Introduction

In his novel Riven Rock (1999), American author T.C. Boyle refers several times to the enlightened capitalism of the former McCormick reaper factory in Chicago. Established in 1847 by Cyrus McCormick, this company (later International Harvester) introduced at an early stage various remarkable forms of welfare capitalism, such as worker participation. Particularly important in this respect were Cyrus's sons, Cyrus Jr. and Stanley. Boyle also refers to the fact that the McCormick's motives were both economic and idealistic. Boyle is not the first American novelist to pay attention to welfare capitalism in fiction. John Dos Passos (1933) pointed in his U.S.A. trilogy towards welfare capitalism in American labour relations. He mentions the important, from a historical perspective, strike in 1894 at the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago. The strike broke out after a 28 per cent reduction of wages following the economic panic in 1893.

Compared to the other countries in this book, the United States deviate significantly with respect to the number of company towns, usually owned by a single enterprise, as well as in terms of the size and nature of welfare capitalist initiatives. More than 2,000 company towns were built over time and welfare capitalism expressed itself in manifold forms from about 1880 onwards. This raises an interesting question about whether this development can be considered as an expression of “American exceptionalism” or “an America conceived as a historical whole.” Put into perspective, this is not the case, if compared, for example, with the German Sonderweg and other commonly used national characterizations. According to historian Daniel T. Rodgers, American exceptionalism is not a valid empirical concept in itself and appeals mostly to conservative forces in the United States. In his opinion, a more appropriate concept is the ‘American way’. This concept mainly considers the United States as a closed, a-historic nation driven by a particular universal mission. The validity of the concept ultimately boils down to the important question, why has a viable form of socialism or Marxism, similar to socialism in European countries in the first half of the twentieth century, not developed in the United States?