970). Public attitudes toward Social Security, 1935–1965. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Schwartz, B. F. (1984). The Civil Works Administration, 1933–1934: The business of emergency employment in the New Deal. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sexton, P. C. (1991). The war on labor and the left: Understanding America’s unique conservatism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Seymour, H. (1937). The organized unemployed. Ph.D. dissertation, Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Skocpol, T. (1980). Political response to capitalist crisis: Neo-Marxist theories of the state and the case of the New Deal. Politics and Society, 10, 155–201. Skocpol, T. (1985). Bringing the state back in. In: P. B. Evans, D. Rueschmeyer & T. Skocpol (Eds), Bringing the state back in. New York: Cambridge University Press. Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Skocpol, T., & Amenta, E. (1986). States and social policies. Annual Review of Sociology, 12, 131–157. Smith, R. M. (1997). Civic ideals: Conﬂicting visions of citizenship in U.S. history. New Haven: Yale University Press.

116

CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG

Steinfeld, R. J. (1989). Property and suffrage in the early American republic. Stanford Law Review, 41, 335–376. Steinmo, S., Thelen, K., & Longstreth, F. (Eds). (1992). Structuring politics: Historical institutionalism in comparative analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stepan-Norris, J., & Zeitlin, M. (2003). Left out: Reds and America’s industrial unions. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sullivan, P. (1996). Days of hope: Race and democracy in the New Deal era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The New York Times. (1936). Demand’s Pay Rise for WPA Workers. The New York Times, August 25, p.11. Tynes, S. R. (1996). Turning points in Social Security: From ‘‘cruel hoax’’ to ‘‘sacred entitlement’’. Stanford: Stanford University Press. United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1940). Negroes under WPA, 1939. Monthly Labor Review, 50(March), 636–638. United States Federal Works Agency. (1946). Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935–1943. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Valocchi, S. (1994). The racial basis of capitalism and the state, and the impact of the New Deal on African Americans. Social Problems, 41(3, August), 347–362. Wagner, D. (2005). The poorhouse: America’s forgotten institution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleﬁeld. Weber, M. (1978 [1922]). In: G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds), Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weir, M., Orloff, A. S., & Skocpol, T. (1988). Understanding American social politics. In: M. Weir, A. S. Orloff & T. Skocpol (Eds), Introduction to the politics of social policy in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wolters, R. (1970). Negroes and the Great Depression: The problem of economic recovery. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Ziskind, D. (1940). Strikes on public employment projects. One thousand strikes of government employees (Chapter 10). New York: Columbia University Press.

INTERTWINING NATIONAL AND URBAN POLICIES: NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND MUNICIPAL TACTICS IN GREATER BUENOS AIRES Nora Libertun de Duren One only needs to travel a few minutes on the upgraded northern highway, away from the Buenos Aires downtown, to notice the transformation of the city. Once one leaves behind the bustling, busy, dense urban fabric and takes the road to the suburbs, a different kind of landscape appears. Instead of multi-story multi-family buildings bordering the sidewalks, there are gated communities sitting next to the highway; instead of small deli-shops populating the streets, there are large supermarkets directly accessible from the road. Truly, this description could ﬁt just about any contemporary American – or Latin American – city. It makes sense that new developments would follow a transportation upgrade and that the farther one travels from the city, the cheaper the land and the less dense the built environment will be. In addition, if we consider that during 1980s and 1990s national and local governments of less developed nations have favored privatization of state infrastructure, it is not surprising that in many of these countries urban designers focused on the needs of the most afﬂuent urban dwellers. That is, as the State retreats from taking a leadership in the provision of

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 119–157 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19004-4

119

120

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

infrastructure, most of the urban infrastructure developed is closely linked to private consumption. In that sense, the urbanization patterns of the late 20th century – in both developed and developing countries – seem to be the materialization of this overall trend to privatization and private governments (Squires, 2002; Portes & Roberts, 2005). Particularly in the Latin American countries in which national governments were heavily involved in local development (Touraine, 1987; Davis, 1994), after the deregulation of the national economy, market forces seemed to have decided the growth of the city. Yet, as this article will illustrate, the recent development of the metropolis cannot be explained without reference to the years that preceded the liberalization of the urban markets. At least in Brazil and Argentina, where national development programs based on fostering local industrialization went hand in hand with the expansion of the major cities (i.e., Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, Cordoba), the end of the support of the Industrialization Substitution Import in the 1970s seem to anticipate the privatization of public urban spaces (Sikkink, 1991). Moreover, it was not during the years of dictatorship regimes but of popularly elected governments when private developments led the growth of these cities, at least in the formal construction markets. Not surprisingly, these new developments fulﬁlled the requirements of the afﬂuent urban dwellers. Thus, ironically, social and spatial contrasts in the city increased after local governments and residents become more politically autonomous. I present this paper under the assumption that national development models constrain local planning choices, and that the spatial consequences of these development models outlive the ideologies – or the constituencies – that supported them. Additionally, this connection between the national and the urban realms suggests that as long as the goals of the national elites and the urban infrastructure are in harmony, we should not see much conﬂict in the land uses of the city. Conversely, as these two diverged, we should see increasing obsolescence of urban infrastructure plus privatization of the urban space. Moreover, even if the regional shift to market economy is behind this process, as it is the case in many of Latin American countries in the 1990s, this paper emphasizes that the speciﬁc geography of this urban transformation is the outcome of the accommodation of local development policies to changing national priorities. Thus, the aim of this paper is to understand how the interaction between the national and local levels of governments affected the growth of Buenos Aires in the last three decades. More speciﬁcally, I analyze the impact of changing national development policies on the development of Greater

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

121

Buenos Aires. In this case, as Argentine government changed hands, its commitment to subsidizing the industrial development of the nation faded. This event triggered the economic decay of the municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires, which suffered most due to the loss of national investments in their urban infrastructure. In this way, in this particular scenario, the end of national industrialization projects increased the dependency of suburban planners on private capital for the development of their land. Looking at the national policies for the causes of the current stagnation of Greater Buenos Aires metropolis is not intended to underestimate the inﬂuence of transnational ﬂows and new technologies in determining today’s urban growth (Sassen, 1991; Castells, 1996). Nor does it deny that similar features characterize a vast number of Latin American cities (Portes & Roberts, 2005), which suggests that the causes behind this overall shift to privatization and social polarization may extend beyond. Instead, this approach aims to emphasize how embedded institutional hierarchies inﬂuence on urban growth at the same time as the preexisting spatial outlays of the metropolis condition the performances of all levels of government. Further, it implies that the speciﬁcity of Buenos Aires transformation during the 1990s is based on its historical legacy rather than on the nature of the government reforms of that particular era. In the following pages I present a brief introduction to the case of Buenos Aires. Then, I explore the development policies of each of the national governments of Argentina from 1977 until 1999 in chronological order: the Process of National Reorganization (PRN) military dictatorship, the Union Civica Radical government of Dr. Raul Alfonsı´ n and the two Peronist presidencies of Dr. Carlos Menem. Each of these depicts the industrial, social and institutional circuits that affected the development of the municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires. Finally, there is a conclusion with a comprehensive assessment of these transformations.

SPATIAL AND SOCIAL CONTRASTS IN GREATER BUENOS AIRES Why are some of the municipalities located on the most dynamic, populous and productive region of a nation, also the poorest of the nation? Why after decades of being at the center of national development policies, the municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires are still suffering some of the worst development indicators of the Argentina?

122

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

Few countries present a pattern of territorial concentration as persistent and extreme as Argentina does (Keeling, 1997; Suarez, 1999). With more than a third of the country’s 36 million residents, more than half of the national gross domestic product (GDP) (INDEC, 2004) and less than 2% of its land (307,571 square kilometers), Buenos Aires is by far the largest metropolis in Argentina. However, metropolitan Buenos Aires does not work as a single jurisdiction, but is divided between the City of Buenos Aires (CBA) and the municipalities comprising Greater Buenos Aires (GBA). While the CBA enjoys full political autonomy, and has one of the lowest percentage of poor households (8% according to the 2001 national census), the municipalities of the GBA are under the rule of the Province of Buenos Aires (PBA) and the percentage of poor households in most of them is double –if not triple – that of the CBA (Torres, 2001). Argentine development bias favorable to metropolitan concentration has been present since Hispanic times; but the industrialization policies of mid20th century ampliﬁed the development gap between Buenos Aires and the rest of the country. Thanks to the combined effects of its trading port and transportation infrastructure (Scobie, 1964), abundant labor and consumption centers (Dorfman, 1983) and the favor of those political leaders who found their constituency in the masses of urban workers (Davis, 2004; Mora y Araujo & Peter, 1983), Buenos Aires accounts for the largest share of the national industrial development (UIA, 2001). Still, in the long run, Buenos Aires’s centrality to the national economy curbed the sustainability of its own development. That is, each time the rest of the country became impoverished, a continuous ﬂow of migrants moved to the metropolis. The national governments of the 1950s pursued for an urban model that distinguishes clearly between the urban core and its periphery. Industrial establishments and labor resided on the borders and fed the consumption needs of the more afﬂuent urban core. By the late 1970s, when this urban vision was showing some early signs of exhaustion, a military coup took over the national government. The urbanization policies of this dictatorship triggered a troubling discontinuity in the metropolitan course of development (Azpiazu, Basualdo, & Khavisse, 2004; Di Tella & Dombusch, 1989; Kosacoff & Ramos, 2001; Schvarzer, 1987; Smith, 1989). By halting national subsidies for metropolitan industries, at the same time it relocated urban slums into the urban periphery (Oszlack, 1984), the policies of the 1970s dictatorship contributed to the persistency of poverty in GBA. Ironically, two decades later, afﬂuent city residents moved to this same urban periphery in search of safety within gated communities.1 In the 1990s, amidst an overall decline of national industries, the number of gated

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

123

communities in this region quadrupled. By the end of the 1990s, gated communities combined area was 1.6 times that of the CBA itself (Pirez, 2002). The point is that, while the national development imbalance has remained constant in favor of metropolitan Buenos Aires, within the metropolis itself there have been remarkable population shifts. (see Table 1). Eventually, this has led to the novel geography of social inequality: fortiﬁed pockets of wealth superimposed on top of declining industrial infrastructure and scattered slums – hence, uprooting the former concentric urban model of gradient poverty and replacing it with a much more heterogeneous spatial distribution of poverty and prosperity. This novel geography of social polarization of the Buenos Aires of the late 20th century was not solely the outcome of the urban policies of any government, but owes much to the centrality of Buenos Aires in national development policies. But, how exactly did national development policies transform GBA? And moreover, how did the sharp discontinuities between the national development policies of the three governments ruling Argentina from 1977, the year when the PBA got its ﬁrst urban planning code, until 1999, when Argentina entered its worst economic crisis ever impact the metropolis?

THE 1977–1983 DICTATORSHIP REGIME As with all regimes, the military coup that took over ofﬁce from Isabel Pero´n, the widow of the General Juan Domingo Pero´n, affected the metropolis in both intended and unintended ways. Aiming to reform the national socio-economic structure, it was no surprise that the military regime centered its action on the capital city. Buenos Aires – which, by the mid-1970s, accounted for about a third of Argentina’s population, half of its industries and more than two thirds of its production – was the obvious hub from which the self-named ‘‘Process of National Reorganization’’ (PRN) was to launch a program of national impact. Accordingly, in the eyes of the government, the reform of the city was an essential step in the realization of a new model nation, thus affecting the urban structure both purposefully and as a by-product of reconﬁguring the national economy. Likewise, the deﬁance of the new regime was most threatening when located in Buenos Aires. In that sense, at least two aims of the PRN led by General Jorge R. Videla (1987–1981) had a direct effect on metropolitan growth. One was the increased participation of the national economy in international markets, which ended the majority of the state’s industrial

2,797,719 7,007,216 10,865,408 27,432,998

1980 Total Pop.

231,872 1,873,878 2,597,831 7,603,332

Poor

2,871,519 8,225,715 12,594,974 32,245,467

1991 Total Pop. 232,203 1,576,000 2,121,943 6,427,257

Poor

2,725,488 9,095,055 13,827,203 35,927,409

2001 Total Pop. 212,489 1,616,785 2,161,064 6,343,589

Poor

200 4,312 307,571 3,761,274

Area (Sq Km)

Population in CBA, GBA, PBA and Argentina According to 1980, 1991 and 2001 Censuses.

Note: According to the 2001 decennial Census, as the suburban region added more than 700,000 new residents, the City of Buenos Aires, which has maintained the same boundaries since 1890, decreased its population by 9% or about 200,000 residents. Poor: NBI households. According to INDEC, to be classiﬁed as an NBI (Unsatisﬁed Basic Needs) a household has at least one of the following characteristics: (a) More than three people per room; (b) unsound building structure; (c) no water-closet; (d) at least one child aged between 6 and 12 who does not attend school; (e) four or more people dependent on a single breadwinner who has no schooling beyond third grade. Municipalities included in GBA: Avellaneda, Berazategui, Esteban Echeverria, Ezeiza, Florencio Varela, Escobar, General San Martin, Hurlingham, Ituzaingo, Jose C Paz, La Matanza, Lanus, Lomas de Zamora, Malvinas Argentinas, Merlo, Moreno, Moron, Quilmes, San Fernando, San Isidro, Pilar,Tigre, Tres de Febrero, Vicente Lopez. Source: INDEC (2001a). Censo Nacional de Poblacio´n de la Republica Argentina.

CBA GBA PBA Argentina

Table 1.

124 NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

125

subsidies and opened local markets to foreign products (Schydlowsky, 1995). The second was the elimination of any resistance that these economic changes might elicit from the population. As Buenos Aires was the largest site of production and consumption, the majority of governmental development policies directly impacted the urban growth. But to the dictatorship regime, the metropolis was also relevant symbolically, as since at least the 1930s, urban life had often been presented as the nation’s ideal (Davis, 2004).

National Development Policies and the Urban Industries Argentine industry was born and raised in Buenos Aires in the early decades of the 20th century, when the development of the train – which met the exportation needs of local agro – swiftly crushed the incipient industrial initiatives of the northern and western provinces (Scobie, 1964). By 1947, when the ﬁrst national industrial census was published, the metropolis contained more than half of Argentina’s industrial establishments and almost 70% of its labor. In 1976, when General Videla’s coup took over, these ﬁgures had barely changed, although the number of workers in the metropolis continued to grow while its establishments added up to a slightly smaller fraction of Argentina’s industrial buildings. The situation that exploded in Argentina in the ﬁrst trimester of 1976 can be explained by the economic policy followed in our country during the previous thirty years. y The increasing state-engineering of the economic life not only reduced the action-ﬁeld of the private enterprise, but it also led to a centralization of the national government at the expense of the provincial capacity of decision. y The State, by its nature, does not base its decision in the search for the highest economic result for each operation. The larger the part of the economy under the inﬂuence of the State’s characteristics, the smaller the ﬁeld for the private enterprise and competition, and the smaller the economic growth will be. Recognition of these facts led the economic program to foster – during these last ﬁve years – a privatization process on one hand and state decentralization on the other.2

With these words – of which the advocacy for privatization and decentralization uncannily resembles those of the so-called ‘‘Washington Consensus’’ (Williamson, 1990, 2000; Naim, 1999), the head of the Ministry of Economy, Jose Martinez de Hoz (1976–1981), outlined his evaluation of Argentina’s development during President Pero´n’s years. In the belief that the economic policies of the developmentalist state wasted funds on industries in which Argentina lacked natural advantages and that unions’ pressure blocked the growth of the economy, subsidies were re-targeted,

126

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

unions dissolved and salaries frozen. The dictatorship regime believed that if social unrest was kept at bay, the play of free-market forces would lead Argentina to reach its ‘‘full potential.’’ Also, it believed that these actions would end, once and for all, the endemic devaluation of local currency and the rising levels of inﬂation that had afﬂicted the country since the mid1950s, if not the late 1930s, when the agrarian economic model showed its ﬁrst signs of exhaustion. Besides internal political and technical conﬂicts over the management of resources, the international scenario was no longer favorable to the Argentine economic model (Diaz Alejandro, 1970). As typically accompanies such overarching reforms, the de facto government perceived itself as morally and intellectually superior, and assumed that all previous failures, even those that attempted similar policies, were due to the incapacity of its implementers, rather than the inadequacy of the model itself. Finally, control of social protest and social surveillance became central to economic reform due to the perception that a malfunction of society caused the shortcomings of the economic model. In brief, the main pillars of the new economic program were: (1) a controlled exchange rate, which aimed to reduce inﬂationary processes; (2) the privatization and decentralization of state enterprises; (3) the reduction and retargeting of the state’s industrial subsidies; (4) cutbacks on labor costs; (5) the support of private investments regardless of an investor’s nationality and (6) the termination of tariffs on international transactions (Azpiazu et al., 2004). A number of contradictions marred the implementation of these policies. For instance, stopping industrial subsidies without the provision of compensation measures furthered the state’s expenditure, as the government had to take over large, bankrupted industries (Galiani, Gertlan, Schardgorodsky, & Sturzzeneger, 2005; Gonzalez Fraga, 1991). In addition, the control of currency exchange rates raised ﬁnancial speculation, black-market activities, and inﬂation (Sjaastadt, 1989; Modigliani, 1989). Nevertheless, these policies did succeed in favoring the economic groups included among its supporters. While industrial employment declined sharply and thousands of establishments closed their doors, a few large corporations proﬁtably expanded their businesses (Kulfas & Schorr, 2000). Shrinking state intervention while fostering larger private industrial investments and limiting the rights of unions had signiﬁcant consequences for the metropolitan geography. As General Videla’s government associated the success of economic reform with the suppression of dissenting groups, the new economic model and the repressive measures were integral in the residential areas of the city as well. Under this regime, the state regarded the

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

127

small, private industries that multiplied all over the city as a result of inefﬁcient, protectionist policies, and, moreover, as potential nodes of subversive labor. Therefore, industrial suburbs of GBA suffered the double impact of a macroeconomic project favoring concentration of industrial ownership, as well as the state’s animosity against the physical concentration of workers. Because urban labor was the traditional stronghold of leftwing, Peronist movements, the anti-Peronist dictatorship regime mandated the dispersion of the industry out of the overpopulated urban realm. However, it was the combination of economic and industrial policies that determined the economic decline of the municipalities that had the largest number of industries. These small industrial establishments, which grew in GBA, as well as in some core neighborhoods, usually had a low rate of production and all of their goods fed the consumption needs of the urban dwellers. Once the national government eased the restrictions on imported industrial products, foreign products ﬂooded urban markets, and local ﬁrms could not ﬁnd alternative markets for their products. Moreover, there was no banking system in place providing credit to smaller ﬁrms that looked to upgrade their production. Since these economic activities were at the heart of the local economy of the southern and western municipalities of GBA, these localities suffered overall disinvestment and the subsequent emigration of the most afﬂuent households. Conversely, larger industrial compounds had access to preferential government credits (Azpiazu, 1985) and were able to cater to the consumption of other markets as well focus their production on those products that did not face strong international competition (see Table 2). In addition, a policy of industrial incentives rewarded those industries able to relocate outside of the metropolitan area. For example, while in the 1960s the metropolis received about 70% of all industrial subsidies, by the end of the 1970s this ﬁgure shrank to 20% (Ferruci, 1986; see Table 3). Clearly, this policy rewarded large capital investments, as those were the only ones that could afford the cost of moving and of providing the extra infrastructure that living outside of the urban sphere demanded (i.e., higher transportation and infrastructure costs). While smaller enterprises could hardly pay for the cost of relocation, the largest industries moved their operations just outside the boundaries of the city, where they could enjoy favorable tax incentives. The differences between small and large establishments thus became patent, which led to the decline of the suburbs in which the latter were located. Unable to compete with the imported products that now inundated local markets and lacking the technology or credit to upgrade their own production, many of the small establishments that

128

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

Table 2. Variation in Employment and Production in Industries of Dispersed and Concentrated Ownership 1975–1980 (1975 ¼ 100%). Dispersed Ownership Industries

Concentrated Ownership Industries

Production

Employment

Production

Employment

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980

100 93 93 89 95 90

100 96 89 82 79 75

100 97 109 96 110 106

100 98 94 85 85 73

Variation

10

25

6

27

Dispersed ownership industries: Food, beverage and tobacco; textile, clothing and leather; wood and furniture; paper and printing; glass and non-ferrous metals. Concentrated ownership industries: Chemicals, rubber and plastics; basic metals; machinery. Source: Author’s extrapolation based on William C. Smith (1989). Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Argentine Political Economy. California: Stanford University Press.

Table 3.

1958 1963 1964 1973 1977

– – – – –

Allocation of National Industrial Subsidies per Industrial Centers.

Law 14780 Decree 5339 Decree 3113 Law 20560 Law 21608

Buenos Aires

Santa Fe and Cordoba

Rest of Argentina

60 71 22 10 20

21 19 27 17 5

19 10 51 74 74

Source: Ricardo Ferrucci, La Promocio´n Industrial en la Argentina. (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1986.)

populated the suburbs were trapped in a subsistence economy and the industrial fabric that crowded GBA became obsolete. Entire jurisdictions on the west and south of city – like those tied to textiles (General San Martin and Moron), food processing (Merlo and Moreno), furniture (La Matanza) and light machinery (Avellaneda) – began their path towards what is still referred to as the ‘‘the industrial cemetery of Buenos Aires.’’ Thus, GBA – rather than the CBA– began to show the deeper implications of a novel model of wealth accumulation and social dynamic.

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

129

State Repression and Urban Form If the ﬁnancial aspect of the new PRN economic plan was linked to its credit decisions, its social project was deeply tied to its industrial incentive policies. Customarily, any national economic reform proclaimed that it was not a good strategy to have roughly 80% of all establishments clustered in less than a tenth of the country’s territory (in the City of Buenos Aires, in the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Co´rdoba and Santa Fe). In Dr. Arturo Frondizi’s developmentalist government (1958–1962), national industrial policy already aimed for the diffusion of manufacturing activities beyond the traditional urban centers (Ferrucci, 1986). However, it was only when the concentration of urban workers began to be perceived as a political menace to the government’s agenda that the dispersion of industry became a priority.3 In 1977, the dictatorship signed Law #21,608, which prohibited the establishment of new industries in the City of Buenos Aires, as well as denied industrial incentives to establishments located within 60 kilometers of any large city (i.e., the City of Buenos Aires, the City of Co´rdoba and Rosario). Signiﬁcantly, in 1979, the appointed mayor of the CBA, Osvaldo Cacciatore, launched a plan to relocate industrial establishments away from the metropolis, well beyond the major national industrial urban ring. The regulation mandated the eviction of 15 types of industrial establishments from City of Buenos Aires, as well as from the 11 municipalities bordering it, within the next 10 years (see Fig. 1). The traditional industrial ring was to be mapped as a location unﬁt for industrial development. Although in theory an environmental concern justiﬁed this ordinance, it relied not on environmental variables but on number of workers per establishment, and was thus designed to prevent the concentration of workers in the city (Schvarzer, 1987). Subtly, but effectively, the economic and social goals of the dictatorship developed a speciﬁc vision of ‘‘the right society.’’ In order to execute this vision, they had to deal with the fact that about 7% of urban inhabitants were slum dwellers for whom they had no place in their urban plan. As Guillermo Cioppo, the then Minister of Housing of the City of Buenos Aires, said in 1980: Not anyone can live in the City of Buenos Aires. An effective effort should be made to improve the health and hygienic conditions. In fact, living in Buenos Aires is not for everybody, but only for those who deserves it, for those who accepts the regulations of a pleasant and efﬁcient community life. We have to have a better city for the better people.

130

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

Fig. 1. National Government Project for Relocating Industries in Greater Buenos Aires 1981. Note: Numbered municipalities: Municipalities from which industries were to be relocated; grey municipalities: Proposed locations for the removed industries. Source: Horacio Difﬁeri (Ed). (1981). Atlas de Buenos Aires. Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires: Secretaria de Cultura.

In agreement with this notion of the exclusivity of the capital city, the municipal government, which was headed by an appointee of the national government, launched a series of legal reforms. These new regulations aimed to transform the CBA from a disorganized and menacing industrial hub, where less afﬂuent workers and slum-dwellers crowded in the low neighborhoods, into a site where a ‘‘hygienic, pleasant community life’’ would prosper. In this vision of the city, three views converged. The ﬁrst one was that of a macro-economic project that the Ministry of the Economy and the large industrialists, who were unlikely to locate within the metropolis, supported. The second was that of the national government and the antiPeronist groups, who wanted to disband the urban working crowds from whom Pero´n had gathered much of his popular support. Lastly, there was the government of the CBA and the local afﬂuent residents, who were eager

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

131

to get rid of the slums that diminished the real estate value of much of the land. In contrast, the alignment of interests was to be much more complex in the GBA, which suffered the effects of deindustrialization, received the displaced urban poor and lacked the political access to the national government necessary to successfully advance their local concerns. Both national and city government ofﬁcials looked upon the poor in the city as a dangerous and undeserving crowd. When the FIFA committee selected the CBA as one of the venues for the 1978 Fe´de´ration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup, the regime saw this occasion as an opportunity to broadcast the right image of Argentina to the world. Accordingly, the government launched a massive slum removal program that would prevent foreign visitors from seeing any sign of poverty in Argentina’s capital city (Oszlack, 1984). The strategy was to create new urban infrastructure, such as highways, parks and entertainment centers, on land on which informal houses had settled (Domselaar, Enrı´ quez, & Sala, 1981). Although the national government relocated a small fraction of these slum-dwellers to government housing projects (i.e., Lugano I and II, and the Villa Soldati apartments), it expelled the majority from the City of Buenos Aires. Thus, the regime forced poor foreigners to return to their countries of origin (mostly Paraguay and Bolivia) and moved poor nationals back to their native provinces or, in the case of the great majority, accommodated them in urbanizations dispersed throughout the more rural urban fringe (Bermudez, 1985). By the end of the regime, the geography of poverty in the metropolis had been radically modiﬁed, with the displacement of more than 100,000 slum residents out of the city core and into suburban municipalities (Pirez, 1994). Thus, slums in the suburbs swelled while the conditions of households in the city improved.

Institutional Reforms and Urban Planning At the level of the metropolis, the institutional structure perpetuated the regime’s bias against the social project of the Peronism. As the same regime managed all levels of government and a division of powers was virtually non-existent, it was not uncommon for the provincial government to increase the legal requirements for residential land acquisition while simultaneously expelling poor residents into the PBA. Concurrently, while the CBA ended rent control programs, the government of the PBA prohibited the subdivision of land for housing when it lacked urban services (Herzer & Pirez, 1988). Furthermore, in 1979 the national government

132

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

mandated that the responsibility for the provision of these urban services should fall on municipal jurisdictions. However, these local governments were hardly capable of ﬁnancing any land improvement (Ley de Municipalizacio´n de Servicios 9347). Consequently, housing built on land lacking infrastructure, which was voided as housing land, multiplied. It was also in 1977 that the ﬁrst formal land use planning code of the PBA was legislated (Urban Code 8912/77). Notoriously, amidst an absolute suspension of constitutional rights and repression of civic participation, this code called for principles of municipal self-governance and decentralization (Badia, 2004). However, the delegation of powers was limited to the designation of land usage (residential, commercial, industrial or rural) and, as would be expected in this context, contained no provision for an increase in residents’ participation. Also, as the provision of ‘‘affordable housing’’ disappeared, ‘‘gated communities’’ were, for the ﬁrst time, explicitly addressed in the urban code. This top-down approach to the reform of the state left a lasting impact on decentralization reforms. Even after 30 years of democratic regime, the legislation that the dictatorship regime of 1977 enacted still constitutes the master document for urban planning in the PBA. This law gave municipal authorities two capabilities that would prove to be fundamental in forming spatial patterns of suburban development, both at that time and even more so in the late 1990s: the designation of land uses and the approval of new private developments. Without exception, the municipal government was to designate all land, either rural or urban, to reﬂect the character of its current usage. When land was undeveloped, the government was to designate it according to its desired future use. Once more, the unevenness of metropolitan social and geographical development behind this legislation was evident. Clearly, the development of gated communities received a disproportionate amount of attention in this foundational planning document. While the 1977 law explains gated communities with great care and detail, neither industrial and commercial buildings nor affordable housing units receive such careful thought. In a provincial regulation affecting the territory of over 120 municipalities, in which gated communities affect less than a tenth of their total area, there is an entire chapter dedicated exclusively to the speciﬁc regulations of the development of these communities. This disproportionate dedication reveals the government’s prioritization of the expansion of the City of Buenos Aires’s afﬂuence over the needs of the peripheral municipalities (Keeling, 1997). By the end of the 1970s, the tendency of gated communities to cluster in the municipalities that had higher-than-average percentages of poor

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

133

households consolidated. About seventy of the region’s new gated communities located in the two municipalities with the highest percentage of poverty where, according to the national census data of 1980, one out of every three households was living in precarious conditions. The irony was that the central government designed the decentralization of planning capacities as a way to alleviate the national budget, far from the democratic character decentralization reforms acquired later. Additionally, this economic rationale created a social and land use project that affected metropolitan growth. As the government identiﬁed with the interests of the elite population of the City of Buenos Aires, it favored the expansion of city elites into the suburbs. However, even if successful, the long-term impact of this regulation was not what the dictatorship regime had imagined for the city. Originally, the majority of gated communities were used as weekend homes. Thus, this document served the elites’ vision of the suburbs as the providers of all kinds of services to the afﬂuent residents of the CBA. Yet, in the 1990s, as gated communities became a widespread option for the relocation of upper middle-income households of the City of Buenos Aires, the suburbs became increasingly disconnected from the urban core. (Libertun de Duren, 2006).

THE 1983–1989 UCR PARTY GOVERNMENT The return of formal democracy to Argentina constitutes one of the most signiﬁcant transformations of its institutional structure. After 20 years without an election, and more than 40 without a democratically elected president ﬁnishing his term, democracy was a true revolution in the life of the country. Yet, as the 1980s and 1990s presented a stagnant economy and an even more uneven distribution of resources, one must wonder how the political and economic participation related – even more so if one considers that the government policies of the ﬁrst years of democracy were more often than not focused on undoing those of the former dictatorship. If the dictatorship regime hardly ever distinguished its economic from its political goals, the democratic government had to deal with almost opposing goals on these two fronts. While the economic reform that the state sought to impose aimed for a wide, participatory society, it threatened the economic sustainability of the majority of Argentine households. In a sense, this paradox was typical of all the governments that followed Peron’s strategy of distributing national monies for social aid as a way to enlarge his constituency (Mora y Araujo & Peter, 1983). In any case, the contradiction

134

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

between making necessary changes in economic policies and pleasing the majority of the voters trapped the UCR government. In brief, after the national government took the lead in the industrialization of Argentina, a constant confrontation of two antagonistic projects for the nation characterized its political scene. One wanted to protect industry, to tightly regulate labor markets, and depended on an inefﬁcient level of the state’s expenditure. This project agreed with the needs of small local industrialists, some large industrial owners and most of the industrial unions. The other model, which was beneﬁcial to the interests of a few large industrial owners and the agro exporting industries, sought deregulated tariffs and labor markets, a ﬂuid exchange with international investors and implied high levels of social exclusion. Moreover, between the 1970s dictatorship and the 1990s, the democratic regime was marked by the struggle between the national groups that supported each of these options. The epicenter of this confrontation, which spread throughout the nation, was the metropolis, where the great part of the labor, industrial establishments and economic elites resided. In Buenos Aires, the confrontation of these two national projects was apparent in the divergent interests of the City of Buenos Aires, which could proﬁt from the ﬁnancial activities that would follow a growth of exportation activities, and of the industrial GBA, which was the residence of most of the small and medium industries depending on state protection. This geographical distinction was even greater after the implementation of the 1977–1983 dictatorship’s industrial policies, which led to the consolidation of larger industrial compounds outside of the metropolis, while it allowed for the decay of the smaller urban industries of Greater Buenos Aires.

Between Democratic Will and Economic Rationale Many of these tensions that appeared in the metropolitan space after the development policies of the late 1970s were evident only in the subsequent democratic years. After the initial joys of democracy, the problematic heritage of the previous regimes became evident. In December of 1983, Raul Alfonsı´ n, a center-leftist of the UCR Party, began his presidency with wide political support and troubling economic conditions. While the international community celebrated a presidency won with the majority of national votes, the country still had to deal with rampant inﬂation (above 150% annually), declining GDP (–5%), closed credit markets, debt services in excess of export earnings and a population whose wages’ purchasing power

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

135

had declined by a fourth since 1975 (World Bank, 1985). Clearly, the economic problems that precipitated the end of the dictatorship rule were still unsolved. If these problems appeared during the 1976–1983 period, they would have become the source of speciﬁc political claims during the early years of the democracy. The owners of small industries, the entrepreneurs who provided state enterprises, the waged workers and the former industrial workers would voice their opposition to halting the State’s protection of local industries. Thus, almost from its inception, the democratic government faced a paradox: either shrink the expenditures of an unsustainable and indebted state in agreement with the recommendations of the international agencies and the desires of local exporting elites or please the majority of voters and continue running expensive state enterprises and protecting local industries. Moreover, in the context of the economic crisis, more and more of the political discourse revolved around the immediate distribution of wealth rather than around which policies would increase national resources. In Buenos Aires (to which most of GBA grew parallel in terms of the national industrialization and the rising earning power of the waged households), the transition to a different state model would affect the vital sources of the local economy, which eventually changed the conﬁguration of the whole metropolis and its polity. In essence, the democratic government was to deal with the pressure of harmonizing the conﬂicting demands of a national industry tailored for internal consumption and an agricultural sector that produced the bulk of Argentina’s exports. That is, because the national industry mostly targeted to the local market, only the agricultural elites had the ability to participate in the international markets. For that reason, running the expensive state structure – on which most of the industries depended – required taxing the gains of agricultural exports. Furthermore, as the country increased its debts to international lenders and access to international credit became more difﬁcult to obtain, the internal pressures emerging from this management grew larger. While the national government had to deal with a debt six times larger than Argentina’s annual export earnings (World Bank, 1985; Ferrer, 2004), international credit became scarce and interest rates swelled (Hanlon, 2000). To make things worse, this liability resulted in few local beneﬁts, as much of these obligations were the product of nationalizing private sector debts acquired during the former regime (Peralta Ramos, 1992). During his presidential campaign Dr. Raul Alfonsı´ n emphasized the value of the democratic regime, and was eager to distinguish his government from the military dictatorship practice of imposing economic policies through

136

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

social repression. For that reason, he began his mandate by proposing a participatory, conciliatory process in which all sectors would be included. Adding to the contrast, his economic program was keen on direct state intervention on economic matters, on restricting foreign investments and on revitalizing local industries through strengthening internal consumption. Yet, he also sought to streamline the over-expanded Argentine state. These policies agreed with the desires of the majority and gave him the vote of most of GBA’s households, who typically supported the Peronist candidate. However, once in ofﬁce, he could not live up to this agenda, thus harming his government’s credibility and weakening his capacity to negotiate with the different sectors. In spite of needing the support of the waged workers, the national government could not maintain – let alone upgrade – the current structure of state enterprises and employment without increasing the already over-expanded national budget, and going against the advice of international lenders. On one hand, the new president had inherited a heavily indebted country that could no longer afford to pay its debt at the expense of its own productive capacity. On the other, he did not have the political capital to impose the cuts in state expenditure needed to stop the mounting international debt (Peralta Ramos, 1992; Lewis, 1990). Eventually, the impossibility of fulﬁlling both demands at the same time ended the government’s popularity, both inside and outside of the country. After a few months of tranquility, such as those following the launching of the ‘‘Plan Austral’’ in February 1985 (Acunˇa, 1995), the inﬂation rate grew in excess of 400% annually. As expected, this high level of uncertainty was deleterious to long-term investment and welcomed ﬁnancial speculation (Cavallo, 1989). The new economic program, which aimed to cut the state’s deﬁcit by shrinking state payroll and privatizing state companies, faced the ﬁerce opposition of the unions, while inﬂation harmed the purchasing power of the waged workers (Dornbusch, 1986). The urban periphery, which had been growing at the rate of national industrialization, began to show the signs of a failed national project. Nonetheless, the population of the urban periphery grew regardless of the decline in industry and labor wages. Moreover, as the development of urban services was now decentralized, municipal land in GBA stagnated due to the lack of infrastructure. The percentage of substandard households grew, as informal housing developed on municipal lands lacking piped water or sewerage. Not surprisingly, the population of GBA was soon to reject the national government, and the UCR party lost all provincial elections following the victory of the 1983 presidential campaign.

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

137

The New Urban Poverty By 1983, when the dictatorship regime ended, the municipalities of GBA had a myriad of decaying small industries and more than 200,000 slum dwellers that the PRN displaced from the City of Buenos Aires. In addition, since the PBA decentralization laws of 1977, these municipalities were responsible for the provision and administration of public urban services. As a consequence, when democratic procedures returned, these municipal governments found themselves with a large list of responsibilities and concerns, but very few resources (Pirez, 1999). Moreover, they could not afford to put in place the missing infrastructure that would allow for the improvements of substandard households and the better use of land. But, as the economic conditions in other Argentine provinces were also problematic, none of these factors deterred the ﬂow of migrants from other provinces that came to Buenos Aires in search of employment. Most of these people located on the cheapest land available: the un-serviced lands of the municipalities of GBA. In this way, the impoverishment of Argentina had a double impact on the periphery of the City of Buenos Aires. First, it hampered the economic sustainability of the small and medium enterprises located there. Second, it strengthened the inﬂow of economic migrants to the metropolis. Overall, the combination of these two led to a vicious cycle of disinvestments. Small industrialists, municipalities and newcomers did not have the resources – or commitment – to pursue the long-term projects needed to upgrade the infrastructure of these municipalities (i.e., water, electricity, and sewerage pipes), thus population growth increasingly settled in subserviced lands. Not only were the economics of GBA troubling, also the political scenario was extremely complex for dealing with the growth of poor households. Given the notorious violations to human rights during the years of the PRN dictatorship, which included the violent eviction of the slum dwellers of the City of Buenos Aires, in the 1980s, no democratic government was to attempt the relocation of informal housing settlements, even less so when, after the decentralization laws of 1977, the responsibility over the provision of the services fell to the municipal governments of the PBA (Sbatella, 2001). Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that GBA accounted for the largest concentration of poor residents of Argentina, and by the end of the 1980s, about half of all its households lacked access to piped water and sewerage (INDEC, 2001a). It was at this point that the people living in the municipalities of GBA experienced a novel kind of impoverishment. Unlike previous occasions, not

138

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

only the recently arrived, but also the already established residents of the suburbs were suffering increasing decline on their household earnings (INDEC, 2001a). Moreover, the sudden changes in the national currency value were favorable to those who had ﬁnancial assets, and especially disadvantageous for those dependant on monthly salaries. Thus, between 1980 and 1989, the income of the poorest tenth of the urban population declined by 15%, while that of the wealthiest tenth rose by 14% (Gasparini, Marchionni, & Escudero, 2000). Lastly, in addition to the difﬁculties of taking care of an impoverished population, the increasing inequality within the metropolitan population was challenging the governance of the urban periphery. Although much of the population was suffering the consequences of national deindustrialization and currency instability, some groups could take advantage of these changes. The decline of productive activities ran parallel to rising ﬁnancial speculation and inﬂation, which skewed the distribution of resources within the population even more (Azpiazu et al., 2004; Di Tella, 1989). The overall instability of the national economy contributed to a widening the social gap – both in terms of people and geography – in the country in general and in Buenos Aires in particular. While the peripheral municipalities suffered the effects of disinvestment, ﬁnancial and banking activities ﬂourished in the City of Buenos Aires. In spite of its economic decline, the population of GBA remained central to the power balance of Argentina. Taking into account Argentina’s demographic distribution, it was evident that no democratically elected government could afford to disregard the support of the majority of urban dwellers (Walter, 1984). Therefore, even though it was not conducive to a long-term diffusion of development (as it targeted the causes for the uneven distribution of population and resources, and as poverty was notorious in other regions of the country such as the north-western provinces), it made political sense for the national government to privilege the funding of the welfare of the population of the GBA. Hence, once more, the connection between national politics and the fate of GBA came to the forefront of all national politics. In effect, as noted by early studies of underdevelopment in Latin America (Castells, 1977; Di Tella, 1962), the disproportion between a rapidly growing urban population and a declining industrial force was becoming one of the deﬁning features of these societies (see Table 4). First, the percentage of urban dwellers kept on rising so that by the beginning of the 1980s more than 90% of the national population lived in cities. But at the same time, the percentage of urban workers who worked in the industry shrank from 35%

139

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

Table 4.

Social Aid by Function of Governments.

Function

Housing Food programs Primary and Secondary education Tertiary education Public health Hospitals Total

Level of Government (%) National

Provincial

X

X X X

X X 3

X X 5

Municipal

0

Source: Fabian Repetto and Guillermo Alfonso (2004). La Economı´ ca Polı´ itica de la Polı´ itica Social Argentina: Una Mirada desde la Descentralizatio´n. Divisı´on de Desarrolo Social. Series Polı´ı´cas Sociales. 85. Santiago de Chile: UN CEPAL.

in the 1950s to 25% in the 1990s (Godio, 2000). Increasingly, a higher percentage of the population depended directly on the metropolitan economy, even when this was being de-industrialized. During the 1970s the urban population swelled while industrial employment declined, and unemployment increased. Therefore, neither the government nor the people were able to wait for the results of an economic reform that might reactivate – even if it were possible – the productive engine of the formerly industrial city. In that scenario, government policies increasingly focused on interim actions that could lessen the impact of unemployment, rather than on creating the foundation for alternative models of development. In any case, the UCR national government’s attempts to satisfy such disparate agendas – simultaneously claiming state austerity, while running an expansive state structure – resulted in rapidly deteriorating conditions of the urban periphery. The tension between the immediate demands of the impoverished workforce and the need for policies that promoted long-term growth took a heavy toll on the national project. For instance, in order to alleviate unemployment, the national government hired more bureaucratic personnel at the same time as it aimed to cut national deﬁcit. However, this tactic was no solution for the economic decline of GBA. Taken as a whole, the shift towards quick-ﬁx policies and ﬁnancial speculation was particularly harmful for the economy of the urban periphery. In a scenario looking for short-term economic gains, the industrial establishments that populated the suburbs tended to suffer disinvestments. In addition, local people depending on wages were worse off in this rapidly changing economic scenario. More

140

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

germane yet, no government level promoted the much-needed investment in urban infrastructure to prevent the spread of housing without services. Despite the mounting social demands and the presidency’s need for the votes of the province’s residents, it could not re-activate the industrial structure or the wage values of the heyday of Peronism. The macroeconomic conditions in which Argentina was immersed gravitated negatively against the economic project that originated many of the industries of GBA. Unlike Pero´n, who enjoyed a wealthy state budget thanks to the favorable terms of international trade, international conditions were adverse during the administration of the UCR government in the 1980s. Moreover, the market demands of the CBA were not sufﬁcient to sustain national industries. The fusion of these two factors furthered the decay of the industrial establishments of the urban fringe. In addition, the UCR government had to face the escalating pressures of the largest national unions, the majority of which were unconditional supporters of the Peronist party (Mora y Araujo & Peter, 1983). After suffering violent repression during the former dictatorship, the unions’ claims defending industrial labor had found a receptive public among the impoverished urban waged workers of the early democracy. Their support was instrumental in mobilizing society against the national government, and they had exercised great inﬂuence on the election in the PBA, the hub of industrial labor (Acunˇa, 1995). By 1987, the Peronist candidate captured the majority of the votes in the province, and thus a deep political division between the city core and the periphery began with a belt of Peronist majorities surrounding the pro-UCR City of Buenos Aires.

