At one point in this blog, several years ago, I shared with
you the work of Daniel J. Elazar.[1] Specifically, I pointed out his
conceptualization of three political subcultures in the American nation and how
they had their origins all the way back to the nation’s colonial days. The three political subcultures have been the
moralistic, the individualistic, and the traditional. To further refresh your memory, let me add
that the three started on the Atlantic coast and stretched in more or less parallel
layers of states all the way to the Pacific.
While this pattern has not been perfect – for example, the traditional
was truncated in its expansion to the former Confederate states – there still
exists a fairly discernable cultural distinction among the three. More recent research, that of Robert D. Putnam,[2] reports
that the pattern is still observable. I
want to further consider the prevalence of one of these subcultures, the
traditional political subculture. As I mentioned
above, this is a subculture dominant in the good old South.
Economically, the
significance of this subculture is its disposition concerning the role and
social designation of labor. To put this
in context, this subculture is characterized by the following:
1.
Belief
that the elite class (originally plantation owners and their families) should
have dominant political power. This
power position should be secured by establishing a caste system in which
political, economic, and social status is primarily determined by conditions of
birth. The subculture, a pre-industrial
view, supports and maintains a strict social and political hierarchy. Under their paternalistic control, elites can
accomplish good things.
2.
Goodness
is defined, circularly, as anything that perpetuates this hierarchical
distribution of power.
3.
Most
politics is derived from personal relationships. Political parties are of little value and
primarily function to recruit individuals for positions in government that
elites do not want to hold.
4.
Leadership
is seen as a custodial function. As
custodians, elites will initiate change only when they perceive they must due
to pressures emanating from outside the system.
Obviously, these
characteristics have had to accommodate the changes that befell the South,
especially since the Civil War. One
might ask: how much has the South
changed? Since the Civil War, the
development of industrialization has probably had one of the most extensive
effects on southern culture, though the prevalence of industrial spread has
been limited. We hear in the news that foreign
and domestic car manufacturers are opening production facilities in southern
states. But the automobile industry was
not the first looking to the South to build and operate production facilities.
Sven Beckert[3] gives us
an account of how the South, already famous for growing the raw material of the
cotton industry, began to actually produce finished cotton products. This process began in the late nineteenth century
and early twentieth century and was a consequence of the unionization of
northern workers, particularly in Massachusetts. This development was the US’s version of a
worldwide phenomenon: the transfer of
the cotton industry to what Berkert calls the global South. Other areas so affected were Egypt, India,
China, and Japan. In our South, the
following description is offered:
As a result of the peculiar settlement
between the expropriated slave owners and industrial capitalism after the Civil
War, the United States had a global South within its own territory. And the United States also had its own class
of global capitalists who had, just like their Indian counterparts, accumulated
wealth in the trade of raw cotton, ready to move some of it into manufacturing
enterprises. The exceptional combination
of extensive territory and limited political, economic, and social integration
between North and South was the envy of European capitalists – and the first
harbinger of the global fate of European cotton manufactures as well.
… Lax labor laws, low taxes, low
wages, and the absence of trade unions made the South alluring to cotton
manufacturers, a region of the United States, according to an industry
publication, “where the labor agitator is not such a power, and where the manufacturers
are not constantly harassed by new and nagging restrictions.” As a result, the period from 1922 to 1933 saw
the closing of some ninety-three Massachusetts cotton mills; in the six years
after 1922 alone … .[4]
This all happened after
the long labor battles had finally accrued to northern workers living wages,
child labor laws, and safer working conditions.
Still today, labor unions
in the South are weak. Probably very
influential in this state of affairs are laws that limit the ability of unions
to make meaningful inroads. Eleven of
the twenty-six states that have “right to work” laws are former Confederate
states. While recently, some “progressive”
states, such as Wisconsin, have adopted “right to work” laws, it is hard to
underestimate the effect of traditional views of politics having a meaningful
influence on how southerners see labor and labor’s social and economic role in
southern society.
[1] Elazar, D. J. (1966). American federalism: A view from the states. New York, NY: Thomas
Y. Crowell.
[2] Putnam, Robert D.
(2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and
revival of American community. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
[3]
Beckert, S.
(2014). Empire of cotton: A global
history. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
[4]
Ibid., citation on pp. 393-394.
