¹ For some of the more recent discussions of “American exceptionalism”, see Karabel, Jerome, “The Failure of American Socialism Reconsidered”Google Scholar, in Miliband, R. and Saville, J. (eds.), Socialist Register 1979, pp. 204–227Google Scholar; Davis, Mike, “Why the U.S. Working Class is Different”, New Left Review, 123 (1980), pp. 3–16Google Scholar; Foner, Eric, “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” History Workshop, 17 (1984), pp. 57–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilentz, Sean, “Against Exccptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement”, International Labor and Working Class History, 27 (1984), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the responses to Wilentz in the same issue by Salvatore, Nick, pp. 25–30Google Scholar, and by Hanagan, Michael, pp. 31–36.Google Scholar The notion of “exceptionalism” in labor history is, of course, but a part of a broader celebration of “American exccptionalism”. Sec, for example, Bell, Daniel, “‘American Exccptionalism’ Revisited: The Role of Civil Society,” The Public Interest, 95 (Spring 1989), 38–56.Google Scholar

² Anderson, Perry, “Origins of the Present Crisis”, New Left Review, (01–02 1964), pp. 26–53Google Scholar; Nairn, Tom, “The Nature of the Labour Party”, Pt. 1, NLR, (09–10 1964), pp. 38–65Google Scholar; Pt. 2, NLR, (11–12 1964), pp. 33–62Google Scholar; and Thompson, Edward, “The Peculiarities of the English”Google Scholar, in Miliband, R. and Saville, J. (cds.), Socialist Register 1965, pp. 311–362.Google Scholar On the impact of the debate within British social history, see Nield, Keith, “A Symptomatic Dispute? Notes on the Relation between Marxian Theory and Historical Practice in Britain”, Social Research, 47 (1980).Google Scholar Its continuing relevance can be seen in Jones, Gareth Stedman, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, which remains interpretively very much of a piece with the Anderson/Nairn position; and in Wood, Ellens Meiksins, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), csp. pp. 11–19, which does not.Google Scholar

³ This focus upon the persistence and strength of aristocatic forces in explaining the weakness of British socialism ironically reverses the arguments put forward about the peculiarities of the American and German labor movements. Thus it has often been argued that in America it was the absence of feudalism and an inherited class structure that allowed individualist and capitalist values to sink such deep roots in American political culture and to prevent the growth of class politics. In Germany, of course, the argument has been that aristocratic power, manifest in particular in the so-called “re-feudalization” of the Reich in the late nineteenth century, hindered the development of German democracy, pushed the German labor movement into a permanent quasi-revolutionary stance and thus prevented the emergence of a strong and consistent social-democratic reformism.

⁴ See, for example, McKibbin, Ross, “Why Was There No Marxism in Britain?” in Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 1880–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 1–41.Google Scholar

⁵ It does not, for example, fall neatly into any of the categories of useful comparative analysis that Tilly, Charles describes in Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1984).Google Scholar Nor docs it conform to any of the three styles of historical and comparative sociology that Theda Skoepol describes in her essays in Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

⁶ Hobsbawm, Eric, Workers: Worlds of Labor (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 1–14.Google Scholar

⁷ Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide (eds.), Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton University Press, 1986).Google Scholar For earlier variations on this argument, sec Przeworski, Adam, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Katznclson, , “Working-Class Formation and the State: Nineteenth-Century England in American Perspective”, in Evans, Peter, Rucschcmcyer, Dietrich and Skoepol, Theda (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge University Press. 1985). pp. 257–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Katznelson, , “Working-Class Formation: Constructing Cases and Comparisons”Google Scholar, in Katznelson, and Zolberg, , Working-Ctass Formation, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