Distorting Democracy Any non-Peronist government that intended to engage itself in an election had to develop an institutional strategy exclusively to deal with the PBA. The challenge was to play down the importance of the municipalities of the GBA – from which Peronism typically attained the majority of its votes – on the national elections. As more than a fourth of the national workforce and production capacity was located in this area, virtually any system of political representation would allow the GBA voters to impose their will all along the nation. Beginning with the dictatorship of General Alejandro Agustı´ n Lanusse, who seized power through a coup d’e´tat in 1971 and called for elections one year later, all governments skewed the electoral rules against GBA. By assuring that all provinces had a minimum of ﬁve representatives

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

141

at the national level – regardless of their actual population – Lanusse diminished the relative weight of each voter from the PBA. In addition to the manipulation of political representation, in 1972, the regime modiﬁed the distribution of ﬁscal resources so as to disfavor the PBA (Law 20221). The law stipulated that 48.5% of ﬁscal monies collected by the national government should be distributed among the provinces as stated by the following formula: 65% according to population, 25% according to the average development gap from the most developed province of the nation and 10% according to provinces with below-average population density. As a result, the PBA, which was at the top of the development level and had a high population density, become a net giver of ﬁscal resources. At ﬁrst glance, this distribution would appear to help alleviate regional inequalities in the nation. Yet, because social conditions within provinces were not homogeneous, this was hardly the case and it certainly increased the social gap within the PBA. It is estimated that in 1991, the lowest quintile of residents of the PBA received almost ﬁve times less aid than the average amount given to the lowest quintile of any other province (Porto & Cont, 1998). More simply put, thanks to the new regulations, aid for the poor of Buenos Aires fell far behind the aid given to the poor in the rest of the country. It is obvious that the practices of the new democracy had to deal with the economic debts as well as with the institutional legacy of former dictatorship regimes. Eventually, the strategy of postponing the fulﬁlment of Buenos Aires’s demands backﬁred on the UCR mandate. As Peronism expanded into other regions, particularly into the impoverished north-western Argentinean provinces (i.e., Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero, Chaco, Formosa and La Rioja), the electoral balance was even more skewed in favor of the Peronist party. In the congressional elections of 1987, when the Peronists gained the majority in Congress and the UCR party began its decline, Buenos Aires had 36% of all registered voters but it elected only 27% of the congress. Conversely, these north-western provinces represented 10.5% of all voters, but elected 17% of the national congress. As a consequence, Peronism was more entrenched in the less populated provinces where local politicians could tip the electoral balance of the nation thanks to a small difference of votes in their home provinces. Additionally, even if the PBA’s residents did not have fair representation in Congress, these policies increased the negotiating power of local politicians, who often made ad-hoc arrangements with the national government. Parallel to this structural bias at the national level, suburban municipalities still had to deal with the issues speciﬁc to the practices within

142

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

the PBA. This is particularly true in the case of urban planning. Avenues for participation were practically absent in the 1977 as well as in the 1980s additions. They requested no public participation, or even publication of the planning decisions made by municipal authorities in their communities. This biased understanding of the role of planning reﬂected the institutional beliefs of the dictatorship regime. Given that a ‘‘non-democratic’’ government generated this regulatory body, the absence of civic participation is not surprising. However, none of the successive legal reforms, which went into effect under the following democratic government, made civic participation a condition for investment or development approvals. The silence on the issue of social participation in municipal planning was also a consequence of the lack of a communal entity in many municipalities. During Peron’s government, political manipulation often dictated municipal boundaries. Later, the dictatorship regime relocated people throughout the metropolis, hence threatening the consolidation of a municipal sense of community. Finally, during the democratic era, the widening social gap between local residents contributed to the absence of a cohesive vision within the municipality. In the end, the juxtaposition of a skewed distribution at the national level and little participation at the local level increased the access to land for private development. The structure of democratic representation left municipal mayors with little monies, relatively few avenues for contestation, but ample power over land management in their jurisdictions. Once pressed for funds, these mayors turned to the private sector to develop land lacking urban services. Eventually, the top-down approach embedded in the planning code inherited from dictatorship days was a basic institutional feature for the expansion of private investors in the democratic era.

THE 1989–1999 PERONIST PARTY GOVERNMENT Many of the features that marked the 1990s consolidated the institutional and social transformations that began in the previous decades. To begin with, several of the government’s measures resembled the economic ideology of the 1976–1983 dictatorship, during which the country halted much of its support to local industrialization and attempted to privatize the state’s enterprises. In addition, there was a commitment to continuing with the democratic regime consolidated during the UCR administration of 1983–1989. Yet, because this was an unedited combination of liberalization of the economy, democracy and Peronist social appeal, the presidency of the

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

143

Peronist Dr. Carlos Saul Menem constituted a radical change in Argentinean politics. Nevertheless, it could not have been as successful in imposing its new program of government had it not taken advantage of the ongoing national economic crisis. In 1989, when Dr. Menem became Argentina’s president, Argentineans’ constant frustration with the instability of the national economy had made them receptive to a signiﬁcant change in the whole management of the state. The massive social support for a change in the national economy does not mean that there were not entrenched interests opposed to the transformation of state-led enterprises. Unions, middle-income urban households and the UCR were some of the forces opposed to the privatization reforms that Menem advocated. None of the former experiences with deregulated economies had left the population with positive memories, as they had all ended in economic crisis and had often been imposed through the devices of a dictatorship. Eventually, the Argentinean paradox of attempting a deregulated economy through an authoritarian state had been solved by Menem’s two-pronged strategy. On one hand, he relied on his Peronist background to attenuate the social tensions caused by imposing this new state model, and thus catered his discourse to the working poor likely to feel threatened by the changes in the state. On the other hand, he allied himself with the interests of the largest corporate holdings and thus the international connections to take advantage of the sweeping state reform proposed. But the true extent of the state and economic reform that Dr. Menem sought became evident only in 1991, when the government launched the ambitious economic plan entitled ‘‘Plan de Convertibilidad.’’ Although the minister of the economy, Dr. Domigo Cavallo, led the project, it was more than a ﬁnancial reform. In a few words, its main objectives were to minimize state deﬁcit, to stabilize the economy and curb the inﬂation and to further integrate the country into the international investment circuits (Acunˇa, 1994). In terms of actual policies, these goals translated into: (1) the privatization of State companies; (2) the opening of trade and the deregulation of tariffs; (3) the simpliﬁcation of the tax structure; (4) instating labor reforms that increased hiring ﬂexibility; (5) autonomous management of the Central Bank and (6) to valuate 1 Peso equal to 1 US dollar (Powell, 1998). All of these reforms worked well with the development principles pushed by international lenders and policy makers of the moment (Williamson, 1990). Yet, as Dr. Cavallo emphasized, this economic reform was born out of a genuinely Argentinean project, which had been in the public eye since at least the 1970s (Cavallo & Cottani, 1997; Cavallo, 1984). The inﬂuence of external factors was thus minimized,

144

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

which suggests the international community facilitated the successful implementation of a national project that had deep roots in Argentinean society.

International Trade and the New Urban Geography Brieﬂy, the predominance of Buenos Aires industries over the rest of the country was more the consequence of national development policies than of the geographical conditions of the country. Since the industrialization of the country began, national governments of all ideologies had been aiming to manipulate Argentina’s spatial outlay. In each of Pero´n’s presidencies (1946–1952, 1952–1955, 1974–1975) his political force grew at the pace of the national industrial labor force, which was located in GBA (Germani, 1980). As a result, from its outset the national geography of industry and labor was one of the key variables in the disclosure of the economic and political goals of each regime (Ferrucci, 1986). Accordingly, the last dictatorship regime (1976–1983) targeted its industrial policies towards the dispersion of industry and labor outside of the urban centers, a practice that Raul Alfonsı´ n (1983–1989) continued by granting subsidies and tax beneﬁts to industries located in targeted, non-urbanized areas, such as the southern Patagonian region. Finally, during the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989–2000), another Peronist, the government relinquished its direct control over the national industrial geography. Why? First, because the PBA was a Peronist stronghold; and second, because the overall policy of Carlos Menem’s government was to liberalize markets and diminish state controls on private investments (Kosacoff, 2000). After decades of ﬁghting the tendency of investments to cluster in an overly expanded Buenos Aires, the state halted national programs beneﬁting non-urban locations. Consequently, in the second half of the 1990s, the tendency towards the diffusion of the industry out of the metropolis was reverted. While the national ﬁgures showed shrinking industrialization, Buenos Aires managed to conserve or even increase its industrial capacity, hence augmenting its share of the national industrial production from 51% in 1984 to 60% in 1994 (Fritzsche & Vio, 2000). Declining industrialization following a policy of trade and industry deregulation was most pronounced during the 1977–1983 period, when the industrial ring that surrounded the city began to show its ﬁrst signs of distress. At that time, the PRN government allowed for the sudden inﬂow of imported products to local markets, which destroyed the smaller producers

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

145

of the industrial belt. Although the democratic regime restricted imports in the 1980s, so as not to alienate the urban workers and small producers, it could only brieﬂy stop the decay in the production value of the myriad of establishments surrounding the City of Buenos Aires. By the time the import of ﬁnished goods once more ﬂooded the urban markets, the foundation for the division between large and small producers was already in place. While many of the larger establishments had already left the urban periphery so as to take advantage of the numerous incentives for relocating industries, the smaller establishments remained in the stagnating urban periphery. The higher concentration of industries in Buenos Aires in the 1990s was due to changes at the top and bottom of the industrial production structure. The smallest establishments of the least production value were trapped in a subsistence economy throughout the urban core (Kulfas & Schorr, 2000). The newer and larger establishments of higher production value relocated along the northern side of the conurbation so as to take advantage of the recently established MercoSur market (Kosacoff, 2000). In the middle, the older industrial jurisdictions (Avellaneda, General San Martin and Tres de Febrero) the number of establishments barely changed, yet their income plummeted (Azpiazu et al., 2004). In addition, the MercoSur moved the industrial axis of the conurbation from the south to the north. For the ﬁrst time, local industries found a market larger than the City of Buenos Aires, further diminishing the strategic value of the older industrial suburbs, in the southwest of GBA. Besides the changes in the geography after the new industrial policies, there was a new pattern of land occupation. The growth of the metropolis relied on the highway and did not expand the traditional urban fabric based on blocks and streets, but rather added large, isolated industrial compounds in the less-urbanized municipalities at the far boundaries of the metropolis. The gated communities were also located within these borders. The highway upgrade that fostered MercoSur commerce also enabled urban dwellers to live in the far suburbs while still working in the city. Real estate developers took advantage of this unique opportunity and in less than 10 years the number of gated communities along the road more than tripled, reaching 500 by the year 2001. During the 1990s, 44% of all private investments in the region went towards the development of gated communities (Coy & Pholer, 2002). This growth also took the form of isolated compounds that did not expand the urban grid, as gated communities did not rely on the municipality for the provision of their services and land-use policies were quite ﬂexible. Accordingly, the industrial relocation following the MercoSur was correlated to changes at the municipal land usage. Gated communities

146

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

mushroomed in the empty land of the northern municipalities, in the jurisdictions located in the frontier space between the new industrial growth and the traditional urban fabric, where for years there had been informal housing and no urban infrastructure. At the close of the 20th century, the suburban ring that surrounded the city presented a different dynamic than that of the 1970s, when the deindustrialization of the nation and the decentralization of planning powers began. While the south and the west became impoverished parallel to the survival struggle of the old developmentalist model – in which a sizeable amount of the population was still depending – the northern suburbs were casting the new urban growth: self-sufﬁcient private compounds linked to international markets amidst undeveloped territories. This landscape of social polarization at a smaller scale characterized the growth of the city during the 1990s.

Argentina’s Imbalanced Development and the Urban Poor Eventually, the centrality of Buenos Aires to the national economy impinged on the urban development. As the rest of the country became impoverished, a continuous ﬂow of economic migrants moved to the metropolis. Even in the mid-20th century, during the most successful stages of the Peronist project, when industries bloomed in GBA, the consequences of an imbalanced national development were evident in the new informal settlements along the train tracks converging towards the urban core (Torres, 2001). Once the state changed its industrial policies and urban industry began to decline, most of the newcomers stayed in the suburbs regardless of the rapidly deteriorating working conditions. As we have seen, the urban scheme in which industrial establishments and labor were located in the periphery and fed the consumption needs of the more afﬂuent urban core showed evident signs of exhaustion. By the 1960s, about 5% of the metropolitan population (460,000 city dwellers) was living in shantytowns spread both in the city and in GBA (Pirez, 1994). But 15 years later, the dictatorship regime removed shantytowns from the City of Buenos Aires, forcing the relocation of more than 200,000 people into the municipalities of GBA. Therefore, the unevenness of national development and the failure of Argentinean industry were more prejudicial to the municipalities of the periphery than to the urban core. Moreover, while the CBA managed to proﬁt from services and ﬁnancial activities in the 1990s, the GBA was still engaged in a failed national project.

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

147

The 1990s reform of Menem’s government intensiﬁed the trend of impoverishment that began in the 1980s. In that sense, the deepening of the local poverty was one of the preconditions to the posterior raise in inequality in these municipalities. That is, as local economic activities were in decline, the state was not likely to provide urban infrastructure, and therefore the population and area of slums was likely to grow, decentralized municipalities allowed for the development of gated communities and the consequent raise in inequality. But why did municipalities encourage these developments in the 1990s, if all these trends had been evident since the 1980s? The answer to this question is twofold. On one hand, the upgrade of the highway and the decentralization of planning capacities allowed the municipalities of GBA to facilitate the growth of gated communities. On the other hand, the growth of poor households in the suburbs was not only due to migration but also due to the impoverishment of established residents, which generated a local constituency willing to accommodate these new land uses as a way to upgrade local ﬁnances. At this time, three causes were behind the growth of suburban poverty. The ﬁrst was the continuity of the national migratory patterns. As the economic crisis hit all over the country, internal migration to the metropolis kept its pace (INDEC, 2001b). Although the labor market in the metropolis was quite unsteady, it was larger and more dynamic there than in the rest of Argentina. Therefore, continuing with the practice that began in the 1950s when the industries of Buenos Aires demanded more workers, people who lost their jobs in the provinces relocated to GBA in the hopes of ﬁnding employment. However, since municipal governments still lacked the resources to provide the necessary infrastructure to take care of the inﬂow of newcomers, migrants built new houses in un-serviced land and thus increased the number of people living in irregular settlements (GCBA, 2002). Even worse, according to the urban labor statistics from the 1990s, for every 10 people seeking employment in the city, there was only one new job. Thus, newcomers often found no job upon relocating to the metropolis (La Nacio´n, 1996a,b). The lack of employment growth was the second cause behind the fact that in the urban periphery, the earnings of one in four households was below the ‘‘statistical poverty line.’’ While unemployment hurt the country as a whole, the loss of jobs was much higher in the major industrial hubs. Unlike the unemployment of the 1980s, which related to decaying industrial production, this unemployment was in response to a structural change in the composition of industrial production. The MercoSur and the import–export

148

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

tariffs fostered the growth of large holdings and industries exporting raw products (Kosacoff, 2000). These industry establishments were located far away from the metropolis, partly because the former industrial policies gave them incentives to move away from the city, and partly because their plants did not ﬁt well in the urban grid. In addition, their production was not labor-intensive and hence their expansion did not alleviate national unemployment. Thus, regardless of the absence of new jobs in the urban periphery, the urban population was still growing faster than that of nonurban centers. For instance, in 1995, the population living in Buenos Aires grew by 2.8% while employment declined by 2.9%. Eventually, chronic poverty and unemployment became distinctive features of most of the municipalities of GBA. In the 1990s, poverty was not only linked to unemployment, but also to the worsening conditions of the employed population (INDEC, 1993). The combination of a large concentration of people looking for jobs in Buenos Aires and the new national labor legislations which eased short-term contracts deteriorated the labor market. Thus, a third cause of the rising urban poverty was the declining incomes of waged workers. By the early 1990s, the massive and rapidly deteriorating living conditions among the industrial sector of GBA were threatening the social stability of the PBA, if not the entire country. The consequences of national deindustrialization were hostile to the basic constituency of the governing Peronist regime. Thus, when the then national vice-president, Eduardo Duhalde, became the governor of the PBA, he launched a new, ad-hoc measure for providing social aid to the poor living in GBA. And once more, the centrality that the metropolis held in the nation curtailed the rights of its own population and diminished the economic autonomy of the municipalities of GBA.

Distorting Democracy, Again The legacy of previous anti-Peronist regimes was an institutional framework strongly biased against the PBA. Less populated provinces were overrepresented in state legislature and the circuit of the nation’s ﬁscal resources made the province a net giver of monies (Porto, 1999). The majority of the poor residents of Argentina were living in GBA, under the rule of the PBA, where the infrastructure was insufﬁcient to meet the demands of the growing metropolis. This situation raised concerns not only for the government of the PBA, but also for the nation’s executive power. Unlike the procedure for

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

149

electing national congressmen, presidential elections were a fair representation of the population’s distribution, thus giving voters in GBA the capacity to tilt election results. Additionally, controlling social protests in these impoverished municipalities was instrumental in assuaging the cost of the new national policies and projecting the image of social progress to the rest of the country (Teubal, 1996; Powers, 1995). Reforms of the distribution of ﬁscal resources among the provinces, or the procedures for electing congressional representatives would be too difﬁcult to impose, and would likely alienate the support of the Peronist provinces of the north. When the former vice-president became the governor of the PBA’s government, he knew how to voice his worries about his province. In 1992, the economic minister approved a unique program to provide social aid to the province, the ‘‘Fondo de Reparacio´n Histo´rica del Bonaerense.’’ By virtue of this reform, the provincial government would get an additional 10% of the national ﬁscal monies. Thus, the PBA’s executive powers had control over a fabulous amount of resources that was not controlled by the Congress. But the funds that the province dispersed were not part of the democratic circuit and were used at the discretion of the executive powers. Neither the national and provincial legislatures nor the municipal government had any legal say in how these monies were spent. Besides, municipal governments controlled less than 5% on the funds targeted to social aid (Vinocur & Halperin, 2004), and these funds had no clear purpose (Repetto & Alfonso, 2004) (see Table 4). Not surprisingly, accusations such that these funds, which amounted to more than 650 million dollars per year, were ‘‘too much of a temptation for the administrators’’ were common (La Nacio´n, 1998). Typical of a demagogic management of social claims, these programs confused social needs with political favors. Ironically, at the end of the day, the total amount that the PBA received from the national government was as large as it would have been if the monies had been allocated in direct proportion to population size (La Nacio´n, 1998). Yet, by using an ad-hoc procedure for obtaining national funds, the governor had full control over the distribution of the lion’s share of the money. All in all, however, insufﬁcient resources are not at the root of the deﬁciencies in the infrastructure and social services of GBA. Regardless of the shifts in industrial geography, it has always been the epicenter of national production. Rather, institutional design perpetuated local poverty at the same time that it eased the manipulation of poor, urban households for the sake of national politics. In that sense, the distribution of monies in the 1990s heightened the relevance of Buenos Aires in the nation, while it

150

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

simultaneously undermined the voice of its local residents. That is, instead of making money for social aid a citizens’ right that could be monitored through democratic participation, social aid became an ad-hoc political measure in which locals had no say. In that sense, it replicates the dictatorship regime’s structure of the decentralization of planning capacities, which relied on modifying local regulations as a way to alleviate the national debt (Repetto & Alonso, 2004). Accordingly, it was a top-down reform lacking correspondence with local grassroots organizations advancing local concerns. In addition, because the provincial administration received most of its monies for social programs, and the provincial government distributed these funds at their discretion, municipalities were more dependent on the central government after decentralization increased local responsibilities (Badı´ a, 2004). Overall, municipal governments have found themselves with few economic resources, swelling poverty and – thanks to the 1977 planning law and its subsequent reforms – legal autonomy over the regulation of land usage. It was in this context that municipalities fostered the development of gated communities as a strategy for local development. Privatizations of land resources became one of the few ways that municipal governments could generate local income, and at the same time, generate local employment.

CONCLUSION The Metropolitan Paradox: Furthering the Relevance of the City and Diminishing Urban Rights This paper begins by asking how national goals, both political and economical, modiﬁed the development of GBA. In particular, it looked at the ways in which national governments since the last dictatorship regime have affected the urban industries, the urban poor and the administrative structure of the urban periphery, where economic and social changes have been most dramatic. These three urban features were consequential for the national development policies, but the relevance of Buenos Aires in the nation had undermined the rights of its own citizens, preventing them from being active participants in their local development. The shifts in the urban industrial geography that followed the end of national industrialization have targeted the original engine of Buenos Aires’s growth. GBA, which grew through Peronist industrialization programs, would bear this legacy for the rest of the 20th century. First,

151

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

the dictatorship regime (1976–1983) opened the economy to foreign industrial products at the same time that it forbade the establishment of industries in the urban periphery. Therefore, most of the urban establishments lost their main market while new industrial investments relocated beyond the urban realm, thus beginning the decadence of the small industrial establishments of the GBA. Next, the democratic UCR government (1983–1989) continued to foster the location of new industries beyond the GBA, but closed the internal market to imported industrial products. Overall, the national economy was highly unstable, which favored the consolidation of the larger industrial and ﬁnancial holdings, able to operate all along the country and hurt the smaller industrial establishments. Finally, the Peronist government that followed (1989–1999) stopped the promotion of national industrialization, re-opened the national market to imported industrial products and consolidated the MercoSur trade. As a result, some new industrial investments returned to GBA, but did not refurbish old industrial infrastructures. Rather than centering in Buenos Aires’s market, they relocated where they could proﬁt more from the MercoSur trade. As a consequence, the aged industrial establishments could hardly compete with the larger holdings, while the strategic value of the urban fringe declined once the CBA was no longer the primary market for national industrial production. By the end of the century, the municipalities of the GBA became one of the paradigmatic examples of the impact of the rapid change in national industrialization policies on Argentina. The most urbanized country of the early industrializers of Latin America became one of the worst examples of sustainable urban development (see Table 5). In this case, the succession of contradictory spatial projects pursued by the

Table 5.

Evolution of Urban Unemployment in Argentina, Brazil and Chile in 2001. Argentina

Brazil

Chile

Area (sq. km) 2,800,000 8,500,000 756,600 Population (in millions in 2001) 37,478 172,564 15,397 Urban open unemployment rate in 2001 17.4 6.2 9.1 14.8 0.1 2.6 Variation in urban open unemployment rate 1991–2001 Urban open unemployment rate in 1991 in Argentina was 2.6, in Brazil 6.3 and in Chile 11.7.

Source: Author’s extrapolation based on Nicola Phillips. The Southern Cone Model. The Political Economy of Regional Capitalist Development in Latin America. Routledge, 2004.

152

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

State, from the concentration of industries in Buenos Aires to the deindustrialization of the metropolis, furthered the negative impacts of an economy adverse to the interests of the majority of the numerous small entrepreneurs. By the year 2000, Buenos Aires presented the worst social indicators of its history, a myriad of empty industrial establishments, and a growing population of poor residents. Poverty in GBA was the result of poor migrants, inefﬁcient infrastructure, unemployment, and in the 1990s, declining wages. Brieﬂy, the historical sequence was as follows: In the late 1970s, when the dictatorship regime aimed to cast the CBA as the example of Argentinean development, it razed all slum from the city proper and relocated its residents all along the urban fringe. In the 1980s, even after the decay of industry triggered unemployment among the urban wage workers, the ﬂow of people into the city in search of jobs continued. Because urban infrastructure in the urban fringe was still lagging, many of the newcomers located in informal settlements. By the 1990s, even if the exploitation of natural resources was the base of Argentina’s insertion into the international economy, the urban environment continued to receive the bulk of economic migrants. Accordingly, population growth in the city kept its pace, regardless of raising unemployment and declining wages. Eventually, as provincial immigrants and urban workers integrated the suburban poor, the poverty of the GBA was meaningful to both the rural and industrial societies. From the beginnings of national industrialization, all national governments were well aware of the socially destabilizing potential of this mass of urban poor surrounding the capital city in the most densely populated region of the nation. As proved by the Peronist electoral success of 1987, the political management of the urban suburbs was fundamental in tilting the national political balance. In the 1990s, as the poverty of the suburbs deepened, the national presidency devised new ways to deal with the unsettling consequences of this structural mismatch between an overpopulation of job seekers around urban centers lacking infrastructure and the decay of national industries. Since controlling much of the nation’s poor required assuaging the demands of the urban periphery, once more, management of the metropolis merged with national politics. At all times, national institutions had to deal with GBA through a number of ad-hoc measures. First, the dictatorship regime of the 1960s skewed the distribution of legislative representation and ﬁscal monies against the PBA, the stronghold of the Peronist force. Then, the dictatorship regime of the 1970s promoted a top-down, non-participatory

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

153

decentralization of planning powers from the province to the municipalities that halted the development of suburban infrastructure. Next, the Peronists of the 1990s, who were in charge of both the Argentine presidency and the PBA government, relied on an ad-hoc law that gave the PBA governor direct access to national monies to use at his full discretion in the provision of social assistance to the poor living in the municipalities of the GBA. As a consequence, even if decentralized, the municipal governments of the urban fringe were further disempowered. While they could do little to modify national industrialization policies or to provide missing infrastructure, they suffered the direct consequences of a growing metropolitan population, prompting municipal governments to relax zoning codes as a way to foster local investments. Because, given the overall deindustrialization of the metropolis, one of the few investors interested in occupying these undeveloped peripheral lands next to the CBA were the developers of gated communities. This island of wealth grew amidst lagging suburbs, and hence social contrasts in the urban fringe were more dramatic than ever before. The interwoven unfolding of the national and urban development trajectories portrays the destabilizing consequences of an imbalanced national geography, which eventually undermined municipal governance and the basis for a more even distribution of development throughout the nation. While the core of industrial production moved away from Buenos Aires, it still retained the majority of the working people and, eventually, of unemployment. Ironically, this new spatial outlay diminished the economic relevance of the metropolis even if it increased its political relevance. The more consequential the poverty of GBA became for national elections, the fewer rights GBA residents and municipal governments received and the more obscure the management of social aid became. Besides the political manipulation of urban poverty in national politics, this also reveals some of the consequences of the different endurance of economic and spatial transformations. The changes in the model of economic accumulation soon made physical scenarios obsolete, in this case, the multitude of small industrial establishments that surrounded the CBA at the south and the west. Ideally, democratic practices should foster policies that buffer and compensate the cost of transformation, at least when they affect a sizeable amount of the population. Yet, this is hardly the case when governments proﬁt from concentrated poverty. On such occasions, governments are likely to perpetuate regional imbalances through top-down mechanisms, such as ad-hoc and discretionary measures, rather than through truly empowering, bottom-up devices.

154

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

NOTES 1. Although a couple of gated communities date back to the early 1930s, only in the 1990s did they become a popular housing choice among urban upper-middle class households. 2. Jose Martinez de Hoz, Argentine Minister of Economy, 1981. 3. Certainly, ‘The Cordobazo,’ a violent uprising led by industrial workers that took place in 1969 in the city of Cordoba, the second largest industrial concentration of the country, was still fresh in the memory of the regime (Brennan & Gordillo, 1994).

REFERENCES Acunˇa, M. L. (1995). Alfonsin y el Poder Econo´mico. El Fracaso de la Concertacio´n y los Pactos Corporativos entre 1983 y 1989. Ediciones Corregidor. Buenos Aires. Azpiazu, D. (1985). La Promocio´n Industrial en la Argentina: Efectos e Implicancias Estructurales, 1973–1983. Buenos Aires. CEPAL. Azpiazu, D., Basualdo, E., & Khavisse, M. (2004). El Nuevo Poder Econo´mico en la Argentina de los 80. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores Argentina. Badia, G. (2004). Cambiando el Foco: La Descentralizacio´n de Buenos Aires y la Regio´n Metropolitana. In: M. Escolar, G. Badia & S. Frederic (Eds), Federalismo y Descentralizacio´n en Grandes Ciudades. Buenos Aires en Perspectiva Comparada. Buenos Aires: Libros Prometeo. Bermudez, E. (1985). La disputa por un territorio. Los Partidos del Gran Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: CICSO. Brennan, J. P., & Gordillo, M. B. (1994). Working class protest, popular revolt, and urban insurrection in Argentina: The 1969 Cordobazo. Journal of Social History, 27(3), 477–498. Castells, M. (1977). The urban question: A Marxist approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. The information age: Economy, society and culture (Vol. I). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Cavallo, D. (1984). Volver a Crecer. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana-Planeta. Cavallo, D. (1989). La Economı´ a Argentina entre 1989 y 1991. In: I. Varela Cid (Ed.), Crecimiento en Democracia. Coleccio´n el Cid Productor. Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo de la Comunidad. Buenos Aires. Cavallo, D., & Cottani, J. A. (1997). Argentina’s convertibility plan and the IMF. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 87(May), 17–22. Coy, M., & Pholer, M. (2002). Gated communities in Latin American mega cities: Case studies in Brazil and Argentina. Environmental and Planning B: Planning and Design, 29, 335–370. Davis, D. (1994). The urban Leviathan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Davis, D. E. (2004). Discipline and development. Middle classes and prosperity in East Asia and Latin America. Cambridge University Press. de Antropologı´ a, 44(2): Sa˘o Paulo: Universidad de Sa˘o Paulo. Di Tella, T. (1962). La Teoria del Primer Impacto Economico. Estudio de Regionalizacio´n Social en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Instituto de Sociologı´ a de la Facultad de Filosofı´ a y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

155

Di Tella, G. (1989). Algunas Ideas para el Plan Econo´mico 1989. In: I. Varela Cid (Ed), Crecimiento en Democracia. Coleccio´n el Cid Productor. Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo de la Comunidad. Diaz Alejandro, C. (1970). Essays on the economic history of the Argentine republic. New Haven: Yale University Press. Domselaar, Z., Enrı´ quez, M., & Sala, N. (1981). Buenos Aires y las Metro´polis Mundiales. In: H. Difﬁeri (Ed.), Atlas de Buenos Aires. Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Secretaria de Cultura. Dorfman, A. (1983). Cincuenta An˜os de Industrializacio´n en la Argentina. 1930-1950. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Solar. Dornbusch, R. (1986). Argentina after Martinez de Hoz. In: G. Di Tella & R. Dornbusch (Eds), The political economy of Argentina. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. Ferrer, A. (2004). La Economı´a Argentina desde sus Orı´genes hasta Principios del Siglo XXI. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econo´mica. Ferrucci, R. (1986). La Promocio´n Industrial en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Galiani, S., Gertlan, P., Schardgorodsky, E., & Sturzzeneger, F. (2005). The beneﬁts and costs of privatization in Argentina. A microeconomic analysis. In: A. Chang & F. LopezSilanes (Eds), Privatization in Latin America. Myths and reality. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press and Washington DC, World Bank. Gasparini, L., Marchionni, M., & Escudero, W. S. (2000). La distribucio´n del ingreso en Argentina y en la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Cuadernos de Economı´ a 49 (March). La Plata, Provincia de Buenos Aires. Germani, G. (1980). Marginality. New Jersey: Transaction Books. Gobierno De La Ciudad Autonoma De Buenos Aires. (2002). Direccio´n General de Estadı´ sticas y Censos. Sistema Estadı´ stico de la Ciudad. Poblacio´n residente en villas de emergencia y asentamientos. SEC Informa. Buenos Aires: Enero-Febrero. Godio, J. (2000). Historia del Movimiento Obrero Argentino 1870–2000. Buenos Aires: Ediciones El Corregidor. Gonzalez Fraga, J. (1991). Argentine privatization in retrospect. In: W. Glade (Ed.), Privatization of public enterprises in Latin America. San Francisco, CA: ICS Press. Hanlon, J. (2000). How much debt must be cancelled? Journal of International Development, 12, 877–901. Herzer, H., & Pirez, P. (1988). Gobierno de la Ciudad y Crisis en Argentina. Buenos Aires: IIED. Grupo Editorial LAC. INDEC. (1993). Evolucio´n Reciente de la Pobreza 1988–1992. Buenos Aires. Republica Argentina. INDEC. (2001a). Censo Nacional de Poblacio´n de la Republica Argentina. Buenos Aires. Republica Argentina. INDEC. (2001b). Series Provincia de Buenos Aires y Ciudad Auto´noma de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires. Republica Argentina. INDEC. (2004). Censo Nacional Econo´mico 2001. Primeros resultados. Buenos Aires. Republica Argentina. Keeling, D. (1997). Contemporary Argentina. A geographical perspective. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Kosacoff, B. (2000). The development of Argentine industry and business strategies under stabilization and trade openness in the 1990s. In: B. Kossacoff (Ed.), Corporate Strategies under Structural Adjustment in Argentina. Responses by

156

NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

Industrial Firms to a New Set of Uncertainties. Saint Anthony’s College, Oxford: McMillan Press. Kosacoff, B., & Ramos, A. (2001). Cambios Contempora´neos en la Estructura Industrial 1975–2000. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Kulfas, M., & Schorr, M. (2000). Concentracio´n en la Industria Manufacturera Argentina Durante los Anos Noventa. FLACSO. Publicaciones del A´rea de Economı´a y Tecnologı´a. (July, 2000). La Nacio´n. (1998). Menem pedirı´ a que se elimine el fondo del conurbano bonaerense. 29 January 1998. La Nacio´n. (1996a). Pilar esta´ ma´s cerca de lo que se creı´ a. 28 June 1996. La Nacio´n. (1996b). El empleo es aun inferior al del 94. 15 December 1996. Law 20221. Lewis, P. H. (1990). The crisis of Argentine capitalism (Ley de Municipalizacio´n de Servicios 9347). Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Libertun de Duren, N. (2006). Planning a la Carte: The location patterns of gated communities around Buenos Aires in a decentralized planning context. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30(20, June), 308–327. Modigliani, F. (1989). Comments to Argentina’s economic policy 1976–1981. In: G. Di Tella & R. Dambusch (Eds), The political economy of Argentina 1946–1983. Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Anthony’s College, Oxford. Mora y Araujo, M., & Peter, S. (1983). Peronism and economic development. In: F. Turner & J. E. Miguens (Eds), Juan Peron and the reshaping of Argentina. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Press. Naim, M. (1999). Washington consensus or confusion? Foreign Policy, Spring(118), 86–103. Oszlack, O. (1984). Proceso, Crisis y Transicio´n Democra´tica. Buenos Aires: CEAL. Oviedo, 1996. Peralta Ramos, M. (1992). The political economy of Argentina. Power and Class since 1930. Boulder: Westview Press. Pirez, P. (1994). Buenos Aires Metropolitana. Polı´tica y Gestio´n de Ciudad. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de Ame´rica Latina. Pirez, P. (1999). Gestio´n de servicios y calidad urbana en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Revista EURE, 25(76), 125–140. Pirez, P. (2002). Fragmentation and privatization of the Buenos Aires metropolitan city. Environment and Urbanization, 14(1), 145–158. Portes, A., & Roberts, B. (2005). La Ciudad Bajo el Libre Mercado: La Urbanizacio´n en Ame´rica Latina durante los An˜os del Experimento Neoliberal. Center for Migration and Development Working Paper #05-01 (February 2005). Princeton, NJ. Princeton University. Porto, A. (1999). Preguntas y Respuestas sobre Coparticipacio´n Federal de Impuestos. Porto, A., & Cont, W. (1998). Presupuestos Provinciales, transferencias intergubernamentales, y equidad. Desarrollo Econo´mico. Nu´mero Especial 38. Buenos Aires: Fundacio´n Atlantis. Powell, A. (1998). Argentina. In: K. Fukasaku & R. Haussman (Eds), Democracy, Democratization, and Deﬁcits in Latin America. Washington, D.C.: OECD/International Development Bank. Powers, N. (1995). The politics of poverty in Argentina in the 1990s. Journal of InterAmerican Studies and World Affairs, 37(4), 89–137. Repetto, F., & Alonso, G. (2004). La Economı´ a Polı´ tica de la Polı´ tica Social Argentina: Una Mirada desde la Descentralizacio´n. Divisio´n de Desarrollo Social. Serie Polı´ticas Sociales, 85. Santiago de Chile. UN CEPAL.

Intertwining National and Urban Policies

157

Sassen, S. (1991). The global city. New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sbatella, J. (2001). Ana´lisis de las Transferencias Provinciales a los Municipios Bonaerenses. Conference Procedeeings of Sexto Seminario Internacional sobre Federalismo Fiscal (November 26). Municipio de Pilar, Provincia de Buenos Aires. Schvarzer, J. (1987). Promocio´n Industrial en Argentina. Caracterı´sticas, Evolucio´n, y Resultados. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales sobre el Estado y la Administracio´n. Buenos Aires. Schydlowsky, D. (1995). Structural adjustment for the 1990s. In: D. Schydlowsky (Ed.), Structural adjustment: Retrospect and prospect. Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood, Praeger. Scobie, J. E. (1964). Argentina: A city and a nation. New York: Oxford University Press. Sikkink, K. (1991). Ideas and institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sjaastadt, L. (1989). Argentina’s economic policy 1976–1981. In: G. Di Tella & R. Ambush (Eds), The political economy of Argentina 1946–1983. Macmillan Oxford Press. Smith, W. C. (1989). Authoritarianism and the crisis of Argentine political economy. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Squires, G. D. (2002). Urban sprawl and the uneven development of metropolitan America. In: G. D. Squires (Ed.), Urban sprawl: Causes, consequences, and policy responses (pp. 1–22). Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Suarez, O. (1999). El Territorio Argentino. Centro de Documentacio´n Urbanı´ stica. Facultad de Arquitectura, Disen˜o y Urbanismo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Teubal, M. (1996). Structural adjustment, democracy, and the state in the Argentina. In: A. E Fernandez Jilberto & A. Mammen (Eds), Liberalization in the developing world. Institutional and economic changes in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. New York: Routledge. Torres, H. (2001). Cambios socio territoriales en Buenos Aires durante la de´cada de 1990. EURE, 27(80), 33–56. Touraine, A. (1987). Actores sociales y sistemas politicos en America. PREALC: Santiago de Chile. UIA – Union Industrial Argentina. (2001). In: Observatorio Permanente de las PyMIs Argentinas (Ed.), Evolucion Territorial-Sectorial de las PYMIS. 1994–2000. Study Directed by Dr. Vicente Donato. Buenos Aires, Urban Code 8912/77 of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Vinocur, P., & Halperin, L. (2004). Pobreza y Polı´ ticas Sociales en la Argentina de los Noventa. Divisio´n de Desarrollo Social. Serie Polı´ticas Sociales (Vol. 85). Santiago de Chile: UN CEPAL. Walter, R. J. (1984). Politics, parties, and elections in Argentina’s province of Buenos Aires, 1912–42. The Hispanic American Historical Review, 64(4), 707–735. Williamson, J. (1990). Latin American adjustment: How much has happened? Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics. Williamson, J. (2000). What Should the World Bank Think About the Washington Consensus? World Bank Research Observer (Vol. 15). Washington, D.C.: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. World Bank. (1985). Argentine Economic Memorandum. Washington, D.C.

A TALE OF TWO WALLED CITIES: NEO-LIBERALIZATION AND ENCLOSURE IN JOHANNESBURG AND JERUSALEM Andy Clarno ABSTRACT This study explores the simultaneous transitions in Palestine/Israel and South Africa at the end of the 20th century through an analysis of the shifting geography of Johannesburg and Jerusalem. After analyzing the relationship between political, economic and spatial restructuring, I examine the walled enclosures that mark the landscapes of postapartheid Johannesburg and post-Oslo Jerusalem. I conclude by arguing that these walled enclosures reveal several interconnected aspects of the relationship between neo-liberal restructuring and the militarization of urban space. They also exemplify different conﬁgurations of sovereignty under conditions of neo-liberalism and empire.

The year 1994 was a watershed of hope for millions of South Africans, Palestinians, Israelis and observers around the world. Two of the most intractable conﬂicts of the late 20th century appeared on the brink of negotiated settlement. On May 9, South Africans participated in the ﬁrst

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 159–205 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19005-6

159

160

ANDY CLARNO

elections based on the principle of ‘‘one person, one vote.’’ An overwhelming majority of the population chose Nelson Mandela – a man who had spent 27 years in prison – to be the ﬁrst Black president. After years of struggle and violent repression, the liberation movement had overcome the morally bankrupt policy of racial segregation known as apartheid. Perhaps South Africa would ﬁnally become what Archbishop Desmond Tutu called a ‘‘Rainbow Nation.’’ Just weeks later, on July 1, Yasser Arafat returned to the Gaza Strip – 27 years after its occupation by Israeli troops. In secret talks, representatives of the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had agreed upon a Declaration of Principles – the ‘‘Oslo Accords’’ – which they signed on September 13, 1993. The pervasive optimism was reinforced when the two sides signed further agreements in April and May 1994, preparing the way for the return of Arafat, the formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the establishment of limited self-government for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps there would be peace in the Middle East after all. This moment of hope will remain a potent symbol of the simultaneous transitions that were reshaping social relations in Palestine/Israel1 and South Africa at the end of the 20th century. I begin this paper by arguing that neither the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa nor the Oslo ‘‘peace process’’ in Palestine/Israel can be understood apart from the neo-liberal restructuring of the South African and Israeli economies. While South Africa and Israel followed similar paths from racial Fordism to neo-liberalism, they underwent distinctly different political transitions. The South African state was democratized, while Israel merely restructured its occupation. I argue that, despite the transition to democracy in South Africa, neo-liberal restructuring has entrenched the race and class inequalities of apartheid. In Palestine/Israel, neo-liberal restructuring has helped constitute a new Israeli strategy of indirect rule through separation and enclosure. With this as my starting point, I then examine the effects of these largescale processes on the spatial restructuring of post-apartheid Johannesburg and post-Oslo Jerusalem. In Johannesburg, the reclamation of urban space by Black South Africans has been accompanied by market-based reforms that are contributing to permanent unemployment, an intense housing crisis and unprecedented levels of inequality. While capital and the state attempt to remove poor residents from downtown Johannesburg, the South African elite responds to a racialized fear of crime by withdrawing to a world of walled enclosures and private security in the northern suburbs. At the same

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

161

time, Israel has been building walled enclosures around the Gaza Strip and the cities of the West Bank while economic restructuring facilitates separation by eliminating the demand for Palestinian workers. Responding to a growing fear of terror, this wall is severing East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and contributing to a crisis of housing and poverty for Palestinians in the city. I argue that these walled enclosures reveal several interconnected aspects of the relationship between neo-liberal restructuring and the militarization of urban space. They also exemplify different conﬁgurations of sovereignty under conditions of globalization and empire. Overall, they demonstrate the importance of spatial enclosures to the restructuring of power relations at multiple geographical scales.

