Bloomsbury Academic The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America: The Movement for Economic Democracy

Through moments of social protest, policy debate, and popular mobilization, this book follows the campaign for economic democracy and the fight for full employment in the United States. Starting in the 1930s, Dennis explores its intellectual and philosophical underpinnings, the class struggle that determined the fate of legislation and the role of left-wing civil rights activists in its revival. With an emphasis on the grassroots perspective, The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America highlights how social movements reshaped the idea of full employment, expanding its democratic parameters and showing its potential to liberate workers across the racial and ethnic spectrum. Demonstrating how the campaign for full employment intersected with movements for womens liberation and civil rights, it explores how social groups and oppressed minorities interpreted and appropriated the promise of full employment and economic emancipation. In this book, Dennis uncovers the class dimensions and the resistance to full employment in the US, and demonstrates how the inequalities and inherent tensions within a capitalist society meant the social vision of full employment would continue to challenge the assertion that capitalism automatically generated employment for all. Review "'I have a very high opinion of this manuscript. I would say that this is the best available overview of the long campaign for economic democracy in the United States, including a nuanced discussion of the breadth of the campaign, the specific character of its rebirth at key moments, and ways in which various participants - both intellectual and activist - shaped the movement.'" --James Naylor, Professor of History, Brandon University, Canada"'Michael Dennis' Full Employment Horizon is a worthy addition to the literature on full employment. Where most books in the field tend to focus on Federal experts and administrators, Dennis' work puts the focus squarely on social movements and public intellectuals through some very impressive archival work that recovers the voices of long-forgotten civil society groups. From this vantage point, the story of full employment becomes one of how political support for an idea is both built and undermined, and the kind of organizing work that would be necessary to transform ideas into law and law into lived reality.'" --Steven Attewell, Professor of History, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, USA"'I think this is a worthy project from a historian with a long track record. I have read his excerpt from this manuscript in Labor and I think both that a book on this subject is needed and that this author is an excellent person to write that book.'" --Erik Loomis, Associate Professor of Labor History, University of Rhode Island, USA"As scholars and activists long understood, inequality in America is rooted in the labor market. Dennis deftly explores the surprising broad and persistent campaign for access to meaningful employment and for economic justice. This is a passionate and nuanced history of a struggle for a deeper, economic, democracy in America." --James Naylor, Professor of History, Brandon University, Canada About the Author Michael Dennis is Professor of American History at Acadia University, Canada. A Historian of US social and economic history, he has written widely on the impact of the New Economy on the American South in the late 20th Century.