Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

It is impossible to comprehend fully the course and long-range impact of the Great Depression in the major capitalist countries of the world (Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States) without first understanding the mass protests of unemployed workers in the 1930s. Their protests form an indispensable element of the histories of class struggle, the working class, and modern notions of citizenship and the welfare state. They also form an indispensable background to the German elites' invitation to the Nazis to join them in the halls of power, with all of its terrible consequences. While most histories of the Great Depression assume that the majority of the unemployed passively accepted their fate, and there is evidence to support this view, the repeated mass protests of many of the jobless were central to the shortterm and immediate alleviation of their suffering as well as the medium-term development of the labor movement and the long-term expansion of the welfare state. Movements of the unemployed in the 1930s asserted the rights of the unemployed as citizens to certain levels of support when they were out of paid employment, and in so doing renegotiated boundaries of social acceptability. The cry heard at almost every unemployed demonstration in the major capitalist countries was a version of “work or full maintenance.” That slogan unsettled old associations between ... log in or subscribe to read full text