THEORETICAL OVERVIEW This research builds upon nearly four decades of comparative historical research on Israel and South Africa. The most important scholarly comparisons include analyses of ethnic conﬂict in settler societies, identity and state formation, the importance of the religious ‘‘covenant’’ to the settler societies and national liberation strategies (Jabbour, 1970; Greenberg, 1980; Mitchell, 2000; Greenstein, 1995; Akenson, 1992; Younis, 2000). Despite this tradition of comparative historical analysis and the increasing frequency of comparisons between contemporary Israel and apartheid-era South Africa (Bishara, 2002; Davis, 2003; Abunimah, 2006; Carter, 2006), there have been relatively few comparative analyses of the simultaneous transitions in Palestine/Israel and South Africa during the 1990s. Some analysts have discussed the divergent paths of the ‘‘peace processes’’ in Palestine/Israel and South Africa. But rather than analyzing the actual transitions, these works have focused on conﬂict resolution and the search for peace (Giliomee & Gagiano, 1990; Adam, 2002; Gidron, Katz, & Hasenfeld, 2002). This paper, therefore, proposes a new framework for the comparative analysis of contemporary South Africa and Palestine/ Israel – one that examines the relationship between political, economic and spatial restructuring. While several studies of South Africa have insisted that the political transition of the 1990s cannot be understood separately from the neo-liberal restructuring of the South African economy (Bond, 2000b; Marais, 2001; Saul, 2001; Alexander, 2002; Desai, 2002; Hart, 2002), critical analysis of the Palestinian/Israeli conﬂict has focused almost entirely on the ostensibly political aspects of the struggle – emphasizing the unequal power relations

162

ANDY CLARNO

and the overwhelming ability of Israel to shape and manipulate the Oslo process (Aruri, 1995; Said, 1996, 2001, 2004). This paper, on the other hand, contributes to an emerging body of literature that highlights the relationship between the Oslo process and the simultaneous neo-liberal restructuring of the Israeli economy (Byrne, 1997; Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000a; Samara, 2000, 2001; Bishara, 2002; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Hanieh, 2003; Lagerquist, 2003; Hanaﬁ & Tabar, 2005; Beinin & Stein, 2006; Honig-Parnass & Haddad, 2007). To analyze the growing militarization of urban space, this work builds on the ‘‘spatial turn’’ in the social sciences that emerged with the work of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. I take Harvey’s ([1982]1999, 1989, 1996) focus on the crisis-induced restructuring of space as my point of departure and follow Lefebvre ([1974]1991) in analyzing the interplay between the state, capital, social movements and everyday life practices in the production of space. I also draw on more recent analyses of spatial restructuring under neo-liberal capitalism. Brenner and Theodore’s (2002) work on the practices that constitute the geographies of ‘‘actually existing neo-liberalism’’ is crucial for taking the analysis of neo-liberalism beyond a focus on abstract economic policies. And Davis (1990, 2006) and Caldeira (2000) have provided invaluable studies of life on both sides of the walled enclosures that increasingly mark the urban spaces of empire. Particularly important for this paper are two concepts that have emerged from the literature on space: First, ‘‘revanchism’’ – a term that Smith (1996, p. 45) borrows from the French political arena, where it refers to ‘‘a rightwing movement built on popular nationalism and devoted to a vengeful and reactionary retaking of the country.’’ In his analysis of gentriﬁcation in New York City, Smith employs the concept of revanchism to describe a rightwing urban politics that: (1) grows out of ‘‘the race/class/gender terror felt by middle- and upper-class whites’’ (Smith, 1996, p. 211) and (2) introduces viciousness and vengeance into efforts to ‘‘reclaim’’ the city from people of color, the working class, gays and lesbians, the homeless, the unemployed, women, squatters, immigrants, etc. (Smith, 1996, pp. 44, 227). Recently, Smith has suggested that revanchist politics have been globalized as cities around the world combine gentriﬁcation with zero-tolerance, law-and-order policies (Smith, 2006). While Smith highlights revanchist politics at the scale of the city, the concept can usefully be expanded to account for vengeful, reactionary efforts to reclaim and secure spaces at multiple geographic scales. The second concept that I employ – ‘‘enclosure’’ – has two overlapping meanings. On the one hand, social theorists such as David Harvey and

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

163

Massimo de Angelis have returned to Marx’s ([1887]1967) discussion of the 16th-century enclosure of the English ‘‘commons’’ to understand contemporary neo-liberal restructuring. Harvey (2003, 2005) argues that the neo-liberal restoration of ruling class economic power has been achieved primarily through the redistribution, rather than the generation, of wealth. He describes this process of redistribution through privatization, ﬁnancialization, corporate welfare, etc. as ‘‘accumulation by dispossession’’ or ‘‘a new wave of ‘enclosing the commons’’’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 159; ibid., 2003, p. 148). De Angelis (1998, 2001) uses similar language to describe the expansion of market domination through the commodiﬁcation of previously ‘‘de-commodiﬁed’’ social goods such as water or public housing. Without trying to mask important differences between Harvey and de Angelis, I want to underline the growing attention to ‘‘enclosure’’ as a mechanism of neo-liberal restructuring. At the same time, urban researchers such as Davis (1990), Caldeira (2000), Marcuse (1995, 1997a, 1997b) and Murray (2004) have argued that spatial enclosures are one of the deﬁning features of ‘‘post-modern urbanism.’’ According to these analysts, the contemporary militarization of urban space has proceeded through the proliferation of walled enclosures. Most of this literature focuses on the fortiﬁed enclaves of the elite – such as gated communities in Los Angeles and walled suburbs in Sa˜o Paulo. But this literature also draws attention to the enclosure of marginalized populations in what Marcuse (1997a) calls ‘‘ghettos of exclusion.’’ This paper examines both forms of spatial enclosure as well as the neo-liberal ‘‘enclosure of the commons.’’ It analyzes the relationship between political transition, neoliberal restructuring and the walled enclosures that are rapidly becoming deﬁnitive features of life in the new empire.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Two key factors distinguish the Israeli and South African colonial projects. First, the question of timing. Although there has been a Jewish presence in Palestine/Israel for thousands of years, Zionism emerged during an era marked by the spread of nationalist ideologies. Not only was Zionism a selfconsciously nationalist project, it also confronted an Arab population developing its own national identity (Elon, [1971]1983; Khalidi, 1997; Laqueur, 2003; Pappe, 2004). It therefore brought two distinct national identities – Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Arab – into competition for the same territory. In Southern Africa, on the other hand, the Dutch and later

164

ANDY CLARNO

British conquests took place long before the development of national identity by either the European settlers or the colonized African populations. Despite efforts by the apartheid regime to divide the African majority into 10 distinct ‘‘nations’’ and some African nationalist calls to expel the European settlers, the dominant current within the anti-apartheid movement argued that the colonizers and colonized were all South Africans and should therefore be included within a single political community (Freedom Charter, 1955).2 The construction of inclusive versus exclusive national identities has thoroughly shaped the dynamics of these conﬂicts (Greenstein, 1995). The second fundamental difference between the colonial projects in Palestine/Israel and South Africa is the question of labor (Greenstein, 1995; Shaﬁr, 1996). With the discovery of gold and diamonds in late 19th-century South Africa, European settlers suddenly became dependent on a large supply of inexpensive, unskilled African workers. The state created separate ‘‘native reserves’’ – later known as Bantustans – as a spatial strategy for not only maintaining segregation and governing the African population, but also for regulating the African labor force (Wolpe, 1972; No Sizwe, 1979; Mamdani, 1996; Lester, 1998). Both before and after the formal adoption of ‘‘apartheid’’ in 1948, South African social relations were shaped by the contradictory tensions between the Europeans’ desire to exclude and expel Black South Africans3 and their absolute dependence on African labor – as well as Black resistance to both exploitation and exclusion. The Israeli economy, on the other hand, has never been fully dependent on Palestinian labor. The Zionist movement sought to build a purely Jewish economy in Palestine – in part through an exclusionary labor strategy that advocated the employment of only ‘‘Hebrew labor’’ (Shaﬁr, 1996). Despite this goal, early Jewish settlements often hired Arab workers from neighboring villages to carry out the hard work of cultivation. Similarly, Israeli capital exploited the labor of Palestinian citizens of Israel after 1948 and absorbed even larger reserves of cheap Palestinian labor after occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 (Semyonov & Lewin-Epstein, 1987; Samara, 1992; Roy, 1995). By the late 1980s, Palestinians from the occupied territories composed 50% of the labor force in construction and agriculture. But overall, Palestinians from the occupied territories never accounted for more than 10% of the Israeli labor force (Ram, 2000, p. 231). Israeli capital has never depended on massive inputs of unskilled labor. Israel has therefore avoided the contradictory dynamics that shaped apartheid in South Africa. Instead, the development of Israel as a Jewish state has been shaped by an exclusionary dynamic that made possible the large-scale expulsion of Palestinian Arabs in 1948 (Masalha, 1992, 1997; Morris, 2004)

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

165

as well as the continuing popularity among Jewish Israelis of population ‘‘transfer’’4 as a solution to Israel’s demographic concerns (Barzilai, 2005).5 The minimal Israeli dependence on Palestinian labor also explains why the labor movement has played such a minor role in the Palestinian struggle.6 Despite these historical differences, Israel and South Africa developed several structural similarities by the mid-1980s. As settler states, Israel and South Africa excluded their colonized populations from political participation. In South Africa, Africans were denied all political rights – except in the Bantustans – while the so-called ‘‘colored’’ and ‘‘Asian’’ populations received only limited political rights. And the South African state maintained indirect rule over the Bantustans, regardless of whether they became formally ‘‘independent.’’ While Israel granted political rights to Palestinians who became citizens in 1948, the state continues to deny all citizenship rights to the vast majority of the Palestinian population – those living in the occupied territories, in the refugee camps of the diaspora and in exile. The Israeli state extended its sovereignty throughout Palestine/Israel after 1967 by imposing direct military rule over the occupied territories. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were governed by military courts, military laws and military patrols (Hajjar, 2005). Israel and South Africa also managed centralized, racial Fordist economies characterized by state support for domestic production, a split labor market and a strong welfare state for the white and Jewish populations based on the super-exploitation of the colonized population (Saul & Gelb, 1986; Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000b; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002). Much like the South African Bantustans, the occupied Palestinian territories were systematically de-developed and integrated into the Israeli economy as labor reserves and captive markets (Samara, 1992; Roy, 1995). Although Israeli capital never developed an absolute dependence on cheap labor, Palestinian workers became heavily dependent on jobs in Israel7 (Roy, 1995). By the late 1980s, nearly 40% of Palestinian workers crossed the ‘‘Green Line’’ to work in Israel every day – mostly in the agricultural and construction sectors (Farsakh, 2005, pp. 209–210). Finally, both Israel and South Africa faced economic crises and popular uprisings. The spread of militant labor actions and mass insurgencies among Black South Africans during the 1970s and 1980s created a major crisis for the ruling elite – a crisis in both its system of rule and its economic system (Lodge, 1983; Saul & Gelb, 1986). The economic crisis was intensiﬁed by the crisis of global Fordism and international efforts to isolate the apartheid regime through economic boycotts and divestments. By the mid-1980s, many white South Africans – especially the owners of major banks and

166

ANDY CLARNO

mining companies – realized that the contradictory logics of exclusion and exploitation could no longer be sustained. Recognizing the imminent collapse of the apartheid regime they had supported for so long, the major capitalists reached out to the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), promising to help facilitate the transition to democracy as long as the ANC was willing to abandon its talk of socialism and the redistribution of wealth (Shaﬁr, 1999; Bond, 2000b). Likewise, Israel faced high rates of inﬂation and stagnation, the growing crisis of global Fordism and an Arab boycott that severely restricted foreign investment in the Israeli economy (Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000b; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, pp. 192–197). The economic crisis became increasingly politicized during the intifada, the six-year popular Palestinian uprising that began in 1987. Palestinian youth with rocks and slings confronted heavily armed Israeli soldiers, while a network of popular committees promoted selfsufﬁciency and targeted the Israeli economy with tax resistance, boycotts, commercial strikes and labor actions (Hilterman, 1991). As the crisis deepened, Israeli elites began promoting peace with the Palestinians as a necessary precondition for solving the economic crisis (Shaﬁr, 1999; Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000b; Beinin, 2006). In the mid-1980s, Israel and South Africa were settler states with Fordist economies confronting popular uprisings and economic crises. In both countries, the corporate elite – insisting that liberalization was the solution to the economic crisis – came to see political unrest as a barrier to integration with the global economy (Shaﬁr, 1999). By the early 1990s, both states had adopted a number of market-based economic reforms and conducted initial negotiations with the leadership of the ANC and the PLO. From the start, therefore, the political transitions of the 1990s were coupled with neo-liberal economic restructuring.

TRANSITIONS TO EMPIRE: SOUTH AFRICA AND PALESTINE/ISRAEL The political, economic and spatial restructuring of Johannesburg and Jerusalem took place against the backdrop of Desert Storm, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the proclamation of a ‘‘New World Order’’ and the hegemony of the neo-liberal Washington Consensus. These events marked an important shift in global power relations and the emergence of a new empire (Hardt & Negri, 2000). Since the rise of the second Bush regime,

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

167

Hardt and Negri’s description of ‘‘Empire’’ – boundless, decentered and biopolitical – has faced a barrage of devastating critiques. The most important critiques challenge claims by Hardt and Negri that the space of imperial sovereignty is smooth, that the United States military simply polices the Empire and that the multitude is moving within and against Empire. While accepting these and other critiques, I believe that it is worth recuperating Hardt and Negri’s analysis of imperial sovereignty as a hierarchical network of power that operates across the globe through the interplay of US military domination, corporate globalization, neo-liberal capitalism and biopolitical production. Rather than simply an outgrowth of shifting power relations at the global scale, this empire was constituted by a multiplicity of political, economic and spatial transformations at local, national and regional scales. Among the more notable moments in this process were the transitions during the 1990s in South Africa and Palestine/Israel, Johannesburg and Jerusalem. In this section, I analyze the transitions at the territorial scale of the state. In the next section, I will discuss the impact of these processes on spatial restructuring at the urban scale in Johannesburg and Jerusalem. The transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa was accompanied and facilitated by the neo-liberal restructuring of the South African economy. Facing an escalating insurrection in the streets, growing international isolation and increasing pressure from the major business owners, the apartheid government introduced a series of political and economic reforms. Beginning with the creation of separate ‘‘Asian’’ and ‘‘colored’’ legislatures and the opening of the African housing market to private investment, the reforms consistently linked political and economic liberalization. By the early 1990s, these reforms included the elimination of the pass laws, the Group Areas Act and the ‘‘Bantustans’’; the privatization of state-run industries; the release of political prisoners; the liberalization of trade to promote foreign investment and the legalization of the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Pan-African Congress (PAC). The state also began a series of negotiations that, by 1994, brought an end to the racist laws that had deﬁned the apartheid era (Bond, 2000b; Marais, 2001). Through this process, the South African state was liberalized and democratized. During the negotiations, the ANC made major economic concessions to relieve the fears of white South Africans and win the support of the South African and global business elites. To prevent capital ﬂight, the ANC dropped its demand to nationalize the land, the banks and the mines and agreed to fully protect private property – even though it had been acquired

168

ANDY CLARNO

through brutal wars and forced removals. The ANC also agreed to take on the $20 billion international debt that had been accumulated by the apartheid government (Bond, 2000b). And in 1996, the ANC government abandoned the ‘‘Reconstruction and Development Programme’’ (RDP) – a partially redistributive economic policy developed in conversation with Black workers and grassroots organizations – in favor of the ironically named ‘‘Growth, Employment and Redistribution’’ (GEAR). This neoliberal macro-economic strategy promotes export-oriented industry and the further privatization of state-owned businesses and municipal services (Bond, 2000b; Marais, 2001; Lodge, 2002). Economic restructuring contributed to the collapse of industrial employment, the loss of over one million formal sector jobs in the ﬁrst ﬁve years of the post-apartheid era, the increasing precariousness and casualization of waged labor and growing levels of permanent structural unemployment (Tomlinson, Beauregard, Bremner, & Mangcu, 2003b, p. 15; Barchiesi, 2005). The informal sector has grown so large that the state recently adopted a ‘‘two-economies’’ strategy for regulating both formal waged labor and the growing informal sector (Barchiesi, 2005). The ofﬁcial unemployment rate of 25.5% reaches 40% when using expanded deﬁnitions that include those who have stopped looking for work (Statistics South Africa, 2007a; McKinley, 2006). Hardest hit by these changes, of course, are the poor, African communities that led the struggle against apartheid and are now being devastated by poverty and HIV/AIDS. The gulf between the wealthiest and poorest South Africans has grown so wide that postapartheid South Africa is now ranked as one of the three most unequal countries in the world (Human Sciences Research Council, 2004).8 While there have been important achievements in the extension of basic services to places that had been abandoned by the apartheid regime, the government backtracked on promises to provide housing, land and basic services to the dispossessed African majority. Despite constitutional guarantees of housing for all and the construction of 2.2 million lowincome houses over the last 12 years, the housing backlog continues to expand more rapidly than the delivery of new homes (Xundu & Boyle, 2007). The rising cost of shelter has generated widespread evictions and multiplied the number of people living in squatter camps (Bond, 2000a). Although some evictees are relocated to distant townships on the urban periphery, most evictions fail to comply with the Constitutional Court’s important Grootboom decision requiring the provision of alternative accommodations before carrying out an eviction (Constitutional Court of South Africa, 2000).9 In 2004, the South African government announced

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

169

plans to eliminate squatter camps prior to the inﬂux of tourists for the World Cup in 2010. The ﬁrst high proﬁle slum clearance project – the N2 Gateway Project outside of Cape Town – failed miserably after just one year of implementation. But efforts to remove informal settlements continue. To transform the geography of apartheid, the post-apartheid state initiated a three-pronged process of land reform. First, people dispossessed of their land after the passage of the Natives’ Land Act in 1913 could claim restitution. By 1913, however, Europeans had already acquired 87% of South African land. Second, the government introduced a reform of the land tenure system to ensure security for labor tenants. Third, the government introduced a ‘‘land redistribution’’ program based on World Bank-approved ‘‘willing seller, willing buyer’’ guidelines. Through this market-based program, the state offers minimal ﬁnancial support for the purchase of white-owned land by Black clients. The program depends upon the willingness of white landowners to offer their lands for sale and to agree on a price (Greenberg, 2004). After more than 10 years, these programs have led to the redistribution of a mere 4% of South African land (Ntsebeza, 2007). This has enabled the growth of a small class of Black corporate farmers while ensuring that the land remains predominantly in the hands of 46,000 white corporate farmers (Nzimande, 2004). Meanwhile, an estimated 28 million South Africans remain landless – either as tenants on white farms, homeless in the cities or squatters in the townships (Landless People’s Movement, 2005). During the 1980s, the boycott of municipal service payments and the demand for free basic services became important weapons in the struggle against apartheid. After 1994, the ANC reversed its support for free basic services and began promoting dept repayment through the Masakhane (‘‘Lets build together’’) campaign. But the privatization and corporatization of water, electricity, health care and education has made these basic services increasingly difﬁcult for the poor majority to afford. With rising costs and growing unemployment, non-payment has continued. Because of neo-liberal stipulations that municipalities adopt ‘‘cost-recovery’’ strategies, poor South African townships have now become testing grounds for ‘‘pre-paid’’ water and electricity meters. These meters automatically cut off the ﬂow of water or electricity whenever a resident’s previously purchased credits run out. Their installation has sparked protests, social movements and a case before the Constitutional Court (Bond, 2000a; Beall, Crankshaw, & Parnell, 2002; McDonald & Ruiters, 2005; von Schnitzler, 2006). In April 2008, the Court declared the forced installation of pre-paid meters unconstitutional.

170

ANDY CLARNO

Confronting an HIV/AIDS epidemic that claims the lives of 300,000 South Africans each year, the public health system is severely underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded. South Africans have had to ﬁght for access to life-saving anti-retroviral medication against a President and a Minister of Health who deny the link between HIV and AIDS (Treatment Action Campaign, 2007). Meanwhile, South Africa’s public clinics, hospitals and schools are experiencing a devastating loss of doctors, nurses and teachers due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and competition from the private sector. Furthermore, educational desegregation has been accompanied by the introduction of school fees. While the majority of schools are able to raise less than R10,000 (B$1400) annually from fees, schools in wealthy neighborhoods often charge that much for each student (Roithmayr, 2002). This has enlarged the resource gap between institutions and prevented poor students from attending the top schools. For millions of poor Black South Africans, therefore, neo-liberal ‘‘liberation’’ has eliminated jobs, evicted families from their homes, denied life-saving medication to people living with HIV/AIDS and commodiﬁed basic services such as water, electricity, health care and education. By the late 1990s, uprisings had begun against the ANC government in townships and squatter camps throughout the country (Desai, 2002). Over the last seven years, waves of revolt have shaken the country – from Durban to Cape Town, from Johannesburg to Harrismith. Some of these uprisings arrived dramatically and then quickly disappeared. Others have crystallized into lasting social movements such as the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF), the Landless Peoples Movement (LPM) and now Abahlali base Mjondolo – a shackdwellers movement based in the squatter camps around Durban. In 2005 alone, South Africa witnessed over 5,000 service delivery protests – a number comparable to the early 1990s (Freedom of Expression Institute, 2006). These protests make clear that, despite the transition to democracy in South Africa, neo-liberal restructuring has entrenched the race and class inequalities that characterized apartheid. Unlike South Africa, the transition in Palestine/Israel did not lead to a democratization of the state apparatus. Instead, neo-liberalization has helped constitute a new colonial strategy of separation and enclosure. In 1985, the Israeli government signed a free-trade agreement with the United States and adopted the neo-liberal ‘‘Emergency Economic Stabilization Plan,’’ which reduced state spending and control over the economy, liberalized trade and investment, put downward pressure on wages and began to dismantle the welfare state (Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000b). Over the last

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

171

20 years, industries owned by the state and the Histadrut have been privatized – as have two-third of the kibbutzim (collective farms) – and capital deregulation has allowed Israeli ﬁrms to attract foreign direct investment (Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000b; Grinberg & Shaﬁr, 2000; Shalev, 2000; McCarthy, 2007).10 The major proponents of economic liberalization, however, argued that Israel could never fully integrate into the global economy as long as conﬂict with the Palestinians (and the Arab boycott) continued (Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000c; Beinin, 2006; Peled, 2006).11 As the ﬁrst intifada shook Israeli conﬁdence in direct military occupation, the state initiated a series of reforms that eventually crystallized into a new strategy for indirectly governing the Palestinians (LAW, n.d.; Hammami & Tamari, 2006, p. 264). In 1991, the Israeli military began requiring Palestinians to obtain permits to enter Israel or East Jerusalem. Over time, these permits became increasingly restrictive and difﬁcult to obtain. The Israeli government then reached out to the PLO leadership in secret negotiations that formed the basis for what became the Oslo ‘‘peace process.’’ Surrendering many of its political objectives, the PLO agreed to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a limited selfgoverning body for Palestinians in selected regions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Oslo Accords, 1993). This allowed Israel to carry out a strategic redeployment of its troops from the streets of Palestinian cities to military checkpoints on their periphery (LAW, n.d.). Israel produced a series of isolated Palestinian enclosures by encircling each population center with military checkpoints, roadblocks, settlements and bypass roads. Charged with the task of policing the Palestinians and suppressing resistance inside the enclaves, the PA became an intermediary in Israel’s strategy of indirect rule (Rabbani, 2006). Israel rules the Palestinians by controlling their movement through the permit system and a policy that Israel calls ‘‘closure’’ and Palestinians call ‘‘siege.’’ Since 1993, Israel has maintained a generalized ‘‘closure’’ of the Palestinian enclaves. The military regulates Palestinian movement by regularly and arbitrarily varying the severity of this ‘‘closure.’’ While the generalized ‘‘closure’’ requires permits for entry into Israel and for movement between enclaves, ‘‘full closures’’ prevent movement between enclaves and sometimes within enclaves, and ‘‘curfews’’ prevent Palestinians from leaving their houses (Hanieh, 2006). This new strategy of indirect rule was reinforced through intensiﬁed land conﬁscations, home demolitions, settlement construction and forced removals in the territory that was not densely populated by Palestinians. An enormous network of ‘‘bypass roads’’ linked the settlements to one another and to Israel, while encircling and

172

ANDY CLARNO

isolating the Palestinian population centers. Permits, checkpoints and ‘‘closure’’ became the principal instruments for enforcing the new governmental strategy of separation, enclosure and indirect rule. The reorganization of the Israeli occupation and the neo-liberal restructuring of the Israeli economy constitute a single process of transition. The Oslo negotiations were driven by the United States and Israeli capital and informed by the neo-liberal principles of the Washington Consensus as well as the belief that peace with the Palestinians would open the markets of the Arab world (Shaﬁr & Peled, 2000c; Beinin, 2006). When Shimon Peres drew up blueprints for the ‘‘New Middle East’’ that he envisioned emerging from the Oslo process, he described the core of the new system as a regional free trade zone that would allow Israeli ﬁrms to invest their capital throughout the Middle East (Peres, 1993). Immediately after the Oslo Accords were signed, the US government along with the World Economic Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations began organizing a series of Middle East/North Africa (MENA) economic summits that promoted the adoption of neo-liberal policies by Arab countries and encouraged joint ventures between capitalists from Israel and the Arab world (Programme: Middle East/North Africa Economic Summit, 1994; Paris, 2000). Although the election of Benjamin Netanyahu and the breakdown of negotiations prevented the emergence of a Middle East free trade zone (Peled, 2006, p. 51), peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt allowed Israeli ﬁrms to take advantage of cheap labor in the region by outsourcing production that was previously performed by Palestinian subcontractors (Byrne, 1997; Samara, 2000, p. 28; see also Drori, 2000). The economic policies of the PA – based largely on a major report published by the World Bank in 1993 – have remained under the constant supervision of the World Bank and US Treasury (World Bank, 1993).12 The ﬁrst substantive accord signed by Israel and the PLO – the Protocol on Economic Relations (1994) – established a customs union between Israel and the PA. A ‘‘closure-proof’’ export-oriented industrial zone was established along the fence surrounding the Gaza Strip, with several more planned for the West Bank (Lagerquist, 2003). Palestinian economists, industrialists and merchants began to talk about the future State of Palestine becoming the ‘‘Singapore of the Middle East’’ – producing affordable consumer goods for export to the entire world. International assistance (partly in the form of loans13) has enabled donor states to shape Palestinian economic development, while ensuring that the PA remains in debt and therefore subject to external pressure for political reform and structural adjustment (Samara, 2000, p. 31; Hanaﬁ & Tabar, 2005). For years, the PA worked hard to join

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

173

the World Trade Organization, ﬁnally achieving observer status in 2005 (European Commission, 2005). Now, with support from the World Bank, the PA is privatizing basic services and installing pre-paid water and electricity meters throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip (International Press Center, 2005; Jerusalem District Electric Company, 2006; World Bank, 2006). And since 2000, Salam Fayyad, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative and the darling of the US government, has been installed as Minister of Finance (and now Prime Minister) and charged with the further neo-liberalization of the PA.14 Palestinian subcontracting industries such as textiles, shoes and furniture have been devastated by the opening of the market to cheap Asian imports and Israeli outsourcing to Jordan and Egypt. In the early 1990s, Israel began reducing the demand for Palestinian labor by importing low paid foreign workers from China, Romania and Thailand to perform unskilled labor. By 2003, the Israeli economy had absorbed nearly 300,000 foreign workers (Ellman & Laacher, 2003). In addition, over one million Russians have immigrated to Israel since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Russian economy. At the same time, Israel has undergone a major transition from a labor-intensive economy centered on production for the domestic market to a service-oriented, high-tech economy integrated into the circuits of global capitalism (Ram, 2000). This shift has undermined the basis of agricultural and industrial labor, further eliminating the need for Palestinian workers and crippling both Palestinian and Israeli labor unions (Grinberg & Shaﬁr, 2000; Ram, 2000; Shalev, 2000). As a result of these changes, Israeli capital has signiﬁcantly reduced its reliance on cheap Palestinian labor.15 By making Palestinian labor increasingly obsolete, neo-liberal restructuring has facilitated the emergence of Israel’s new governmental strategy of separation and enclosure. Beginning in 1993, the Israeli government drastically reduced the number of work permits for Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip – and issued an increasing percentage of these permits for Palestinians employed in the construction of Israeli settlements (Farsakh, 2002, 2005).16 Israel also established control over the ﬂow of undocumented workers to the Israeli economy – nearly eliminating undocumented workers from the Gaza Strip while allowing the number of undocumented workers from the West Bank to ﬂuctuate according to Israeli demand (Farsakh, 2005, p. 150). With undocumented labor increasingly concentrated in the settlements, the construction of Israeli settlements on conﬁscated Palestinian land has become one of the key sources of employment for Palestinian workers (Farsakh, 2005).17

174

ANDY CLARNO

Poverty and unemployment soared within the Palestinian enclaves – reaching well over 60% in the Gaza Strip during the most intense months of ‘‘closure’’ in 1996 (Human Rights Watch, 1996). The PA helped absorb the surplus workers, employing 26–32% of workers in Gaza and 13–15% in the West Bank (Farsakh, 2005, p. 148). As Palestinians became increasingly dependent on the PA for their livelihood, tens of thousands of Fatah loyalists joined the ranks of the security forces – the only branch of the PA relatively immune from World Bank demands to cut government spending and reduce employment. Since 2000, Palestinian workers have been almost entirely excluded from the Israeli economy. By 2001, more than 60% of Palestinian families were living in poverty (Farsakh, 2002, p. 24). And the international ﬁnancial stranglehold on the Hamas-led PA after February 2006 eliminated one of the last remaining sources of income for Palestinians in the occupied territories. In South Africa, apartheid was a strategy for not only maintaining racial separation and governing the rebellious Black majority, but also for ensuring access to cheap African labor. The Israeli strategy of separation and enclosure, on the other hand, has involved the steady eradication of work for Palestinians. A familiar story throughout the world, the globalization of production made possible by neo-liberal restructuring, has generated surplus populations on an unprecedented scale (Bauman, 2004; Harvey, 2005; Davis, 2006). In Palestine/Israel, the Zionist ideal of an exclusive Jewish state has accelerated the process of turning the Palestinians into outcasts who can be enclosed, expelled, encouraged to kill one another or simply slaughtered – as Israel has made clear in Gaza over the last two years. As unemployment soared and the hopes for ‘‘peace’’ collapsed, the Palestinian people rose up against indirect rule in 2000. During the second intifada, however, in addition to stones, the Palestinians had access to thousands of guns and the skills to construct home-made bombs.18 Israel responded by unleashing the full force of its military to crush the resistance: invading and besieging cities, demolishing refugee camps, assassinating leaders and imprisoning activists. In addition to short- and long-term redeployments of Israeli troops into the Palestinian enclaves, the second intifada also witnessed the intensiﬁcation of Israel’s efforts to produce enclosures though the extensive use of roadblocks, trenches and checkpoints to seal off villages and entire cities. In another move calculated to increase the enclosure of Palestinians, Israel conducted a much-celebrated withdrawal of its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. In doing so, Israel retained control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, and coastline

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

175

and uses this power – along with repeated military invasions – to maintain its colonial domination. Meanwhile, the most notorious new tactic in the Israeli strategy of enclosure – the ‘‘separation fence’’ or the ‘‘Apartheid Wall’’ – continues its slow expansion through the West Bank. The Gaza Strip has been surrounded by a security fence since 1994. In 2002, Israel began constructing a series of walls around the major cities of the West Bank. Taking a variety of forms – from 8 meter-high concrete walls with watchtowers to separation zones incorporating fences, trenches, roads, barbed wire, cameras, trace paths that detect footprints and 70–100 meter buffer zones – the Wall in the West Bank will be at least 600 kilometers long when complete (Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network, 2003). The Wall cuts villagers off from their ﬁelds, surrounds entire cities, destroys homes and trees, prevents workers from reaching the few remaining jobs and completely encloses the Palestinian population in a series of large outdoor prisons. The separation is now almost complete. During the Israeli elections of 2006, the ‘‘centrist’’ Kadima party rose to prominence on a platform of neoliberalism and indirect rule. It incorporated the Labor party strategy of indirect rule and the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the Likud, while dropping any hint of Labor’s old social welfare program and distancing itself from the Likud’s vision of ‘‘Greater Israel’’ (Yahni, 2005). In South Africa, the transition to neo-liberalism accompanied the end of formal apartheid while helping to sustain many of its features. In Palestine/Israel, neo-liberal restructuring has helped constitute a new colonial strategy of indirect rule through enclosure and separation.

TWO WALLED CITIES: JOHANNESBURG AND JERUSALEM Local struggles over the restructuring of urban space in Johannesburg and Jerusalem have been profoundly affected by the large-scale political and economic shifts. In both cities, deepening inequality and a heightened sense of insecurity have generated revanchist politics and walled enclosures. The principal difference between these enclosures – the fact that the Israeli state is building a Wall around the Palestinians while in South Africa the wealthy are building walls around themselves – stems from the different political trajectories of these states during the 1990s. But this difference illustrates two emerging conﬁgurations of sovereignty under conditions of

176

ANDY CLARNO

globalization and empire. Johannesburg provides a vivid example of the privatization of security and the decentralization of sovereignty while Jerusalem exempliﬁes the increasing power of state security functions – especially as part of the escalating ‘‘war on terror.’’ The founding of Johannesburg as a mining town near the principal South African gold ﬁelds marked the fundamental turning point in the dynamics of displacement that took place with the discovery of gold. Needing African workers but wanting to maintain racial purity, the Europeans created separate African ‘‘townships’’ outside of the city (Callinicos, 1981, 1987; Bonner & Segal, 1998). Like other cities, Johannesburg was legally designated a ‘‘white’’ area. Pass laws forced Africans to obtain permits to enter the city and a nightly curfew ensured that they leave town before dark.19 Vibrant multi-racial neighborhoods such as Sophiatown and Fietas (Pageview) were completely destroyed and their inhabitants forcibly removed to distant, poorly serviced townships south of Johannesburg – Soweto for the ‘‘Africans,’’ Eldorado Park for the ‘‘coloreds’’ and Lenasia for the ‘‘Asians’’ (Bonner & Segal, 1998; Beavon, 2004). Efforts on the part of the government to impose this separation were met with constant resistance. The residents of Alexandra, for example, fought a successful 30-year battle against repeated attempts by the apartheid regime to eradicate their poor, overcrowded township (Sarakinsky, 1984; Jochelson, 1988). In the mid-1970s, thousands of Black South Africans began ‘‘illegally’’ moving into ‘‘white’’ Johannesburg due to miserable conditions and severe overcrowding in the townships and Bantustans. As white community-based vigilante groups tried to prevent the ‘‘greying’’ of Johannesburg, organizations supporting Africans’ right to the city – such as the Action Committee to Stop Evictions (ACTSTOP) – fought to overturn the Group Areas Act and to prevent the eviction and forced removal of ‘‘illegal’’ Black residents (Pickard-Cambridge, 1988). The emergence of ‘‘grey areas’’ within Johannesburg, along with militant labor struggles and mass uprisings in townships such as Soweto and Alexandra, helped undermine the apartheid laws that formed the basis of legally enforced white space. The urban landscape of Johannesburg has been thoroughly reshaped since the early 1990s. After 1994, the new ANC government began a series of efforts aimed at desegregating Johannesburg. To counter the effects of apartheid planning, which fragmented the region into numerous racially segregated and separately ﬁnanced municipal structures, the government amalgamated 13 distinct local entities into the City of Johannesburg – which now covers an enormous 635 square miles, stretching 40 miles from Orange Farm in the south to Midrand in the north. The City has created a single tax

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

177

base, opened neighborhoods and schools to people of all races and introduced plans to rehabilitate the long-neglected Black neighborhoods (Bollens, 1998; City of Johannesburg, 2001; Beall et al., 2002; Tomlinson, Beauregard, Bremner, & Mangcu, 2003a; Beavon, 2004). Yet Johannesburg remains a highly segregated city. This is due to both the difﬁculty of transforming a built environment that was constructed to facilitate the regulation of African lives and the economic policies that are exacerbating already high levels of inequality. Despite the government’s attempts to transform the city, neo-liberal restructuring has unleashed market forces that are reproducing apartheid geography (Bollens, 1998, p. 741). When the Group Areas Act and restrictions on the movement of Africans were ﬁnally eliminated, hundreds of thousands of Africans moved to Johannesburg in search of housing and work (Beavon, 2004). According to the 2001 census, Gauteng province – an overwhelmingly urban province centered on Johannesburg – grew by 22.2% between 1996 and 2001 due largely to a net increase of over 430,000 migrants (Kok & Collinson, 2006, p. 22; Oosthuizen & Naidoo, 2004, p. 1). At that time, 41.9% of Johannesburg’s residents were born outside of the province (Peberdy, Crush, & Msibi, 2004, p. 9). Recently published estimates suggest that the province gained an additional 500,000 migrants from 2001–2006 and projects a continuation of this rapid growth for at least another ﬁve years (Statistics South Africa, 2007b, p. 6). As the rural poor and migrants from other parts of Africa converged on Johannesburg, white residents ﬂed the downtown areas. Downtown Johannesburg quickly became run-down, impoverished and Black. In less than 15 years, glamorous white residential neighborhoods such as Hillbrow and Yeoville were transformed into crowded African ghettos (Ju¨rgens, Gnad, & Ba¨hr, 2003; Beavon, 2004; Simone, 2004). This rapid urbanization has been accompanied by an equally rapid de-industrialization. The transition from manufacturing and mining to services and informal employment has been particularly acute in Johannesburg (Tomlinson et al., 2003b, pp. 15–16). By 1996, mining had completely collapsed – accounting for only 1% of employment in the city that was once the quintessential mining town (Beall et al., 2002, p. 33). Between 1990 and 1994, 337 manufacturers closed their downtown factories (Beavon, 2004, p. 248) and scores of businesses moved their headquarters to the suburbs or overseas. Abandoned by capital, downtown Johannesburg became the center of an informal economy based on retail, services and labor-intensive textile manufacturing. According to one

178

ANDY CLARNO

estimate, over 15,000 unregistered merchants hawk their wares in the streets of downtown Johannesburg (Rogerson, 1996 cited in Tomlinson et al., 2003b, p. 16). The major businesses, car dealerships, commercial outlets and even the Johannesburg Stock Exchange relocated to the posh northern suburb of Sandton, where they consolidated a new central business district in the midst of the oldest and most exclusive elite residential neighborhoods (Czegledy, 2003; Beavon, 2004, p. 248). More wealth is concentrated in Sandton than perhaps anywhere else on the continent of Africa. Further to the north, an advanced service industry has blossomed along the highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria (Tomlinson et al., 2003b, p. 14, 16). The jobs created by this growth industry are doubly removed from the African majority – ﬁrst, because they demand a highly skilled labor force, and second, because the northward movement of capital steadily increases the distance between employment opportunities and the areas of African residence southwest of the city. After years of declining property values due to capital ﬂight, redlining and slumlords, capital is beginning to reinvest in areas such as downtown Johannesburg and the industrial zone near Alexandra. The downtown spaces that were abandoned by the elite when white businesses and residents withdrew to the suburbs are now being ‘‘reclaimed’’ from working class and unemployed Black residents through a gentriﬁcation program carried out by the City of Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) and ﬁnance capitalists (Johannesburg Development Agency, 2007). Beginning with a cultural district on the west side of town, a fashion district in the east and loft apartments in between, the JDA is displacing the poor to make downtown Johannesburg safe once again for investors and wealthy residents. Property markets are once again beginning to ﬂourish. North of downtown, the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP) – a joint project between the national, provincial and local governments – is attempting to ‘‘upgrade’’ one of the black holes of apartheid (Alexandra Renewal Project, 2007). With a dense network of squatter camps, thousands of backyard shacks and dozens of abandoned factories that have been occupied by squatters and are now being self-managed as housing cooperatives, Alexandra is the site of the most acute housing crisis in Johannesburg. Yet rather than prioritizing housing and other basic improvements in the lives of residents, the ARP has emphasized commercial and industrial development. Tens of thousands of residents have faced eviction and relocation in order to build shopping centers, heavily guarded industrial parks and upgraded roads that link these spaces of investment to

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

179

the highways (Malefane, 2005; McKinley, 2005; Russouw, 2005; Cherney, 2006; Cox, 2006). In scenes reminiscent of apartheid-era forced removals, the re-conquest of downtown, Alexandra and other parts of Johannesburg has been carried out through the demolition of occupied buildings and mass evictions involving thousands of residents at a time. The City has outsourced the politically unpopular work of evictions to a private security ﬁrm called Wozani – nicknamed the ‘‘Red Ants’’ for the red overalls they wear when they descend on a building or a neighborhood to drive out the residents en masse (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 2005). Wozani pays poor African men from one area of town a few dollars a day to evict residents from another part of town (Rasmussen, 2007). But the residents are ﬁghting these evictions through spontaneous resistance when the Red Ants arrive, legal challenges to the constitutionality of evictions and the formation of local committees afﬁliated to the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF) – a regional social movement struggling against evictions and the privatization of basic services (Anti-Privatization Forum, 2007). As deepening rural poverty continues to drive poor South Africans to Johannesburg in search of ways to survive, every open space around the city has been transformed into a massive informal settlement by desperately poor shack dwellers.20 Whether suspended precariously on the banks of the ﬁlthy, ﬂood-prone Jukskei River, erected dangerously on the fragile ground above an abandoned mine or ﬂanking the walls of a fortress suburb, informal settlements continue to proliferate and expand throughout Johannesburg. Although the numbers steadily grow, in 2004 the City of Johannesburg consolidated a list of 189 informal settlements in the city – out of 392 in the Gauteng province (Landsberg, 2005, p. 29). In addition, more than 400,000 shacks have been erected in the backyards of houses in townships around the city (City of Johannesburg, 2001, p. 5). They have become one of the few available options for poor South Africans in search of ﬂeeting employment and scarce housing. Although the level of services in squatter camps varies widely, most have no water, electricity, sewage, schools or clinics. With constitutional promises to provide housing for everyone and with a desire to eliminate the unhealthy and unsightly squatter camps, the ANC government has built 12,000 housing units per year in the Johannesburg region over the last 12 years (Landsberg, 2005, p. 32). But the growth of the housing backlog continues to outpace the delivery of low-income housing (Landsberg, 2005). And, more in line with apartheid planning than with the City’s ofﬁcial ‘‘compact cities’’ guidelines, residents are being relocated to

180

ANDY CLARNO

minimally serviced pieces of land in new townships on the periphery of the metropolitan region (Tomlinson et al., 2003b, p. 11). With a few exceptions, the new townships are located southwest of the city, far away from the spaces of job creation on the city’s northern border (Tomlinson et al., 2003b, p. 14). Travel between these distant townships and the city center often requires multiple taxi rides and several hours of travel time. The exorbitant cost of transportation21 obstructs the ability of poor South Africans to reach jobs, hospitals, government ofﬁces and other crucial services in Johannesburg. The houses being built in townships such as Braamﬁscherville and Evaton West measure 3 m 6 m – smaller and more poorly constructed than the ‘‘matchbox’’ houses built for Africans by the apartheid regime. Each consists of one room, a kitchen and a toilet. Because of the enormous housing backlog,22 many people have waited more than 10 years for a house. To qualify, they must accept the installation of pre-paid water and electricity meters. Other new townships, such as Vlakfontein, do not even have houses – residents are merely issued a plot of dirt, a bit of tin and a community water pipe. Some informal settlements, such as Orange Farm, have been ofﬁcially upgraded into formal townships by allowing the residents to purchase basic services. Most, however, have been slated for destruction with promises of future housing for the residents. Many residents of the informal settlements are refusing to be moved and insisting on the provision of services and housing in their camps. Just minutes away, but a world apart, lie the afﬂuent northern suburbs of Johannesburg, where white South Africans and the emerging Black bourgeoisie have withdrawn to a world of walled enclosures and private security (Czegledy, 2003; Murray, 2004). Although security concerns predate the recent transition, the expression of insecurity has reached unprecedented levels since the early 1990s. The desegregation of public space has meant that what used to be ‘‘white’’ space has become ‘‘Black’’ – and is now seen as dangerous and criminal. Prevalent among wealthy South Africans is a sense of fear, fueled by a pervasive discourse of ‘‘Black crime’’23 – especially rape and property crime. Although the crime is real, it is concentrated in poor areas. Panic about the ‘‘crime wave,’’ however, is concentrated among the elite (Beall et al., 2002, pp. 177–178).24 The South African elite – white and Black – now live almost entirely behind barred windows and enormous brick walls built on private property. From small wooden fences or rows of cacti in the late 1980s, these walls have grown into massive, high-tech security devices armed with metal spikes, razor wire, motion detectors, video cameras, electric wires, guard towers, attack dogs and other weapons. The only public spaces frequented

