A MOMENT OF THE STATE: THE ENACTMENT OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT, 1935

In recent years theorists such as Claus Offe, Theda Skocpol, and Fred Block have contributed to the development of a new understanding of the functioning of the modern capitalist state. This developing perspective offers new insight into the limits and possibilities of political change in the United States. Drawing on this work and the growing literature on the theory of the state, this study presents a model of the political process in modern capitalist democracies. The model posits three structural modes of domination (ideological, political, and economic) which provide the setting and, normally, the limits for political activity. Within these structural modes, the most important political activity centers on the struggles between capitalists, the working class, and the state itself. These struggles are the engine of the attempted and sometimes successful rationalizations of the state which occur largely within the boundaries of the structural modes. This model is then applied to the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 as an example and a test. The NLRA was chosen because it was a prerequisite to the growth of Big Labor and, ultimately, to the development of the alliance of labor and the Democratic Party which is a key feature of the Fifth or New Deal Party System. Despite the NLRA\u27s admitted importance, its enactment has been studied very little. The parameters of its passage are clear: Roosevelt and the executive branch were basically neutral; the press was generally hostile; business support was non-existent while opposition was vociferous; labor support was strong but labor\u27s strength was questionable; and Congress passed the bill overwhelmingly but with little enthusiasm. This easy passage in the face of so little support can only be understood in the context of the effects of the Great Depression on the structural modes of domination. After six years, new openings had developed in the structural modes through which Senator Robert F. Wagner and a small band of allies steered the bill to enactment. Composed primarily of academics and past and present personnel of the tiny and weak national labor relations boards, Wagner\u27s circle advocated a detailed labor policy based on the experiences of the national labor boards in 1933 and 1934. By helping to trigger the growth of organized labor and its alliance with the Democratic Party, the new labor policy aided in the development of the political support necessary for its own survival. Moreover, the NLRA was a crucial step in the developments that led to modifications of the ideological and political structural modes of domination. Though the modifications were limited and the institutionalization of the NLRA itself was shaped by those limitations, those modifications stand as the most significant changes in the American state in recent history. The enactment of the NLRA is not presented as typical but rather as an important instance which any theory of the state or of the political process must be able to explain. The model applied to the Wagner Act in this study provides some explanation of the ways in which the act represented the limits and possibilities of political change in the United States. The study indicates that the general approach represented by the model could be applied to a wider variety of events and policies in recent American history