⁹ For examples, sec Lipset, Seymour Martin, “Radicalism or Reformism: Sources of Working-Class Politics”, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), pp. 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Geary, Dick, European Labor Protest, 1848–1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1981).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Stedman Jones contrasts his account and its focus upon language with that of Thompson, Hobsbawm and others influenced by Marxism. These claims to epistemological novelty notwithstanding, his approach remains remarkably similar in method to Thompson's. For one of several assessments of Stedman Jones' book, sec my review essay “Language, Politics and the Critique of Social History”, Journal of Social History, 20/1 (1986), pp. 177–184.Google Scholar The distance that lies between Thompson's work, with its emphasis on culture and political rhetoric, and that of more recent historians concerned with language, is also exaggerated by Joan Scott in her essay on Thompson, in “Women and the Making of the English Working Class”, in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 68–90Google Scholar, as is the distance separating Scott from Stedman Jones as claimed in her essay “On Language, Gender and Working-Class History”, pp. 53–67.Google Scholar For a more general, critical, discussion of the linguistic turn in labor history, see Palmer, Bryan, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

¹¹ Sewell, William, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge University Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For later adaptations of the language of reform, see Stone, Judith, The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890–1914 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).Google Scholar

¹² Gutman, Herbert, Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 67Google Scholar and passim. The consequence of this interaction, not surprisingly, was not an enduring cultural predisposition but a scries of recurring patterns that appeared discontinuous but shared a common underlying consistency. On the precise political languages and cultures that went into, and emerged from, these confrontations Gutman was very eclectic. Toward the end of his life he had some particularly interesting things to say about the relationship between republicanism and socialism. Sec the transcript of his interview with Merrill, Mike reprinted in Power and Culture, ed. by Berlin, Ira (New York: Pantheon, 1987), pp. 332–339.Google Scholar

¹³ Though the extent to which working-class culture was genuinely national in either Britain or France remains quite debatable. On the yearning for national synthesis in American labor history, but the frank recognition of its impossibility, sec the essays collected in Moody, J. Caroll and Kessler-Harris, Alice (eds.), Perspective on American Labor History: The Problem of Synthesis (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989).Google Scholar It seemed for a time as though a labor history written around the workplace and the question of control might provide the vehicle for a genuinely synthetic account, but that seems less attractive at a time when historians are made daily more aware of the gendered and racial character of the labor market. For the best effort in this direction, sec Montgomery, David, The Fall of the House of Labor (Cambridge University Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the centrality of race to definitions of working-class identity in the United States, see Roediger, David, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Sean Wilentz, , Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1790–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

¹⁵ On the limited imagination displayed in socialist practice in the twentieth century, especially since the 1920s, see Eley, Geoff, “Reviewing the Socialist Tradition”, in Lemke, Christiane and Marks, Gary (eds.), The Crisis of Socialism in Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 21–60.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The problem, then, is drawing the appropriate boundaries around the concept of culture. Recent writing typically draws the boundary too narrowly and also too firmly; but others err in the opposite direction. See, for an example of the latter, Jonathan Prude's otherwise quite useful essay, “Directions of Labor History”, American Quarterly, 42/1 (03 1990), pp. 136–144.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Conk, Margo, “Labor Statisties in the American and English Censuses: Making Some Invidious Comparisons”, Journal of Social History, 16 (1983), pp. 83–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ See, for example, Kaelble, Hartmut, Social Mobility in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Europe and America in Comparative Perspective (New York: St. Martin's, 1985).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Some of the suggestions offered below echo those made previously by Brody, David in “Labor History, Industrial Relations, and the Crisis of American Labor”, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 43/1 (10 1989), pp. 7–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ The argument in favor of methodological individualism has been put most forcefully by Jon Elster. See, for example, his “Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism”, Theory and Society, 11 (1982), pp. 453–482Google Scholar; and Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and also Przeworski, , Capitalism and Social Democracy.Google Scholar

²¹ See, for example, Piore, Michael and Sabel, Charles, The Second Industrial Divide (New York: Basic, 1984).Google Scholar

²² Gordon, David, Edwards, Richard and Reich, Michael, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Cf. also Davis, Mike, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class (London: Verso, 1986).Google Scholar