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

181

by the elite are those with a heavy security presence – usually shopping malls and shady cafe´s on well-guarded streets. The proliferation of private tennis courts, swimming pools, movie studios and ﬁtness centers within these walled enclosures ensures that even the leisure-time of the elite is selfcontained (Czegledy, 2003; Murray, 2004).25 In addition, entire communities are being walled off and enclosed as rich neighborhood associations close roads and privatize public space (South African Human Rights Commission, 2005). By 2002, over 300 roads had been closed in Johannesburg, although only 79 road closure applications had been ﬁled and only 23 had been approved (Landman, 2002). While existing neighborhoods put up gates, the construction of new housing estates now begins by enclosing the site within a wall – and only later building roads, houses and leisure spaces inside the wall. In the older, exclusive upper class neighborhoods, only 2–4% of houses have been sold to African families. But the emerging African middle class has moved into these walled housing estates in much larger numbers (Beavon, 2004, p. 266; Ju¨rgens et al., 2003). With real estate developers churning out fortress communities, wealthy South Africans – and even the middle class – no longer have much choice but to live behind a wall. Each of the walls displays a sign from the private security company hired to deploy an armed rapid-response unit in case of intrusion. Private security has been the fastest growing industry in the country since the 1980s (Bremner, 1998). Employing over 470,000 people, nearly 5,000 private companies now provide security guards, armed rapid-response teams and other security services to those who can afford them (Bell & Pantland, 1997; Irish, 1999; Scho¨nteich, 1999; Pillay, 2001). Vehicles branded with the logos of these private security companies slowly patrol the tree-lined streets of the northern suburbs, watching for ‘‘suspicious’’ behavior, waiting for an emergency call and hoping that their presence alone will prevent crime – or at least displace it to a house or a neighborhood that has not yet purchased coverage. The private security companies feed on the recoding of ‘‘Blackness’’ as criminal and encourage the development of fortress communities and private enclaves. The landscape of segregation in post-apartheid Johannesburg is marked – more than anything else – by these walls, built on private property to preserve the last vestiges of white space and the space for the accumulation and consumption of wealth. Nothing reveals the contours of the transition in South Africa more than the walled enclosures. I will return to them shortly, but ﬁrst I want to discuss the transformation of urban space in Jerusalem. For there, too, the Wall that is currently enclosing the Palestinian

182

ANDY CLARNO

people provides an excellent lens for analyzing the dynamics of transformation over the last 20 years. In 1967, Israel created a legal distinction between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank by expanding the municipal boundaries of Israeli West Jerusalem to incorporate and therefore annex Arab East Jerusalem and the lands of 28 nearby villages (Benvenisti, 1996, pp. 64–66).26 Through planning practices characterized as ‘‘partisan’’ (Bollens, 1998) or ‘‘ethnocratic’’ (Yiftachel & Yacobi, 2002; Yiftachel & Ghanem, 2004), the state and municipality have sought to maintain a 70% Jewish majority in Jerusalem and to ensure that the city remains the ‘‘undivided and eternal capital of the State of Israel’’ (Benvenisti, 1996; Cheshin, 1998; Cheshin, Hutman, & Melamed, 1999; Margalit, 2006). This has remained constant through the restructuring of Israel’s economy and its occupation. These processes have severed East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and exacerbated the housing crisis for Palestinians in the city. Unlike other Palestinian cities (except for parts of Hebron) where the PA served as an intermediary in Israel’s strategy of indirect rule, the transitions of the 1990s have consolidated and extended Israel’s direct rule over Jerusalem. Prior to the 1990s, the Israeli state worked to physically integrate East and West Jerusalem. Conﬁscating Palestinian land for ‘‘public use,’’ Israel constructed a ring of Jewish settlements through East Jerusalem and a second ring of Jewish settlements through the Palestinian villages and cities that surround Jerusalem (Cheshin et al., 1999). The Jewish settlements and the road network linking them to West Jerusalem created a large Jewish presence in East Jerusalem, formed the territorial basis for its incorporation into Israel and began to physically separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank (Klein, 2005). Palestinians from East Jerusalem were granted a privileged legal status as Jerusalem ‘‘residents,’’ which entitled them to certain National Insurance beneﬁts (Benvenisti, 1996; Cheshin et al., 1999). Aside from these welfare beneﬁts, however, the daily lives of Palestinian Jerusalemites differed only slightly from Palestinians living in other parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians moved freely between Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories. East Jerusalem became the center of a rapidly expanding metropolitan region including Ramallah, Bethlehem and Palestinian suburbs such as Ar-Ram, Abu Dis and Azzarrieh (Nasrallah, 2005). Not only was Jerusalem the economic, social and religious capital of Palestinian life, it was also home to the most important schools, hospitals and cultural institutions in the West Bank. The restructuring of the occupation since the early 1990s has entrenched direct Israeli rule over East Jerusalem. East Jerusalem has been almost

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

183

completely severed from the rest of the West Bank. The process began in earnest in 1991, when the state introduced the permit system for Palestinians from the occupied territories – except for East Jerusalem. Suddenly, Jerusalemites became the only Palestinians from the occupied territories able to move freely throughout Palestine/Israel. Due to the designation of East Jerusalem as part of Israel, residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip had to obtain a permit from the military authorities to enter the city that served as the center of Palestinian life. With the ‘‘closure’’ of the West Bank after 1993 and the erection of military checkpoints around Jerusalem, the city became increasingly out of reach for most Palestinians. Due to the location of Jerusalem at the geographical center of the West Bank, the amputation of the city effectively divided the West Bank in two. Palestinians from Bethlehem in the south and Ramallah in the north – each less than 20 minutes away from the heart of Jerusalem – were isolated not only from the core of their metropolitan region but also from one another. At the same time, Jerusalem was physically surrounded by the rapid expansion of existing Jewish settlements, the construction of new settlements (especially Har Homa on Jabal Abu Ghneim), and the creation of ‘‘bypass roads’’ linking the settlements to one another and to West Jerusalem (European Union, 2005; B’Tselem, 2006). The construction of the ‘‘Apartheid Wall’’ over the last four years is ﬁnalizing the separation by creating an enormous physical barrier between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank (Brooks, Khamaisi, Nasrallah, & Abu Ghazaleh, 2005; Michael & Ramon, 2004; Klein, 2005). The Wall winds its way around neighborhoods, incorporating Jewish settlements and open land into Israel while excluding Palestinian cities and suburbs around Jerusalem. The path of the Wall has effectively annexed three enormous settlement blocks built deep within the West Bank – Givon in the northwest, Adumim in the east and Etzion in the southwest. At the same time, it has placed two of the most densely populated Palestinian Jerusalem neighborhoods – Kufr Aqab and Shu’afat refugee camp – on the West Bank side of the Wall. In 2005–2006, Israel built two colossal ‘‘terminals’’ on the roads linking Bethlehem and Ramallah to Jerusalem – with two more under construction in Abu Dis and Shu’afat refugee camp. These high-tech, fortiﬁed military checkpoints are now the only points through which Palestinians from the West Bank can enter Jerusalem – if, that is, they are able to obtain the increasingly rare permits (Ofﬁce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2006). The new master plan released by the Jerusalem Municipality in 2005 – Jerusalem 2020 – explicitly states that the goal of maintaining a 70% Jewish

184

ANDY CLARNO

majority in Jerusalem remains one of the driving forces of Israeli urban planning (Jerusalem Municipality, 2005, p. 32). Because high Palestinian birth rates have driven the Arab population of the city to nearly 40%, the state and the municipality have pursued their demographic goals by putting pressure on Palestinians to leave the city. Revanchist efforts to quietly transfer Palestinians out of Jerusalem have been standard for over 30 years (Benvenisti, 1996; Cheshin, 1998; Cheshin et al., 1999). These efforts have intensiﬁed since the early-1990s, when Israel began aggressively conﬁscating the Jerusalem identity cards of Palestinians who could not prove that Jerusalem was the ‘‘center of their life’’ (Jaradat, 1996, 1997; B’Tselem & HaMoked, 1997; Al-Majdal, 1999a, 1999b, 2000). Unless Palestinian Jerusalemites could provide evidence that they both lived and worked in Jerusalem, the Ministry of the Interior conﬁscated their Jerusalem residency documents and forced them to relocate to other parts of the West Bank. Meanwhile, outright discrimination against Palestinians remains a central feature of municipal policy in both housing and services. The Jerusalem 2020 plan explicitly promotes segregation: In a multicultural city such as Jerusalem, spatial segregation of the various population groups in the city is a real advantage. Every group has its own cultural space and can live its lifestyle. The segregation limits the potential sources of conﬂict between and among the various populations. It is appropriate, therefore, to direct a planning policy that encourages the continuation of spatial segregation with a substantial amount of tolerance and consideration. (Jerusalem Municipality, 2005, p. 33)27

Due to land conﬁscations and zoning regulations, only 10% of the land of East Jerusalem is available for Palestinian use (Margalit, 2006). Palestinian Jerusalemites face enormous difﬁculties obtaining approval for building permits. As the cost of housing soars, many Palestinians have resorted to the construction of unlicensed housing. To combat this informal construction, the Jerusalem municipality sends bulldozers to demolish houses built without a permit (B’Tselem, 2006). All of this has generated a Palestinian housing crisis and severe overcrowding, especially in poor neighborhoods such as Silwan, Shu’afat refugee camp and the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. While Old City shops are converted into apartments, partially constructed buildings attract poor families with absolutely nowhere else to go. Unlike the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, East Jerusalem (and parts of Hebron) remains under direct Israeli control. For daring to challenge Israel’s unilateral sovereignty, independent Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem – such as the Orient House – faced repeated threats of closure

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

185

during the 1990s and were ﬁnally shut down by the state in 2001. Israeli police and border guards maintain a heavy presence in East Jerusalem – especially in and around the Old City – where they constantly detain Palestinians and demand to see their ID cards and permits. These detentions regularly involve assault and brutality by the police. The Old City is also the site of one of the world’s heaviest concentrations of electronic surveillance. Since early 2000, more than 400 surveillance cameras have monitored all movement in the Old City (Agence France Presse, 1999, 2000; Voice of Israel, 2000; Bonnet, 2001). And Jewish settlers have became increasingly aggressive over the last 15 years – violently appropriating property and establishing settlements in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods (B’Tselem, 2002, 2006). All of this demonstrates that racism and colonialism, rather than neoliberalism, play the dominant role in the restructuring of Jerusalem. In fact, the Jerusalem municipality has not yet taken many recognizable steps towards neo-liberal restructuring – such as privatizing the delivery of basic services or the construction of low-income housing.28 Nevertheless, neoliberalization has contributed to the spatial restructuring of Jerusalem in three important ways. To begin with, the restructuring of Jerusalem has involved the extensive ‘‘enclosure’’ of land by the Israeli state. Harvey (2003, p. 176) refers to this process as ‘‘accumulation by dispossession’’ and argues that it constitutes the dominant form of capital accumulation in the neo-liberal project. Nowhere in the West Bank has the Wall enclosed as much Palestinian land as around Jerusalem. This extra-economic ‘‘redistribution’’ of Palestinian land has contributed to the Palestinian agrarian crisis, forcing Palestinian peasants from the villages around Jerusalem to search for increasingly elusive jobs in the Israeli and Palestinian labor markets. These enclosures and the neo-liberal restructuring of the Israeli economy have aggravated the crisis of unemployment for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This has prompted tens of thousands of Palestinians to return to Jerusalem, where they enjoy not only freedom of movement but also privileged access to the Israeli labor market. The imposition of the permit system magniﬁed the value of the Jerusalem residency card, which came to represent freedom of movement – the very freedom undermined by Israel’s new strategy of enclosure.29 Thousands of Jerusalemites living in other parts of the occupied territories returned to the city to protect their freedom of movement and their access to jobs in Israel, especially after Israel began conﬁscating the ID cards of Jerusalemites living outside of the city. Due to the existing housing crisis, most Palestinians returning to

186

ANDY CLARNO

Jerusalem found accommodation in poor, densely populated neighborhoods such as Shu’afat refugee camp and Kufr Aqab. The construction of the Wall around Jerusalem is, in part, a tactic adopted by the state to counter the Palestinian return by severing these neighborhoods from Jerusalem and relocating them to the West Bank side of the Wall. But this has merely exacerbated the congestion in Silwan and the Muslim Quarter, as people leave Shu’afat and Kufr Aqab and ﬂood into the heart of East Jerusalem. Neo-liberal restructuring, therefore, has exacerbated the Palestinian housing crisis while partially counteracting the policies designed to push Palestinians out of the city. Despite their access to jobs, 62% of Palestinian families in Jerusalem live below the poverty line.30 But it is not only Palestinians – 32% of Jerusalem’s Jewish population also lives in poverty. For decades, Jerusalem has had high levels of Jewish poverty due to its large Orthodox community and its lowwage economy centered on government services and tourism (Branovsky, 2007). Neo-liberal restructuring has increased inequality among Israeli Jews, with severe consequences for working class, Mizrahi and religious Jews. Uri Ram argues that these groups have reacted by embracing ultra-nationalist and fundamentalist political beliefs and rejecting the ‘‘peace process’’ that enabled the Israeli elite to pursue its global project (Ram, 2000). The same argument applies to Palestinians, as increasing poverty and inequality generate resistance – some of which has taken the form of suicide bombs. More suicide attacks have targeted Jerusalem than any other Israeli city (Choshen & Assaf-Shapira, 2005, p. 29). As Jewish Jerusalemites experience a heightened sense of economic and physical insecurity, many have embraced the exclusionary, revanchist politics that are reshaping the city. With a collapsing economy, increasing taxes, decreasing beneﬁts, serious overcrowding, rising poverty and the constant threat of home demolitions, police brutality and attacks by Jewish settlers, Palestinian life in Jerusalem becomes more precarious every day. In the end, the Israeli government is betting that most Palestinians will ﬁnd life impossible and will transfer themselves out of the city. So far, however, Palestinians are continuing the struggle to survive in an increasingly hostile Jerusalem rather than ceding to Israeli pressure by relocating to a Palestinian ghetto behind the Wall.

ENCLOSURES: THE EMPIRE’S NEW WALLS The walls that so visually mark the landscapes of Johannesburg and Jerusalem provide a lens perfectly focused to capture the contours of

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

187

transformation in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Oslo Palestine/ Israel. These walls constitute a symbolic and at the same time very material expression of the separation that deﬁnes contemporary South Africa and Palestine/Israel. In South Africa, the walls reveal the limits of transformation and belie the dominant narrative that stresses the racial integration that occurred with the end of formal apartheid. Some have argued that what is taking place in South Africa is a transition from racial apartheid to class apartheid (Bond, 2000b; Harvey, 2005), but this argument does not capture the complexity of the transition. Apartheid was always about both race and class – as is the separation in Johannesburg today. What we are seeing instead is a restructuring of racial and class relations and the development of new tools to maintain separation. The suburban walls and their weaponized accessories constitute one set of tools. The removal of poor residents and the construction of new townships on the urban periphery constitute another set of tools, another kind of ‘‘wall’’ to maintain separation. In Palestine/Israel, the Wall is the clearest manifestation of Israel’s new strategy of political and economic separation. When complete, it will ﬁnalize the gradual separation of Israel from the Palestinian population in the West Bank. The points of contact between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers will be reduced to the new fortiﬁed military checkpoints that Israel calls ‘‘terminals.’’ Current trends suggest the possibility that Palestinian workers will be completely eliminated from the Israeli economy, except perhaps at designated free-trade industrial zones along the Wall. The walls also reveal three interconnected aspects of the relationship between neo-liberal restructuring and the militarization of urban space. First, in South Africa, Palestine/Israel and scores of other locations throughout the world, neo-liberalization has produced an unprecedented growth of ‘‘surplus’’ or ‘‘disposable’’ populations: permanently unemployed, too poor to consume, separated from the means of subsistence and abandoned by the neo-liberal state (Bauman, 2004; Barchiesi, 2005; Harvey, 2005; Davis, 2006). As peasant production and industrial labor disappear, the work that remains becomes increasingly precarious and record numbers of people face permanent structural unemployment. Harvey (2005, p. 185) describes this as the creation of ‘‘a vast reservoir of apparently disposable people bereft of social protections and supportive social structures’’ and Davis (2006, p. 199) refers to it as the ‘‘late capitalist triage of humanity.’’ The hemorrhaging of labor in Palestine/Israel is exacerbated by the policy of replacing Palestinians with foreign workers and compounded by the longstanding support within the Zionist movement for economic and political separation.

188

ANDY CLARNO

A closely related aspect of the transitions – in Palestine/Israel, South Africa and elsewhere – is a heightened sense of insecurity where pockets of enormous wealth and power exist in close proximity to these vast populations of ‘‘surplus’’ humanity. Among wealthy South Africans and Jewish Israelis, the discourse of ‘‘security’’ has reached unprecedented levels over the last 15 years. The post-apartheid collapse of waged labor and the devastation wrought by poverty and HIV/AIDS occurred alongside the soaring fortunes of old white and new Black elites. The wealthy have responded to the extensive urbanization of poverty with a deepening sense of insecurity fed by white dread about the swart gevaar (‘‘black peril’’), elite panic about the racialized ‘‘crime wave’’ and a private security industry that stokes the ﬂames of fear. With record levels of crime, the discourse of ‘‘Black’’ criminality has become pervasive among white South Africans and even among the emerging Black bourgeoisie. Stories proliferate about car hijackings and burglaries involving assaults, humiliations and often rape. These stories circulate rapidly – both informally and through the media. Of course, stories about ‘‘Black’’ attacks on white victims receive the most hype, creating an infectious anxiety and turning all Africans into potential criminals. Feeding on this fear, the security industry encourages the development of private enclaves while real estate developers mass produce fortress communities. Political Zionism has always envisioned Israel becoming an island of security in a world of anti-Semitic hatred. Although Israeli concern with ‘‘security’’ is rooted in the historical suffering of the Jewish people, especially the Nazi holocaust, it is increasingly expressed as a fear of Palestinian terrorism. While the Oslo process temporarily proposed a vision of regional security based on economic integration into a free-trade zone, the political, economic and spatial restructuring generated by this process has produced the opposite effect. Although the reorganization of the occupation improved the security of Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories, the advent of the suicide bomb has extended the reach of the Palestinian resistance into the heart of Jewish space. In addition to an often devastating loss of life, these traumatic attacks sow terror and induce an intense feeling of insecurity. A recent declaration signed by hundreds of Israeli academics and artists begins with an uncomfortable fact: ‘‘The State of Israel was supposed to grant security to Jews; it has created a death-trap whose inhabitants live in constant danger, the likes of which is not experienced by any other Jewish community’’ (Olga Document, 2004). What used to be the safe space of Israeli cities has become dangerous and an unremitting trepidation now permeates social relations. Fear transforms all Palestinians into terrorists and the presence of Palestinians in Jewish space is

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

189

now seen as potentially explosive. The desire for pure Jewish space – which lies at the core of political Zionism – has been enhanced by this increased sense of danger. It has accelerated the elimination of Arab workers from the Israeli economy, heightened calls for ‘‘transfer’’ and strengthened the drive towards separation and enclosure. The ﬁnal element in the emergence of walled enclosures is the reactionary politics that Smith (1996) terms ‘‘revanchism’’ – a response to insecurity that incorporates a desire for vengeance with an effort to ‘‘reclaim’’ spaces that have been ‘‘taken away.’’ Although present in both cities, revanchist politics is far more important in Jerusalem than in Johannesburg. In Jerusalem, revanchism is evident in the intensiﬁcation of home demolitions, the revocation of residency rights and other efforts to provoke Palestinian ﬂight from the city. At the scale of the nation, it has driven the expulsion of Palestinians from the Israeli labor market, the enclosure of the surplus Palestinian population and the widespread support for population ‘‘transfer.’’ But perhaps the ultimate assertion of Israeli re-conquest is the fortiﬁcation of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem through the construction of a Wall around the city. Johannesburg has also witnessed a reactionary response to the growing insecurity of the elite and the unregulated presence of poor, Black South Africans in formerly white spaces. The removal of poor residents to the urban periphery and the gentriﬁcation of downtown Johannesburg certainly reveal elements of revanchism. But wealthy South Africans have not yet focused their efforts on re-establishing control over ‘‘lost’’ spaces. Rather than embracing revanchism, they have chosen to self-segregate by building walled enclosures around their homes and neighborhoods to protect the remnants of white space and the spaces of accumulation and consumption. On another level, the geography of the walls reveals the different conﬁgurations of sovereignty in South Africa and Palestine/Israel. The principle difference between these enclosures is the fact that the State of Israel is building a Wall around the Palestinians, while wealthy South Africans are building walls around themselves. Stemming from the divergent political trajectories of the two states during the 1990s, these walls represent the limits of imperial sovereignty. While most contemporary cities reveal combinations of public and private enclosures, Jerusalem and Johannesburg display them in stark relief. In South Africa, it is not the state but rather private residents and neighborhood associations that are constructing walls. Although white South Africans remain economically dominant, the state no longer exists for the purpose of protecting white space. And while the ANC government has institutionalized property rights in the constitution and fought against land

190

ANDY CLARNO

invasions, there is a strong, racially informed perception that the new Black government is incapable of controlling crime and protecting property. Withdrawing to the suburbs, white South Africans and even the new Black elite are constructing walled enclosures on their own property. The rise of a private security industry has facilitated the emergence of this privatized apartheid. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that post-apartheid forms of enclosure are not entirely privatized. Through mass evictions, relocations and the construction of new townships on the urban periphery, the South African state is not only creating physical barriers that inhibit access to Johannesburg, but replicating apartheid-era urban planning. Due to the long distances and high costs of transportation, the predominantly African residents of these new townships face tremendous difﬁculties reaching jobs, health care and other vital services located in Johannesburg, Sandton and Soweto. This aspect of urban restructuring is marked by deﬁnite revanchist characteristics. Unlike in South Africa, the recent transition in Palestine/Israel did not democratize the state apparatus. Israeli Jews still control the state and the state still exists to protect Jewish space. The State of Israel is constructing the Wall not only for the sake of separation, but also to expand Jewish space by encroaching on Palestinian land. The encirclement and annexation of Jerusalem is the most obvious example – but the Wall has appropriated so much Palestinian land that numerous commentators and human rights organizations have argued that its primary function is an expansionary ‘‘land grab’’ (B’Tselem, 2002; Brooks et al., 2005). In addition, the Wall is an instrument for containing and imprisoning the dispossessed, colonized but still rebellious Palestinian people. This instrumental function – the prevention of suicide attacks – is Israel’s ofﬁcial justiﬁcation for constructing the Wall. Despite the emergence of some gated communities and private security companies, security in Israel remains largely in the hands of the state. People still hold on to a belief in the ability of the state to impose security measures that will protect Jewish space – the Wall and the so-called unilateral disengagement being the most obvious recent examples. The walled enclosures of Johannesburg and Jerusalem, therefore, display contrasting conﬁgurations of sovereignty under conditions of neo-liberalism and empire. They demonstrate the extremes of privatized enclosures on the one hand and state enclosures on the other. With its privately secured walled enclosures, Johannesburg exempliﬁes the characteristics that have made Sa˜o Paulo and Los Angeles emblems of ‘‘post-modern urbanism’’ (Davis, 1990; Caldeira, 2000; Murray, 2004). The proliferation of gated communities and private enclaves has fragmented the space of the city and the privatization of

191

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

security has generated a certain de-centralization of sovereignty. The Wall around Jerusalem, on the other hand, reveals the immense power of the Israeli state in the production and securitization of space. At ﬁrst glance, this may appear to contradict the dominant trend in contemporary urban restructuring, but in fact it demonstrates an equally important trend. Neoliberalization and the emergence of empire can dramatically increase the power of the state (at various scales) to intervene in the production of space – through gentriﬁcation, the ‘‘hardening’’ of urban space, the militarization of policing and the targeting of cities through war and terror (Smith, 1996, 2006; Brenner, 2004; Graham, 2004). The militarization of Jerusalem demonstrates the growing strength of state security functions – especially as part of the escalating ‘‘war on terror.’’ Although they appear to stand in opposition to one another, the conﬁgurations of urban governance in Johannesburg and Jerusalem in fact reveal the limits of sovereignty produced by neo-liberalization and empire. This combination of neo-liberalization and walled enclosures has become increasingly common throughout the world. Spatial enclosures are central to the restructuring of power relations at multiple geographical scales. From walls around suburban homes and gated fortress communities to zerotolerance policies in New York City and the ‘‘Green Zone’’ in Baghdad, to the militarization of the US-Mexican border and the development of ‘‘fortress Europe,’’ to the mass incarceration of African Americans in the United States and secret prisons for ‘‘extraordinary rendition’’ and torture around the world, walled enclosures are rapidly coming to deﬁne life in the empire of the early 21st century.

NOTES 1. I use the term ‘‘Palestine/Israel’’ to designate all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. When discussing the period prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, I refer to this territory as Palestine. 2. But see Alexander (2002) for a more nuanced analysis of the ‘‘national question’’ in South Africa. 3. In the South African context, the term ‘‘Black’’ was redeﬁned as part of the struggle against the apartheid system of racial categorization. Subverting the government’s efforts to maintain a strict separation between ‘‘African,’’ ‘‘colored’’ and ‘‘Asian’’ peoples, the Black Consciousness movement redeﬁned the term ‘‘Black’’ to include all of the victims of apartheid. For the purposes of this paper, I will employ this deﬁnition of ‘‘Black’’ while using the term ‘‘African’’ to refer to people of African decent.

192

ANDY CLARNO

4. According to a 2005 study conducted by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, ‘‘Some 46 percent of Israel’s Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the territories, while 31 percent favor transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country.’’ For information on the report, see Barzilai (2005). 5. Neither of these processes would have been conceivable in mineral-rich and labor-dependent South Africa. Imagine how different things would be if there were gold or diamonds in the West Bank. 6. This is not to say that labor has been absent from the Palestinian struggle. The Palestinians carried out a six-month general strike in 1936 and labor unions played an important role in the ﬁrst intifada. For more on Palestinian labor, see Hilterman (1991), Swedenburg (1995), and Lockman (1996). Compared to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, however, the Palestinian labor movement is notable for its weakness. 7. Until this point, I have used the term ‘‘Israel’’ to denote the State. Here, I use the term to designate a geographic entity – which is problematic for a number of reasons. To begin with, all of the borders of the State of Israel remained ofﬁcially undeﬁned until Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) – its borders with Lebanon and with any future Palestinian state remain undeﬁned. The international community generally treats the ‘‘Green Line’’ – the 1949 armistice lines which remained in effect until June 4, 1967 – as the borders of the State of Israel. However, the State has extended its de facto sovereignty over the territories that it occupied in June 1967. Residents of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories have Israeli citizenship and the Israeli military governs the occupied territories. Furthermore, the State has adopted Basic Laws ofﬁcially annexing some of these occupied territories – speciﬁcally East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. In addition, most Israeli maps include all of the occupied territories within the borders of Israel throughout the world consider the occupied territories to be integral parts of the ‘‘Land of Israel.’’ On the other hand, several states do not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the State of Israel over any part of Palestine/Israel. For the purposes of this paper, whenever I refer to Israel as a geographic entity, I follow the custom of the international community in using the 1949 armistice lines as its geographic limits. As noted in note 1, I use the term Palestine/Israel to designate all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. 8. Despite the disastrous effects of GEAR, the South African government has spent the last six years attempting to export its neo-liberal economic program to the rest of Africa through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) (Bond, 2002). 9. Some displaced residents from Alexandra, for instance, have been relocated to Braamﬁscherville, on the western edge of Johannesburg. Given tiny ‘‘RDP’’ houses, they are the envy of nearby Mandelaville – an informal settlement built on an abandoned mine by residents deposited in the area with a truckload of tin after being evicted from Diepkloof. In most urban evictions, however, residents are simply left in the street to fend for themselves. 10. More recently, Israel has adopted a welfare-to-work program (the ‘‘Wisconsin Plan’’), discussed selling more state-owned business (such as El-Al) and considered the privatization of state-owned lands – especially the lands that were conﬁscated

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

193

from Palestinian refugees and internally displaced people after 1948. And in 2003, the state cut National Insurance grants for unemployment, children and income support (see Davis, 2003; Adiv, 2005; Muammar, 2005; National Insurance Institute, 2006; Sawt el-Amel, 2007). 11. Some members of the Israeli business elite are making the very same argument today (see Remnick, 2007). 12. As Samara (2000, p. 21) notes: ‘‘the PA’s economy may be alone in having been designed from its very beginning by the policies and prescriptions of globalizing institutions.’’ 13. According to Brynen (1996, p. 48), ‘‘about one-third of assistance pledged is in the form of grants, with the remainder as concessional loans or guarantees.’’ But by September 1998, only 22.3% of pledged loans – as opposed to 61.4% of all pledged money – had actually been dispersed (Brynen, 2000, p. 116, 156). 14. After the victory of Hamas in the 2006 elections, Fayyad was replaced as Minister of Finance by Omar Abdel-Razeq. Fayyad returned to the post in March 2007 as part of the ‘‘unity government’’ and has retained Finance alongside his new roles as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister after the ‘‘regime change’’ ushered in by the dismissal of the democratically elected Hamas government in June 2007. 15. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared in 1994 that the goal of the economic protocol was ‘‘to reduce dramatically the number of Palestinians working in Israel’’ (Murphy, 2006, p. 58). 16. The number of permits issued for West Bank Palestinians employed in the settlements grew in both absolute and relative terms – from 15% in 1994 to over 42% in 2000 (Farsakh, 2005, p. 150). Over 50% of this employment was in the construction sector (ibid., p. 179). 17. Farsakh points out that the elimination of Palestinian workers from the Israeli economy has been staggered. Workers from the Gaza Strip have been excluded since 1994 and workers from the West Bank, while suffering periodic exclusions during the 1990s, have been increasingly excluded since 2000 (Farsakh, 2002). Nevertheless, Farsakh (2002, 2005) prefers to withhold prediction as to whether the ban on West Bank workers will continue. Instead, she argues that the West Bank has gone through a process of ‘‘Bantustanization’’ – remaining dependent on the Israeli labor market, but not always able to access it. Her evidence about the staggering of exclusion lends support to Li’s (2006) thesis that the Israeli government treats Gaza as a laboratory for developing governmental strategies that it later applies to the West Bank. 18. The guns came from three sources: the PA security forces, cross-border transfers from Egypt and – perhaps most importantly – trade with Israeli arms dealers (Roy, 1994, pp. 95–96). 19. Domestic servants were, of course, an exception. 20. Davis (2006, p. 15) addresses the apparent paradox of rapid urbanization coupled with deindustrialization. He argues that agricultural deregulation has generated ‘‘an exodus of surplus rural labor to urban slums even as cities ceased to be job machines’’. Cities like Johannesburg ‘‘have simply harvested this world agrarian crisis’’ (Davis, 2006, p. 16). 21. According to the 2002 Gauteng Transport Household Survey, 72% of all public transportation in the City of Johannesburg involves travel on mini-buses. The average time that it takes to travel to work on a mini-bus is 49 minutes and the

194

ANDY CLARNO

average cost of the commute is R3.11 (B$0.44). However, people living in townships on the urban periphery are forced to transfer once or twice to reach their destination, which can raise the average travel time to 99 minutes and the cost of a commute to R8.33 (B$1.17). On average, residents of Johannesburg spend R186 (B$26.22) per month commuting to work (City of Johannesburg, 2004, p. 25, 115–116, 120). 22. Conservative estimates suggest that the backlog in Johannesburg is at least 200,000 and growing rapidly (City of Johannesburg, 2006, p. 33). Other estimates suggest a backlog of 400,000. 23. Within this discourse, ‘‘Black’’ signiﬁes ‘‘African’’ – not the broader referent employed in the rest of this paper. 24. On crime waves, see Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, and Robert (1978). 25. As Czegledy (2003, p. 34) notes, many of these enclosures include cottages for live-in domestic servants. For a similar discussion, see Caldeira’s (2000) description of domestic servants in the fortress communities of Sa˜o Paulo. 26. Although never recognized internationally, this annexation was solidiﬁed in 1980 by a Basic Law which declared that ‘‘Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel’’ (Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, 1980). The State of Israel does not have a constitution – instead, it has Basic Laws. 27. Liberal Zionists, such as Margalit (2006, pp. 159–161), support this segregationist policy – ostensibly because it could be used to oppose the construction of Jewish settlements in Palestinian neighborhoods. 28. Although, see Shalakany (2002) for a prognosis of future trends. 29. Yet over the last two years, in an unprecedented move, Israel has occasionally required Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to obtain permits to enter the West Bank – thus undermining much of the free movement they used to enjoy. This policy has not yet become permanent (Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, 2005; Hass, 2005; Rubinstein, 2005). 30. In part, this poverty is due to the higher cost of living for Palestinians in Jerusalem – which is partly caused by the housing crisis. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) spend on average two-third as much as Palestinians Jerusalemites for basic household necessities (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2007, pp. 191–194). Unfortunately, poverty statistics released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics do not account for the higher cost of living in Jerusalem (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2006). As a result, they portray far lower levels of Palestinian poverty in Jerusalem than in other Palestinian territories (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2007, pp. 187–188; 31–33 [Arabic], 13–15 [English]). Statistics released by the Jerusalem municipality, on the other hand, reveal that 62% of Palestinian families in Jerusalem are living below the Israeli poverty line (Branovsky, 2007). These statistics demonstrate that, although they are considered privileged according to Palestinian standards, Palestinian Jerusalemites are living in dire circumstances according to Israel (and most other) standards.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The paper was made possible by the inspiration and understanding of hundreds of people in Palestine/Israel and South Africa who opened their

195

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

worlds to me and taught me about their cities and their struggles. I am truly indebted to each and every one of them. I am also deeply grateful to the people who read and commented on this work: Claire Decoteau, Cedric de Leon, Bashar Tarabieh, Chandan Gowda, Atef Said, L’Heureux Lewis, Rosa Peralta, Tanya Saunders, Mandi Bane, Steven Hyland, Mike Daly, Brian Wood, Anna Zogas, Naji Awdah, Suheir Awdah, Haidar Eid, Tikva Parnass, Oren Yiftachel, Ahmed Veriava, Salim Vally, Antina von Schnitzler, Franco Barchiesi, Toyin Falola, Barbara Harlow, Neil Brenner, Diane Davis, Neil Smith, Jeff Paige, Mamadou Diouf, George Steinmetz and Mu¨ge Go¨c- ek – as well as four anonymous reviewers for PPST, the African History Group and the Department of Sociology Graduate Student Workshop at the University of Michigan. This research was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and several centers and departments at the University of Michigan: the Center for African and Afroamerican Studies (CAAS), the Center for International and Comparative Studies (CICS), the South African Initiatives Ofﬁce (SAIO), the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the Department of Sociology.

REFERENCES Abunimah, A. (2006). One country: A bold proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. New York: Metropolitan Books. Adam, H. (2002). Peace-making in divided societies: The Israel-South Africa analogy. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council. Adiv, A. (2005). Punishing the poor: The Wisconsin Plan in Israel. Challenge, 93 (September– October). www.workersadvicecenter.org/Sept_05/Wisconsin.htm (accessed August 21, 2007). Agence France Presse. (1999). Israel to install cameras to keep guard on Jerusalem holy sites. Agence France Presse (November 21). Jerusalem. Agence France Presse. (2000). Israel asserts control over east Jerusalem with closed circuit TV cameras. Agence France Presse (January 9). Jerusalem. Akenson, D. (1992). God’s peoples: Covenant and land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Alexander, N. (2002). An ordinary country: Issues in the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. Scottsville: University of Natal Press. Alexandra Renewal Project. (2007). Alexandra Renewal Project website. www.alexandra.co.za (accessed August 21, 2007). Al-Majdal. (1999a). Israeli High Court decision on ID card conﬁscation. Al-Majdal, 1(March), 22–23. Al-Majdal. (1999b). Ofﬁcial ﬁgures on Jerusalem ID-card conﬁscation. Al-Majdal, 4(December), 30.

196

ANDY CLARNO

Al-Majdal. (2000). ID card conﬁscation in Jerusalem: Ofﬁcial Israeli data for 1999. Al-Majdal, 5(March), 24. Anti-Privatization Forum. (2007). Anti-Privatization Forum website. www.apf.org.za (accessed August 21, 2007). Aruri, N. (1995). The obstruction of peace: The US, Israel, and the Palestinians. Monroe: Common Courage Press. Barchiesi, F. (2005). Social citizenship and the transformation of wage labour in the making of post-apartheid South Africa, 1994–2001. PhD dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Barzilai, A. (2005). More Israeli Jews favor transfer of Palestinians, Israeli Arabs – poll ﬁnds. Ha’aretz, April 10. www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10522.htm (accessed August 21, 2007). Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel. (1980). Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1980_1989/Basic%20Law-%20Jerusalem-%20Capital %20of%20Israel (accessed on August 21, 2007). Bauman, Z. (2004). Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beall, J., Crankshaw, O., & Parnell, S. (2002). Uniting a divided city: Governance and social exclusion in Johannesburg. London: Earthscan Publications. Beavon, K. (2004). Johannesburg: The making and shaping of the city. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press. Beinin, J. (2006). The Oslo process and the limits of a Pax Americana. In: J. Beinin & R. L. Stein (Eds), The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beinin, J., & Stein, R. L. (Eds). (2006). The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bell, T., & Pantland, W. (1997). Private security in South Africa. Sunday Independent, November. www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,10,43 (accessed August 21, 2007). Benvenisti, M. (1996). City of stone: The hidden history of Jerusalem. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bishara, M. (2002). Palestine/Israel: Peace or apartheid – occupation, terrorism, and the future. London: Zed Books. Bollens, S. (1998). Urban planning amidst ethnic conﬂict: Jerusalem and Johannesburg. Urban Studies, 35(4), 729–750. Bond, P. (2000a). Cities of gold, townships of coal: Essays on South Africa’s new urban crisis. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Bond, P. (2000b). Elite transition: From apartheid to neoliberalism in South Africa. London: Pluto Press. Bond, P. (Ed.) (2002). Fanon’s warning: A civil society reader on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Bonner, P., & Segal, L. (1998). Soweto: A history. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman. Bonnet, G. (2001). Israelis have 400 eyes in Jerusalem’s Old City. Agence France Presse (April 3). Jerusalem. Branovsky, Y. (2007). 62 percent of east Jerusalem residents poor. Y-Net News (May 15). www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3400011,00.html (accessed August 21, 2007). Bremner, L. (1998). Crime and the emerging landscape of post-apartheid Johannesburg. In: H. Judin & I. Vladislavic (Eds), Blank_Architecture, apartheid, and after. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

197

Brenner, N. (2004). New state spaces. Urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the geographies of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism’’. In: N. Brenner & N. Theodore (Eds), Spaces of neoliberalism: Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Oxford: Blackwell. Brooks, R., Khamaisi, R., Nasrallah, R., & Abu Ghazaleh, R. (2005). The wall of annexation and expansion: Its impact on the Jerusalem area. Jerusalem: International Peace and Cooperation Center. Brynen, R. (1996). International aid to the West Bank and Gaza: A primer. Journal of Palestine Studies, 25(2 Winter), 46–53. Brynen, R. (2000). A very political economy: Peacebuilding and foreign aid in the West Bank and Gaza. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. B’Tselem. (2002). Land grab: Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank. Jerusalem: B’Tselem. B’Tselem. (2006). A wall in Jerusalem: Obstacles to human rights in the Holy City. Jerusalem: B’Tselem. B’Tselem, & HaMoked. (1997). The quiet deportation: Revocation of residency of East Jerusalem Palestinians. Jerusalem: B’Tselem and HaMoked. Byrne, A. (1997). Gaza’s textile merchants struggle with globalization and ‘‘peace.’’ News from within, 8(1 January), 20–22. Caldeira, T. (2000). City of walls: Crime, segregation, and citizenship in Sa˜o Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Callinicos, L. (1981). Gold and workers: 1886–1924 – a people’s history of South Africa (Vol. 1). Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Callinicos, L. (1987). Working life: Factories, townships and popular culture on the rand 1886–1940 – a people’s history of South Africa (Vol. 2). Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Carter, J. (2006). Palestine: Peace not apartheid. New York: Simon and Shuster. Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions. (2005). Any room for the poor? Forced evictions in Johannesburg, South Africa. COHRE: Geneva. www.cohre.org/store/attachments/ COHRE%20Johannesburg%20FFM_high%20res.pdf (accessed August 21, 2007). Cherney, M. (2006). Her community will not be a ‘‘political football.’’ The Star (May 15). Johannesburg. Cheshin, A. (1998). Municipal policies in Jerusalem: An account from within. Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA). Cheshin, A., Hutman, B., & Melamed, A. (1999). Separate and unequal: The inside story of Israeli rule in East Jerusalem. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Choshen, M., & Assaf-Shapira, Y. (2005). Jerusalem: A city in transition. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. City of Johannesburg. (2001). Johannesburg: An African city in change. Cape Town: Zebra Press. City of Johannesburg. (2004). Integrated transport plan 2003/2008: Updated 2004. Johannesburg. City of Johannesburg. (2006). Integrated development plan 2006/11. Johannesburg. Constitutional Court of South Africa. (2000). Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others v Grootboom and Others. Case CCT 11/00. Cox, A. (2006). Alexandra residents getting their own super shopping facilities. The Star (September 13). Johannesburg. Czegledy, A. (2003). Villas of the highveld: A cultural perspective on Johannesburg and its ‘‘northern suburbs’’. In: R. Tomlinson, R. Beauregard, L. Bremner & X. Mangcu (Eds), Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the postapartheid city. New York: Routledge.

