Talk:The labor problem
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August 2022 comment
editThe second masked avenger (talk) 19:58, 21 August 2022 (UTC) I am not a wikipedia editor and have no interest in becoming one, so I am just commenting on this article. The understanding of the phrase "The labor problem" is excessively narrow, relying ultimately on the usage of economists who identified with the Institutionalist school, and which I think they in turn derived from discussions in the late 19th C, among socialists and others, e.g., Eugene Debs' 1894 pamphlet, "The Labor Problem" ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1894/940500-debs-thelaborproblem.pdf ). The broader conception deals with how laboring is to be organized by the asset owning class (whether capitalists or landowners) so that the members of this class can conduct production in a way that they find satisfactory.
To be more specific, this piece focuses on unionism, industrialism and labor unrest. However, members of the former plantation elite spoke of "The labor problem" during and after reconstruction as they tried to reorganize southern agriculture following the end of legal slavery: consider
Ferleger (1998). "The Problem of 'Labor' in the Post-Reconstruction Louisiana Sugar Industry". Agricultural History , Spring, 1998, Vol. 72, No. 2, African Americans in Southern Agriculture: 1877-1945 (Spring, 1998), pp. 140-158
Evans (2001). "Evans on Rodrigue, 'Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880'". H-South, H-Net Reviews. December, 2001. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5744
McCoulough (2017). "Not as Slaves…but as Freemen': Coolies, Free Labor, and Reconstruction in the Age of Emancipation" (url: https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/8661f0a8-d724-422a-86ee-c5543b3b477c/content)
Horton (2005). "Race and the Making of American Liberalism" (esp. ch 3) doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195143485.003.0004
Going further back, consider Chapter 2 of the 1886 book, "The Labor Problem" (url: https://ia802708.us.archive.org/35/items/laborproblempla00woodgoog/laborproblempla00woodgoog.pdf ), edited by William Barnes, which is titled "The Conflict Historically Considered". After a throat-clearing initial section, it begins with serfdom and shortly moves onto the consequences of the Black Death in the mid 14th C. It then moves briskly through the 15th C (& Agincourt), the 16th C (& the Reformation), the 17th C (& Henry VIII). In the middle of the chapter, the following line appears: "The following table pictures the decay of the laborer uuder capitalist supremacy during five centuries:"
In short, "The Labor Problem" is much older than the beginnings of modern industrial production.
Thank you
The second masked avenger (talk) 19:58, 21 August 2022 (UTC)