²³ Sec, among others, Walby, Sylvia, Patriarchy at Work (Cambridge: Polity, 1986)Google Scholar; Soccombe, Wally, “Patriarchy Stabilized: The Construction of the Male Breadwinner Wage Norm in 19th-century Britain”, Social History, 11 (Spring 1986), pp. 53–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, Sonya, “Gender Antagonism and Gass Conflict: Exclusionary Strategics of Male Trade Unionists in 19th-century Britain”, Social History, 13 (05 1988), pp. 191–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Savage, Mike, “Trade Unions, Sex Segregation and the State: Women's Employment in the ‘New Industries’ in Inter-War Britain”, Social History, 13 (05 1988), pp. 209–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Humphries, Jane, “Enclosures, Common Rights and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries”, Journal of Economic History, 50 (03 1990), pp. 17–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levine, David, “Recombinant Family Formation Strategics”, Journal of Historical Sociology, 2 (1989), pp. 89–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seccombe, W., “The West European Marriage Pattern in Historical Perspective: A Response to David Levine”, Journal of Historical Sociology, 3 (1990), pp. 50–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tilly, Charles, “Demographic Origins of the European Proletariat”, in Levine, D. (ed.), Proletarianization and Family Life (New York: Academic Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Tilly, , “Flows of Capital and Forms of Industry in Europe”, Theory and Society, 12/2 (03 1983), pp. 123–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Castles, Stephen and Kosack, Goduta, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Hohenberg, Paul and Lees, Lynn, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000–1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

²⁶ One useful, if not fully convincing, effort in this direction is Sabel, Charles's Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Another helpful, if again provisional, approach is Wright, Erik, Classes (London: Verso, 1985).Google Scholar

²⁷ Levine, Andrew and Wright, Erik Olin, “Rationality and Class Struggle”, New Left Review, 123 (09/10 1980), pp. 47–68.Google Scholar

²⁸ It is interesting that those scholars who pay closest attention to variations in the strength and structure of labor organization have done so in order to assess the impact of labor organization on politics, particularly social democratic politics, and on the creation of the welfare state. See the literature cited in Shalev, Michael, “The Social Democratic Model and Beyond: Two ‘Generations’ of Comparative Research on the Welfare State”, Comparative Social Research, 6 (1983), pp. 315–351Google Scholar; and also Esping-Andersen, Costa, Politics against Markets (Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Hollingsworth, J. R. and Hanneman, R., “Working-Class Power and the Political Economy of Western Capitalist Societies”, Comparative Social Research, 5 (1982), pp. 61–80Google Scholar; Stephens, John, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism (London: Macmillan, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Marks, Gary, Unions in Politics: Britain, Germany and the United States in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Princeton University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an approach critical of this literature, see Baldwin, Peter, The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the Welfare State, 1875–1975 (Cambridge University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Though the effort is more feasible when confined to a particular region or locality. See, for example, Koditschck, Theodore, Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society: Bradford, 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

³⁰ As would seem to be the point of Zeitlin, Jonathan, “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”, Economic History Review, 40 (1987), pp. 159–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ Sabel, Charles, “The Internal Politics of Trade Unions”, in Berger, Suzanne (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Leier, Mark, “Which Side Are They On? Some Suggestions for the Labour Bureaucracy Debate”, International Review of Social History, 36 (1991), pp. 412–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² It must be conceded, however, that even when support has been available, the task of producing genuinely comparative work has proved extremely difficult. See, for example, the three recent sets of conference papers published on comparative labor history: Mommsen, W. J. and Husung, H.-G. (eds.), The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985)Google Scholar; and Haimson, Leopold and Tilly, Charles (eds.), Strikes, Wars and Revolutions in an International Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Haimson, Leopold and Sapelli, Giulio (eds.), Strikes, Social Conflict and the First World War: An International Perspective (Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1992)Google Scholar. In the three collections, the individual papers are typically of high quality but seldom venture beyond national boundaries. There are currently two projects underway on comparative labor history – one sponsored by the Fernand Braudel Center in Binghamton and the other by the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam – but the results have yet to appear.

³³ Arnesen, Eric, “Crusades against Crisis”, International Review of Social History, 35 (1991), pp. 106–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ Bergquist, Charles, Labor in Latin America (Stanford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and “Latin American Labour History in Comparative Perspective: Notes on the Insidiousncss of Cultural Imperialism”, Labour/Le Travail, 25 (Spring 1990), pp. 189–198.Google Scholar