198

ANDY CLARNO

Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz: Excavating the future of Los Angeles. New York: Vintage Books. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. London: Verso. Davis, U. (2003). Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the struggle within. London: Zed Books. De Angelis, M. (1998). Towards a theory of globalization as strategy. Paper presented at the annual conference of the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy. Lisbon, November. http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/M.DeAngelis/EAEPE98.htm (accessed August 21, 2006). De Angelis, M. (2001). Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s ‘‘enclosures.’’ The Commoner, 2 (September), 1–22. www.commoner.org.uk/02deangelis.pdf (accessed August 21, 2007). Desai, A. (2002). We are the poors: Community struggles in post-apartheid South Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press. Drori, I. (2000). The seam line: Arab workers and Jewish managers in the Israeli textile industry. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ellman, M., & Laacher, S. (2003). Migrant workers in Israel: A contemporary form of slavery (www.ﬁdh.org/magmoyen/rapport/2003/il1806a.pdf (accessed August 21, 2007)). Paris: Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network and International Federation for Human Rights. Elon, A. ([1971]1983). The Israelis: Founders and sons. New York: Penguin Books. European Commission. (2005). Trade issues: Bilateral trade relations – Palestinian Authority. ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/bilateral/countries/palestine/index_en.htm (accessed April 18, 2007). European Union. (2005). Report on East Jerusalem by Jerusalem and Ramallah Heads of Mission. Unpublished report. electronicintifada.net/bytopic/historicaldocuments/413.shtml (accessed April 18, 2007). Farsakh, L. (2002). Palestinian labor ﬂows to the Israeli economy: A ﬁnished story?. Journal of Palestine Studies, 32(1 Autumn), 13–27. Farsakh, L. (2005). Palestinian labour migration to Israel: Labour, land, and occupation. London: Routledge. Freedom Charter. (1955). www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/charter.html (accessed August 21, 2007). Freedom of Expression Institute. (2006). Annual report 2005/2006. Johannesburg. www.fxi.org.za/ PDFs/Governance/FXIAnnualReport2006.pdf (accessed October 7, 2007). Gidron, B., Katz, S., & Hasenfeld, Y. (Eds). (2002). Mobilizing for peace: Conﬂict resolution in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giliomee, H., & Gagiano, J. (Eds). (1990). The elusive search for peace: South Africa, Israel, and Northern Ireland. New York: Oxford University Press. Graham, S. (Ed.) (2004). Cities, war, and terrorism: Towards and urban geopolitics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Greenberg, S. (2004). Post-apartheid development, landlessness, and the reproduction of exclusion in South Africa. Research report no. 17. Durban: Centre for Civil Society. Greenberg, S. B. (1980). Race and state in capitalist development: Comparative perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press. Greenstein, R. (1995). Genealogies of conﬂict: Class, identity, and state in Palestine/Israel and South Africa. New Haven: Wesleyan University Press.

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

199

Grinberg, L. L., & Shaﬁr, G. (2000). Economic liberalization and the breakup of the Histadrut’s domain. In: G. Shaﬁr & Y. Peled (Eds), The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Hajjar, L. (2005). Courting conﬂict: The Israeli military court system in the West Bank and Gaza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., & Robert, B. (1978). Policing the crisis: Muggings, the state, and law and order. New York: Halmer and Meier Publishers. Hammami, R., & Tamari, S. (2006). Anatomy of another rebellion: From intifada to interregnum. In: J. Beinin & R. L. Stein (Eds), The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hanaﬁ, S., & Tabar, L. (2005). The emergence of a Palestinian globalized elite: Donors, international organizations, and local NGOs. Jerusalem: Institute of Palestine Studies. Hanieh, A. (2003). From state-led growth to globalization: The evolution of Israeli capitalism. Journal of Palestine Studies, 32(4 Summer), 5–21. Hanieh, A. (2006). The politics of curfew in the occupied territories. In: J. Beinin & R. L. Stein (Eds), The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hart, G. (2002). Disabling globalization: Places of power in post-apartheid South Africa. Pietermaritzberg: University of Natal Press. Harvey, D. ([1982]1999). The limits to capital. London: Verso. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An inquiry into the origins of cultural change. Cambridge: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature, and the geography of difference. Malden: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2003). The new imperialism. London: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. London: Oxford University Press. Hass, A. (2005). Palestinians also sleep in the city. Ha’aretz (March 31). Hilterman, J. (1991). Behind the intifada: Labor and women’s movements in the occupied territories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Honig-Parnass, T., & Haddad, T. (2007). Between the lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the US ‘‘War on Terror’’. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Human Rights Watch. (1996). Israel’s closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. hrw.org/ reports/1996/Israel1.htm (accessed August 21, 2007). Human Sciences Research Council. (2004). Fact sheet: Poverty in South Africa. Fact sheet #1: July 26. www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000990/index.php (accessed August 21, 2007). International Press Center. (2005). Al Shawwa: New developments in ﬁelds of energy and natural resources. May 25. www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_new/english/press_conf/print.asp?name ¼ 4908 (accessed August 21, 2007). Irish, J. (1999). Policing for proﬁt: The future of South Africa’s private security industry. Monograph No. 39. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies. http://www.iss.org.za/Pubs/ Monographs/No39/Contents.html (accessed August 21, 2007). Jabbour, G. (1970). Settler colonialism in southern Africa and the Middle East. Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center. Jaradat, I. (1996). Ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. News from Within, 12(11 December), 18–20. Jaradat, I. (1997). Who will stop ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem?. News from Within, 13(4 April), 17–18.

200

ANDY CLARNO

Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights. (2005). Israeli occupation authorities impede Palestinian Jerusalemites from entering PA controlled areas. (January 15). Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights. Available online: www.jscer.org/ english/index.html (accessed August 21, 2007). Jerusalem District Electric Company. (2006). Al-Khazan: The pre-paid water system. http:// www.jdeco.net/Default.aspx?tabid ¼ 82 (accessed August 21, 2007). Jerusalem Municipality. (2005). Jerusalem 2000: Local outline plan – Report no. 4: The proposed plan and the main planning policies. Jerusalem. Jochelson, K. (1988). Urban crisis and popular reaction: A case study of Alexandra. BA Honors dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Johannesburg Development Agency. (2007). Johannesburg Development Agency website. www.jda.org.za (accessed August 21, 2007). Ju¨rgens, U., Gnad, M., & Ba¨hr, J. (2003). New forms of class and racial segregation: Ghettos or ethnic enclaves?. In: R. Tomlinson, R. Beauregard, L. Bremner & X. Mangcu (Eds), Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the postapartheid city. New York: Routledge. Khalidi, R. (1997). Palestinian identity: The construction of modern national consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press. Klein, M. (2005). Old and new walls in Jerusalem. Political Geography, 24, 53–76. Kok, P., & Collinson, M. (2006). Migration and urbanization in South Africa. Report 03-04-02. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Lagerquist, P. (2003). Privatizing the occupation: The political economy of an Oslo development project. Journal of Palestine Studies, 32(2 Winter), 5–20. Landless People’s Movement. (2005). Memorandum of demands to the National Land Summit. July 27–31. Johannesburg. Landman, K. (2002). Gated communities in South Africa: Building bridges or barriers? Paper presented at the ‘‘International Conference on Private Urban Governance.’’ Mainz, Germany, June 6–9, 2002. Landsberg, C. (2005). City case study report: City of Johannesburg. Developed for the IBSA workshop on ‘‘Achieving the Millennium Development Goals.’’ Republic of South Africa: Department of Housing. Laqueur, W. (2003). A history of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Schocken Books. LAW – The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment. (n.d.). Apartheid, bantustans, cantons: The ABC of the Oslo Accords. Jerusalem. Lefebvre, H. ([1974]1991). In: D. Nicholson-Smith (Trans), The production of space. Cambridge: Blackwell. Lester, A. (1998). From colonization to democracy: A new historical geography of South Africa. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers. Li, D. (2006). The Gaza Strip as laboratory: Notes in the wake of disengagement. Journal of Palestine Studies, 35(2 Winter), 38–55. Lockman, Z. (1996). Comrades and enemies: Arab and Jewish workers in Palestine, 1906–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lodge, T. (1983). Black politics in South Africa since 1945. London: Longman. Lodge, T. (2002). Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki. Cape Town: David Philip Books. Malefane, M. (2005). Squatters’ relocation on hold after clashes. The Star (August 4). Johannesburg.

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

201

Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Marais, H. (2001). South Africa: Limits to change: The political economy of transition. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Marcuse, P. (1995). Not chaos, but walls: Postmodernism and the partitioned city. In: S. Watson & K. Gibson (Eds), Postmodern cities and spaces. Cambridge: Blackwell. Marcuse, P. (1997a). The Ghetto of exclusion and the fortiﬁed enclave: New patterns in the United States. American Behavioral Scientist, 41(3 Novembeor/December), 311–326. Marcuse, P. (1997b). Walls of fear and walls of support. In: N. Ellin (Ed.), Architecture of fear. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Margalit, M. (2006). Discrimination in the heart of the Holy City. Jerusalem: International Peace and Cooperation Center. Marx, K. ([1887]1967). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1). New York: International Publishers. Masalha, N. (1992). Expulsion of the Palestinians. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Masalha, N. (1997). A land without a people: Israel, transfer, and the Palestinians 1949–1996. London: Faber and Faber. McCarthy, R. (2007). Israel’s oldest kibbutz votes for privatization. The Guardian, Tuesday, February 20. http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2017038,00.html (accessed August 21, 2007). McDonald, D., & Ruiters, G. (2005). The age of commodity: Water privatization in Southern Africa. London: Earthscan. McKinley, D. (2005). Alex residents know the truth. The Star (December 8). Johannesburg. McKinley, D. (2006). The making of a myth: South Africa’s neo-liberal journey. Durban: Centre for Civil Society. www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,11,2476 (accessed August 21, 2007). Michael, K., & Ramon, A. (2004). A fence around Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Mitchell, T. G. (2000). Native vs. settler: Ethnic conﬂict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Morris, B. (2004). The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muammar, L. K. (2005). Privatizing apartheid in Israel. Z-Net daily commentaries (December 8). http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2005-12/08mouammar.cfm (accessed August 21, 2007). Murphy, E. (2006). Buying poverty: International aid and the peace process. In: J. Beinin & R. L. Stein (Eds), The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Murray, M. (2004). The evolving spatial form of cities in a globalizing world economy: Johannesburg and Sa˜o Paulo. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Publishers. Nasrallah, R. (2005). Transformations in Jerusalem: Where are we heading? In: M. Auga, S. Hassan, R. Nasrallah & S. Stetter (Eds), Divided cities in transition: Challenges facing Jerusalem and Berlin. Jerusalem: International Peace and Cooperation Center. National Insurance Institute of Israel. (2006). Annual Survey 2005. Jerusalem. Nitzan, J., & Bichler, S. (2002). The global political economy of Israel. London: Pluto Press.

202

ANDY CLARNO

No Sizwe. (1979). One Azania, one nation: The national question in South Africa. London: Zed Press. Ntsebeza, L. (2007). Address the land question. Mail and Guardian, August 17–23, 23. Nzimande, B. (2004). Assessing the 2004 Red October campaign: Land and agrarian struggles and a way forward. Address to National Campaign Review Meeting, Johannesburg, January 26, 2004. Ofﬁce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (2006). Access to Jerusalem – New military orders limit West Bank Palestinian access: Special Focus (February). Humanitarian update: Occupied Palestinian territory. Jerusalem: Ofﬁce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Olga Document. (2004). http://oznik.com/words/040712.html (accessed August 21, 2007). Oosthuizen, M., & Naidoo, P. (2004). Internal migration to the Gauteng province. Development Policy Research Unit: Working paper 04/88. Cape Town: University of Cape Town. Oslo Accords: Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements. (September 1993). http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/israel-palestine/ document/oslo091393.pdf (accessed on August 21, 2007). Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. (2006). Poverty in the Palestinian territory (2005). Ramallah: Palestinian National Authority. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. (2007). Jerusalem statistical yearbook, No. 9. Ramallah: Palestinian National Authority. Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON). (2003). The wall in Palestine: Facts, testimonies, analysis and call to action. Jerusalem: PENGON. Pappe, I. (2004). A history of modern Palestine: One land, two peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paris, J. (2000). Regional cooperation and the MENA economic summits. In: G. Shaﬁr & Y. Peled (Eds), The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Peberdy, S., Crush, J., & Msibi, N. (2004). Migrants in the City of Johannesburg: A report for the City of Johannesburg. Johannesburg: Southern African Migration Project. Peled, Y. (2006). From Zionism to capitalism: The political economy of the neoliberal welfare state in Israel. In: J. Beinin & R. L. Stein (Eds), The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Peres, S. (1993). The new Middle East. New York: Henry Holt. Pickard-Cambridge, C. (1988). The greying of Johannesburg. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations. Pillay, K. (2001). The South African private security industry: Its phenomenal growth and current efforts to regulate the industry. Paper presented at the 11th Conference of the International Institute for Security and Safety Management, Kolkata, December 15–17. http://www.tsa.ac.za/corp/research/papers/kpillay2001IISSM.doc (accessed August 21, 2007). Programme: Middle East/North Africa Economic Summit. (1994). Casablanca: Council on Foreign Relations and World Economic Forum. October 30–November 1, 1994. Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of the State of Israel and the PLO Representing the Palestinian People. (April 29, 1994). Paris. Rabbani, M. (2006). Palestinian authority, Israeli rule. In: J. Beinin & R. L. Stein (Eds), The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993–2005. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

203

Ram, U. (2000). ‘‘The promised land of business opportunities:’’ Liberal post-Zionism in the glocal age. In: G. Shaﬁr & Y. Peled (Eds), The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Rasmussen, J. (2007). Struggling for the city: Evictions in inner-city Johannesburg. In: L. Buur, S. Jensen & F. Stepputat (Eds), The security-development nexus: Expressions of sovereignty and security in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press. Remnick, D. (2007). The apostate: A Zionist politician loses faith in the future. The New Yorker (July 30). Rogerson, C. (1996). Emerging from apartheid’s shadow: South Africa’s informal economy. Journal of International Affairs, 53(2), 673–695. Roithmayr, D. (2002). The constitutionality of school fees in public education. Issue Paper #1. Joint publication of the Education Rights Project, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, and the Education Policy Unit of the University of the Witwatersrand. http://www.law.wits.ac.za/cals/lt/pdf/Roithmayr_postRefGrp.pdf (accessed October 8, 2007). Roy, S. (1994). ‘‘The seed of chaos, and of night’’: The Gaza Strip after the agreement. Journal of Palestine studies, 23(3, Spring), 85–98. Roy, S. (1995). The Gaza Strip: The political economy of de-development. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Rubinstein, D. (2005). The battle for the capital. Ha’artez (March 31). Russouw, R. (2005). Squatters will have no place in brave new shopping mall world. The Star (February 12). Johannesburg. Said, E. (1996). Peace and its discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East peace process. New York: Vintage. Said, E. (2001). The end of the peace process: Oslo and after. New York: Vintage. Said, E. (2004). From Oslo to Iraq and the road map. New York: Pantheon. Samara, A. (1992). Industrialization in the West Bank: A Marxist socio-economic analysis, 1967–1991. Jerusalem: Al-Mashriq. Samara, A. (2000). Globalization, the Palestinian economy, and the ‘‘peace process. ’’ Journal of Palestine studies, 29(2, Winter), 20–34. Samara, A. (2001). Epidemic of globalization: Ventures in world order, Arab nation, and Zionism. Glendale, CA: Palestine Research and Publishing Foundation. Sarakinsky, M. (1984). Alexandra: From ‘‘freehold’’ to ‘‘model’’ township. BA Honors dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Saul, J. (2001). Cry for the beloved country: The post-apartheid denouement. Review of African Political Economy, 28(89, September), 429–460. Saul, J., & Gelb, S. (1986). The crisis in South Africa: Revised edition. New York: Monthly Review Press. Sawt el-Amel. (2007). Israel: Wisconsin plan – Welfare to work? Documentary ﬁlm. Nazareth: Sawt el-Amel/Laborer’s Voice. Scho¨nteich, M. (1999). Fighting crime with private muscle: The private sector and crime prevention. African Security Review, 8(5). www.iss.org.za/Pubs/ASR/8No5/Fighting Crime.html (accessed August 21, 2007). Semyonov, M., & Lewin-Epstein, N. (1987). Hewers of wood and drawers of water: Noncitizen Arabs in the Israeli labor market. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Shaﬁr, G. (1996). Land, labor and the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conﬂict, 1882–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press.

204

ANDY CLARNO

Shaﬁr, G. (1999). Business in politics: Globalization and the search for peace in South Africa and Israel/Palestine. Israel Affairs, 5(2), 103–120. Shaﬁr, G., & Peled, Y. (Eds). (2000a). The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Shaﬁr, G., & Peled, Y. (2000b). Introduction: The socioeconomic liberalization of Israel. In: G. Shaﬁr & Y. Peled (Eds), The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Shaﬁr, G., & Peled, Y. (2000c). Peace and proﬁts: The globalization of Israeli business and the peace process. In: G. Shaﬁr & Y. Peled (Eds), The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Shalakany, A. (2002). Privatizing Jerusalem or an investigation into the city’s future legal stakes. Leiden Journal of International Law, 15, 431–444. Shalev, M. (2000). Liberalization and the transformation of the political economy. In: G. Shaﬁr & Y. Peled (Eds), The new Israel: Peacemaking and liberalization. Boulder: Westview Press. Simone, A. (2004). People as infrastructure: Intersecting fragments in Johannesburg. Public Culture, 16(3), 407–429. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentriﬁcation and the revanchist city. New York: Routledge. Smith, N. (2006). The revanchist city evolved: New globalism, new urbanism. Paper delivered at The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Lecture Series, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (November 6). South African Human Rights Commission. (2005). Road closures/boom gates. Johannesburg. Statistics South Africa. (2007a). Labour force survey – September 2006. Statistical release P0210. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Statistics South Africa. (2007b). Mid-year population estimates. Statistical release P0302. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Swedenburg, T. (1995). Memories of revolt: The 1936–1939 rebellion and the Palestinian national past. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tomlinson, R., Beauregard, R., Bremner, L., & Mangcu, X. (Eds). (2003a). Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the postapartheid city. New York: Routledge. Tomlinson, R., Beauregard, R., Bremner, L., & Mangcu, X. (2003b). The postapartheid struggle for an integrated Johannesburg. In: R. Tomlinson, R. Beauregard, L. Bremner & X. Mangcu (Eds), Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the postapartheid city. New York: Routledge. Treatment Action Campaign. (2007). Treatment Action Campaign website. www.tac.org.za (accessed October 7, 2007). Voice of Israel. (2000). Mideast: Jerusalem police place hundreds of video cameras in Old City (January 9). Jerusalem. Von Schnitzler, A. (2006). Smart meters, bad debt, and virtuous citizens: Governing the urban in post-apartheid South Africa. Unpublished paper presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association. San Francisco, November 16–19. Wolpe, H. (1972). Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: From segregation to apartheid. Economy and Society, 1(4), 425–456. World Bank. (1993). Developing the occupied territories: An investment in peace. Washington DC: World Bank.

A Tale of Two Walled Cities

205

World Bank. (2006). Technical annex for a proposed trust fund grant in the amount of US$10 million to West Bank and Gaza for an Emergency Municipal Services Rehabilitation Project II (EMSRP II). Report No. T7684 – GZ: November 16. Xundu, X., & Boyle, B. (2007). State fears protests over lack of delivery. Sunday Times (January 28). Johannesburg. Yahni, S. (2005). Unpublished paper presented at the conference ‘‘Building a future together: Alternatives to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.’’ Bethlehem, December 2–3. Yiftachel, O., & Ghanem, A. (2004). Understanding ‘‘ethnocratic’’ regimes: The politics of seizing contested territories. Political Geography, 23, 647–676. Yiftachel, O., & Yacobi, H. (2002). Planning a bi-national capital: Should Jerusalem remain united? Geoforum, 33, 137–145. Younis, M. (2000). Liberation and democratization: The South African and Palestinian national movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

THE INTERNET AND THE CITY: BLOGGING AND GENTRIFICATION ON NEW YORK’S LOWER EAST SIDE Lara Belkind INTRODUCTION This article relates the recent rise of weblogs and examines their relationship to processes of urban transformation. Speciﬁcally, it looks at the history of Curbed.com, a weblog created in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan that presents a layman’s perspective on real estate development and neighborhood change. Curbed began in 2001 as the personal blog of a local resident documenting the gentriﬁcation taking hold on the blocks surrounding his walk-up tenement apartment. It has since become more established, expanding to cover development in other New York neighborhoods and spawning franchises in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This inquiry seeks to examine what inﬂuence, if any, Curbed.com has had upon the neighborhood transition it has closely charted. This question is one aspect of larger questions about the relationship between virtual space and urban space; about the impact of growing use of the internet on the city. Has Curbed been a neutral observer of neighborhood change as it professes? By raising awareness of the processes underlying urban transition, has it provided any opportunities for community action to buffer gentriﬁcation? Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 207–233 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19006-8

207

208

LARA BELKIND

Or is the opposite true – have it and other neighborhood blogs contributed to the new desirability and market value of the Lower East Side? I would argue that although Curbed.com has increased the ability of local residents to understand the changes taking place around them, in the end it has helped accelerate gentriﬁcation by repositioning a site of local culture within a global market. Although Curbed.com serves an important function in making visible the frequently invisible processes of real estate – creating openings for public discussion, debate, even offering potential for political activism – it is likely enhancing the pace of gentriﬁcation on the Lower East Side due to evolutions in cultural and market operations. For example, post-Fordist differentiation and niche marketing mean that blogs help translate the speciﬁc local history of this neighborhood and its bohemian subcultures for a particular sector of global consumers. This in turn opens the neighborhood to broader consumption. In addition, the evolution of urban centers as producers of ‘‘content’’ in the new economy means that weblogs become another source of such content for cultural consumption. Finally, while Curbed and other internet blogs contribute to the increasing speed and intensity of information exchange, a digital divide remains between the new economy workers moving into the Lower East Side (and reading Curbed), and the production and low-end service workers largely being displaced by gentriﬁcation. This latter group is less likely to use information available on the internet to promote its own stake in the neighborhood. Curbed has contributed to repositioning the Lower East Side in several ways. First, it has increased the rate at which development information about the neighborhood becomes available and by foregrounding the area’s investment momentum, has unwittingly engaged in a kind of ironic boosterism. In addition, its tales of the ‘‘hood’’ enhance social networks among a new local demographic of young culture industry workers at the same time that these stories are compelling content for a global urban niche market. ‘‘Insider’’ niches taking shape in nontraditional media are highly targeted by a range of commercial interests in today’s increasingly differentiated marketplace. As a result, local physical geographies change as capital responds to global cultural niches forming in virtual space. This phenomenon can be read, for example, in the rapid transformation of the Lower East Side from a residential area into a consumption zone of nightlife, entertainment and retail. Finally, Curbed and other blogs have reinforced existing neighborhood social divisions by creating a virtual space of dialog that

The Internet and the City

209

technologically and culturally excludes the Lower East Side’s remaining immigrant communities. Blogs are playing a new role in making legible the logics of capital accumulation, but knowledge is not always equal to power. On the Lower East Side, information most beneﬁts those with capital to invest on the basis of this knowledge – real estate interests and retailers. Rather than facilitating any subversion of existing logics of economics and power through new forms of participatory dialog, neighborhood blogs appear to help sustain these logics at the same time that they make them more apparent. And in addition, the local histories mediated and constructed by blogs are presented on the internet in a format that can be appropriated to promote goods and services – in a way that non-virtual dialog cannot be. Bloggers and the neighborhood’s new population of young information economy workers also see themselves differently than did an earlier generation of artists who ‘‘frontiered’’ the Lower East Side’s rough tenement blocks in the 1970s and 1980s and ushered in a ﬁrst wave of gentriﬁcation. Unlike artists who felt part of a counterculture, most bloggers do not make a claim to operate outside of middle class conventions and commercialism. In the present moment of the Lower East Side, boundaries between cultural innovation and commerce are blurred. Although bloggers are not primarily motivated by economic goals, economic value creation is seamlessly folded into their experimentation with creating new forms of culture, information and technology. A number of authors have addressed the impact of new telecommunications technologies upon urban development trends. Early on, both Saskia Sassen’s 1991 book, The Global City, and Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin’s 1996 Telecommunications and the City rejected previous theorizing that such technologies erode the demand to locate in urban centers and make spatial proximity irrelevant by engendering a diffuse network of economic activities facilitated through telecommuting, teleconferencing and other mediated exchange. Both Sassen and Graham and Marvin’s work stresses instead that telecommunications have the opposite spatial effect, actually increasing the centrality of high-tech infrastructure networks and of the homes and workplaces of new economy workers. Growing demand for these homes and workplaces is focused particularly on a few select urban ‘‘control centers’’ in the global economy – such as New York City (Sassen, 1991; Graham & Marvin, 1996). More recent writings on the social impact of internet technologies echo the importance of urban centrality and theorize additional social effects, for example a growing pluralism of expression and democratization of

210

LARA BELKIND

information access. In fact, Curbed.com itself proposes that its central mission is to democratize knowledge about real estate operations in New York City – posting reader tips about new and rumored developments and sponsoring an online dialog. This information has long been obscured by the dominance of a highly competitive real estate industry, by hidden transactions in the speculation process and by New York City’s lack of a centralized real estate listings system. Curbed has charted the recent gentriﬁcation of the Lower East Side from a shifting perspective, often critical and ironic, at other times sympathetic, and generally claiming to be an objective observer of inevitable urban evolution. Greater transparency in the real estate market has been the key contribution of a host of real estate dot coms, including Zillow, Trulia, PropSmart, LiveDeal, Point2 and Oodle. These are in addition to real estate information and listings available on Google, Yahoo and Craigslist. All of these sites give consumers direct access to sales and listing information once widely dispersed and controlled by brokers and agents. To some extent, these sites have the effect on real estate that internet travel sites have had on the travel industry (Urban Land, 2005). Yet the Lower East Side weblogs are distinct from real estate websites. The content on their pages is not data and listings information but rather stories of place. The dialog that they generate in virtual space enhances a neighborhood ‘‘scene’’ that is simultaneously forming in physical space: Bloggers may interact online but will also meet for a drink at a local bar. Their weblogs make this local scene accessible to a global audience interested in the culture of hip young urbanites. As a result, blogs bring exposure which not only ‘‘sells’’ the neighborhood’s terrain but also transforms the neighborhood into a brand image that can be adopted to sell clothing, music, new restaurants, bars, hotels and entertainment.

CURBED.COM Curbed evolved from the personal blog of its publisher, Lockhart Steele, a New England prep school and Ivy League grad who moved to New York after college in 1996 to work in publishing and undertake a failed dot com venture. Steele, a freelance writer, became part of a burgeoning culture of weblogs, of which not a small number focused on daily life in New York. Steele graduated from Brown University after attending St. Paul’s, the high school of John Kerry, and jokes that in Manchester, Massachusetts

The Internet and the City

211

where he was raised, ‘‘people care more about where you go to prep school than where you go to college (LoHo Realty’s Grand Street News, 2005).’’ While in college, he began a few book projects with friends: a fan book on the rock band Phish and a series called the Book of Ages, reﬂections upon turning 30 and 40. Afterwards, he was hired as an editor at Wide Band, a consumer electronics trade magazine in New York. The magazine failed, but he succeeded in convincing its publishing executive to help ﬁnance a dot com project he was developing with another friend, a database of popular websites. When the dot com boom went bust and his site never launched, the same executive rehired him to manage a new magazine, Hamptons Cottages and Gardens (Gothamist.com, 2004; The Villager, 2004). In 2001, Steele rented a walk-up apartment in a tenement on Rivington Street and began a blog for his friends to read. This blog – titled Lockhart Steele.com Web Presence Lower East Side – began as a site for personal musings but soon turned its lens on the neighborhood. Initially its pages were ﬁlled with trials and tribulations of the Boston Red Sox and travels with a friend through the Himalayas, but quickly its subject became the changing physical and cultural landscape of the Lower East Side. Discussions touched upon real estate, retail and restaurants and neighborhood life in general. LockhartSteele.com charted new condo and hotel development projects and solved local real estate mysteries of changing ownership and sales of vacant lots. Other topics were growing numbers of new restaurants and bars, the decline of the area’s Jewish and ethnic businesses and of its local theaters and music venues. Discussions of neighborhood street life included documenting grafﬁti art. Steele also followed struggles inherent in neighborhood change such as the ‘‘noise wars’’ between existing residents and new nightlife as well as more recent arrivals’ ﬁght with Fresh Direct to add the area to its grocery delivery zone. In addition to the departure of neighborhood institutions, Steele chronicled the new presence of celebrities such as Moby, a techno music star and activist who opened a local vegan cafe´ and adopted the neighborhood’s working class imagery as part of his public persona. The site was a dialog – internet readers continually e-mailed in new information and Steele’s blog entries linked to an array of other weblogs and news articles (LockhartSteele.com; New York Post, 2004). An event that heavily inﬂuenced the blog’s shift to real estate and gentriﬁcation was when a high-rise boutique hotel broke ground for construction directly across the street from Steele’s tenement apartment in 2002. Over the next several years, Steele uncovered stories behind the project’s ﬁts, starts, name changes and controversies over shady real

212

LARA BELKIND

estate transactions and the use of non-union labor – and posted them on his blog: Tuesday, December 31, 2002

W Hotely Construction continues on the 18-story behemoth across the street from my apartment on RivingtonyAt least I can see where I live from anywhere below 14th nowy Strangest Daily Experience, Rivington Street Edition So here’s the deal with the new Lower East Side W Hotel, told to me by an insider. Apparently, Starwood (the parent company) doesn’t actually own the structure that’s

The Internet and the City

213

going up in the heart of the LES. The plan is that, once this massive structure is complete, the developer (one ‘‘Downtown LLC’’ by name) will go ‘‘bankrupt’’ and Starwood will ‘‘just happen’’ ‘‘to purchase the property. As a result, the place is being built with non-union labor. Sub-result: Every morning this year, I’ve stepped outside to ﬁnd (a) a group of striking laborers; and (b) their 25 foot inﬂatable rat looming over mey’’ Tuesday May 27, 2003 LA Goes LES 9 04:27 PM 9 10 TB LA Times reporter Geraldine Baum ﬁlls the West Coast crowd in on the Surface [formerly W] Hotel and its developer, Paul Stallings. Looks like everyone’s keeping it real: During a tour of the $250-a-night rooms at the Surface, a woman in a housedress emerged from her apartment in an adjacent tenement and began hanging her laundry on the ﬁre escape. ‘‘That’s what we want people to experience,’’ said Amador Pons, the 28-year-old hotel architect, ﬁrst pointing to the woman sunning her laundry and then sweeping his hand across a cityscape of tenement rooftops and East River bridges. – $250 a Night at the Corner of Posh and Gritty [latimes.com]

214

LARA BELKIND

Next, conﬂicts arose in the shift of the Lower East Side from a residential area to a new nightlife district. Tired of the noise and late night activity accompanying the new density of bars and entertainment venues, some neighborhood residents sought to block granting of additional liquor licenses. Schiller’s Liquor Bar, a fashionable new restaurant by the owner of tony SoHo eatery, Balthazar, had a run-in with the area’s community board over its license and, as the saga played out, it was documented by Lockhart Steele on his blog: Monday, October 27, 2003 Schillers: Battle Lines Being Drawn909:59 AM913 TB When we brunched there Saturday morn, we never imagined that Schiller’s could be a Liquor Bar no more. Yet that’s the rub from Community Board 3, which has requested that Keith McNally’s boisterous boıˆ te lose its full liquor license. Reputed crimes against the neighborhood, according to an article in today’s Times, include: Illegally close proximity to high school across street; Large neon LIQUOR BAR sign is ‘‘annoying’’; Employees from Schiller’s use hose to wash bar mats and trash cans on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant at 4am, creating ‘‘a din’’; ‘‘General resentment’’ that new bars and restaurants in neighborhood are turning a ‘‘residential area’’ into an ‘‘entertainment bazaar.’’ Hrhmy tough to argue with those. (Clearly, some people just don’t get it.) Tuesday, October 28, 2003 Schillers: Day 2 9 11:22 AM 9 12 TB As of 8:42am this morning, the doors of Schiller’s are still open, the neon is lit, schoolkids from across the street are inside sipping pernod, and breakfast is being served. God save the Queen! Ian: ‘‘I for one will be wearing a Save the Martini t-shirt until this is resolved’’ [ebway.org]. Liz: ‘‘The hipsters annoy me, too—tearing through town with their infernal electroclash music, and leaving in their wake a devastating trail of legwarmers, ironic t-shirts and upper-middle-class guilt. But I have to side with LES blogger Lockhart Steele on this one’’ [The Kicker].

Steele had an ambivalent relationship to the gentriﬁcation he was witnessing on the Lower East Side, but generally professed to be observing an inevitable process of change: December 31, 2002 LES Throwbacks Not To Lose 1. The Matzo Factoryy Walk past and check out the matzo coming off the conveyor belt, and the old Jewish men packaging it up. Better than fresh donuts at Krispy Kreme (Rivington @ Suffolk/Clinton)

The Internet and the City

215

2. Economy Candyy A bona ﬁde tourist attraction, this old school candy store sells in bulk. A must-see. (Rivington @ Ludlow/Essex) 3. The Kosher Wine Mural on the wall above Essex and Rivingtony. Lord, don’t let them replace it with a Miss Sixty billboard Five Signs of Creeping LES Gentriﬁcation 1. Jennifer Convertibles opens LES store (Delancey @ Allen) 2. Age-old kosher deli landmark Ratners closes to expand increasingly cheesy cocktail haven Lansky Lounge (Delancey @ Norfolk) 3. Moby opens overpriced teashop Teany (Rivington @ Orchard/Ludlow) 4. Apt. buildings for I-Bankers sprout (‘‘Gotham Court’’ on Essex, that big-ass place on Bowery @ Spring) 5. This weblog

By 2004, LockhartSteele.com attracted about 2,000 hits per day on the web (Ibid.). This startling popularity and his own interest in the commercial potential of blogs led Steele to launch Curbed.com in May 2004. After one short-lived attempt with a restaurant and nightlife blog called ‘‘Below 14th,’’ Steele and a high school friend with a Harvard MBA came up with a business plan for a blog whose subject was real estate and neighborhood change. The day of the Curbed launch, LockhartSteele.com carried the following text to explain the undertaking: Curbed is based on the idea that all conversation in New York eventually comes back to real estate, apartments, and the neighborhoods we inhabit y . I think real estate in New York is interesting not because of the dollars and cents involved (although, yes, that can be interesting too) but rather because of what it means for the city, and y what it means for the neighborhoods we call home. I last got away for more than a month in the summer of 2001. It was right after I moved into my current apartment, on a relatively quiet block with an old Mexican food place and a hardware store that inexplicably closes on Sundays across the street. Since then, this block – this tiny, one block block – has had a bar named after a French poet move in downstairs; an art gallery open a few doors down that a major newspaper immediately declared profoundly important; a hip clothing boutique for women take over an old garment store; a giant Mondrian-clad monolith rise from nothing to tower over the street; and, perhaps most ﬁtting of all, a candy store that has been there forever become enshrined as an unparalleled tourist destination. LockhartSteele.com, May 24, 2004

While documenting these changes in his neighborhood, Steele had also been charting new developments in the world of weblogs. A relatively new medium, the terms ‘‘weblog’’ and ‘‘blog’’ were coined by 1999 to refer to online diaries ﬁrst in use in 1994. Also in 1999, Blogger offered the ﬁrst widely used, free blog-creation service. 2002 marked the launch of the ﬁrst

216

LARA BELKIND

blog advertising broker, Blogads. The same year, Nick Denton, an acquaintance of Steele’s who would later become his employer, launched the ﬁrst in what would become an ‘‘empire’’ of blogs based on technology, New York gossip and other niche topics. By 2005, yearly blog ad sales were estimated at $100 million (New York Magazine, 2006; New York Times, May 8, 2005). In November, 2002, Lockhart Steele posted excerpts from an interview with Nick Denton concerning a new gossip blog project: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 Thin Media 9 01:09 PM 9 12 TB Nick Denton says he’s working on something cool: yReal estate ads will be a prime revenue source. ‘‘The advertisers target old money in the New York Observer. We’ll serve the advertisers targeting the young money,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re getting the formula reﬁned for thin media.’’ If he could identify the right niches and locales, Nick said, ‘‘I’d love to launch one of these a month.’’ (Blogads, 2002) I love it. Perhaps a relationship with my employer [Hamptons Cottages and Gardens] is in the cards – we do high camp real estate gossip better than anyone.

Clearly, with the surprising popularity of his personal blog – and his somewhat random yet serendipitous employment at a lifestyle and real estate magazine – Steele soon realized he had hit upon just such a ‘‘niche and locale’’ – the Lower East Side and other volatile New York neighborhoods. Curbed was launched and expanded to cover New York City, neighborhood by neighborhood, and by 2005 had 200,000 unique visitors (a million page views) per month and major advertisers including the New York Times (Inman Stories, 2005). Lockhart Steele’s coverage of the Lower East Side remained very similar to that of his personal blog – with the same small details of place-speciﬁc cultural observation but with more investigation of real estate activities and their ramiﬁcations for the neighborhood. Some of the real estate stories followed by Curbed included a local realtor’s attempt to promote the neighborhood as ‘‘LoHo,’’ for Lower Houston Street. Another notes Seward Park residents’ creation of a ‘‘ﬂipping tax’’ to discourage proﬁteering after this moderate-income housing cooperative, developed by a local garment workers’ union in the 1950s, was recently privatized. One piece gives a sense of the sheer scale of investment taking place within the modest urban fabric of the Lower East Side: It documents the sale of a Rivington Street walk-up tenement for $8.5 million, ‘‘a gross multiple of nearly 13 times the rent roll.’’ (Curbed.com, 2006). Still others provide information about demographic shifts in the neighborhood which might not be visually evident. For example:

The Internet and the City

217

LES: Undergarments Out, Condos Up? Tuesday, November 1, 2005, by Joey

According to blogger Joe Schumacher, Lismore Hosiery, on Ludlow and Grand Streets, is either the scariest or creepiest storefront on the Lower East Side. But put aside your nightmares of spare mannequin limbs for a second, and understand that it can now be known for a second reason: the site of another new LES condo development. At least that’s according to Lower [East] Society, who drop us a line: ‘‘This evening, I noticed the owner of Lismore Hosiery Co. (corner of Ludlow and Grand) was cleaning out the store. Asked what was happening, he said the shop was sold and a new condominium will take its place.’’ So who’s got the scoop?

This reliance on a stream of input and information from readers made the site a virtual space of continuous interchange which Lockhart Steele promoted on his own site and in news articles as representing the democratization of the real estate industry in New York. New York City is the self-described real estate capital of the world, but even to those spending the $1 million it takes to buy an ‘‘average’’ apartment in Manhattan – or those dropping $2 million to, you know, get that second bedroom – the rules of the game can be obscure, and good information hard to come byy Curbed aims to map the city as it changes in hopes of understanding the neighborhoods we inhabit a little better. To do it

218

LARA BELKIND

right, we need you. Drop a line: property tales, story tips, feedback and the like are most welcomey –Curbed.com Mission Statement, May 24, 2004 Whether it’s matching buyers and sellers, or providing detailed property statistics that used to be hidden from consumers, the Internet is ﬂattening the [real estate] game – and making it more democratic y . And Lockhart believes we are only at the beginning of this phenomenon – catalyzing millions of users to share information about their local community with each other. (Urban Probe Magazine, 2006)

WEBLOGS AND DEMOCRACY Curbed.com’s claim to be a democratizing medium that can level the playing ﬁeld of urban transformation is related to larger optimism about the potential of the internet as a medium for democracy and pluralism (Saco, 2002). According to Ted Friedman, ‘‘Blogs embody the hopes of so many cybertopians that computers might democratize the distribution of informationy that the blogosphere might become the public sphere – not just an adjunct or echo chamber [to the mass media], but a forum where a large portion of Americans get their news and share their views (Friedman, 2005).’’ This optimism reached a peak in 2002 and 2003 in the American political arena, ﬁrst when Senate Republican leader Trent Lott was forced to resign after making remarks interpreted to disdain the civil rights movement. Though his remarks were initially ignored in the mainstream press, a storm of discussion on blog sites – accompanied by research into Lott’s history of segregationist political stances – ﬁnally brought the discussion into the mass media. In 2003, the success of the Howard Dean presidential campaign both in fundraising and in spreading its message through a decentralized network of independent bloggers was key to sparking the perception of the internet as a bottom-up democracy, a virtual public sphere that could reject traditional media (Ibid.). This is almost a vision of a neo-Habermasian public sphere, where an engaged, sustained dialog on public issues could take place in virtual space rather than in the bourgeois coffee house. However, some theorists believe that the ‘‘democracy’’ of the internet is more descriptive of the structural quality of the medium than it is of an inherent political quality. This is a structure that from a political perspective has a number of Achilles heels: it is a structure that can be commodiﬁed, a structure that is subject to the inequality of ‘‘power law’’ distributions of information and a structure whose community is differentiated but also socially exclusive.

The Internet and the City

219

The bewildering variety and dynamism of cultural expression on the Internet has often been understood as an effect of a new mode of communication (distributed and manyto-many rather than centralized and few-to-manyy . [There is a] coexistence, within the debate about the digital economy, of discourses which see it as an oppositional movement and others which see it as a functional development to new mechanisms of extraction of value. (Terranova, 2004)

Manuel Castells believes the internet to be primarily a space of commodiﬁcation. It and other developments in telecommunications and information processing comprise the ‘‘space of ﬂows’’ through which the global economy will ‘‘penetrate all countries, all territories, all cultures, all communication ﬂows, and all ﬁnancial networks, relentlessly scanning the planet for new opportunities for proﬁt-making (Castells, 1997).’’ However, he also believes that the cultural values of the new network society operating in this space of ﬂows are no longer simply that of pure capital accumulation. ‘‘The new culture of the global network society is a culture of communication for the sake of communication. It is an open-ended network of cultural meanings that can not only coexist, but also interact and modify each other on the basis of this exchange.’’ Castells feels this culture can be characterized by what has been called the ‘‘hacker ethic’’ which has two primary cultural values: innovation and sharing. ‘‘It is a culture of innovation for the sake of innovation. The passion to create replaces capital accumulation as a means of salvation y The free sharing of knowledge and discovery is the essential mechanism by which innovation takes place in the information age (Castells, 2004).’’ Castells’ characterization seems an accurate description of the culture in which Lockhart Steele and other bloggers currently operate, where lines between proﬁt-making and democracy become blurred in their own discussions and in the mission statements of their websites. Saskia Sassen also points out that the idea of the internet as an equalizing medium is fallible, particularly in the realm of web logs: [T]here is no necessary correspondence between openness and distributed outcomes, and equalityy. This fact does come through y in the winner-takes-all patterns evident today in web log accessing y . [C]ivil society organizations also develop power law distributions as they scale up. It is not only in ﬁnance that the mix of openness and choice produces something akin to a winner-takes-all pattern. (Sassen, 2006)

As both the number of blog sites and those visiting them have grown, a few sites that appeared early and receive links from other websites tend to hold exponentially greater visibility and dominance over others as prominent voices on the internet. This power law distribution may in part explain Curbed’s success, given that Lockhart Steele’s blog was one of the ﬁrst sites to become popular on the Lower East Side. Not all internet voices feel he

220

LARA BELKIND

accurately speaks for the neighborhood, and he has received criticism from other local bloggers who feel he has contributed to gentriﬁcation. Lockhart Steele has indeed been a frequent target of mine when discussing Lower East Side development. His name alone is offensive to the immigrants who suffered through this neighborhood’s harshest times. My problem with Steele comes from his sense of entitlement. Here’s a privileged kid, the product of Northeast boarding schools and an Ivy League education, who arrives to NYC and moves to an ‘‘edgy’’ part of town that he insists on turning into Lower East Hampton. How he became an authority on the area is a mystery to me. (Krucoff, 2004)

Lastly, Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin expand upon Castells’ description of the way in which the internet operates to include some voices in dialog but excludes others: [Information] processes are directly supporting the emergence of an internationally integrated and increasingly urbanized, and yet highly fragmented, network society that straddles the planet. New, highly polarized urban landscapes are emerging where ‘premium’ infrastructure networks y selectively connect together the most favoured users and places, both within and between cities y . At the same time, y infrastructures often effectively bypass less favoured and y what Castells calls ‘redundant’ users. (Graham & Marvin, 2001)

This produces highly layered environments such as the Lower East Side, where a less afﬂuent ethnic population co-habits a neighborhood with an incoming demographic of young, blog-savvy new economy workers – the ‘‘most favored’’ users described above by Graham and Marvin. The latter group participates in a dialogue about neighborhood transformation in which much of the community, especially those being displaced, are for the most part not engaged. Lockhart Steele remarks as much on his blog: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 Dark Side of LES Gentriﬁcation [continued] 1. Dwindling local theater sceney 2. Misrahi Realty’s plan to deep-six Ludlow Street stalwarts Barramundi and Collective Unconscious. Bastards. 3. The dawning realization that there are few residents left around here who don’t blog.

