Voluntarism: The Political Functions of an Antipolitical Doctrine

Abstract

Political action based on a broad appeal of common interests with other groups in the community is today taken for granted by most trade union leaders. Yet not much more than a generation ago, the leadership of the American labor movement had come to eschew the state as a means of achieving trade union goals, and in some cases even adopted an extreme antistate position. This article traces the origin and development of the AFL's doctrine of voluntarism, arguing that it was transformed from a method of practical social and economic reform for all workers to an organizational ideology for the protection of an elite trade union group. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

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