Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T07:52:36.283Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Illiberal reformers: Economics as hate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Braham Dabscheck
Braham Dabscheck*
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne, Australia
*
Braham Dabscheck, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. Email: bdabsche@bigpond.net.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This review article discusses Leonard’s (2016) study of the ideas of an elite group of Progressive economists who flourished in the United States of America between 1885 and the late 1920s. Advising governments through think tanks and regulatory commissions, they advocated labour market policies that combined a racialized approach to immigration, eugenics, Taylorist labour market efficiency and a living wage. Their interest in women’s employment conditions was based on a Darwinian concern to protect mothers of the ‘white’ race. Parallels are drawn with Australia, where, from the turn of the 20th century, industrial tribunals established a male minimum wage designed to support the maternal role, based on similar racial preoccupations and a view that women’s ‘inefficiency’ as workers would protect men from low-wage competitors. United States Progressives, in rejecting laissez-faire economics, espoused instead a role for the state based on a holistic Darwinian sociology of racial contest: an economics of hate. It was not till the 1930s that Keynesianism emerged as an alternative macroeconomic project.

Keywords

B10B22Efficiencyeugenicsfamily wagemacroeconomics progressivismracialismSocial DarwinismTaylorism
Type
Review Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 28 , Issue 2: Industry policies, financialisation and globalisation , June 2017 , pp. 332 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adkins v Children’s Hospital 261 US 525 (1923)Google Scholar
Brown, WJ (1927) Economic welfare and racial vitality. Economic Record 3(1): 15–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dabscheck, B (1983) Arbitrator at Work: Sir William Raymond Kelly and the Regulation of Australian Industrial Relations. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Dabscheck, B (1986) ‘The Typical Mother of the White Race’ and the origins of female wage determination. Hecate 12: 147–152.Google Scholar
Darwin, CB (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle of Survival for Life. London: John Murray.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Tocqueville, A (1966) Democracy in America, vol. 1. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Ex Parte HV McKay , 2 CAR 1 (1907)Google Scholar
Factories and Shops Act , 1896 (Vic)Google Scholar
Federated Clothing Trades of Australia v JA Archer 13 CAR 647 (1919)Google Scholar
Forbath, WE (1989) The shaping of the American labor movement. Harvard Law Review 102(6): 1109–1256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getman, JG (2016) The Supreme Court on Unions: Why Labor Law is Failing American Unions. Ithaca, NY; London: ILR Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keynes, JM (1936) The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Klare, KE (1978) Judicial deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the origins of modern legal consciousness, 1927–1941. Minnesota Law Review 62(3): 265–339.Google Scholar
Macintyre, S, Mitchell, R (eds) (1989) Foundations of Arbitration: The Origins and Effects of State Compulsory Arbitration from 1890 to 1914. Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Muller v Oregon 208 US 412 (1908)Google Scholar
National Labor Relations Act (1935) 49 Stat. 449 29 U.S.C. § 151–169Google Scholar
Peart, S, Levy, D (2003) The ‘Vanity of the Philosopher’: From Equality to Hierarchy in Post Colonial Economics. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Plessy v Ferguson 163 US 537 (1896)Google Scholar
Printing Trades Case 2 SAIR 31 (1918)Google Scholar
Roe, M (1984) Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought 1890–1960. St Lucia, QLD, Australia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, FW (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, I (2010) The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Random House Google Scholar
Women’s Living Wage (Cardboard Box Makers) Case, 3 SAIR 11 (1919)Google Scholar
Wyndham, D (2003) Eugenics in Australia: Striving for National Fitness. London: Galton Institute.Google Scholar