On the one hand, the Lower East Side is a ‘‘most favored’’ place in the network society. It has a high rate of internet use and one of the highest documented concentrations of bloggers in New York City. (This fact made it the location of a key New York organizing event for the Howard Dean campaign) (LockhartSteele.com, 2003). On the other hand, the Lower East

221

The Internet and the City

Side also contains a declining population disenfranchised by the new economy and by a growing ‘‘digital divide.’’

BLOGS AND URBAN CHANGE I would argue that Curbed.com – while it successfully makes visible the often invisible workings of real estate and opens access to knowledge about development processes and urban change – in the end helps reposition working class neighborhoods in the global marketplace. It does this through several operations: the intensiﬁcation of high-speed information exchange; the production of content for niches of an increasingly differentiated market and a de facto exclusion of the Lower East Side’s remaining local ethnic community.

Information Exchange Blogs have proven highly effective vehicles for the global economy in what Castells terms the space of ﬂows due to their ﬂexibility and efﬁciency for communication. Unlike conventional journalism, blogs can immediately incorporate new information and instantly communicate it to a global audience. Without professional obligations to fact check or seek permission, new information can be made public as soon as it is available. There are no set publishing deadlines to stagger or delay the appearance of new information. In fact, bloggers are driven by the ranking hierarchies of search engines such as Google – which prioritize sites that are regularly updated. Bloggers must continuously publish new information throughout each day to retain their visibility (New York Magazine, 2006). As a result, they often have the most current information or discussion about a given subject. Blogs prioritize speed over accuracy, as they are not held to the standards of traditional journalism that require time to check facts (Curbed.com, July 1, 2005; Iwantmedia.com, 2005; Oculus, 2005–2006). Even if their information is not completely accurate, they have the ﬂexibility to update and correct as they go – and this process often becomes part of the discussion. For example, Lockhart Steele.com reported in 2003 that a vacant lot on Stanton Street had just been sold at auction by the city for $2.2 million (dramatically higher than the initial set bid price of $242,000). A reader wrote in to say that the accompanying photo Steele had posted was actually of another vacant lot on Stanton – and broadened

222

LARA BELKIND

the discussion of sites in ﬂux in the neighborhood (LockhartSteele.com, 2003). This currency of information, as well as the informal, insider tone of blogs, is appealing to both readers and advertisers (New York Times, January 27, 2005). Provocative blogs such as Lockhart Steele’s may be listed as links on a host of other blog sites. It may draw readers interested in checking out the neighborhood or investing on the Lower East Side, and real estate advertisers with new properties to sell. According to Castells, internet-related industries as a whole have grown exponentially, even with the dot com bust of 2001, and internet businesses such as Curbed.com which generate revenue from advertising rather than direct revenue have been a signiﬁcant part of this growth (Castells, 2000, p. 151). The speed of information dissemination afforded by blogs about new investments and cultural trends, and the growth of internet-based business generally, also correlate to real estate value creation and hypergentriﬁcation – the increasing speed with which working class neighborhoods have recently appeared to gentrify. While demographic transitions in other New York neighborhoods, including SoHo and the East Village, occurred over decades, the Lower East Side has undergone dramatic social and physical shifts in the last ﬁve years. Although these shifts began in the late 1970s and are a result of many factors – including a city-wide shortage of middle class housing, an inﬂux of institutional capital following decades of small-scale speculation and a decrease in drug-related crime – the pace of neighborhood change has steadily increased and signiﬁcant changes have occurred within shorter and shorter periods (New York Sun, 2006). A steady 50-year decline in property values on the Lower East Side came to an end in the late 1970s, after a period of severe disinvestment. The cycle was ﬁrst triggered by the federal Immigration Act of 1924, which brought the ﬂow of European immigration and new demand for the area’s tenement housing to an abrupt halt. Between 1979 and 1982, however, median sales prices per unit in the East Village and Lower East Side tripled, rising from approximately $3,500 to $10,000. This upward trend continued to accelerate. Properties selling for tens of thousands in the 1970s sold for hundreds of thousands in the 1980s. By the late 1990s, building sales were commonly above a million dollars. In most recent years, residential rents on the Lower East Side have frequently exceeded those of the Upper East Side, while commercial rents are higher than those on Park Avenue. Symptomatic of this condition of ‘‘hypergentriﬁcation’’ are urban shifts such as the rapid rise and decline (due to displacement) of the area’s cluster of a dozen independent theaters within

223

The Internet and the City

the space of seven years, from 1995 to 2002 (The Village Voice, 2003; New York Post, 2005). Writers including Anthony Townsend and Steven Berlin Johnson link the increasing availability of digital information about neighborhoods to urban trends such as the emergence of new retail clusters and patterns of gentriﬁcation: Studies estimate that some 80 percent of the information on the web has a spatial component – increasingly, that geographic metadata can be recorded, indexed, searched by a widening array of tools and browsers, both mobile and ﬁxed y . [A]ccumulations of searchable, digital location-based annotation will help amplify the existing character and value of urban places. (Townsend, 2004; Johnson, 2001, 2003)

Content It is not simply the speed with which information is exchanged, but also the content that is produced by blogs such as Curbed.com that contributes to value creation. As cities like New York have become the global centers of ‘‘production’’ of services and information in the new economy – as theorized by Sassen, Castells and others – certain neighborhoods within these cities have become associated with such production. Interestingly, the value of content production in virtual space often correlates to new geographies of value in physical space. This is true on the Lower East Side. Castells addresses the special tensions within gentrifying working-class districts: [T]raditional working-class neighborhoods, increasingly populated by service workers, constitute a distinctive space, a space that, because it is the most vulnerable, becomes the battleground between the redevelopment efforts of business and the upper middle class, and the invasion attempts of countercultures y trying to reappropriate the use value of the city. Thus, they often become defensive spaces for workers who only have their home to ﬁght for. (Castells, Rise of the Network Society, p. 432)

But what Castells does not address is the way in which the invasion of countercultures creates value as such neighborhoods become associated with content production in the digital economy. This initial value creation then opens such areas for redevelopment by business and the upper middle class. On the Lower East Side, there is a particular correlation between the production of internet content and the growing value of the neighborhood. According to nycbloggers.com, no less than 178 blogs exist in the area – clustered near the 2nd Avenue and the Delancey Street subway stations. (In Manhattan, only the East Village has a higher concentration.)

224

LARA BELKIND

(nycbloggers.com). Most are of a similar genre, relating the daily lives and reﬂections of young urbanites as well as local culture and entertainment options. The emergence of the Lower East Side as an epicenter of internet content production seems to coincide with its emergence as one of the most active sites of gentriﬁcation in the city. One explanation for this phenomenon includes the fact that for some time, this was one of the few Manhattan neighborhoods in which young 20-something workers in mediaand culture-related industries could afford to reside. Another is that, as the neighborhood became a center for artists, theater, restaurants and nightlife in the 1990s, these uses and life in the neighborhood itself became signiﬁcant generators of cultural narratives and content. Indeed, the online community evident on sites such as Curbed is an extension and enhancement of a local ‘‘scene’’ – social networks forming in physical space. Lower East Side bloggers meet up in the neighborhood in addition to corresponding online. Yet the internet content they generate enhances not only local social networks but also neighborhood economic value. Its format reaches a global audience and can accommodate advertisers. This content has been translated by real estate developers, retailers and other entrepreneurs marketing a hip downtown lifestyle to more afﬂuent consumers (Inman News, 2005; Toronto Star, 2005). Tiziana Terranova, a scholar of internet culture and politics, would likely hold a nuanced view of the relationships between the personal stories and local narratives of place found in Curbed and other Lower East Side blogs and their creation of value in the digital economy as well as in local real estate: [The] ‘digital economy’ [is] a speciﬁc mechanism of internal ‘capture’ of larger pools of social and cultural knowledge y . It is about speciﬁc forms of production (web design, multimedia production, digital services and so on), but it is also about forms of labour we do not immediately recognize as such: chat, real-life stories, mailing lists, amateur newsletters and so on. These y are not produced by capitalism in any direct, cause-andeffect fashion, that is, they have not developed simply as an answer to the economic needs of capital. However, they have developed in relation to the expansion of the cultural industries and they are part of a process of economic experimentation with the creation of monetary value out of knowledge/culture/affect. (Terranova, 2004. p. 79)

Although LockhartSteele.com was not produced by a proﬁt impulse, the blog is a product of a contemporary milieu of New York media workers experimenting with relationships between information, culture, and economics. This is a context where creativity and artistic innovation within new forms of communication are difﬁcult to distinguish from innovation in value creation. Blogs do generate proﬁt potential as they become new hosts for advertising, but these proﬁts are not so immediate as to become a blogger’s

225

The Internet and the City

sole motivation. For several years after launching Curbed.com, Lockhart Steele was unable to quit his day job as a managing editor and humorously remarked that he soon expected to pull in ‘‘ﬁve ﬁgures’’ (BusinessWeek online, 2005). And although Curbed’s primary advertisers are large real estate developers – and through its observations he has become fully versed in the New York real estate market – Steele himself has never owned property. He continues to rent his walk-up tenement apartment on Rivington Street (SFGate.com, 2006).

Market Differentiation Another aspect of the translation of stories of place into content and value is the opening of speciﬁc local cultures to a global market. As Appadurai and others have noted, in post-Fordist reality, consumption has become increasingly differentiated and production grown ﬂexible enough to respond to increasingly deﬁned market niches (Appadurai, 1996). Micro-niches are attractive to advertisers and business due to their ability to reach an extremely targeted audience with precision. The result is marketing efﬁciency and large proﬁt potential. The Lower East Side and its particular urban subculture is perceived by the market to be one such micro-niche. Furthermore, blogs and other websites provide a means to open the neighborhood’s local micro-cultures to a global market of consumers, businesses and real estate developers. Lockhart Steele himself has perceived his blogging to be, in a sense, a documenting of details of place to be read by outsiders: A close friend observed to me after I’d been doing this site for some time, ‘What you’re really doing is micro-travel writing’ y . I think that Chatwin’s Notebooks happen to remind me of weblog postsy . (LockhartSteele.com, 2004)

Latham and Sassen describe a rescaling that occurs online between global and local realities: ‘‘What has tended to operate or be nested at local scales can now move to global scales, and global relations and domains can now, in turn, more easily become directly articulated with thick local settings’’ (Sassen & Latham, 2005). In addition, the intimacy of blogs and niche websites facilitates sequences of ‘‘viral marketing,’’ or marketing that occurs when one individual forwards a link or web content to a friend. Contained in this gesture is an implicit recommendation and a sense of having insider information – extremely compelling and effective for marketing goods and services.

226

LARA BELKIND

One illustration of both the local–global rescaling and viral marketing present on the Lower East Side is the culture of the neighborhood’s hidden bars, referred to by Lockhart Steele on his blog. One such club, Happy Ending, is located in a defunct Chinese massage parlor but still maintains the signage and fac- ade of the former establishment with no indication of its current use. Its name is a euphemism for the ‘‘total release’’ massage previously offered on the premises. Inside the door, a video monitor plays a surveillance tape found in the space when the bar took over. The tape reveals the comings and goings of former Johns, and bar patrons proceed downstairs to listen to djs in the old steam and massage rooms. Invisible to passersby or uninitiated local residents, the bar is nonetheless highly visible to a global network of trend setters. It has an elaborate website and is recommended on a growing number of internet culture sites and weblogs. This is its description on superfuture.com, a site describing itself as ‘‘urban cartography for global shopping experts’’ with listings for New York, Tokyo, Sydney and Shanghai: converted massage parlour and hot lower east night spot [09.2004]. best on tuesdays and fridays [hard line hipsters] total wild shenanigans down here gets shut down by the cops at least once a month which is always a good sign. (superfuture.com)

In turn, the bar owner relies on content – the fact that his bar has a ‘‘good story’’ – and the cachet of insider word of mouth for its continued popularity in a highly competitive market (Interview with Happy Ending bar owner, 2005). Similarly, real estate advertisers are eager to place ads on Curbed despite its often ironic, critical tone towards new development projects on the Lower East Side because of a similar quality of insiderness. As Lockhart Steele’s irony is a deﬁning characteristic of the local hipster subculture, advertisers may feel they are reaching the target audience of ‘‘young money,’’ per Nick Denton, or a distinct market niche attracted to the grittiness of a working class precinct in transition. Finally, individual blogs themselves create niche markets in virtual space – in the ‘‘knowledge communities’’ that form around the discussion and exchange of a circumscribed set of ideas and interests (Bach & Stark, 2005).

The Digital Divide Despite Curbed.com’s claims that it ‘‘democratizes’’ information about real estate investment and urban development, not everyone appears engaged in

The Internet and the City

227

this democracy. For instance, the blog rarely chronicles any interaction with the area’s non-proﬁt development corporations, a number of which have secured local city-owned sites and developed affordable housing. Rarely included as well is any discussion of life in the Lower East Side’s community gardens, over which longtime residents battled with the city to maintain as open spaces. Reading the Curbed and LockhartSteele.com blogs, one does not get a sense that members of the area’s Puerto Rican or Asian communities are e-mailing in tips or initiating online discussions about neighborhood change. Although this discussion is certainly taking place in the community, it does not seem to be happening on the internet. Websites have been created by the neighborhood’s most active community organizations – many of which were established in the 1970s – but not blogs. These websites are updated infrequently and for the most part act as bulletin boards advertising more traditional forums for dialog: monthly meetings and neighborhood programs and events. Recently, community organizers protesting a proposed 24-story hotel development on Orchard Street posted ﬂyers throughout the neighborhood and held forums rather than posting to blogs or sending out e-mail (The Villager, 2005). Expressions of community identity are abundant in physical space, if not virtual. For example, a host of murals in the neighborhood celebrate Puerto Rican cultural heritage. Only since late 2006 have a few blogs appeared which rally efforts to stem displacement of the Lower East Side’s ethnic communities and local arts scene by a wave of new development (For example, see takeittothebridge.com and savethelowereastside.blogspot.com). By 2006, however, much displacement had already taken place. Clearly, those most engaged online are the group of young workers already engaged directly or by association in the information economy. Curbed democratizes information about real estate for them: young creative professionals who will eventually hope to buy a home and have a vested interest in tracking the shifting development landscape in New York. Saskia Sassen, Manuel Castells and others describe the growing importance of urban centers and urban neighborhoods in the new economy, but also the increasing polarization between afﬂuent groups engaged in this economy and less afﬂuent groups increasingly disenfranchised by it (Sassen, 1991; Castells, 2000). This social polarization exists (ﬂeetingly) as an intimate spatial condition on the Lower East Side. Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman have also observed the polarizing effects on community of ‘‘wiring’’ some residents but not others. In Netville, a new suburb of Toronto where three out of ﬁve homes were connected by the developer to a local high speed network, they discovered that access to

228

LARA BELKIND

the network had the effect of strengthening a range of social and political ties between wired residents. In fact, the network even became a tool to organize collective action against the developer for non-delivery of services. However, those residents without access formed fewer relationships within the community and were much less aware of issues of local concern (Hampton & Wellman, 2003). Although a less controlled environment, the Lower East Side is experiencing social dynamics analogous to those in Netville.

CONCLUSION: CURBED, GENTRIFICATION AND URBAN REDEVELOPMENT Through its format of participatory dialog, Curbed.com certainly succeeds in making visible what are frequently the invisible logics of power and capital in the gentriﬁcation and urban redevelopment processes – although this new visibility may be more empowering to a ‘‘knowledge community’’ of blog-savvy internet users and real estate interests than to some local residents. Here, it would seem, knowledge is power but only for those with ﬁnancial or technological capacity to act upon it. Many of the hidden operations in urban revaluation discussed on the pages of Curbed.com have been studied in the literature on gentriﬁcation. Some of these include disinvestment, property ﬂipping and other short-term speculative maneuvers and the ‘‘selling’’ of cultural images to promote real estate. Neil Smith, for example, has addressed disinvestment and the abandonment of property in his research on the ‘‘rent gap.’’ His work in the 1990s carefully charts patterns of private sector disinvestment and reinvestment in the East Village, demonstrating a link between the two – one traces the path of the other – and positing that dramatic devaluation and abandonment are pre-conditions or strategies for urban redevelopment (Smith, 1996). Christopher Mele, writing in the late 1990s, closely examines the nature and behaviors of private real estate investors and their impacts on the built landscape. He compares the subtle, longer term effects of independent property ‘‘ﬂippers’’ – where value shifts occur through hidden ﬁnancial transactions, often without visible evidence such as tenant changes or building upgrades – to the more dramatic urban changes and revenues required by larger developers with institutional backing (Mele, 1994). Mele also studies the role that neighborhood images and public discourses have played in promoting disinvestment or redevelopment in the East Village

The Internet and the City

229

throughout the 20th century. He has examined how the Lower East Side’s ethnic history as well as its bohemian subcultures has been employed to sell art, entertainment and real estate (Mele, 2000). Sharon Zukin, meanwhile, takes a decidedly political view, framing the gentriﬁcation of former manufacturing districts such as SoHo and Tribeca within a larger contest between broad social groups for urban space and for control over the city’s political economic future. She theorizes the emergence of an ‘‘artistic mode of production (AMP),’’ which has arisen as a subtle, culture-based mode of urban redevelopment in the face of resistance to more shocking urban renewal practices of demolition and displacement supported by the state and real estate sector – especially the programs of 1950s and 1960s. In the AMP scenario, city rezoning policies and private real estate investments support bohemians’ removal of terrain once dedicated to the activities and working-class populations of the production economy, as well as the subsequent reformulation of this terrain as a zone for higher value residences and culture of the new service economy (Zukin, 1982). Christopher Mele would concur with this vision of culture-based strategies of urban redevelopment: As the culture industry reaches deep into the urban milieus of street corners, alleyways, basement bars and clubs to appropriate content to merchandise to consumers across the globe, it presents new opportunities for the urban redevelopment of neighborhoods where such forms originate. (Mele, 2000, p. 293)

Curbed.com, in its detailed documentation of these street corners, alleyways and bars, is one outlet in the space of ﬂows through which the culture and real estate industries have extended their reach. In the latest phase of the Lower East Side’s transformation, larger developers and commercial retailers targeting urban niche markets have adapted and reconﬁgured the lifestyle of neighborhood bohemians and local entrepreneurs. American Apparel, Moby, and Nike are just a few of the entertainment and retail entities who have adopted the neighborhood’s working class ethnic and bohemian history as part of their brand imagery. Meanwhile, invisible processes of capital accumulation that have been occurring beneath the surface in several generations of real estate speculation and investment are suddenly strikingly apparent in the neighborhood’s built landscape – in the form of new luxury condominiums, boutique hotels and sleek high end restaurants. Successive speculation builds real estate value with small proﬁt margins, often without disrupting a building’s physical condition or tenancy, until values reach a threshold where further proﬁt gain can only be made through major construction or renovation. This threshold has

230

LARA BELKIND

recently become visible on the Lower East Side. It has been encouraged by recent public actions, for example, the sale of remaining public urban renewal sites to private developers for the construction of condominums and an upscale Whole Foods grocery (Downtown Express, 2004). Unexpectedly, urban renewal visions proposed in the 1950s and 1960s of the area as a residential district for the professional class are, to some extent, now being realized. But instead of having been achieved with top-down methods of clearance and displacement that were successfully defeated by the community in the 1960s, this renewal has been a subtle process internal to the neighborhood. Local artists, entrepreneurs, small speculators and internet documentarians such as Lockhart Steele and other bloggers have gradually generated value and an opening for outside investors. This opening has been widened by successive pro-growth city administrations and sustained economic expansion in service and culture industries (Sites, 2003; Abu-Lughod, 1991). Although bloggers may not have begun producing internet content with express motives of proﬁt or real estate value creation, they have been part of what Tiziana Terranova describes as a process inherent in the expansion of cultural industries ‘‘of economic experimentation with the creation of monetary value out of knowledge/ culture/affect’’ (Terranova, 2004. p. 79).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Diane Davis and Susan Fainstein for the stimulating teaching and conversations that inspired this investigation. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments were invaluable in improving the text and deepening its arguments.

REFERENCES Books pertaining to the Internet and Society Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bach, J., & Stark, D. (2005). Recombinant Technology and New Geographies of Association. In: S. Sassen & R. Latham (Eds), Digital Formations: IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Castells, M. (Ed.) (2004). The network society: A cross-cultural perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgarp.40. Note that Castells adds a second value, sharing, to Pekka Himanen’s

The Internet and the City

231

discussion of innovation as a primary value of the ‘‘hacker ethic’’ in the new network society. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Friedman, T. (2005). Electric dreams: Computers in American culture. New York: New York University Press. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (1996). Telecommunications and the city: Electronic spaces, urban places. London: Routledge. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism: Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. London: Routledge. Hampton, K., & Wellman, B. (2003). Neighboring in Netville: How the internet supports community and social capital in a wired suburb. City and Community, 2(3, Fall). Johnson, S. (2001). Emergence. New York: Scribner. Saco, D. (2002). Cybering democracy: Public space and the internet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sassen, S. (1991). The global city: New York, London, Tokyo (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sassen, S. (2006). Foreword to: J. Dean (Ed.), Reformatting politics: Information technology and global civil society. New York: Routledge. Terranova, T. (2004). Network culture: Politics for the information age. London: Pluto Press.

Books pertaining to Gentriﬁcation Abu-Lughod, J. (1991). Changing cities. New York: Harper Collins. Mele, C. (1994). The Process of Gentriﬁcation in Alphabet City. In: J. Abu-Lughod (Ed.), From Urban Village to East Village: The Battle for New York’s Lower East Side. London: Blackwell. Mele, C. (2000). Selling the lower east side: Culture, real estate, and resistance in New York city. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sites, W. (2003). Remaking New York: Primitive globalization and the politics of urban community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentriﬁcation and the revanchist city. New York: Routledge. Zukin, S. (1982). Loft living: Culture and capital in urban change. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Articles on Curbed.com, Lockhart Steele and Lower East Side BusinessWeek online. Online extra: New York’s real estate know-it-all. May 2, 2005. Curbed.com. About Curbed. July 1, 2005. Curbed.com. Freeman’s Alley: From Darkness Into Light. March 1, 2006. Downtown Express. Steele blogging on the L.E.S. June 3, 2004. Downtown Express. Whole Foods, YMCA, and a mix of housing coming to E. Houston. December 10–16, 2004. Gothamist.com. Lockhart Steele, downtown documentarian. February 2, 2004. Inman News. Neighborhood search a boon for real estate. November 19, 2005.

232

LARA BELKIND

Iwantmedia.com. Lockhart Steele. March 7, 2005. Krucoff, A. (2003). Open letter to Lockhart Steele and his patrons of the cause (aka ‘‘Schiller’s List’’). Lasagnafarm.com. November 7, 2003. Krucoff, A. (2004). Theotherpage.com. April 20, 2004. LockhartSteele.com. July 23, 2003. LockhartSteele.com. Schillers: Battle lines being drawn. October 27–28, 2003. LockhartSteele.com. December 31, 2003. LockhartSteele.com. May 24, 2004. LoHo Realty’s Grand Street News. The WASP that crossed delancey. January 2005. New York Post. Home Page Must Reads. June 5, 2004. New York Post. As posh real estate rolls over Lower East Side, locals lament local bars. January 27, 2005. New York Sun. City may block renewal of L. East Side. March 15, 2006. The Village Voice. Exit stage Lower East Side: The closing of surf reality and the theatorium signals the end of a theatrical era. March 5–11, 2003. The Villager. Blogger’s ‘addiction’ hooks many. May 26–June 1, 2004. The Villager. New group’s going L.O.C.O on the Lower East Side. April 27, 2005. Toronto Star. Lower East Side’s ‘true’ grit resists creeping respectability. March 24, 2005. Urban Probe Magazine. Curbed: A neighborhood narrative – Lockhart Steele keeps real estate real. July 11, 2006.

Articles on the Internet and Society Castells, M. (1997). Hauling in the future. The Guardian (p. 21), December 13 (as noted in Graham, Splintering Urbanism, p. 15). Johnson, S. (2003). Wireless communications and the future of cities. Taub Urban Research Center, NYU, April 2 [http://www.urban.nyu.edu/events/wireless]. Townsend, A. (2004). Digitally mediated urban space: New lessons for design. Praxis, Issue 6. Townsend also refers to Steven Berlin Johnson’s paper, ‘‘Wireless Communications and the Future of Cities,’’ Taub Urban Research Center, NYU, April 2, 2003. [http:// www.urban.nyu.edu/events/wireless]. See also Johnson, Steven. Emergence (New York: Scribner, 2001).

Articles on Weblogs Blogads. (2002). Mondo Gizmodo. November 18, 2002. New York Magazine. (2006). Blog Blog Blog. February 20, 2006. New York Magazine. (2006). Blogs to riches: The haves and have-nots of the blogging boom. February 20, 2006. New York Magazine, ‘‘The Early Years: A Timeline of How Blogging All Began.’’ February 20, 2006. New York Magazine. (2006). Meet the bloggers. February 20, 2006. New York Magazine. (2006). The long tail theory of B- and C-List blogs. February 20, 2006. New York Times. (2005). A blog revolution? Get a grip. May 8, 2005. New York Times. (2005). Hot off the web: Gossip and design guidance. January 27, 2005.

The Internet and the City

233

Oculus. (2005–2006). Talking into the wind. Winter 05/06. SFGate.com. (2006). The New Pornographers. April 9, 2006. Urban Land. (2005). Blogging for dollars. March 2005.

Websites Curbed.com LockhartSteele.com nycbloggers.com savethelowereastside.blogspot.com superfuture.com takeittothebridge.com

Video Resources Inman Stories. (2005). New York Blogger, documentary short ﬁlm and interview with Lockhart Steele.

Interviews Author Interview with Happy Ending bar owner, Oliver Pihlar. April 26, 2005.

A MEMO ON THE FAMILIAL STATES OF THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE AND ENGLAND, 1500–1800$ Julia Adams The central historical question that animates The Familial State – Why the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic? – at ﬁrst sounds quite particular. Yet the diminutive Netherlands played an enormous historical role in the early modern period (1500–1800), which embraced what we still call the Dutch Golden Age. Its glorious artistic legacy is well known. The Dutch also created the ﬁrst system of global commercial/colonial power. Dutch developments shaped the histories of other regions, both negatively and positively, in Europe, Africa, the Americas and the colonial territories in the East and West Indies. Furthermore, Dutch history is a window into general processes of European development and mechanisms of politico-economic

$

This year’s Scholarly Controversy revolves around Julia Adams’ The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, originally published by Cornell University Press in 2005. In 2006 the Social Science History Association organized a session dedicated to The Familial State that produced a series of papers upon which this year’s Scholarly Controversy is based. Adams has written an essay, ‘‘A Memo on the Familial State,’’ that summarizes the central arguments of the work for Political Power and Social Theory’s readers. However, readers should keep in mind that the critic’s commentaries are based on the book, which, as other scholars have noted, is likely to become a classic.

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 237–241 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19007-X

237

238

JULIA ADAMS

stability and transformation. But the more we appreciate these facts, the more puzzling aspects of the Netherlands appear. How did its weak state dovetail with unprecedented economic hegemony? Why did not the ruling elite of the Netherlands capitalize on its new resources and reform the state, shoring up the global mercantile system? Why did the Dutch state ultimately decline? My answer to these questions, as well as the comparative optic that they necessitate, is inscribed in the title of the book itself. The Familial State borrows a concept, patrimonialism, that Max Weber used to evoke forms of governance that are based on rulers’ family households but extend beyond them. Rulers and corporations that the rulers recognize or sponsor jointly do politics and share the prerogatives of sovereignty. The concept of patrimonialism is a handy, ideal-typical tool for people trying to make sense of medieval and early modern global politics. In a nutshell, it captures a situation in which the ruler’s or rulers’ authority is personal–familial, and the mechanics of the family household is the template for political administration. Power is discretionary, and the line between persons and ofﬁces faint at best. Patrimonial rulers cite sacred tradition as the basis of their authority, but have immense latitude to inaugurate innovations. The Familial State proceeds from a restructured concept of patrimonial power – one that recognizes the social basis of father-rule – and goes on to develop a general approach to state building in Europe. When we think of these states under construction as ‘‘familial states,’’ we are foregrounding not just paternal political rule generally but also the concrete social arrangements among the patriarchs who shaped evolving political organizations and the resources, prestige and power that ﬂowed through them. The second and third chapters of The Familial State together contend that a speciﬁc form of governance – ‘‘an institutional nexus fusing a set of elite patriarchal families with a merchant capitalist class and a locally grounded patrimonial state’’ – was key to the rise of the Netherlands. Elite merchantregent family heads colonized parts of the Dutch state on behalf of their family lineages and clans. These ruling families aligned themselves with traditionalism while deploying state ofﬁce and privilege in some innovative ways – especially in creating the sovereign chartered companies that formed the Dutch overseas empire. The companies were economic and military powerhouses, widely imitated elsewhere in Europe, leaving their traces in the interior of metropolitan states as well. These political feedback effects were of special concern in The Familial State, occupied with explanations of metropolitan development and decline. In the case of the Netherlands, these privileged spots within the patrimonial state entitled the men who held them

A Memo on the Familial States

239

to make monopolistic claims to streams of resources, decision-making power and family prestige. Political privilege was also the backdrop against which patriarchal identity took shape, the setting in which speciﬁc forms of elite masculinity celebrating a man’s statist pedigree were performed and created anew. I argue that it is precisely in the Netherlands, where global commercial capitalist dominance was awkwardly grafted to localized familial rule, that the uneven and contradictory development deﬁnitive of all early modern patrimonial states – and therefore also their empires – is starkly revealed. The Golden Age lost its luster in the later 17th century. Dutch decline was partly due to what we think of as exogenous factors, as the very interregional integration that the Netherlands helped foster put pressure on the core network status of the Dutch entrepot. Once the United Provinces of the Netherlands had gained their position in the teeth of Iberian resistance, that is, France and England became the chief contenders for international commercial/colonial clout, and I explore that uneasy triadic relationship in Chapter 4 of the book. The rulers of these challenger states, and their henchmen, tried to copy and improve upon key Dutch institutions, while alternately harassing and collaborating with the United Provinces on its home turf and at its colonial outposts. They were sometimes successful, and at other times not, but overall the burgeoning world network of relationships among patrimonial powers – including the dynastic ties that linked them – undermined the terms of Dutch dominance and transformed the opportunity structures available to all state builders. My argument in The Familial State is that Dutch decline also reﬂects an important feature of state-building and breakdown missed in the previous theoretical literature. That missing piece of the puzzle is the patrimonial institutional nexus. The elite family heads – the merchant-regents – assumed control over the state, grounding generations of elite politico-economic authority. The Dutch patriarchs authored a series of ingenious patrimonial pacts that further reinforced local genealogies of ofﬁce. These arrangements explicitly circulated chunks of resource-bearing political privilege among recognized participants, and the participants policed both the ﬂow of recognitions and resources. These pacts solved some looming collective action problems (e.g., when there were not enough positions to go around, deciding on an intergenerational system of rotation meant that there could be an adequate amount of privilege for everybody’s sons and sons’ sons, as well as less bloodshed). With the aid of these explicit deals among family heads, patrimonial power was stabilized for many years. In the Netherlands, however, these contracts effectively locked a dispersed and localized form of

240

JULIA ADAMS

political privilege into place, one that guaranteed more elite families a piece of the action but sharply limited state capacity in the 18th century. Individual members of the elite came to grips with this problem, and spoke and wrote about it eloquently and imaginatively, but collectively the ruling groups proved unable to solve it. Chapter 5 contends that in the Dutch case, these family investments in forms of politico-economic privilege strongly supported the status quo, continued political fragmentation in a global environment in which more nationally consolidated forms of politics gave increasing advantage. Thus the unique three-way patrimonial conﬁguration that fostered the rise of the Netherlands helped unravel its form of governance – and its global empire – a century later. The canonical cases, France and England, serve ﬁrst of all as the backdrop against which I assess my claim that the Netherlands’ unique version of governance contributed to the formation and ultimately the dissolution of Dutch hegemony. In this vein, Chapters 4 and 6 underscore unexplored similarities in the dynamics of patrimonial development and decline. In France and England as well as the Netherlands, coalitions of men – or, more precisely, men who represented elite patriarchal families – came to possess, desire and control pieces of patrimonial states, deploying them to intergenerational family advantage. These coalitions implanted themselves in the evolving state apparatuses and sovereign companies that revolutionized the mechanisms of overseas capital accumulation and projected newly multiplied military force abroad. These states-in-the-making therefore came to resemble one another in certain important ways. They featured converging kinds of political conﬂict and cohesion, I argue, and strikingly similar institutional innovations and rigidities as family heads collectively devised ways to clutch and expand their honors and privileges. And the men themselves changed because of their families’ having sunk their roots into state ofﬁce. Among other things, they become the authors of reinvented forms of patriarchal political authority. In all three sites that involved not simply their own rule, but also the cultural claims and institutional moves of superordinate ‘‘political fathers’’: monarchs and monarchical substitutes. Conversely, by virtue of this common platform of rule and the reconstituted political claims that it involved, key differences emerged among nation-states. The various ruling family coalitions developed their own class content; relationships with monarchs’ dynastic projects, and changing forms of elite masculinity. These differences carved out distinctive trajectories of domestic state formation and colonial ventures. The conventional picture of politics in 18th-century northern Europe is one of Dutch decline, English triumph and French

A Memo on the Familial States

241

revolutionary collapse. The Familial State explores the central causal mechanism of domestic patrimonial forms – the three-way institutional nexus of elite families, state and economic ﬂows – and their overseas expansion. As with all academic arguments that come to closure, some things are clariﬁed and others made newly mysterious. Sometimes both happen at once. The Familial State is no exception, although this brief summary memo telegraphs only two of those things. First is the question of how the rulers of Augustan England, for much of the 18th century as locked into patriarchal patrimonial privilege as the Dutch or French elites, managed to wend their collective way to modernization, including the beginnings of the ﬁrst Industrial Revolution. If the path was not exactly smooth, at least it bypassed revolution or successful invasion (the Netherlands sustained both at the end of the early modern era). This was not easy or straightforward, and though 18th-century England has been much studied, I believe that one upshot of the book is to restate the riddle, more clearly and strongly than before. Second, we are better able to see the ironic structural vulnerability, and alternative possibilities, built into fortiﬁed patriarchal patrimonial rule. This mode of rule created tensions within the patriarchiate itself. Take the procedure of strict settlement, in 17th- and 18th-century England, which regulated the inheritance of landed (and sometimes mercantile) property entailed to the male line. For social scientists, this is a perfect example of a self-reinforcing feedback process. The demographic evidence shows that it consolidated and expanded estates. It also limited the agency of individual patriarchs, penalized daughters and disadvantaged younger sons, some of whom did not go quietly. We know, too, that discourses of ruling fatherhood invite criticism of political fathering styles and even patriarchal failure. Relatedly, I think that the increased patriarchalism of discourses of rule that was avidly embraced by ruling Houses and elites of 18th-century Europe increased the general expectations of rulers’ charisma and performance and was implicated in the perceived political troubles and traumas of the French Bourbons, the British Hanoverians and the Dutch House of Orange. Restyled formations of rule create new openings for instability, including contention from below. One surprising Tocquevillian mechanism lay in the patriarchal elite pacts and negotiations that I described in The Familial State. The practices of collective contestation and corporate deliberation among early modern elite men also helped construct their relations as lateral ties among equals. This was one root of practical democratic governance, and of a wider concept of equality, available to all.

PATRIMONIAL STATES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE AND IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA: SIMILARITIES?$ Mounira M. Charrad I was delighted to chair the Author Meets Critics session on Julia Adams, The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Adams, 2005) at the meetings of the Social Science History Association in 2006. The session gave us an opportunity to reﬂect on this provocative and cutting edge book which has the makings of a classic. I touch on three points in this review: the elegance of the argument, the comparative and historical method and the discussion on the place of kinship/family/gender/patriarchy in the development of the Deutsch state, with an eye for possible similarities with state formation in the contemporary era.

$

Sections of this essay draw on Mounira M. Charrad. ‘‘Rulers and Families.’’ Review of The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe by Julia Adams, contribution to a review symposium, Comparative and Historical Sociology Section Newsletter, ASA, Vol. 17(2), Spring 2006.

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 243–251 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19008-1

243

244

MOUNIRA M. CHARRAD

ELEGANCE OF THE ARGUMENT The book focuses on the Netherlands as a distinctive case which, as the ﬁrst hegemonic economic and political entity in Western Europe, sheds light on similar processes but different outcomes in France and England. The time periods considered are the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century when the Dutch established a position of world power through a global colonial system, and the decline of Dutch hegemony in the 18th century (although Adams is careful to point out that the timing of the decline is open to debate). The purpose of the book is at once historical and theoretical. It is to analyze Dutch ascendancy and decline in an effort to ‘‘build the foundation of a more adequate explanation of historical hegemonies, of varying patterns of state formation and collapse in early modern Europe (p. 12).’’ Accordingly, Adams treats the Netherlands in part as a ‘‘vehicle for tackling theoretical issues of the largest possible interest (p. 7).’’ Adams shows how the same institutional arrangements have different implications at different times depending on the historical moment, thus offering an analysis which is at the same time parsimonious in design, strong in explanatory power and rich in detail. In suggesting that, like a double-edged sword, the familial foundation of state authority went from asset to liability, she presents an elegant argument for reversals in economic and political power in the Netherlands. The main actors whose story she relates are the elite patriarchal families, capitalist merchants and a locally grounded patrimonial state. Her central argument is that the relationships among these key actors, and the speciﬁc permutations in their relationships in different contexts, shaped the rise and decline of the Dutch state. Similarly, these relationships are essential to understanding the formation of the French and English states. Adams sees the Dutch Golden Age as resulting in part from a particular form of governance in which ‘‘elite merchant-regent family heads managed to lay claim to parts of the Dutch state, which became the de facto property of family lineages and clans (p. 4).’’ This form of governance was dominated by rules of family patrilineal succession in politics (p. 9). A crucial factor in the glory of the Golden Age thus was an institutional arrangement that fused the interests of elite patriarchal families with those of a merchant class capable of developing a lucrative colonial trade and those of regents holding local and regional power. Paternal rule, mercantilism (especially overseas expansion and long-distance commerce) and political power all came together in what Adams calls ‘‘the patrimonial institutional nexus (p. 5),’’ the core of the familial state and the main basis for Dutch success.

Patrimonial States in Early Modern Europe and the Contemporary Era

245

Conversely, Dutch decline is ascribed to how the patrimonial institutional arrangements operated in the face of new exogenous forces such as commercial competition or military pressure. In particular, the ability of the state to respond to these forces in the 18th century was limited by the very same nexus that had been a source of success earlier on. In a nutshell, the merchant/regent heads of families now clung to their diminishing economic privileges, the advantages of their lineage and to a localized, dispersed form of power. The result was to freeze the state into a local and familial form. This crippled its ability to become more centralized, to tap existing resources through taxation and to expand its navy. In a new age and context, the nexus of family cliques, merchant class and patrimonial politics became an impediment to hegemony. Adams argues that, instead of seeing the ‘‘betrayal of the bourgeois’’ as the principal cause of Dutch decline, we should look towards the ‘‘loyalty of the patriarch – loyalty to one’s family lineage and one’s collectively ratiﬁed, controlled, and, yes, enforced role in the state (p. 152).’’

COMPARATIVE HISTORY SERVING THEORY If one of the major challenges of comparative historical research is to weave together theory and history, Adams has met the challenge. There is an ongoing comparative dimension in her analysis, as France and England are either explicitly addressed or implicitly taken into account. She shows how despite similarities, the Netherlands, France and England follow different political trajectories. The analysis is based on the use of secondary sources and archival data. On each case and time period, the text moves from narratives to Adams’ own theoretical statements, to a discussion of major theories on speciﬁc points, inviting the reader to navigate among these different forms of discourse. While reading the narratives, the reader is reminded of the theoretical issue at hand and of the relevant variables. For example, Adams keeps at the forefront of the discussion questions such as ‘‘how decentralized authority was or was not’’ or ‘‘how much competition was regulated,’’ while she gives historical details. Another strong point in her methodological approach is the sharp focus on the particular historical moment. When things happen, makes a big difference in Adams’ story. She pays close attention to formative moments in the process of state building and shows how the moment inﬂuences political developments.

246

MOUNIRA M. CHARRAD

It is by considering other countries with similar characteristics but different trajectories that she develops her framework on the familial state, its possibilities and limitations. The state in England and France was also thoroughly familial in its early modern incarnation. How these two countries entered the modern world depended in part on how oligarchs seeking to advance their patrilineages related to mercantilism and central power. Essentially, the differences between the Netherlands, France and England have to do with the role of the crown and how it related to local arenas of power. As in the Netherlands, power in France rested on patriarchal dynastic legitimation and hereditary ofﬁce holding (p. 111). The difference with the Netherlands was the growing role of the French crown in the political economy of patrimonial state formation and imperial colonial projects, which gave ‘‘ofﬁceholder families an increased stake in the patrimonial state rather than in independent trade or manufacturing (p. 113).’’ In contrast, ‘‘English merchants were strongly represented in key areas of the patrimonial statey. Unlike France, self-organized merchant groups made and sustained autonomous demands on the crown (p. 127).’’ In England as well as in France, the key factor was how the relationship between the crown and merchants evolved over time. Adams’ book challenges comparative historical sociologists to push further the analysis of how the inevitable and the contingent come together at particular historical moments. Methodologically, she shows us the craft of presenting theory and narrative in a way that is both engaging and compelling.

