Reconstructing Global Capitalism: Class, Corporations, and the Rise of Welfare States, 1870-1930

Abstract

Leading accounts of the rise of the welfare state and the “Great Compression” of inequality in the mid-twentieth century stress the catastrophic shocks of the Great Depression and World Wars. Against these short-term accounts which largely focus on the 1930s and 1940s, this dissertation explains the rise of modern inequality and welfare states through tracing the long-term reconstruction of capitalism from kitchens and shop-floors to city councils and federal policy during the period from 1870 to 1930. This dissertation ties together changes within households and firms, networks of collective action, and the state by focusing on how power, coordination, and control were articulated across the economy. In doing so, it recasts our understanding not only of a crucial moment of transition within the global history of capitalism, but also overturns liberal interpretive conventions by showing ever-expanding state power and capacity to be a central and constitutive feature of capitalist political economies.