How Many Machine Guns Does It Take to Cook One Meal? explores the cultural forces that shaped two pivotal events affecting the entire West Coast: the 1919 Seattle General Strike and the 1934 San Francisco General Strike. In contrast to traditional approaches that downplay culture or focus on the role of socialists or communists, Victoria Johnson shows how strike participants were inspired by distinctly American notions of workplace democracy that can be traced back to the political philosophies of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
Johnson examines the powerful stories and practices from our own egalitarian traditions that resonated with these workers and that have too often been dismissed by observers of the American labor movement. Ultimately, she argues that organized labor's failure to draw on these traditions in later decades contributed to its decreasing capacity to mobilize workers as well as to the increasing conservatism of American political culture.
This book will appeal to scholars of western and labor history, sociology, and political science, as well as to anyone interested in the intersection of labor and culture.
By:
Victoria Johnson
Imprint: University of Washington Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 14mm
Weight: 356g
ISBN: 9780295997131
ISBN 10: 0295997133
Series: How Many Machine Guns Does It Take to Cook One Meal?
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 20 July 2015
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Preface Abbreviations 1. New Wine in Old Bottles: Rethinking American Exceptionalism 2. ""A New Power and a New World"": The Seattle General Strike, 1919 3. ""To Organize and Control the Job"": The San Francisco General Strike, 1934 4. Explaining General Strikes: The Instrumentality of Culture 5. The Making of Moral Certitude: Institutions, Identities, and Resonance Notes Bibliography Index"
Victoria Johnson is associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, Columbia.