The Unemployed Workers Movement of the 1930s: A Reexamination of the Piven and Cloward Thesis

Steve Valocchi

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Labor Movements and Unions Social Policy and Reform Studies American Literature and Culture

Abstract

This paper examines the rise and decline of the unemployed workers movement in the United States in the 1930s. The analysis highlights the articulation of the movement's organizational form and the larger political environment to explain these changes. The movement's inability to change its organizational form in the face of early New Deal reforms led to the precipitous decline in protest activity in 1934. Contrary to the Piven and Cloward thesis, this inability derived from neither oligarchic tendencies within the leadership nor political coaptation by the New Deal, but from the competition between organizations within the movement. Although protest declined, lobbying continued and shifted the parameters of the welfare debate in 1934 and 1935. I consider the implications of this analysis for theories of collective action and argue that movement structure and political environment are key resources in a movement's development.

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References

1983Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 1978Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How they Fail 1983Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements 1973The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities 1984Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880s-1920 2017Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900–1911, and the United States, 1880s–1920*1989Worker Insurgency, Radical Organization, and New Deal Labor Legislation 1961The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933.

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2003Crossing Movement Boundaries: Factors that Facilitate Coalition Protest by American College Students, 1930–1990 2008Political, Biographical, and Cultural Consequences of Social Movements 2007The Legislative, Organizational, and Beneficiary Consequences of State-Oriented Challengers 2000Wage Wars: Institutional Politics, WPA Wages, and the Struggle for U.S. Social Policy 1993

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