Why is the United States the only advanced capitalist country with no labor party? This question is one of the great enduring puzzles of American political development, and it lies at the heart of a fundamental debate about the nature of American society. Tackling this debate head-on, Robin Archer puts forward a new explanation for why there is no American labor party — an explanation that suggests that much of the conventional wisdom about “American exceptionalism” is untenable.
Conventional explanations rely on comparison with Europe. Archer challenges these explanations by comparing the United States with its most similar New World counterpart — Australia. This comparison is particularly revealing, not only because the United States and Australia share many fundamental historical, political, and social characteristics, but also because Australian unions established a labor party in the late nineteenth century, just when American unions, against a common backdrop of industrial defeat and depression, came closest to doing something similar.
Archer examines each of the factors that could help explain the American outcome, and his systematic comparison yields unexpected conclusions. He argues that prosperity, democracy, liberalism, and racial hostility often promoted the very changes they are said to have obstructed. And he shows that it was not these characteristics that left the United States without a labor party, but, rather, the powerful impact of repression, religion, and political sectarianism.
Robin Archer is director of the postgraduate program in political sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was previously the fellow in politics at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford.
"Robin Archer's Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? is the most comprehensive, acute, and original exploration of 'American exceptionalism' to appear in many years. Archer boldly and rigorously argues that repression, religion, and socialist sectarianism shaped the politics of American labor far more than did the usual suspects—affluence, liberalism, democracy, and racial divides. Anyone interested in understanding the distinctive character of American politics during its industrial age will have to wrestle with this provocative and important book."—Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University
"This is a profound and searching study based on primary research that applies an entirely new perspective to the intriguing absence of an American labor party. Archer employs a comparative historical method with great ingenuity—matching up the United States with a 'most similar' case, that of Australia. He leaves virtually no stone unturned in his search for an answer, taking the reader on a fascinating journey that creatively integrates the politics of unions, ideological analysis, race, religion, and institutional design. A must for historians, sociologists, and political theorists."—Michael Freeden, University of Oxford
"Robin Archer's Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? is a splendid demonstration of the power of comparative history. Closely reasoned and extensively researched, it turns some of the oldest and most influential clichés about American politics on their head."—Daniel Rodgers, Princeton University
"Archer has some extremely important things to say about the U.S. experience based on his comparison of U.S. and Australian labor history. Indeed, he turns the conventional understandings of 'American exceptionalism' upside down, and, in doing so, he will make historians and social scientists reexamine and reinterpret the American past."—Melvyn Dubofsky, Binghamton University, SUNY