PATRIMONIALISM AND PATRIARCHY The Familial State stands as a convincing demonstration that questions of political organization are deeply connected to the dimensions of kinship, lineage and family. One of Adams’s objectives is to put kinship and patriarchy at the heart of the study of state formation. The concepts of patrimonialism and patriarchy, which Adams joins in the template of patriarchal patrimonialism (p. 7), are central to the formulation of the ‘‘familial state’’ during its rise as well as its demise. Patrimonialism refers to the relationship between the ruler and the ruled in the polity. Adams uses the Weberian concept of patrimonial power, ‘‘that characteristic form of rule in which a ruler (such as monarch or a lesser lordy) and the corporations that the ruler recognizes or sponsors jointly do politics and share the prerogatives of sovereignty (p. 4).’’ Patrimonialism involves an

Patrimonial States in Early Modern Europe and the Contemporary Era

247

unstable balance of power in which either the ruler or the corporations may alternatively have the upper hand. Adams shows how in the situation of built-in instability in patrimonial politics, notables (who also tend to accumulate wealth) use family strategies to strengthen their hands. This is where patrimonialism intersects with patriarchy, which refers to relationships among members within a household or a lineage, and more speciﬁcally to gender relations, as well as to signs used by the ruler. Conceptualizing patriarchy as a key principle on which political rule was constituted in the Netherlands, Adams deﬁnes it as including an expectation of obedience to the patriarch, the protection of the lineage and the skillful crafting of a common ancestry. Adams focuses on father rule and on patriarchs who govern by calling on signs of paternity and by linking signs of father rule with God (the Father) father. She uses the concept in two different ways. The concept refers to signs and symbols that infuse the father with supreme authority, and extend it to the ruler who is perceived as a symbolic father. Celebrating the father–son relation, families created elaborate mythologies honoring their lineage in early modern Europe, as ‘‘the successfully achieved social ﬁction of an unbroken line of honorable, preferably patrilineal, descent was what counted in establishing enduring claims to politico-economic privilege (p. 84).’’ The concept of patriarchy is also used to mean a set of practices. We learn that elite families exchanged women in mutually advantageous intermarriages. Family heads practiced the ‘‘politics of marriage’’ (p. 86), trying to marry well or to marry their children well. The control of marriage alliances was especially pronounced in the Dutch East Indies, where daughters were married off in their early teens (p. 88). In the Netherlands, the outer boundaries of choice in regard to a marriage partner were delimited by family needs. In stating that ‘‘The early modern patrimonial state and its sovereign arms or extensions would not have existed without the concept of father-rule and associated patriarchal practices of power (p. 200),’’ Adams points not only to a close connection between patrimonialism and patriarchy, but also to the father-rule and patriarchal practices as necessary to the functioning of the patrimonial state. She makes an argument for the ‘‘importance of a speciﬁc institution – patriarchal patrilineal relations of rule, interlocked with politico-economic development – in constructing and framing (p. 9)’’ institutions in early modern Europe. In the general framework proposed, patriarchy is treated as a necessary ingredient of patrimonialism, and as a link between the familial and political practices that constitute the familial state (p. 32). Reminding us that ‘‘Weber himself saw patriarchal domination not only as the purest logical form of traditional authority but as the

248

MOUNIRA M. CHARRAD

historical seed of patrimonialism (p. 32),’’ Adams makes the important point that ‘‘patriarchy was one of the key principles on which the shifting sovereign center was constituted and defended (p. 74).’’ In doing so, she calls upon political sociologists to take seriously the implications of the state/family or state/patriarchy interlocks in politics at the level of nations and states. She carefully cautions that patriarchy is more than male dominance, since women sometimes acted like patriarchs in the families whose history she recounts. She tells the story of elite women struggling to keep patriarchal structures going. This is a theoretically convincing way to treat patriarchy, which Adams presents as a system of action and signs that both men and women may use to further their interests and to which they may both be subjected. The conceptualization, which differs from a simple deﬁnition of patriarchy in terms of male dominance, is useful for the analysis of politics at a macro structural level. It is in part what allows Adams to show the interconnections between patriarchy and power, political and economic, in the process of state building.

SIMILARITIES WITH STATES IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA I ﬁnd interesting similarities between the process of state formation in the Middle East and North Africa (the Middle East in short) and in the Netherlands as analyzed in The Familial State. Adams forces us to confront squarely how given organizational forms play out differently in different contexts. Consider, for example, kin-based solidarities such as clans, lineages or tribes in the Middle East (Charrad, 2001). A major question relevant to today’s international politics is whether they help or hinder the development of centralized states in the region. As with the ﬂuctuations in the Deutsch state, the answer is that kin-based solidarities in the Middle East are assets or liability, depending on the forces at work in different contexts. Like the familial state, such solidarities do not inherently facilitate or prevent the development of bureaucratic states. They sometimes articulate with partially bureaucratic states as in the recent history of Jordan, Syria or Kuwait. In other places and times, because of internal and external processes, situations develop as in Iraq and Afghanistan where kin groupings, clans and tribes sometimes compete with the state and each other. To take another example, Tunisia developed a bureaucratized central

Patrimonial States in Early Modern Europe and the Contemporary Era

249

state that marginalized tribes and kin groupings, following the achievement of national sovereignty from French colonial rule in 1956. By contrast, Morocco at the end of colonization in the mid-1950s experienced tension between the monarchy and political forces anchored in kin-based solidarities before later integrating kin groupings in rural areas into the national polity. Another similarity concerns the state/kinship interlocks in Adams’ story and in the formation of post-colonial states in the Middle East. There too, families skillfully pursued kinship strategies and crafted myths of common ancestry. As in the Netherlands, this did not apply only to the monarch and his immediate entourage, but extended to notables. In the case of the Middle East, patriarchal partimonialism has also been constitutive of politics at the local level for the population at a whole. One way to think of tribes in the history of large parts of the region is to see them as mini-states in a shifting nexus of alliances and conﬂicts. Kin networks in the form of patrilineages functioned as cohesive groups with important macro-level political consequences, making kin-based solidarities a building block of partially centralized states (Charrad, 2001, pp. 17–27). As in the Netherlands and early modern Europe, they were core institutional centers of power. The process of state formation in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria or Saudi Arabia, to name a few, entailed the integration and/or transformation of kin groupings that had served as the foundation of patrimonialism. For these reasons, I strongly agree with Adams’ call for treating gender, family, and kinship as constituents of modern state power and institutions, a call made as well in Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2005, pp. 49–56). The Familial State contributes to refuting the anthropological dichotomy between kin-centered systems of regulation in stateless societies and statist structures in societies that exhibit an institution that can be called a state. The fallacy of the dichotomy is especially apparent in political systems where anthropology and political history have come together to show how tribes and clans, which are built on kinship, whether real or ﬁctive, have partaken in partially bureaucratized state structures for a long time. Anthropologists have recently been called upon to explicate the tribal system to international policy makers in Afghanistan (Rohde, 2007, A1 and A12). Whether anthropology should be used to that end is another matter. The point is that, without an understanding of how patrimonialism and patriarchy come together, politics at the national level as well as at the local level in rural areas in Afghanistan can only remain incomprehensible. Still another similarity concerns patriarchy and marriage alliances, especially during periods of intense competition for state power. In the

250

MOUNIRA M. CHARRAD

Middle East, as in the Netherlands, marriages were often part of complex political relations. Women were married in their teens and marriage alliances were worked out by families with an eye to their perceived collective interest. In thinking about political systems based on kinship, I see the importance of giving even more emphasis to patriarchal strategies understood as control over the fate of individuals, women and young men, for the sake of the family or the kin group as a collective entity (Charrad, 2007). This form of control has been essential to patriarchal strategies to gain political or economic power in the history of the Middle East. It persists today in many forms and has been enshrined in the laws of several countries. This is one reason why women’s rights advocates ﬁght for laws that would give them greater individual autonomy and lessen the control over women’s life options such as in marriage and divorce. They want women to have more leverage over their own fate instead of it being shaped by the interests of the larger kin-based community, be it extended family, clan or a tribe. By contrast, conservative groups, whose power is anchored in patriarchal practices, argue for keeping in place legislation that facilitates the control of women. Like other rich studies, this one gets you thinking about further questions. We need to do more to unpack complex theoretical issues such as the following: How do patrimonialism and patriarchy intersect in macro structural politics in different places and periods? Is there a form of patrimonialism that is patriarchal and another that is not? Or is it a matter of degree and can patrimonialism be more or less patriarchal? Or are there several forms of kinship/family/gender with different impacts on patrimonialism and on the transition to centralized states? Or shall we look at the issue from another angle and ask if there are variants in the form of patrimonialism or in the transition to centralization that may have different impacts on family forms and gender relations? Are different kinship conﬁgurations associated with patrimonial rule in different world regions? These are questions to be considered if we are to further develop a comparative historical sociology of kinship/family/gender and state formation.

REFERENCES Adams, J. (2005). The familial state: Ruling families and merchant capitalism in early modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Patrimonial States in Early Modern Europe and the Contemporary Era

251

Adams, J., Clemens, E. S., & Orloff, A. S. (Eds). (2005). Remaking modernity: Politics, history and sociology. Durham: Duke University Press. Charrad, M. M. (2001). States and women’s rights: The making of postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press. Charrad, M. M. (2007). Contexts, concepts and contentions: Gender legislation in the Middle East. Hawwa: Journal of Women in the Middle East and the Islamic World, 5(1), 55–72. Rohde, D. (2007). Army enlists anthropology in war zones. New York Times. (October 5), A1 and A12.

PATRIMONIAL RISE AND DECLINE. THE STRANGE CASE OF THE FAMILIAL STATE Ivan Ermakoff Recall Weber’s diagnosis. A patrimonial system of governance is one in which those holding public ofﬁces manage these ofﬁces as if these were their ‘‘personal property.’’ In this system of rule, the ruler and his ofﬁcials are only limited by tradition. The consequences are twofold. First, institutional innovations are precarious since they do not enjoy the ‘‘sanctity of tradition.’’ Second, new kinds of acquisition and enterprise are exposed to the arbitrary character of the ruler’s governance and of his ofﬁcials’.1 Investments can be wiped out by one single stroke. Arbitrary power begets instability which in turn undermines sustained investments over time. The indictment is therefore quite clear. ‘‘The patrimonial state lacks the political and procedural predictability [Weber’s emphasis] indispensable for capitalist development.’’2 This liability is compounded by a second one which Weber does not elaborate but which is quite consistent with his overall diagnosis. In a patrimonial system of governance, rulers and their ofﬁcials seek to convert their ofﬁce into a family property. Handing down their ofﬁce and the prestige attached to it to their male heirs is their way to trump death. The implication is that when the logic of patrimonial appropriation is under way, family ties and the logic of political consolidation, not standards of

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 253–271 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19009-3

253

254

IVAN ERMAKOFF

political or administrative competence, motivate ofﬁce allocation. The door then is open to nepotism, corruption and inefﬁciency. In light of this diagnosis, we would expect any patrimonial system of governance to undermine rather than to enhance collective capacity. More to the point: we would not expect such a system to lay the ground for an institutional setting prone to innovation. The ﬁrst contribution of The Familial State is to point out this paradox and to document it extensively in the case of the Netherlands in the early modern period. This case has demonstrative value: here is a country in which patrimonial practices were rife and pervasive. Far from hindering the development of state institutions, these practices were key to the geopolitical rise of the Dutch state and its hegemonic position. Two questions then come to the fore. Which factors made these developments possible? How does this paradox contribute to our understanding of institution building and state formation? I propose to discuss the contributions of The Familial State by focusing on three nodal points: (1) the family as a site of strategic investment, (2) the analytical relevance of the Dutch anomaly for the theory of state formation and (3) the institutional underpinnings of decline. The Familial State places gender and families at the center of the stage by emphasizing the centrality of family relations and patriarchy in patrimonial strategies. In so doing, Adams invites us to ask, beyond any naturalist conception of patriarchal domination, why family relations were so central to strategies of patrimonial aggrandizement and consolidation. The ‘‘unique’’ (Adams, 2005a, p. 5) character of the Netherlands’ system of governance raises the issues of its comparative status – how shall we assess its patrimonial character? – and of its theoretical potential. Since, furthermore, this case is a clear-cut case of rise and decline, I will also examine to what extent The Familial State provides a theory that accounts for both sides of the coin.

1. LINEAGE AND STRATEGY Whenever we speak of patrimonialism, the reference is to the rule of the pater. Weber theorizes this connection from a genetic perspective. The prototype of patrimonial governance is the household. The patrimonial ruler manages his realm as he would manage his household according to rules of traditional wisdom. This genetic and naturalist model makes patriarchy a constitutive dimension of patrimonial practices. In this conception, patrimony implies the dominion of fathers. Patrimonial ofﬁcials are bound to be male.3 At least this is what we think. And we are all the

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

255

more inclined to think so if we assume that the rule of the fathers is a fact of nature grounded in a biological necessity. Etymology comforts this bias: the reference to gender, being inscribed in the term, lends credence to a substantialist interpretation. Adams warns us against this naturalistic bias (Adams, 2005a, p. 32). Weber mistakenly takes the etymology of patrimony at face value, interpreting the rule of the father as a fact of nature grounded in biological differences across sexes.4 The problem with this naturalist understanding is that it prevents us from investigating patriarchy for its own sake: if the rule of the father is a natural phenomenon, there is no need to construct it as an object of inquiry. Consequently, in failing to make the gender dimension of patrimonial practices a focus of inquiry, we miss the opportunity to explore ‘‘modes of politico-economic reproduction’’ that impinge on ‘‘how political alliances are formed and how power is transferred, how new members of the elite are recruited, how political rule is legitimated, and when it founders’’ (p. 32). The point of The Familial State is precisely to extract patriarchy out of its naturalistic gangue so that we can adequately gauge these patterns of reproduction. Whether the focus is on the Netherlands (p. 102), France (p. 108) or England (p. 129), the private appropriation of rule which Adams documents in the early modern period was a fathers’ and sons’ business. Each case was ‘‘a version of single template of patriarchal patrimonialism’’ (p. 7). The players were male family heads ‘‘holding their card on behalf of the lineage’’ (p. 93). Fathers sought to capture state positions to the beneﬁt of their own lineage. It is they who administered the allocation of goods across generations. Consequently, the rule of the father suffused the common sense of elite families. ‘‘Contemporaries saw themselves as bound by the rules of family patrilineal succession in politics.’’5 In this political economy thus, norms of patrilineal succession enjoyed hegemony. Adams does not use the notion in this speciﬁc sense.6 Yet, hegemony captures the thrust of her descriptive claims. Conjointly, this mode of reproduction made the family a site of intense strategic investment. The key issue was not only to get hold of ofﬁces and positions but also to make sure that these would remain within the purview of the family. This analytical and descriptive foray into the gender dimension of patrimonial practices in early modern Europe points to two further questions. First, how shall we account for the cultural hegemony of this patriarchal model? Theorists of hegemony such as Laitin (1986) draw attention to the conditional impact of state practices and institutions on the creation of common sense.7 The interesting point in the case of the familial

256

IVAN ERMAKOFF

state is that the cultural hegemony of the patriarchal norms described by Adams either preceded or was contemporaneous with the emergence of state institutions.8 Second, what explains the centrality of family relations in this strategic universe? Both questions take on their signiﬁcance in light of Adams’ critique of Weber and, more broadly, the critique of any naturalist conception of patriarchy.

Historicizing Hegemonic Representations Adams’ analysis can be deemed ‘‘Geertzian’’ to the extent that it is interested in capturing the semantic logic of a set of cultural representations grounded in normative assumptions about fatherly rule and familial honor.9 We cannot purport to reconstruct the subjective ethos of historical actors without mapping out their collective representations and without investigating how these representations relate to one another in a symbolic system endowed with its own semantic consistency and logic.10 Here the approach is primarily static. In adopting this standpoint, The Familial State displays a powerful matrix of widely shared normative representations. The paradoxical effect of this perspective is that it relegates to the background Adams’ critique of naturalist conceptions. If indeed practices such as those recorded by The Familial State are socially and symbolically constructed – the outcome of struggles and conﬂicts that are historically situated and socially conditioned – then this critique calls for a genetic analysis tracing the processes whereby these practices became referential, pervasive and commonsensical. We demonstrate the inanity of the assertion that a social pattern is grounded in nature by showing what made this pattern historically possible. There is considerable tension between, on the one hand, the claim that the gender dimension of patrimony should be analyzed in its own terms as a mode of regulation (by deﬁnition historically relative) and a structural analysis mapping out a matrix of cultural representations enjoying cultural hegemony and, as a result, endowed with the universality of their hegemony. The following statement is indicative of this tension: ‘‘In more structural terms, one of the general arguments of this book is that paternal authority and patriarchal status are core dimensions of patrimonial rule; entwined with the articulations of political privilege and property relations speciﬁc to the times, they could be expected to shape the development of the Dutch and other European states in a range of speciﬁc ways’’ (p. 29; my emphasis). Unless we unduly interpret the ﬁrst part of this statement (‘‘In more

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

257

structural terms y are core dimensions of patrimonial rule’’) as a deﬁnitional claim, this part asserts an anthropological truth that has no historical referent. Patriarchy is inherent to, and constitutive of, patrimonial power. The second part of the statement, on the other hand, situates the claim historically, but eludes the question of genesis, presumably because it is grounded in the anthropological claim. Thus, the question which Adams’ critique of Weber invites us to ask is: why did this patriarchal ideology emerge with such symbolic force? Or shall we conclude that this ideology has no history (as Althusser, 2001, would put it) because patriarchy is a trans-historical feature of patrimonial structures?11 If indeed patrimony always implies the rule of the pater, is this not to say that it has universal truth? The Familial State leaves us on the verge of these different interpretive leads, in part because with regard to the ideology of family lineages, the book adopts a predominantly culturalist standpoint and downplays the issue of emergence processes.

Strategizing Family Honor The second issue worthy of attention pertains to the family/strategy nexus. Adams portrays family relations as central to strategies of patrimonial appropriation. The family is the collective actor on behalf of which elite family heads deploy their strategies. It is both the end and the means of ofﬁce acquisition. The logic inherent to these strategies asserts the prevalence of kinship ties over any other criterion of ofﬁce transfer. Why were elite family heads so eager to convert their ofﬁce and state service into a property of their lineage? Two very different lines of argument are possible to address this question. The ﬁrst one points to the condition of possibility of a moral economy, the second one to a strategic model of cooperation. At ﬁrst sight, it is tempting to interpret these family strategies in light of the inevitable standoff with Death – the ‘‘Ultimate Master’’ as Hegel once put it: they are last-ditch attempts to fend off death’s grip by vesting sons and daughters with the task of being on our behalf. We will be defeated for sure. Who is not? But we can nonetheless claim to a modicum of immortality through our lineage and the lineage of our offspring. Family is our trump card. According to this interpretation, converting ofﬁces into family properties is one instance of a broader anthropological pattern. In handing down their ofﬁce and the prestige attached to it to their heirs, patrimonial ofﬁcers and rulers were extracting their fate from the temporal horizon set by their death.

258

IVAN ERMAKOFF

However basic this anthropological interpretation may seem, it needs to be qualiﬁed: if it provides a plausible foundation for the moral economy of intergenerational investment, it does not tell us under which conditions this moral economy becomes possible and when it is likely to emerge. It may well be that this type of investment becomes conceivable when prestige can be viewed as a family feature. Particularly signiﬁcant in this regard are Adams’ remarks about the crystallization of a new cultural understanding of patriarchal familial honor. The early modern period in western Europe is a time when two different idioms of honor – one stressing state service, the other, the aristocracy of blood – get conﬂated.12 The Netherlands are particularly representative of this cultural evolution. Adams notes for instance that even the princes of the House of Orange portrayed themselves as ‘‘state ofﬁcers’’ (p. 97). Is this enough? It is possible to set forth a different account of the centrality of family ties – one that is focused on the strategic requirement of private appropriation. In environments that lack the stabilizing effects of well-functioning legal settings, interpersonal commitments are constantly undermined by the possibility of defection and betrayals. By contrast, because of the normative underpinnings of kinship, and because of the density and the mutual dependence inherent to family relations, family ties bring with them the promise of interpersonal commitment. They maximize the cost of defection for potential defectors and are better suited to the goals of maintaining supervision and enforcing sanctions than ties of friendship or relations of personal exchange.13 This explains their pragmatic convenience.

2. THE PATRIMONIAL MOMENT Adams situates the unique character of the Dutch case in the ‘‘three-way institutional nexus of elite families, state, and economic ﬂows’’ (p. 6). This ‘‘distinctive patrimonial institutional conﬁguration – linking a merchant capitalist class, an estatist state and the elite patriarchal families – ‘‘was a central factor explaining ‘‘the ascent of the Dutch state in the Golden Age’’ (p. 77). Since the paradox of the Dutch case is one of patrimonial expansion, the issue is, ﬁrst, to ﬁgure out what was distinctively ‘‘patrimonial’’ in this conﬁguration and, second, to what extent this ‘‘unique’’ setup is amenable to a general theory of state formation. To fully gauge the contributions of The Familial State on this point, it is helpful to discuss in which respects Adams’ analyses build on, and depart from, Weber’s framework. Summarizing Weber’s views on patrimonial

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

259

structures and their collective impact is not an easy task. His reﬂections shun clear-cut arguments. Weber proceeds by delineating multiple contrasts and by outlining different directions of research. It is as if, implicitly acknowledging the multiplicity of the effects at work and the wide range of possible outcomes, Weber had shunned away from making deﬁnite statements and predictions. The terrain which he is mapping is one in which gradation and combined effects carry more analytical weight than self-enclosed types.

Stereotyped and Parcellized Two broad principles of differentiation run through the apparent maze of Weber’s historical observations and analytical insights regarding the collective implications of patrimony. The ﬁrst one relates to the extent to which patrimonial agents can indulge in arbitrary power. The second one pertains to the degree to which power is ‘‘parcellized downwards’’ – to use Adams’ apt expression (p. 17). I consider each dimension in turn. The possibility of arbitrary power is inherent to patrimonial relations. Since, in a patrimonial system of governance, rulers and ofﬁcials manage their ofﬁce as if it were their private realm, they can have considerable discretion in the way they exercise power and for which purposes. This discretion, however, does not go unchecked. For one thing, tradition sets powerful limits to the legitimate use of patrimonial power.14 ‘‘The exercise of power is primarily a personal right of the ofﬁcial: outside of the sacred boundaries of tradition, he makes ad hoc decisions. Hence, a typical feature of the patrimonial state in the sphere of law-making is the juxtaposition of inviolable traditional prescriptions and completely arbitrary decisionmaking.’’15 Further, as patrimonial rulers and ofﬁcials engage in repeated transactions over time, they organize their interactions by reference to a set of expectations, explicit or not, that provide the basis for common understandings and that enmesh these interactions in a codiﬁed setting. Without providing an explicit characterization of this dimension, Weber evokes the notion of ‘‘stereotyped patrimonialism.’’16 Codiﬁcation differentiates patrimonial arrangements by stabilizing relations and by limiting the unpredictable character of patrimonial power.17 The second principle of differentiation running through Weber’s analysis is the degree to which power gets fragmented among multiple agents directly managing portions of the public rule. Fragmentation is a natural outgrowth of patrimonial rule: ‘‘As the appropriation of ofﬁces progresses, the ruler’s

260

IVAN ERMAKOFF

power, especially his political power, disintegrates into a bundle of powers separately appropriated by various individuals by virtue of special privileges – rights which are most variously deﬁned but which, once the deﬁnition has become established, cannot be altered by the ruler without arousing dangerous resistance from the vested interests.’’18 Hence, as Adams points out (p. 17), a patrimonial system of governance is ‘‘crosscut by patterned tensions’’ between rulers and agents with a local basis of power.19 How shall we situate the Dutch case in this conceptual space? The Familial State makes it clear that on both counts – codiﬁcation and power fragmentation – Dutch patrimonial structures ranked high. These structures exemplify Weber’s implicit deﬁnition of ‘‘stereotyped patrimonialism.’’ To a signiﬁcant extent, patrimonial relations in this institutional conﬁguration enjoyed a high degree of codiﬁcation. Moreover, power was parcellized and fragmented.20 This being said, the unique character of this case still remains elusive when we remain within the conﬁnes of Weber’s analytical framework. The broad characterization of Dutch patrimonialism as ‘‘stereotyped’’ and ‘‘fragmented’’ does not make it more distinctive than England and France at the same period of time. If, from a macro comparative perspective, we were to locate these three cases in the two-dimensional space constituted by ‘‘codiﬁcation’’ and ‘‘power fragmentation,’’ we would in all likelihood situate them in the same quadrant.21 More to the point, the references to ‘‘stereotyped patrimonialism’’ and power fragmentation tell us nothing about their impact on economic development and collective capacity. Clearly, codiﬁcation has a stabilizing effect on relations and expectations about the future. In this respect, it does contribute to the prospect of capitalist investment.22 But the codiﬁcation of patrimonial relations into stereotypes can also inhibit innovations in the same way tradition does.23 Even more damaging, the stabilization of patrimonial privileges creates an opportunity for rent situations, that is, situations in which wealth is accumulated ‘‘as a source of rent, not as a source of capital.’’24 As for the degree to which power is fragmented in the patrimonial structure, it is unclear how this variable could be construed as a factor of economic development. Those who have crafted for themselves a parcel of power are likely to enjoy it for their own sake, not for the sake of collective projects. Once patrimonial ofﬁcers have got hold of their ofﬁce, they have no reason to tolerate entrepreneurial moves and reforms if these threaten the bases of their wealth and power. The French parlements are a case in point. They ‘‘blocked all innovations which would have been detrimental to their traditional rights.’’25 Hence, in a parcellized system, the potential for

261

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

arbitrary power gets replicated at the local level. And arbitrary power, insofar as it begets unstable decisions, impedes economic development. In short, the reference to Weber is of little help in the present case. Parcellization downwards and codiﬁcation capture important sources of variation among patrimonial structures. But these two dimensions are of little explanatory value if the point is to assess the impact of patrimonial arrangements on economic development and, more speciﬁcally, on capitalism. They are of little explanatory value because their effects are indeterminate. They do not inform us about actors’ capacity to put collective resources to a productive use.26 The consolidation of ofﬁce creates the capacity to take over free-ﬂoating resources. In this respect, it is a factor of stability. It creates a temporal horizon for the management of resources. But the ﬂip side is never far away: the appropriation of ofﬁce also creates the opportunity for exclusive appropriation and the suppression of any innovation that could be threatening. From an evolutionary viewpoint, the challenge is to identify which factors lead actors to promote innovations versus exclusive appropriation. This analytical agenda is very much present in Adams’ historical inquiry: ‘‘Venality and associated styles of patrimonial governance welded states to the political goals and reproduction of particular elites as those elites in turn tightened their grip on pieces of patrimonial power. Under certain conditions, this dynamic encouraged politico-economic rigidity y Under others, it fostered plural, decentralized possibilities y’’ (The Familial State, p. 26, my emphasis). The point is key. The effects of patrimonial arrangements on the collective capacity for institutional innovation remain indeterminate if we cannot specify the parameters conditioning these outcomes. By focusing speciﬁcally on the characteristics of the Dutch case from a comparative viewpoint, The Familial State helps us ﬂesh out an argument that complements and goes beyond Weber’s framework.

Nodes of Agency Large-scale organizational endeavors require the formation of cliques of agents with the capacity to build institutions. Stated in more abstract terms: cooperative efforts rest on nodes of agency. Patrimonial practices provide a breeding ground for these cliques and nodes by webbing a network of interrelated ties geared to shared interests and coordination. The groups thus constituted may be exclusive. But they can also be ‘‘initiating nuclei.’’ As such they create the condition for institution-building (pp. 35, 98).

262

IVAN ERMAKOFF

From this perspective, these groups are a necessary and constitutive moment in the process of institution building.27 The Familial State restores the signiﬁcance of this constitutive moment. In the Dutch state, patrimonial practices welded corporate families to the state.28 Remains the intriguing question: how can these practices serve a collective project that is antithetical to their underlying logic? Two key factors stand out in Adams’ account: decentralized rule and regulated competition. Both are of broad theoretical signiﬁcance. They explain how the logic of patrimony can be turned against itself. Consider the impact of decentralized rule. The case of the Netherlands in the 17th century exempliﬁes a system of rule in which no clique and no single actor had the capacity to monopolize executive power. The contrast with the Florentine case, which Adams underscores (p. 101), is striking. In the confederate structure of the Dutch state, sites of sovereignty – town councils, provincial representative assemblies and the States General – were too numerous to be taken over by one single family (p. 104). Very signiﬁcantly Adams establishes a negative correlation between the scope of decentralization and the instability of governance: ‘‘the uncertainty that was endemic to patrimonial rule was minimized when corporate elites controlled the levers of power – that is, when the monarch or stadholder was politically subordinated to the estates, as in the Netherlands of the Golden Age’’ (p. 21).29 The second factor is the regulated exercise of competition. This point relates to the corporate and mercantilist setup of the Dutch state. Families were competing for ofﬁces in a corporate setting. This setting induced a fair amount of competition and elicited an interest in self-regulation. It is very striking to observe that early on, in the second half of the 16th century, members of the regent class were pushing for the abolition of venal ofﬁceholding and that the proscription of venality acquired legal status (pp. 43, 81). As we could have expected, this proscription was far from being fully enforced. The interesting point is that family heads invoked these rules when they sought to limit the margin of maneuver of their competitors (pp. 93–94, 145–146).30 Competition thus was regulated and this regulation limited the destructive logic of private appropriation.

3. EXPLAINING DECLINE Stasis and decline are the ﬂip sides of hegemony. It is possible to set forth an explanation of the decline of the Netherlands exclusively in terms of

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

263

economic factors, both structural and contingent.31 But decline can also be analyzed as a political phenomenon: economic patterns co-evolve with governance systems.32 Regarding stasis and decline, one of the strengths of The Familial State is to propose an account which, from an analytical viewpoint, is highly consistent with Adams’ explanation of the rise of the Dutch state. The focus is on the interplay between actors’ capacity for institutional innovations and the impact of structural constraints. The question The Familial State invites us to pursue further from a comparative perspective is whether, and in which capacity, elite groups had the ability to overcome or reverse politico-economic developments that had a structural character. On this point, Adams’ formulations are compatible with two possible interpretations, and it is not entirely clear which one, in the end, we should endorse. Taking full advantage of the analytical resources provided by her comparative framework, Adams shows that patrimonial actors in England, France and the Netherlands sought to entrench and consolidate their privileges by drafting cartel-like agreements specifying who was entitled to what. These covenants took the form of family syndicates of ofﬁceholders in France (p. 172), elite arrangements determining the distribution of proprietary ofﬁce-holding in England (p. 184) and ‘‘contracts of correspondence’’ formalizing ‘‘the distribution of city ofﬁces in written succession rules’’ in the Netherlands (p. 146). These different schemes exemplify the drive for monopoly characteristic of patrimonial appropriation.33 Yet, in spite of these similarities, these three states underwent very different political trajectories with strikingly dissimilar outcomes in terms of institutional capacity. Clearly, exogenous factors related to the dynamics of trade patterns played a role in these trajectories.34 Still, Adams argues that the variance in outcomes should not be reduced to these exogenous constraints. Whether the focus is on England, France or the Netherlands, her conclusion is that ‘‘key elite actors, y, had a hand in shaping the different resolutions y to analogous institutional limits and quandaries’’ (p. 201). As far as the Dutch regents were concerned, the problems of state management they faced ultimately were ‘‘collective action problems’’ and these, as collective action problems, were ‘‘susceptible of solution’’ (p. 154). Thus, actors had their say. The type of responses they came up with had a crucial inﬂuence on institutional trajectories and state capacities.35 This observation suggests that the decline of the Dutch state was not a foregone conclusion. If so, that is, if indeed elite actors had some leeway in shaping different solutions to the challenges they faced, we should be able to identify missed opportunities,

264

IVAN ERMAKOFF

possible turning points or counterfactual scenarios through a close investigation of their conﬂicts and strategic motivations. When we narrow the focus down, however, this suggestion becomes elusive. The diagnosis Adams brings into relief is one that emphasizes not missed opportunities but either a lack of alternatives or an inexorable logic. In the ﬁrst half of the 18th century, the Dutch regents crafted ingenious pacts allowing them to secure their grip over corporate and political ofﬁces by making their positions the property of their lineage – the so-called ‘‘contracts of correspondence.’’ These covenants were indeed innovative and they sanctioned cooperative strategies. But in setting up political cartels shutting off competition for ofﬁce, these actors were behaving in true patrimonial fashion. They were doing nothing else except bringing about the logic inherent to their position. They were acting as the agents of the structures in which they were embedded.36 Collective action was therefore possible but along the lines set by patrimonial consolidation. These instances of collective coordination far from challenging structural developments were contributing further to their implementation. True, there were pressures from below and proposals for reform coming from the top (pp. 155, 159). Yet, the conclusion emerging from this account is that these initiatives never materialized. Willem IV’s ‘‘Proposition for a Limited Free Port’’ (1751), which Adams singles out as a signiﬁcant moment, was ‘‘stillborn’’ (p. 159). By then, the state had the structure of a pyramid of cartels embedded in one another and this structure made coordination among the various loci of sovereignty highly problematic. Furthermore, the regents were obviously incapable of moving beyond their patriarchal understanding of patrimonial authority (p. 155).37 If historical close-ups reveal stillborn attempts at reforms and if the analytical narrative overall says very little about the moments in which alternative historical possibilities came to the fore, it seems reasonable to conclude that there were no such moments, no real missed opportunities and no conﬂict that could have reversed the logic of patrimonial decline. Adams endorses this interpretation when she claims that ‘‘ﬁscal crisis and state incapacity were the legacy of structures that vested power and policy making in the hands of elite family heads committed to protecting their local – at most provincial – identities and positions’’ (p. 144, my emphasis). In this interpretive framework, decline was inevitable. The regents’ power was too much entrenched in state and corporate institutions to make alternative historical developments possible. As they captured the state from the mid-17th century on, the merchant-capitalists became state rentiers (pp. 39, 71, 150). In practice, family covenants institutionalized the

265

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

extraction of rents from corporate and political ofﬁces.38 In the end, the logic of patrimonial accumulation got the upper hand and undermined their collective capacity to handle external challenges. The contrast with England is striking. For in England, rulers did dismantle ‘‘key structures of patrimonial power’’ (p. 194). From a comparative viewpoint thus, the outcome appears more open-ended than a retrospective assessment in terms of structural legacy would lead us to assume. These few remarks also outline the contrast between Adams’ understanding of path dependence and a standard account in terms of punctuated equilibria, i.e., equilibrium conﬁgurations punctuated by sudden change. In the standard account, path dependence can be traced to foundational events, whether these events are deﬁned as ‘‘times of crisis’’ (Krasner, 1984, p. 240) or as ‘‘contingent’’ in the sense that they fail to ﬁt standard theoretical predictions (Mahoney, 2000, p. 514). By contrast, Adams’ analysis gives no pride of place to founding events, for good reason: the shift to a locked-in patrimonial system of rentier positions was the outcome of multiple, decentralized and local formal arrangements which sanctioned elite family heads’ attempt to secure their hold over their ofﬁce. Far from reﬂecting the impact of a foundational event, local arrangements in this account appear to be determined by the structural logic of patrimonial appropriation. We thus have two accounts: one emphasizes historical actors’ collective capacity; the other underscores a developmental process driven by an inexorable, i.e., structural, logic. The claim: ‘‘key elite actors had a hand in shaping different possible outcomes’’ (p. 201) is an invitation to focus on some key moments and to delve into the reason explaining why calls for reform fell through. Conversely, the claim: ‘‘decline was the legacy of a certain type of patrimonial structure – a type of corporate privilege associated with dispersed federated sovereignty’’ (p. 194) – this claim, I would argue, actually calls for further comparative analysis regarding the processes whereby elite groups acquire or fail to acquire the cognitive and political ability to overcome or reverse politico-economic developments that have a structural character.

CONCLUSION As these comments make clear, it is possible to engage the claims of The Familial State from multiple standpoints. This multiplicity of perspectives testiﬁes to the richness of this inquiry. Adams’ original and

266

IVAN ERMAKOFF

provocative analyses explore different terrains of investigation: state formation, the institutionalization of patrimonial practices, the political economy of chartered companies, the anthropology of familial honor, class structures and geopolitical competition in early modern Europe. The Familial State paces these terrains with great relevance and stylistic brio. Adams sheds light on the complexity of the cases while developing, through the critical dialog with Weber, a comparative argument that informs our theoretical understanding and, as a result, has broad relevance. This combination is a remarkable achievement.

NOTES 1. Weber (1978, p. 1094). 2. Weber (1978, p. 1095). 3. On this point, see Adams’ exegesis of Economy and Society (2005b, pp. 238–241). 4. Weber (1978, p. 1007). True, Weber acknowledges that females can play a leading role in extended families when he observes the existence of female sachems (p. 1009). Despite its heuristic value, this observation remains buried under a naturalist conception of gender differences. 5. Adams (2005a, p. 9). Conversely, elite family heads ‘‘believed that they were entitled to family property in ofﬁce and privilege’’ (p. 45, my emphasis). 6. In The Familial State hegemony describes a geopolitical position of dominance. The term is conﬁned to this international relation usage. 7. Laitin (1986, p. 153). 8. ‘‘As the patriarchal family and lineal networks and ideologies were woven into the web of patrimonial power, they formed what we might call a familial state’’ (Adams, 2005a, p. 34). 9. Geertz (1973), Chapter 8. See Adams (2005a, pp. 10, 31, 2005b, pp. 242–245). 10. Along the same lines, see Bloch’s (1997, p. 131) broad claim that, in the end, history’s subject-matter is human consciousness understood in collective terms. 11. Althusser (2001, pp. 108–109). 12. Adams (2005a, p. 97). 13. Hechter (1987, Chapter 3) develops a consonant theoretical argument about group solidarity. 14. Weber (1978, p. 1008) sets forth this claim ﬁrst with regard to patriarchy: ‘‘Everything within [the patriarchal] structure of domination is ultimately determined by the power of tradition, that is, the belief in the inviolability of what has always been (des ewige Gestrigen).’’ Subsequently, he extends this claim to patrimonialism: ‘‘the ruler’s powers are legitimate insofar as they are traditional’’ (ibid., p. 1020). The order of presentation is consistent with the premise describing patriarchy as the evolutionary grounding block of patrimonialism. 15. Weber (1978, p. 1041).

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

267

16. The opposite of ‘‘stereotyped patrimonialism’’ (der stereotypierte Patrimonialismus) is ‘‘arbitrary patrimonialism’’ (Weber, 1978, p. 1090, 1971, pp. 639, 648). ‘‘Stereotyped’’ relations y contribute to stability. The non-stereotyped patrimonial state lacks a stable ‘‘legal order’’ (p. 1101). The distinction between ‘‘pure patrimonialism’’ and ‘‘estate patrimonialism’’ only partially overlaps the distinction between ‘‘arbitrary’’ and ‘‘stereotyped’’ patrimonialism. Undoubtedly, estate patrimonialism overlaps with ‘‘stereotyped’’ patrimonialism since estate distinctions involve codes and patterned expectations. Weber (1978, p. 1046) for instance observes that there is no polity of estates if the ruler can treat ‘‘the ofﬁcials’ privileges as precarious’’. Pure patrimonialism, on the other hand, cannot be equated with ‘‘arbitrary patrimonialism’’ if it is regulated by well-established codes of etiquette. 17. It could be objected that any reference to tradition for the purpose of curtailing a patrimonial ofﬁcial’s privileges draws on a codiﬁed understanding of the relation between this ofﬁcial and his subjects. Weber does not explain in which sense stereotyped patrimonialism is different from patrimonial relations legitimized by the reference to tradition. However, his historical references draw a picture of stereotyped patrimonialism as an ad hoc form of regulation emerging through the exercise of patrimonial power. The main difference between stereotyped patrimonialism and tradition thus can be viewed as one of temporal frame. The codiﬁcation implied by ‘‘stereotyped’’ patrimonialism becomes part and parcel of the tradition after a certain point, most likely when actors have forgotten the context in which the rules were established. 18. Weber (1978, p. 1040) states that decentralization and appropriation are ‘‘natural processes’’. 19. A patrimonial system of governance generates its own contradictions between the logic of power accumulation at the center and the logic of power accumulation at the periphery. There is an inevitable conﬂict of interests between the patrimonial prince and the ‘‘natural tendencies of the local patrimonial interests’’ (Weber, 1978, p. 1058). Weber refers to the ‘‘trend toward the elimination of any control on the part of the ruler and toward the hereditary appropriation of the political ofﬁce by a family, ideally or in fact’’ (ibid., p. 1058). 20. Adams (2005a, pp. 44–45). 21. Ertman’s (1997, pp. 66, 126, 155, 322) remarks on the ‘‘rationalization’’ of patrimonial structures in the early modern period suggest a signiﬁcant degree of codiﬁcation. Regarding fragmentation, ‘t Hart (1993, p. 189) draws a parallel between the ‘‘fragmented’’ Dutch state and ‘‘the shift from central to centrifugal government and from public to private administration’’ observed in France in the ﬁrst decades of the 17th century. For his part, Ertman (1997, p. 184) concludes that in the ﬁrst half of the 17th century, ‘‘tendencies towards appropriation were nearly as strong in England as they were in Latin Europe’’. 22. This partial conclusion follows from the broad and negative observation that the lack of continuity proper to ‘‘non-stereotyped’’ patrimonial structures impedes capitalist development (Weber, 1978, p. 1102). 23. ‘‘The spirit of patrimonial administration, interested as it is in public peace, the preservation of traditional means of livelihood and the satisfaction of the subjects, is alien to and distrustful of capitalist developments, which revolutionizes the given social conditions’’ (Weber, 1978, p. 1109).

