My dissertation deploys a recent case-study--the legislative struggle to enact the 1989 Fair Labor Standards Act Amendments--to elucidate the explanatory power of class-centered theories of the U.S. state. My variant of class-centered theory emphasizes the intrinsic relations between the commodity-form, capitalist wage-relation, and political class struggles. / In Part I (chapters one through three), I establish a theoretical and historical foundation for interpreting minimum wage politics. Chapter one illustrates the origins and consequences of Theda Skocpol's ahistorical, functionalist-grounded state-centered theory. I develop an outline for an alternative class-centered approach; one that interrogates the relations of commodity-form, capitalist wage-relation, and political class struggle. In chapter two I unfold a concise summary of Marx's critique of capitalism; emphasizing his analysis of the commodity-form of labor and wage-relation as foundational to the capitalist system. In chapter three, I investigate the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act as a product of uneven and contradictory capitalist development. In the context of discussing general changes in its scope and magnitude 1939-1988, two basic tendencies are evident: (1) industry-specific application of its provisions and (2) the historic, post-1960s/1970s retreat from its previous inflation-adjusted value and scope. / In Part II, I provide an in-depth, historical case study of political class struggles to enact the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1989. I demonstrate how organized labor and organized capital, through official representative agencies and class organs, substantially impacted on the form and content of minimum wage politics. The data strongly support class-centered theory, especially variants that assert the relevance of class-fractions for shaping capitalist state activity. Workers and capitalists from industries with relatively low average wage rates unquestionably dominated the political class struggle to enact a minimum wage bill. I conclude (chapter six) by summarily evaluating the strengths of class-centered theory and the political implications drawn from the political class struggles of 1989. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 4291. / Major Professor: Larry W. Isaac. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78378 |
| Contributors | Kamolnick, Paul., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 321 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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