Strikes: A Necessary Good
Dear friends,
I’m so excited to be joining the Making History team! I’m a historian and a writer; I teach in the History & Science undergraduate concentration at Harvard and edit at The Drift. My work focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of American capitalism, with an emphasis on labor and work. I have a book tentatively scheduled to come out next fall with Harvard University Press, called Make Your Own Job: The Entrepreneurial Work Ethic in Modern America, which tells the story of how popular psychologists, management scientists, and policy experts convinced Americans that being “entrepreneurial” was the key to virtue, success, and happiness.
I’ll have more to contribute here before too long, but for now, by way of further introduction, I wanted to share a new piece of mine out today in Jewish Currents, one of the best left-wing little magazines out there. It’s about the history of competing conceptions of the purpose of striking: whether it’s a mere necessary evil, as our rhetoric today often implies, or a positive good. We’ve seen a bunch of high-profile strikes this year, which means that it’s a great time to reevaluate this history and take stock of what today’s resurgent labor movement can learn from the inspiring and often tragic history of unions in America. Again, you can read the piece here: https://jewishcurrents.org/revaluing-the-strike.
Thanks for reading!
-Erik Baker