268

IVAN ERMAKOFF

24. Weber (1978, p. 1097). 25. Weber (1978, p. 1038). ‘‘By virtue of their property right to ofﬁce, the parliaments, through remonstrance, often questioned immediately afterwards the validity of the decree which ran counter to tradition’’ (p. 1039). 26. Do patrimonial structures allow for institutional innovation or do they stultify it? Are they factors of stability or instability? Are they compatible with capitalist developments or do they jeopardize such developments? Do they enhance collective capacity or do they undermine it? Weber’s (1978, p. 1095) overall diagnosis is negative. Capitalism cannot tolerate the unpredictable character of a patrimonial rule. Instability is inherent to the confusion of the private and the public. ‘‘The patrimonial ruler does not like independent economic and social powers’’ (ibid., p. 1102). Furthermore, the regulative role of tradition preempts incentives for innovative moves. Along this broad negative assessment, Weber points to opposite developmental trends. A patrimonial rule can contribute to stabilizing resources thereby enhancing the capacity for innovation. Hence, capitalism is ‘‘compatible with patrimonialism’’ (ibid., p. 1091). Whether we are focusing on arbitrary power, fragmentation, or codiﬁcation, each one of these variables can have positive and negative effects. The conclusion thus is bound to remain open-ended. ‘‘Patrimonialism in part furthers and in part deﬂects modern capitalism’’ (ibid., p. 1099). This indeterminate character explains why at times, Weber’s observations sound contradictory. For instance, while observing that the patrimonial state ‘‘easily dissolves into a congeries of privileges’’ (ibid., p. 1097), he also argues that ‘‘the more restricted access to patrimonial ofﬁce is, the more wealth is directed to purely bourgeois-capitalist uses’’ (ibid., p. 1102). It is interesting to observe that this indeterminacy even extends to ‘‘arbitrary patrimonialism.’’ This type is the most antithetical to economic development as a result of its arbitrary character. Weber grounds his overall negative diagnosis regarding the externalities of patrimonial arrangements in the potential for instability inherent to unrestrained power. Yet, rulers who enjoy considerable leeway, precisely because they have this unrestrained margin of maneuver, have also the capacity to introduce and impose innovative arrangements. 27. ‘‘Patrimonial state formation can be seen as a process of tying together nodes in a single cartel or network, in mutable arrangements that are variably centralized and contingently integrated’’ (Adams, 2005a, p. 35). Interestingly, a rational choice analyst like Chong (1991, p. 36) makes consonant observations regarding the emergence of collective action: ‘‘preexisting social networks play a central role in the emergence of collective action y collective action invariably involves the confederation of smaller organized units, rather than the aggregation of previously isolated, atomized individuals’’. To the extent that institution building is a form of collective action, this statement applies to state formation as well. 28. In this respect, Adams’ account ﬂeshes out what Tilly terms the ‘‘capitalintensive path’’ of state formation (Tilly, 1990, p. 99). Tilly’s synthetic description of ‘‘capital-intensive’’ regions applies particularly well to the Netherlands in the 17th century: ‘‘In capital-intensive regions, the presence of capitalists, commercial exchanges, and substantial municipal organizations set serious limits on the state’s direct exertion of control over individuals and households, but facilitated the use of

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

269

relatively efﬁcient and painless taxes on commerce as sources of state revenue’’ (ibid., p. 99). 29. Contemporary observers drew the connection between, on the one hand, the political structure of the Dutch state characterized in the ﬁrst place by the absence of a monarchical ‘‘center’’ and, on the other hand, the security of property rights. Witness this statement by Pieter de Groot in 1673: ‘‘What constitutes the wealth of the Republic? The opulence of its trade. And what is the source of that trade? Good government. For nothing is more attractive for the whole world than freedom of conscience and security of possessions. It is impossible that this freedom and this security of possessions would survive the government of a monarch’’ [Lettres de Pierre de Groot a` Abraham de Wicquefort, edited by F. Kra¨mer. Utrecht: Werken Historisch Genootschap. 1894; quoted by Smit (1968, p. 23)]. 30. As I have argued elsewhere, a key factor in the process whereby a proscriptive norm acquires validity is actors’ decision to invoke the norm to undercut the political capacity of those whom they view as competitors (Ermakoff, 1997, p. 418). The regents’ invocation of an anti-venal norm ﬁts a priori this analytical scenario. 31. E.g. Ormrod (1975, pp. 36–43). 32. This broad point underlies North and Weingast’s (1989, pp. 806–808) interpretation of the institutional effects of the Glorious Revolution in England. Swart (1975, p. 44) makes it explicit in the Dutch case by drawing attention to the political dimension of the decline of the Netherlands. Similarly, Weber’s (pp. 1092–1094) remarks on the political consequences of trade and the relationships between feudalization and the market economy points to different hypotheses about the coevolution of governance structures and economic systems. 33. Weber (1978, p. 1028). 34. Adams (2005a, pp. 138–144). 35. See Adams’ (2005a, p. 165) reference to the ‘‘collective responses of state elites’’. These collective responses had ‘‘starkly contrasting upshots, in the face of similar institutional opportunities and conundrums’’ (p. 165). 36. Weber develops a different account of the decline of ‘‘patrimonial capitalism,’’ i.e., the establishment of monopolistic industries under the control of the political center and the granting of ‘‘concessions to private trade or craft monopolies for high fees’’ (pp. 1097–1098). This type of enterprise ‘‘often furthered or awakened the entrepreneurial spirit.’’ But its impact is short-lived (p. 1098). The political reason for this failure is to be found, not in the capacity of patrimonial ofﬁcials to turn their corporate positions into rentiers positions, but in ‘‘the legal insecurity owing to the always doubtful duration of monopolies in view of possible new privileges’’ (p. 1099). In sum, the ultimate cause for the decline of patrimonial capitalism was ‘‘the arbitrariness of patrimonial rulership’’ (p. 1099). The examples Weber draws on to illustrate his claim are examples of centralized regime (p. 1098). In Weber’s terminology, these cases exemplify ‘‘patriarchal patrimonialism,’’ characterized by the ‘‘mass domination by one individual’’ (p. 1106). ‘‘The arbitrariness of patrimonial rulership’’ could not play out in the Netherlands given the federal and highly decentralized structure of the state. The Dutch case does not ﬁt Weber’s account of ‘‘patrimonial capitalism.’’ Yet, it ﬁts the prediction of decline.

270

IVAN ERMAKOFF

37. Israel’s observation that ‘‘Dutch society in the 18th society was a society dominated by the rentier’’ is consonant with this strand of Adams’ diagnosis (Israel, 1998, p. 1016). 38. ‘‘The shift toward rentier status and the formal monopolization of urban ofﬁce-holding were related tendencies’’ (Adams, 2005a, p. 72).

REFERENCES Adams, J. (2005a). The familial state: Ruling families and merchant capitalism in early modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Adams, J. (2005b). The rule of the father: Patriarchy and patrimonialism in early modern Europe. In: C. Camic, P. S. Gorski & D. M. Trubek (Eds), Max Weber’s economy and society: A critical companion (pp. 237–266). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Althusser, L. (2001). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Lenin and philosophy and other essays (pp. 85–126). New York: Monthly Review Press. Bloch, M. (1997). Apologie pour l’histoire ou Me´tier d’historien. Paris: Armand Colin. Chong, D. (1991). Collective action and the Civil Rights Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ermakoff, I. (1997). Prelates and princes: Aristocratic marriages, Canon law prohibitions and shifts in norms and patterns of domination in the central middle ages. American Sociological Review, 62, 405–422. Ertman, T. (1997). Birth of the leviathan. Building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books. Hechter, M. (1987). Principles of group solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Israel, J. I. (1998). The Dutch Republic. Its rise, greatness, and fall 1477–1806. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Krasner, S. D. (1984). Approaches to the state: Alternative conceptions and historical dynamics. Comparative Politics, 16(2), 223–246. Laitin, D. (1986). Hegemony and culture. Politics and religious change among the Yorubas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mahoney, J. (2000). Path dependence in historical sociology. Theory and society, 29, 507–548. North, D. C., & Weingast, B. R. (1989). Constitutions and commitment: The evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. The Journal of Economic History, December49(4),Dec., 1989, 803–832. Ormrod, O. (1975). Dutch commercial and industrial decline and British growth in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In: F. Krantz & P. M. Hohenberg (Eds), Failed transitions to modern industrial society: Renaissance Italy and seventeenth century Holland. Montre´al, Canada: Interuniversity Centre for European Studies. Smit, J. W. (1968). The Netherlands and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In: J. S. Bromley & E. H. Kossmann (Eds), Britain and the Netherlands in Europe and Asia (pp. 13–36). New York: St Martin’s Press. Swart, K. W. (1975). Holland’s bourgeoisie and the retarded industrialization of the Netherlands. In: F. Krantz & P. M. Hohenberg (Eds), Failed transitions to modern industrial society: Renaissance Italy and seventeenth century Holland (pp. 44–48). Montre´al, Canada: Interuniversity Centre for European Studies.

Patrimonial Rise and Decline

271

‘t Hart, M. C. (1993). The making of a bourgeois state. War, politics, and ﬁnance during the Dutch Revolt. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, capital and European states, AD 990–1990. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Weber, M. (1971). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tu¨bingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Weber, M. (1978 [1921]). Patriarchialism and patrimonialism. In: G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds), Economy and society. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.

ELABORATING THE MICROFOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILIAL STATE: UNITING EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY Edgar Kiser I want to begin by saying that I really love this book. I have had the pleasure of talking to Julia Adams about the project that produced this book over more years than either one of us would probably like to recall, watching it develop from a great dissertation about the political economy of early modern states into an even more unique analysis of the familial dynamics of patrimonial states. The writing style of the book is wonderful too – in an era in which the social sciences are rightly criticized for producing prose characterized by either dry scientism or impenetrable jargon (or in some cases a combination of both),1 this book stands as a model of how to write – it is clear and concise while still being nuanced and detailed, and often entertaining and funny to boot, reﬂecting perfectly the personality of its author. My comments will not try to summarize the book’s arguments or judge its conclusions. Instead, I will focus on one feature of the theory, Adams’ discussion of the microfoundations of familial action. From its inception until quite recently, comparative-historical sociology has been concerned primarily with tracing the development of and

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 273–281 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19010-X

273

274

EDGAR KISER

explaining causal relationships between macro-level entities, few have focused their analytical attention on the micro-level determinants of individual action. The most important debates in comparative-historical sociology have been about the rise and decline of political and economic institutions, not the motivations of historical actors.2 As Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2005) note, this has begun to change. One of the most important theoretical moves made in what they call ‘‘Third Wave’’ of comparativehistorical sociology is to transcend the dominant structuralist approach by paying more attention to the micro level. One of the best recent examples of this trend, deftly combining macro and micro levels of analysis, is Adams’ (2005) The Familial State. A close analysis of the analytics of the microfoundations in the book can thus help us understand both the beneﬁts and the difﬁculties involved in incorporating micro-level causal mechanisms. I will argue that although Adams does a much better job of discussing microfoundations than most other scholars, some of the arguments in the book could have been improved if she had elaborated that aspect of her theory, especially by drawing on general theoretical models from evolutionary biology.

ELABORATING ARGUMENTS ABOUT MICROFOUNDATIONS In contrast to some Second Wave structuralists (e.g., Skocpol, 1979), most contemporary comparative-historical sociologists support the nonreductionist version of methodological individualism (Weber, [1922]1978; Coleman, 1986) suggesting that any complete explanation of social phenomena must include an analysis of individual action as one of its components. However, in part because theoretical training in sociology tends to focus on macro-level causal processes, and in part because it is much easier to get macro-level data about history than good data about the motivations of historical actors, they have usually given less attention to the micro level. As a result, many of the micro-level arguments in comparative historical sociology are incomplete or ad hoc (Kiser & Hechter, 1991). The main exception to this criticism is the growing literature analyzing microfoundations from a cultural/interpretivist perspective. This work often employs complex theoretical arguments oriented to uncovering and decoding the meanings motivating or attached to actions, and sometimes uses rich archival data to illustrate these arguments. At its best, this type of

Elaborating the Microfoundations of The Familial State

275

work can allow the reader to see and understand an entirely different historical world from the perspective of participants in it. However, many interpretivists are not interested in doing causal analyses, and most reject the attempt to construct and test causal propositions. For scholars interested in discovering and testing the impact of general causal mechanisms, this is a serious limitation. Adams’ book is impressive in part because it combines some of the strengths of interpretivist and realist causal analysis. She wants to both develop a nuanced understanding of the meanings of family lineages to patrimonial elites and use those microfoundations to explain how their actions in part determined the trajectory of Dutch, English and French state formation and political power. Analyzing her attempted theoretical/ methodological synthesis can teach us something about how to better use micro-level causal mechanisms in comparative-historical work.

MANAGING MULTIPLE MICROFOUNDATIONS: THE SPECIFICATION OF TRADE-OFFS Comparative-historical sociologists like Julia Adams who deal directly with the complexity of human motivations by incorporating multiple microfoundations in their micro-level theory face an important problem (Kiser, 2006). How can they use multiple micro-level causal mechanisms [Weber’s (1978) four types of social action are the best example in classical theory] without making their arguments untestable? The problem here is the same as that of tautology in rational choice (RCT) models that do not specify preferences a priori – with many different microfoundations allowed, any action can be ‘‘explained’’ after the fact, making it extremely difﬁcult to judge the validity of any explanation. This problem can be resolved in one of three ways: (1) by denying the importance of theory testing (making it more difﬁcult to cumulate knowledge); (2) by using only one microfoundation (this allows testing but comes at the cost of less realism) or (3) by theoretically specifying the conditions under which different microfoundations will be important and the trade-offs between them (this solution avoids the problems of the other two, but is far more difﬁcult to do). How does Adams (2005) deal with this problem? Perhaps surprisingly, given the focus on familial relations (thought by many to be primarily characterized by action based on values and/or emotions), the microfoundations employed in her book are overwhelmingly (although not

276

EDGAR KISER

exclusively) instrumental – essentially a rational choice account of actors strategically choosing actions to provide material and status beneﬁts for their family lineages (for her most explicit statement of this, see Adams, 2005, pp. 93–94). One way of interpreting Adams’ argument is as an elaboration of Becker’s (1981) model of familial interaction: Becker argues that heads of households (in Adams’ case, patrimonial elites) act altruistically toward current members of their nuclear families by maximizing a familial (instead of the usual individual) utility function. Adams goes further than this, arguing that the heads of households act in the interests of not only their current family members but their future (as yet unborn) family members too. I happen to like rational choice arguments, and I think her extension of the Becker model is especially interesting – but I do want to raise a few questions about it and suggest one general elaboration. The ﬁrst set of questions concerns the fact that although she mainly uses fairly standard rational choice microfoundations, she uses other types of micro-level causal mechanisms as well – so how is she able to juggle these multiple microfoundations? Adams modiﬁes RCT ﬁrst by changing the assumptions about preferences by assuming partial altruism (toward family lineage) instead of individual self-interest. But, since she quite sensibly notes that these patrimonial elites were also interested in maximizing their own individual wealth and power (Adams, 2005, p. 108), and given that this interest will often conﬂict with maximizing the welfare of their family lineage, in order to avoid ad hoc argumentation we need some model of how actors are supposed to trade off these two preferences. When and how much will they act for themselves, and when and how much for their families? Second, her focus on actors maximizing utility for their family lineage (often far into the future) raises the issue of discount rates (the rate at which people discount future relative to current costs and beneﬁts). Are we to assume that actors care as much about the welfare of their granddaughter’s children as they do about their own – in other words, that they do not discount the future at all?3 Probably not, and if not, if they do in fact have positive discount rates, we also need some arguments or assumptions about exactly how high their discount rates are, and perhaps what structural factors might cause them to change – in the absence of that, we cannot know with any precision how altruistic elites will be toward their children, grandchildren and more distant descendants – especially when their actions have different consequences for different generations. Third, and again quite sensibly from the point of view of getting the history right, Adams (2005, pp. 56–57, 97) brings in additional preferences (perhaps better called values) such as religious beliefs and family honor.

Elaborating the Microfoundations of The Familial State

277

Again, since acting on the basis of these preferences will at least sometimes conﬂict with the material interests she usually stresses, some discussion of the trade-offs between them is necessary to test her argument. Fourth, something a little different, a microfoundation that I think should be included but is not. Somewhat surprisingly, because familial action is often thought to be at least partly emotionally based, and because Adams (1999) has elsewhere written about the importance of emotions in criticizing the narrowness of RCT (I think she was probably right about that, even though one of her targets was me), there is no discussion of emotionally based familial action in the book. Although Adams (2005, p. 97) argues for the ‘‘systematic integration of affective and strategic impulses,’’ her substantive empirical arguments seem to rely solely on strategic instrumental action. Adams (2005, pp. 96–97) mentions love once, only to mostly dismiss it. It is always difﬁcult to incorporate emotions in sociological analysis because they are very difﬁcult both to theorize and to measure, but in the case of these patrimonial elites acting in the interests of their children and grandchildren, it seems too important to ignore.

INCORPORATING EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY: A MODEL OF LINEAGE ALTRUISM In some sense these are all second-order issues, picking around the edges of the argument; let me now get more to the core of it and discuss a general theory that offers potential answers to some of the questions I have raised. Adams (2005, p. 76) argues that there is a ‘‘pervasive early modern impulse to identify with and promote the envisioned future of one’s patrilineage.’’ But is this impulse a product of this particular historical/cultural conjuncture or is it a trans-historical feature of all human societies or perhaps even a trans-species feature of all animals? Evolutionary biologists argue the latter, and Hamilton’s (1964) work on kin selection provides a formal model of altruism toward family lineages. Using this model could make some of Adams’ historical arguments more precise and more compelling, and could improve their utility for analyzing other times and places. One might think that altruistic behavior would be anomalous for Darwinians – by behaving altruistically (e.g., calling out to warn others when a predator is near or by sharing scarce food), an animal would reduce its own ﬁtness and thus be at a selective disadvantage relative to others

278

EDGAR KISER

behaving selﬁshly – yet there is obviously a great deal of this type of behavior. Evolutionary biologists have always had an intuition that altruism toward kin would facilitate the reproduction of an animal’s genes (Darwin, 1871, p. 912; Fisher, 1930, p. 27).4 Hamilton (1964) formalized this intuition, arguing that all animals maximize their inclusive ﬁtness, meaning that they will act altruistically toward other animals in proportion to the extent that those animals share their genes.5 The greater the ‘‘coefﬁcient of relatedness’’ (e.g., your offspring have half your genes, your grandchildren and nieces a quarter, your cousins one-eighth), the greater the extent of altruism, thus the model is often referred to as kin selection. Hamilton’s theory of inclusive ﬁtness and kin selection has a great deal of empirical support [see Madsen et al. (2007) for citations to over 20 empirical studies of humans], and it provides precise predictions about some of Adams’ central questions. First, how are patrimonial elites expected to trade off the interests of different members of their family lineages and exactly how altruistic should we expect them to be toward each? Kin selection theory suggests that patrimonial elites will be about twice as altruistic toward their children as toward their grandchildren, and about four times as altruistic to children as to great grandchildren, etc.6 Second, evolutionary theory yields predictions about how these elites will differentially treat sons and daughters. Trivers and Willard (1973) argue that elites will favor sons over daughters, and that the opposite will be true in lower classes, and evidence provided in Adams (2005, p. 83) suggests that the former was true in the Dutch case (the latter is beyond the scope of her book). Third, Adams (2005, pp. 91–92) argues that the interests of male elites mattered much more than those of their wives in the Dutch case, since males had much more political and economic power. Evolutionary theory suggests one test of this claim. Married elite men have genetic interests in allocating resources to improve the welfare of all of their children, including those born outside of their marriage, whereas their wives will want all (or the vast majority) of familial resources to go only to children born within the marriage (children with their genes) – thus the nature and enforcement of norms governing the distribution of resources to children inside and outside the marriage will be one indicator of the relative power of elite men and women. Finally, evolutionary theory provides a theoretical rationale for the causal importance of emotions, since evolved emotional responses (parental love for children, sexual jealousy, etc.) are the proximate causes of behavior maximizing the spread of genes.7 So does this mean we can do away with all of the messy and complex historical analysis in Adams’ book, and simply replace it with Hamilton’s

Elaborating the Microfoundations of The Familial State

279

parsimonious general theory? Of course not – what I want to argue is that the two are perfect compliments for each other, that this general theory could improve the historical analysis and not replace it. The relationship between theory and history that I have in mind was best articulated by Weber (1978) in his discussion of ideal types. Hamilton’s theory should be used a baseline ideal type (Madsen et al., 2007), specifying the most general sources of altruism toward kin in all societies. As Weber recognized, this sort of ideal type serves two functions – it both shows the general features that all members of the type share and, equally important, by using those general features as a baseline for comparison, it reveals the speciﬁc ways in which each member deviates from the characteristics of the ideal type. Using Hamilton’s model in this way would thus show us both how interactions within patrimonial familial lineages were similar across Adams’ cases, and by highlighting the deviations from Hamilton’s predictions present in each case, would show exactly which particular features must be explained by historical analysis. A nice model for this is provided by Madsen et al. (2007). They did the same experimental test of kin selection theory in London and South Africa (using two Zulu populations), and not surprisingly found that although the theory was generally supported in both cases, there were interesting differences across the societies, as well.

CONCLUSION Like all great books, Julia Adams’ The Familial State not only answers many important questions, it raises many more that will motivate additional research. One important theoretical nexus opened up by her focus on the relationship between family dynamics and political power in early modern patrimonial states is the possibility of combining evolutionary biology (a fundamentally historical theory) and comparative-historical sociology. Evolutionary theory provides several interrelated general theoretical models of different aspects of familial relations, and comparative-historical sociology provides both models and empirical data about the social contexts that interact with and thus alter these evolutionary dynamics in particular times and places. Although work like this is not common in contemporary comparative-historical sociology, there are models for it, such as Whitmeyer’s (1997) study of endogamy and ethnic conﬂict and Betzig’s (1986) analysis of the relationship between despotic power and differential reproduction. Evolutionary theories will not be useful for all historical analyses, and they will be best used to supplement historical work, not to

280

EDGAR KISER

replace it, but historical work on issues of family, gender and ethnicity (and perhaps other areas) can be improved by incorporating their most useful models and arguments.

NOTES 1. David Foster Wallace (2005, p. 81) makes the point better than I can, in part because he knows a lot more words: ‘‘The truth is that most US academic prose is appalling – pompous, abstruse, claustral, inﬂated, euphuistic, pleonastic, solecistic, sesquipidelian, Heliogabaline, occluded, jargon-ridden, empty: resplendently dead.’’ 2. I am not denying the existence of signiﬁcant exceptions to this generalization, but only claiming that work focusing on the micro level has been a small percentage of the total output in this ﬁeld. 3. Although this issue is never discussed theoretically, Adams’ (2005, p. 118) analysis of the shift of investment from commerce to land, state debt, ofﬁces and rents does seem to assume that merchant-regent elites had fairly low discount rates, and were thus willing to take less current income in exchange for more certain income for their descendents. 4. J. B. S. Haldane is said to have quipped that he would lay down his life for two brothers or eight cousins. 5. Just to clarify the use of the term ‘‘altruism’’ here, these acts are genetically selﬁsh but phenotypically altruistic (see Alexander, 1987, p. 84). 6. This relationship will also be affected by the age of the recipients of altruism. Younger kin will be favored over older since they have great potential to pass on genes. Therefore, when their children pass beyond reproductive age, parents are expected to be relatively more altruistic toward their grandchildren. 7. These evolved emotional responses will not be the same in all times and places, since they will be shaped and transformed by the characteristics of the social contexts within which they are embedded.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Ivan Ermakoff, Rosemary Hopcroft, Satoshi Kanazawa, Steve Pfaff, Blaine Robbins, Ted Welser and Jacob Young for helpful comments on an early draft of this paper.

REFERENCES Adams, J. (1999). Culture in rational choice theories of state formation. In: G. Steinmetz (Ed.), State/culture: State formation after the cultural turn (pp. 98–122). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Elaborating the Microfoundations of The Familial State

281

Adams, J. (2005). The familial state: Ruling families and merchant capitalism in early modern Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Adams, J., Clemens, E. S., & Orloff, A. S. (2005). Social theory, modernity, and the three waves of historical sociology. In: J. Adams, E. S. Clemens & A. N. Orloff (Eds), Remaking modernity (pp. 1–72). Durham: Duke University Press. Alexander, R. (1987). The biology of moral systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Becker, G. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Betzig, L. (1986). Despotism and differential reproduction. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Coleman, J. (1986). Social theory, social research, and a theory of action. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 1309–1335. Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. New York: Random House. Fisher, R. A. (1930). The genetical theory of natural selection. New York: Dover. Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior, I, II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1–52. Kiser, E. (2006). Mann’s microfoundations: Addressing Neo-Weberian dilemmas. In: J. A. Hall & R. Schroeder (Eds), An anatomy of power (pp. 56–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiser, E., & Hechter, M. (1991). The role of general theory in comparative-historical sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 97(1), 1–30. Madsen, E., Tunney, R. J., Fieldman, G., Plotkin, H. C., Dunbar, R. I. M., Richardson, J. M., & MacFarland, D. (2007). Kinship and altruism: A cross-cultural experimental study. British Journal of Psychology, 98(2), 339–359. Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridghe University Press. Trivers, R. L., & Willard, D. E. (1973). Natural selection of parental ability to vary the sex ratio of offspring. Science, 179, 90–92. Wallace, D. F. (2005). Authority and American usage. Consider the lobster and other essays (pp. 66–127). New York: Little, Brown. Weber, M. ([1922]1978). Economy and society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Whitmeyer, J. M. (1997). Endogamy as a basis for ethnic behavior. Sociological Theory, 15(2), 162–178.

FAMILIAL STATE AND THE DYNAMICS OF HOUSEHOLD MASTERY Pavla Miller There is nothing as annoying as completing a book which covers a much wider area than prudence dictates, and then being told to write on even larger issues. I know. About 15 years ago, I and a colleague embarked on an imprudent project dealing with transformations of patriarchy in the west between 16th and 19th centuries (Miller, 1988). One day, about two years into the project, I informed my colleague that we will need to ﬁnd out, as I put it, ‘‘all about the Dutch’’ in order to make sense of the story. Horriﬁed, he jumped ship, and from then on dedicated himself to university administration. I persevered, but decided to leave ﬁnding out ‘‘all about the Dutch’’ to others. So it is a treat and a privilege to be taking part in a panel on Adams’s book. This is particularly so since in reading and reﬂecting on her excellent text, I have been able to see more clearly the gaps and problems in mine. In contributing to discussion on where to go next, I focus on the internal workings of patrician households, and conclude with remarks on the ways that a different conceptualisation of patriarchy can give greater force to fragments of material already included in The Familial State. (Indeed, just about every wise thing I thought of is already tucked away in a footnote somewhere in the text.)

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 283–288 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19011-1

283

284

PAVLA MILLER

FAMILY DYNAMICS AS ENGINES OF CHANGE The key argument of the book is that parcellization of power between great merchant families and the patrimonial corporations they ruled, ﬁrst fuelled the Dutch Golden Age and then contributed to its demise. Even though farsighted contemporaries realized that a measure of centralization was essential, they were unable to loosen the patricians’ grasp of particular hereditary powers. Were the internal dynamics of elite families one factor in driving political fragmentation? Adams stresses that the ‘‘betrayal of the bourgeoisie,’’ routinely used as explanation of Dutch decline, can also be read as ‘‘loyalty of the patriarch,’’ and notes that the patriarchs acted in defence of the lineage continuity they themselves imagined and represented. In this area in particular, systematic attention should also be given to the urgings, imaginings and interests of other household and family members, and the cautionary tales of kin and friends who, in one way or another, missed out. Conversely, Adams argues convincingly that patrimonial governance tends to fragment political rule. How then were patrician family heads able to retain centralized power over family patrimony from one generation to the next? How were different offspring disciplined into accepting lines of succession and unequal inheritance, and the fact that around one in ﬁve would never marry? Were there attractive options for women and men who did not wish to or could not marry or (and this is a different thing) set up their own households? To make the same point in a different way, Adams rightly stresses ﬁghts between beneﬁciaries and those excluded from high ofﬁce, but pays far more systematic attention to struggles between rather than inside families. The resolution of inter-family ﬁghts, she notes, were compacts of correspondence, under which elite families took turns getting top positions, and political institutions which became the de facto heritable property of elite lineages as a whole. Entitlements to high ofﬁce, Adams mentions elsewhere, could be even less partible than land, and certainly less partible than the property of great merchants. Paradoxically, she notes, regent circles became increasingly closed to new entrants as declining birth rate of the regent families led to persistent vacancies. Was this paradox linked, in part, to successful pressure of younger sons, daughters and their mothers for more ﬂexible inheritance practices within regent families? Adams argues that ‘‘a single form of elite family household characteristic of north-west Europe was entangled with emergent state power.’’ Yet in many regions, such as in Italy, elite family forms differed from those of others: they were almost invariably larger, but often also structured

Familial State and the Dynamics of Household Mastery

285

differently (Kertzer & Saller, 1991). Was this the case in the Netherlands? In any case, Adams provides systematic evidence that, over time, the possession of patrimonial privileges changed the class character of those who held them. In other words, elite families were differently patriarchal at the beginning and at the end of the period covered. According to her ﬁgures, in 1600, half of Amsterdam’s regents were large-scale merchants; by early 1700s, almost three quarters of councillors were rentiers. Did the withdrawal of resources from trade or manufacturing and their investment in state privileges, accompanied by whatever bureaucratic reforms the regents instituted, in turn alter family dynamics? Babies seemed to be more plentiful in a period when elite men were merchants. Were there some systematic demographic factors (other than inbreeding) behind falling fertility, such as later age at marriage because of the necessity to assume ofﬁce before establishing a new household, or desire to limit family inﬁghting by having fewer sons? And did lower fertility in turn lessen the ‘‘anti-patriarchal’’ pressure of junior sons for reform (since they could be coopted to other families through marriage)? Conversely, did patrician family heads themselves seek greater ﬂexibility to designate the most deserving son as heir, so they could use inheritance to discipline the younger generation more effectively, and avoid getting stuck with an incompetent oldest son as their successor? And how did the organization of elite households articulate with the lives and attitudes of subaltern populations? Writing on England during the same period, E. P. Thompson noted that paternalism was as much theatre and gesture as effective responsibility (Thompson, 1978); far from a warm, household, face-to-face relationship, it was a studied technique of rule. Similarly, Doug Hay argued that a ‘‘deferential dialectic’’ held the key to an effective system of class-speciﬁc justice and social control (Hay, 1975); deference was a tangible and powerful technology of rule, its efﬁcacy often surpassing both random violence and ‘‘modern’’ systems of deterrence and punishment.

PATRIARCHS AGAINST MEN The tangle of questions I just posed can be clariﬁed if we set the interests of patriarchs against those of men. I endorse Adams’s contention that patriarchy is not just about men’s domination of women, and gender is more than a synonym for focus on women. For precisely this reason I would like to see more discussion of age relations inside patrician households, of

286

PAVLA MILLER

the making of, and interplay between, different masculinities and different forms of homosociality. How did the forms of elite masculinity change when merchants became rentiers? How did families manage the explosive tensions between male heirs and their ‘‘understudies’’? Were some of these management devices signiﬁcant for the changing fortunes of the familial state? Adams postulates that heads of elite families exerted fatherly rule, yet presents evidence that many were not fathers or even married. Could unmarried men, if they inherited ofﬁce, set up great households, perhaps with an unmarried sister or mother as the female head? Were there any rules mandating that ofﬁceholders be married? Was it mastery, rather than paternity, that made a household head a patriarch? And to what extent did wives share household mastery?

WOMEN’S FAMILIAL AGENCY Adams notes that women had little power in patrimonial politics because they could not own or hold high public ofﬁce, and repeats that ‘‘men exchanged women in complex intermarriages.’’ Yet, here again, she presents evidence which a range of feminist historians, writing on other places during the same historical period, have used to underpin markedly different conclusions (Davidoff & Hall, 1987; Wiesner, 2008). There was late and non-universal marriage and ﬂexible inheritance. Even if the ofﬁces they inherited were relatively minor, women received substantial property as heirs, and consequently mattered as investors and possibly as businesswomen in their own right. As mistresses of substantial households, patrician women held considerable power in building up and maintaining family honour and prestige, as ‘‘ambassadors’’ of their natal kin, as educators of daughters and sons, and as strategists in the marriages of the younger generation. Widows probably held guardianship of minor children and could re-marry. One would expect such arrangements to give sinews to mistresses of households, especially compared to junior sons, and relatives unable to form establishments of their own. And what about women’s role in securing legitimation and consent through charitable works and minor forms of patronage? Adams notes that the regents’ institutional grip was tightening just as the traditional legitimating political symbolism of heredity, birth and blood was being challenged. Was it also because great households, and their female members in particular, were for some reason

Familial State and the Dynamics of Household Mastery

287

less effective in dispensing useful goods and resources to people in the locality and maintaining effective rituals of legitimation?

PATRIARCHY I agree wholeheartedly with Adams that ‘‘patriarchy cannot simply be added as an asterisk to ﬁscal-military preoccupations that remain otherwise undisturbed.’’ As my remarks indicate, however, I believe that a more dynamic, historically speciﬁc theorization of patriarchy can disturb more orthodoxies, and give a better purchase on the social dynamics described in The Familial State. At several places in her text, Adams draws on Weber to portray patriarchy as a universal concept or principle of ‘‘father-rule.’’ In contrast, I believe that patriarchy is best conceptualized in plural rather than singular, and with a focus on historically speciﬁc articulations of gender, generation and class relations, speciﬁc forms of household mastery and subordination. To give just one example, in ancient Rome there was no word for parents and their children; familia most frequently meant the body of slaves belonging to the estate of one master or mistress. While the term pater familias was most often used to designate male citizens with full legal powers, and more speciﬁcally estate owners, a pater familias need not have children or even be married; in any case, a man’s wife was not reckoned a member of his familia (Saller, 1994, 1999). Theorizations of patriarchy capable of dealing with such complexities are a collective work in progress. In further research on the Dutch familial state, they could provide a clearer guide to articulating the internal workings of great households with state politics on the one hand and popular life on the other.

REFERENCES Davidoff, L., & Hall, C. (1987). Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850. London: Hutchinson. Hay, D. (1975). Property, authority and the criminal law. In: D. Hay, P. Linebaugh, J. G. Rule, E. P. Thompson & C. Winslow (Eds), Albion’s fatal tree: Crime and society in eighteenthcentury England (pp. 17–63). London: Allen Lane. Kertzer, D. I., & Saller, R. P. (1991). The family in Italy from antiquity to the present. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Miller, P. (1988). Transformations of patriarchy in the west, 1500–1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

288

PAVLA MILLER

Saller, R. P. (1994). Patriarchy, property and death in the Roman family. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saller, R. P. (1999). Pater familias, mater familias, and the gendered semantics of the Roman household. Classical Philology, 94 (2, April), 182. Thompson, E. P. (1978). Eighteenth-century English society: Class struggle without class? Journal of Social History, 13(2), 133–165. Wiesner, M. E. (2008). Women and gender in early modern Europe (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

POLITICS, PATRIARCHY AND FRONTIERS OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION Julia Adams It is hard to imagine more thoughtful and stimulating responses to The Familial State (Adams, 2005a) than the four gathered in this symposium. Mounira Maya Charrad, Ivan Ermakoff, Edgar Kiser and Pavla Miller raise important challenges not only for me but for all those who tackle questions of large-scale comparative history. Rather than arguing about this or that point of speciﬁc interpretation – in fact I think that unlike some ‘‘Author Meets Critics’’ sessions, these commentators have the main arguments of the book nailed down – I will immediately turn to those issues. These include the relationship of the argument to today’s patrimonial states; patriarchal power and internal family dynamics; the reasons for the decline of hegemonic powers; the microfoundations of collective action and the place of evolutionary biology in comparative historical explanation. Mounira Charrad’s reading of the book takes seriously the implications of patriarchal interlocks in politics at the level of states, nations and global political networks. This dimension is largely absent in social-science theory of state-building and empire. Charrad also puts her ﬁnger on a critical cultural component of my overall argument. Early modern patriarchs claimed legitimacy and constituted themselves as collective political actors, more or less successfully, by calling on signs of paternity, linking those with images of God-the-Father as well as an array of temporal powers (see also

Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 19, 289–294 Copyright r 2008 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1016/S0198-8719(08)19012-3

289

290

JULIA ADAMS

Adams, 2005b). How elite men and women crafted and manipulated these socio-cultural networks mattered for the developmental trajectories of early modern European states and the relative fortunes of their contending empires. This argument reaches beyond the ambit of early modern Europe and its colonial extensions, as Charrad notes in her discussion of today’s states in the Middle East, North Africa and the broader Islamic world. It is clearly impossible to understand the basics of contemporary Saudi Arabian politics, for example, without taking into account the fraternal-patriarchal core of the ruling elite, their symbolic self-presentation as the dynastic core of the nation and their uneasy dependence on the burgeoning bureaucratic parts of the state. Familial claims and networks, underwritten by the Americas and Europe, have stabilized Saudi state building; conversely, they also expose the ruling elite to systematic political vulnerabilities, with serious implications for the region and world at large. Charrad’s concluding array of questions and indeed her own work on law and politics in Middle Eastern states go to the core of these pressing problems and broaden our collective comparative-historical research agenda. Overall this is a welcome opening and an exciting bridge to a better historical sociology of the present day – not to mention a more realistic and long overdue assessment of the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics. Pavla Miller’s rich contribution raises the crucial issue of the relationship between an account like that in The Familial State, which focuses on the commanding heights of dynastic political power, and the intimate internal dynamics of the relevant family households. The variations in the latter were less important to the book’s argument, as she points out. True, I instanced the role of internal family dynamics in the run-up to the 18th-century revolutions, particularly in France. And it is certainly the case that in England, political mobilization could and did coagulate around splits within the great royal family/households. But overall I did not (and still do not) think that the sorts of counter-pressures on the ruling patriarchs from within their families mattered as much for metropolitan state formation as did the contractual and quasi-contractual resolution of inter-family ﬁghts in metropolitan France, England and the Netherlands. What they did matter for, I think, was empire. Younger sons were everywhere engines of European colonialism. And as Taylor (1983) argued for the Dutch East Indies, and Kerry Ward has since underlined for the Cape of Good Hope in Southern Africa (see Ward, 2008), clan systems developed in which familial power – traced through locally born women of mixed European and Asian ancestry – was gifted to Dutch male immigrants, often ofﬁcials of the Dutch East India Company, who forged marriage

Politics, Patriarchy, Frontiers

291

alliances and secured for themselves positions of prestige, power and wealth in the Company and the colonies. Patriarchal patrimonialism became an imperial formation in the early modern era (for the American version, see McConville, 2006), with a genuinely global story that has yet to be told. Beyond that, however, Miller’s comment, which presses for including still more familial – and other – mechanisms in explanation, raises an important challenge. Many of the causal mechanisms she proposes deserve our sustained attention. One of Miller’s key questions regarding the English case, for example, is how the organization of elite households articulated with the lives and attitudes of subaltern populations. This has been canvassed by many, including E. P. Thompson and Douglas Hay (as she mentions), and from a more controversial perspective, Clark (2000), all of whom testify to the effectiveness of what I would call patriarchy in northern Europe past the conventional boundaries of the early modern period. But whichever version of this particular variable comes up trumps, those larger questions remain: which of these theoretical mechanisms should we admit into this and other stories, and on what grounds? How should they be ordered and mobilized in comparative history? Can this be accomplished in a way that forwards explanatory ambitions? Are there limits to theoretical proliferation? I wonder what Miller thinks. I do not have deﬁnitive answers to these burning epistemological questions, though I do have strong opinions; in my view they remain open, unsettled and legitimately contested. These questions certainly move comparative-historical sociologists out of our usual interdisciplinary comfort zone into the realm of philosophy and science studies. (Or, if Edgar Kiser persuades us, still further, to evolutionary biology.) Kiser and Ivan Ermakoff raise a crucial challenge regarding the microfoundations of elite action in The Familial State which has implications for most historical sociologists, trained as we tend to be in predominantly structuralist and politico-economic modes of approach. It is not that the structuralist approaches are bad, but they can be misleading and are certainly incomplete. For that reason, Ermakoff, Kiser and I try, in our different ways, to meld them with broader substantive analysis of the action of individuals, aggregates, networks and groups. Thus I strongly agree with both Kiser and Ermakoff about the need to better theorize the intersections among and emergent properties of actors’ stances at the heart of social action. The Familial State would have beneﬁted from developing a still thicker and more historical grammar of political motive, for example – affective, evaluative, strategic (not to mention habitual and so forth). I do not think that would have changed the main argument of the book, but it would have enriched it.

292

JULIA ADAMS

In this context, I greatly appreciate Ermakoff’s nuanced discussion (with which I concur) of the vicissitudes of patrimonial politics and especially his reﬂections on actors’ predicaments and opportunities. In one of the most interesting parts, he addresses the institutional underpinnings of hegemonic decline in the Netherlands. Ermakoff agrees with the account offered in the book, including the emphasis on the way that cartel-like agreements, once a plus, came to constitute overly rigid forms of monopolistic appropriation. But he would have liked a more agent-centered account of the dilemmas of the declining 18th-century Dutch elite, both their failures to understand alternative strategic possibilities and their inability to solve the collective action problems that blocked thoroughgoing reform. There is a tension between actors’ structural determinations and opportunities for transformative action, in other words, and this tension could have been explored further. I agree. Nevertheless I would like to add that structure and agency are not opposites in this regard. This departs from the usual way that sociologists imagine agency, as a sort of secularized Protestant space of free will, outside any structural determinations. But dramatic moments of creative and consequential action can occur precisely when people are most bound – when they act within highly structured and even utterly conventional relations of agency – on behalf of someone or something, including an idea – with consequences that ripple through their own and others’ lives. When I pursue Ermakoff’s suggestion, I want to make sure that I do it in these terms. I am more ambivalent about Kiser’s proposal that we undertake further analysis of familial action under the aegis of evolutionary biology. On the one hand, I take Kiser’s adventurous challenge to heart, even though it makes me nervous because it enjoins scaling even scarier reaches of inter-disciplinarity on those of us working at the nexus of politics, family and lineage. Evolutionary biology is a strong theoretical contender and historical sociologists should learn more about it. On the other hand, I am not convinced that the current ahistorical and acultural incarnation of evolutionary biology offers us much additional explanatory punch. I do not think, for example, that the heads of patrimonial households typically ‘‘acted in the interests of their family members’’ in any genetically mandated fashion. The evidence weighs on the side of their having generally (not always) acted in the interests of ideas of their lineage instead, which might easily have involved sacriﬁcing the interests of particular family members, no matter how closely genetically related they might have been. (We shall have to see whether evolutionary biologists can, seriously and without resort to vacuous tautologies, integrate culture and other forms of social determination into their own explanatory microfoundations.) Just how to improve evolutionary

293

Politics, Patriarchy, Frontiers

explanations seems a more pertinent question to me. What if we consider evolutionary theory sans the biological component? Dynamics of replication do not have to emerge from biological foundations: they can arise from other sources, including mimicry, stylization, searching and learning and so forth. If equipped with broader sociological, cultural and historical microfoundations rather then pure utilitarianism, game theory provides one source of tools with which to help us analyze the vicissitudes of emergent strategies and practices – their survival, spread, institutionalization, and demise. This point returns us to one of the key preoccupations – the family as site of emergent politico-economic strategy – that Ermakoff raises in his comment. How did norms of patrilineal succession come to dominate over others, he asks? This is an excellent question. The Familial State does not explore the genesis of patrilineal succession, or for that matter of patriarchy itself, not even in the relatively restricted sphere of northern Europe and its colonial extensions. Such problems have recently reemerged (e.g. Hartman, 2004), however, after seeming for a time to be academically barred, in part because of overextended and over-politicized uses of fragmentary historical and archaeological evidence, and that is a good thing in scholarly terms. How patriarchy or patriarchal patrimonialism came to be, many times over, is also important because, as Charrad notes, it bears on the fates of many women and men in today’s world, from all walks of society. So we should resist the analytical temptation to locate patriarchal patrimonialism in the past, in pre-modernity or in any singular founding moment, even collectively imagined ones as resonant as Adam and Eve’s being pitched out of Paradise. It is a going concern: being reconstituted and strengthened in some places while decaying in others. Was Charles Tilly (2006) right in his tongue-in-cheek description of the normative inclinations of The Familial State? Is it really about ‘‘toppling Papa,’’ historically as well as theoretically? Maybe so.

REFERENCES Adams, J. (2005a). The Familial State: Ruling families and merchant capitalism in early modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Adams, J. (2005b). The rule of the father: Patriarchy and patrimonialism in early modern Europe. In: C. Camic, P. S. Gorski & D. M. Trubek (Eds), Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion (pp. 237–266). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Clark, J. C. D. (2000). English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, ideology and politics during the ancient regime (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hartman, M. (2004). The household and the making of history: A subversive view of the western past. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

294

JULIA ADAMS

McConville, B. (2006). The king’s three faces. The rise and fall of royal America, 1688–1776. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Taylor, J. G. (1983). The social world of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Tilly, C. (2006). Toppling Papa. Symposium on The Familial State. Trajectories. Newsletter of the ASA Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology. Spring 2006. http:// www2.asanet.org/sectionchs/newsletter/SCHSspring2006.pdf Ward, K. (2008). Networks of empire: Forced migration in the Dutch East India Company. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.